04.11.08
Posted in New Age at 4:48 pm by nemo
SK comment suggesting I am a ’sufi’
Sillykitty, I need to clarify the suggestion that in some fashion I am a ’sufi’. It simply isn’t true. First, the term is undefined, and has no meaning, actually. But in the conventional sense, it can be very destructive to pin that label on anyone. It implies that a whole series of strangers are in a position to harrass you if you don’t conform to a standard that isn’t specified.
And calling people sufis is itself a sufi tactic of entrapment. The Shah people called Shakespeare a sufi, and proceeded to imply that anyone who wished to write poetry like that must submit to their regime!!! A whole slew of nonsense like that. Completely brazen tactics to confuse beginners.
So I categorically deny being a ’sufi’. As proof positive of that I should say that any real sufi would go into hiding so deep noone would be able to penetrate his disguise. So if I am discussing the question at all in public it is proof I am merely a general student of culture and religion. Note my parallel discussions of Buddhism. I have met so-called sufis, in the seventies, along with people in a host of spiritual movements, across a spectrum. So what? As it happens I have learned more than is usual about sufism, the more to make me keep my distance.
Actually, if your read my book on World History, I have made my position exceedingly clear. I am a general ’secularist’ (uh oh, another label), that’s it. So it is unfair to be dragged into all of that. My experience is of the uniquely malevolent character of the ’sufis’ I encountered years ago. I would not wish anything to do with that, or any association. And my work would suffer instant bias if I were an adherent of any religion, cult, or suchwise group of associated believers, all too eager to entrap writers in their movements.
etc, etc….
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04.04.08
Posted in New Age at 5:01 pm by nemo
SK comments on spiritual poverty
…is only poverty and hunger spiritual? BAH! that is old paradigm nonsense. let’s pray for enlightened people with lots of MONEY. why not? i don’t see the problem. i would imagine that dl and other enlightened bodhisattvas with a lot of cash, are probably pretty philanthropic with it? no?
After what seemed like a trumpeting of ’spiritual poverty’ in my post, SK raises a significant issue. Actually the experience I described, despite my secondary take about ‘meditation retreats’, which was meant as a descant on the original theme, wasn’t intended as a depiction of a spiritual path. It was merely a description in disguise of the American economy and the way one can observe it. The path of the fakirs is an ancient one, and the indirect plugging of spiritual poverty in antiquity is clear from both Buddhism and Christianity.
But SK raises a valid issue, and sounds like Rajneesh who tried to criticize that tradition and initiated an new approach to an old question. We see it reflected in the New India as it industrializes. All well and good.
And I should warn those self-styled fakirs that poverty has a marxist dimension in an Islamic culture where certain sufis were disguised exploiters and passed away into the realm of ’spiritual riches’ as they became a hidden establishment veiled from ordinary seekers.
You can see the effect in Idries Shah who is really part of a group that has only contempt for ordinary seekers and creates a kind of ‘haut bourgeoisie’ of exploitative sufis elites, a point to consider when the charade of ’sheiks’ and ‘fakirs’ gets underway. I can’t resolve the issue, except to warn that the ’spiritually rich’ will outsmart themselves and end up in the pits of Dubai as high-priced spiritual whores.
Part of my warning about ’sufi hyenas’.
But, in any case, SK, you point is valid.
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03.17.08
Posted in New Age at 7:58 pm by nemo
SK on Eckhart Tolle.
SK, I have no comment anymore about these gurus. After the sufi hyenas it seems like a sick joke. After Rajneesh I have lost my reverence for the Buddhas. You seem to have wondered if I am a guru. Actually, NOT! I have a funny story about that. The sufis once checked me out on that score, roving for fronts. I used to be able to give lectures on Ouspensky off the top of my head. (Why?). Such trash, as it seems now. But I flunked the test: I was an honest man! Can’t have honest men for sufi sheiks. Also, I suffer from reverse charisma: people run away screaming as soon as I enter the room.
Still, I think I should lead a meditation reteat.
I once on my travels and wanderings lived for a whole month in Penn Station in New York with no money. There’s a meditation for you. A whole month. It’s easy to survive there: people catching trains throw away lots of food. You can scrounge in the trash cans. The caves of Almora are too ritzy. Penn Station in the midst of immense distractions is better as a meditation space. Yep, nice.
So, get ready.
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03.12.08
Posted in New Age at 7:17 pm by nemo
Comment from sillykitty on SK: Sufi hyenas and mysticism, an exit strategy.
We have lost the thread of our mind control discussion.
You did a good thing here by bringing up the subject of mindcontrol: unwittingly it turned out to be a preparation for the appearance of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, with its depiction of the way the very material we were discussing has filtered through the shadows of government into the forms of stealth tactics. I hope you get to read the book.
The question of ‘mind control’, as we determined, tends to downshift toward lunatic fringe conspiracy theories, when the real issue for us is the very real ’something we wouldn’t quite call mind control’ at work on various levels in the various cults and gurus. At the level of cults it is one thing, in the world of real occultists an altogether malevolent situation.
