Recently, I was asked by author Geoffrey Falk to review his new eBook Stripping the Gurus. This book is available as a PDF file through the Stripping the Gurus website and is published by Million Monkeys Press. According to his website, Falk is a computer programmer who lives in Toronto, Canada.
Stripping the Gurus is a fascinating and well written series of snapshots of self described "enlightened ones" who claim to hold the keys to spiritual fulfillment and oneness with God. These snapshots are not the pretty pictures that the gurus' spin doctors try to sell to the world. Instead, they represent the dark underbelly of the spiritual enlightenment marketplace that has slipped under the radar for most people. To suggest that these gurus have human failings seems so obvious (duh!) to skeptics, but amazingly many people flock to these "models of spiritual perfection" who promise similar enlightenment for those who are willing to eat the table scraps offered to them by these godlike gurus. After you read this book, you will never look at your local holy man through rose colored glasses again.
Much of the book centers around twenty five exposes of a wide variety of gurus mostly of the Eastern religion type. Some of the highlights of this book are as follows:
Laughing gas "drugee" Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
Alcoholic Chögyam Trungpa
Swami Muktananda with his secret passageway to the female disciples' dormitory
Pedophile Catholic priests
"Mental" L. Ron Hubbard - Sorry, Tom Cruise!
and my personal favorite, the feces eating Bhagawan Nityananda
Quite frankly, I could care less about the gurus' many kinky sexual habits, recreational drug use or even strange food cravings. To me, physical pleasure is as natural as intellectual or moral excellence. To denigrate the importance of our physical selves in order to pursue greater spiritual enlightenment makes as much sense as disparaging our feet because they do not have the manual dexterity of our hands. Even if we do have a spiritual side to us (which is far from being proved), why should it be more important than the our physical bodies that can give us orgasm and the intimacy that comes with sex? I do hold with contempt those individuals who claim to be celibate and above physical needs at the same time that they banging everything in sight. If you are going to do it, at least own up to it. But, I do not expected enlightened gurus to forgo physical pleasure as they pursue oneness with god. Of course, I would expect the sexual relationships to be consensual and not the results of pressuring easy to please disciples into sex and convincing them that it promotes their progress towards enlightenment as some gurus in the book did.
However, the book goes further than detailing the pursuit of physical pleasure by "enlightened" gurus and that is the real strength of this book. It explores the authoritarian nature of the gurus as they treat their disciples as their personal property to torment and exploit for their own power hungry ego trips. I guess when you are close to god or even an incarnation of god itself, you can do what