With a figure like e j gold and various shadow sufis the dangers here are very considerable indeed.
EJ Gold makes me think of Spitzer, now in the news. Why would someone with such talents just at the point of being a real teacher turn to such hurtful tactics with people who are foolish enough to trust him?
I hope you are safe behind your disguises. It is not a question of fun dabbling in mysticism, but of maintaining sanity as the spiritual front generates disillusion.
I think it is time to tackle the Gurdjieff material to generate a warning to those still at risk in the immense proliferation of all that, …
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02.26.08
Posted in New Age at 7:41 pm by nemo
Elisabet Sahtouris
Confessions of a Creationist Evolution Biologist
a Voices from the Edge presentation in London Part 1: Living Systems
More junk from WIE, this time on evolution. The Darwin critics are getting ripped off by those who buy into the basic Darwin critique and then use that for their own metaphysical off-the-deep-ending. The crisis of evolutionary theory can’t be solved by the usual brands of New Age mystical hype. These antithetical formulations become part of the problem, driving reductionists back to their rigidities.
The problem with Darwinism is the bungled job of proper observational science. The solution is not continuing lack of observation plus theology.
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in New Age at 7:41 pm by nemo
Comment from Da Free John groupie
Readers of this blog may remember a long series of posts on the issues of gurus. One of the most pitiful is this creep Da Free John.
I have deactivated the links given lest Google register spam, you can reconstruct them if interested in the DFJ propaganda rap, a bit stale form the seventies.
The issue of Slavoj Zizek is a bit odd in this context, but readers may recall the exchange with Hucklebird over non-dual issues. These people must think they should attack Kantian dualists with voodoo as the contribution of guru degenerates to philosophy (what does that mean???!) Most of these characters have never read a book of philosophy and have the intellectual capacity of college sophmores.
Avoid.
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12.08.07
Posted in New Age, Evolution at 7:54 pm by nemo
Hucklebird comment
You are beginning to sound like Andrew Cohen/Ken Wilbur. I haven’t read this book you refer to (send me a copy!):
Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution (Hardcover).
by Steve McIntosh
When New Agers talk about evolution they are mixing two things, self-development via some ‘yoga’ and the general evolution of culture. Read the rest of this entry »
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12.05.07
Posted in religion, 1848+, New Age at 8:36 pm by nemo
G.I. Gurdjieff, et al,… sufi hyenas:
I would be interested to see where the ‘evidence’ lies for Gurdjieff promoting ‘reactionary democracy-destruction agendas’ !!
Where indeed! I can’t easily satisfy your wish. The post in question was a ‘heart-felt warning’, not a legal case, a passing rumor among those who have moved in the shadow world of the ’sufis’, whispering in a side street between followers on the way. A sense of suspicion turning into dread arises over the years as an ‘occult horse-sense’ begins to pick up the soft echoes and veiled hints. What do you think is going on in the current attempted demolition of American democracy?
For myself I once stumbled on a secret Gurdjieff group wearing nazi arm bands, and active criminals behind sufi fronts. I know for a fact that the Gurdjieff shadow world is prejudiced against liberal democrats, even as it pitches its message to just such people. There is all sorts of mischief going on, and the standard public Gurdjieff groups don’t have a clue, they are irrelevant. The conservative, that is reactionary, character is obvious, in any case, from the context of the Gurdjieff/Ouspensky saga, against the backdrop of the Russian revolution. A bunch of stinking reactionaries if ever there was such. Behind all the esoteric hype lies Gurdjieff’s inability to get past the fact of abolition, in his statements about slavery. That was the generation of the gestating far right, the period of Nietzsche et al. and the genesis of fascism (Nietzsche is hard to figure here, of course, and can be falsely accused. But his statements are clear on democracy, freedom, and slavery) J.G.Bennett, to his immense discredit not repudiating the game, discovered the ‘conspiracy of genocide’ afoot. He hints at it in several of his books. This compromise wrecked his integrity.
You see it overflow into or at work in many gurus, with their postmodern exploitations and spiritual authoritarianism, wishing doom on the age of democracy. It is there among certain Tibetans, deeply hidden behind the public formations.
Be wary indeed of these people.
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10.27.07
Posted in New Age, Booknotes at 6:01 pm by nemo
In the previous post I cited one of U.G. Krishnamurti’s books (he passed away this year), and his radical criticism of the guru tradition. I also noted that WIE had an advertisement for the republication of Lizelle Reymond’s To Live Within, an out-of-print piece of guru propaganda. So what’s Andrew Cohen doing promoting this book in his magazine?
I recall this book from the seventies when I passed on the fringes of various Sufi worlds, and noted how this book appeared as a sort of coffee-table chestnut passed around among semi-followers still with some common sense left, but still liable to mesmerization by overbearing ashram hypnosis fields. I could see how this book was used to get people to sign their life away.
This book looks profound on one level, and those who are intimidated by the threatening declarations of Gurdjieff via Ouspensky need to learn (hopefully not the hard way) that such dishonest people just don’t deserve the ridiculous peans given to them by shills like Anirvan, or anyone else.
As soon as I saw the ad, I went immediately to Amazon.com to review it, or sound a warning. Enough people have been hurt by this kind of literature, and the author’s indirect promo of Gurdjieff is some of the most egregious mischief in this area. This book (the author himself is a harmless fool) has been abused already by certain Gurdjieff types to promote the mystique of the gurus, and plant in the minds of naive New Agers the absolute authority of gurus.
Don’t let it happen that these transplanted traditions of domination take root in the West, if it is still possible to do anything about it.
—————
To Live Within (Paperback)
by Sri Anirvan (Author), Lizelle Reymond (Author), Jacob Needleman
The reappearance of this out-of-print book by Anirvan/Reymond is perhaps unfortunate, though no doubt inevitable, since it has been used (effectively, for the naive New Ager) for a purpose contrary to its main theme: the relationship of a disciple to a guru, in an Indian context…
Read the rest of this entry »
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Posted in New Age, Booknotes at 5:47 pm by nemo
Picking up on comments on the recent issue of WIE magazine, I notice the announcement that U.G. Krishnamurti passed away this year. A radical critic of guruism in the tradition of the other Krishnamurti (whom he criticized), Krishnamurti was a voice for the times as Westerners attempt to grapple with the tricky phenomenon of gurus. Here’s one of his books.
The Mystique of Enlightenment: The Radical Ideas of U.G. Krishnamurti (Paperback), by U. G. Krishnamurti .
For most, the question of gurus is closed, but there are droves of New Agers systematically confused on the subject, and the secular critics are often of little help, as the question derails in the Standard Operating Critique, deprogramming and cults. But the issues are not that simple.
I notice that WIE also has an ad for the republished To Live Within, by Lizelle Reymond (and Sri Anirvan), a book better forgotten, but, inevitably, the guru propagandists thought it fitting to keep this piece of guru intimidation on the market. I will comment on this book in the next post.
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10.18.07
Posted in New Age at 7:33 pm by nemo
James: Wilbur Open Thread
As far as I’m concerned, Wilber should be placed in the same category as dangerous con men like Adi Da and Andrew Cohen. Forget Chopra…
Read the rest of this entry »
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10.17.07
Posted in New Age at 3:03 pm by nemo
Dogberry expressed some criticisms of Ken Wilbur. I am going to set up this open thread for comments, from anyone, and I will place any useful commentary in the main post.
James comment upgraded here to main post:
James said,
October 17, 2007 at 7:54 pm · Edit
As far as I’m concerned, Wilber should be placed in the same category as dangerous con men like Adi Da and Andrew Cohen. Forget Chopra…this guy has already brainwashed gullible minds with the pseudo-sophistication and disguised nonsense of his “integral philosophy.” Indeed, he has fooled his followers into thinking that his “philosophy” is more than just recycled New Age garbage:
“While some of Western Buddhism indeed deserves a bashing as quasi-Western pseudo-Buddhism, it being an insidious newage flirtation with general Buddhist signifiers, and a shallow understanding and application of Buddhist spiritual methods, there is surely an authentic Buddhist mysticism for the 21st century being questioned and formulated here in the West by at least some…For a way out of such mess, read chapter “Legitimacy, Authenticity, and Authority in the New Religions” in Ken Wilber’s “Eye to Eye”, or see the online essay ”A Spirituality that Transforms”.”
http://hokai.zaadz.com/blog
Here’s another comment on Wilbur
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10.08.07
Posted in New Age at 7:08 pm by nemo
It exemplifies why I don’t think it would be a great idea to get rid of “classical” Buddhism.
I certainly think this is correct, but the problem is that ‘classical Buddhism’ thrived in a context foreign to us, and the world of the early Buddhists on the fringes of society wouldn’t be tolerated by modern social systems.
Also Buddhism has a complex history, and any encounter with it tends to chaotify as the different stages, Hinayana, Mahayana, and subsequent developments (’Tantra’) meld together in confusion, even as the ancient conflicts of Hinayana and Mahayana resurface and complicate everything, next to the decayed versions of Mahayana which freeze people in place.
Also, the heritage of Buddhism has produced an immense number of occult operators (one considers the history of Tibet) who are no longer spiritual types. These people wreck everything.
So I don’t have the answers. But you are right. I have often called for a sort of generalized ‘religion’ in which the basics of human evolutionary psychology (I discard the term ’spirituality’) are laid out as a starting point (a sort of super FAQ) in a secular environment free from guru fun and games. Buddhism actually did that, more or less, several millennia ago. But the language and concepts no longer sync very well with modern minds.
In any case the New Age environment is producing an immense, commercialized wasteland where the ‘noise’ factor makes ‘classic Buddhism’ a fairly weak channel.
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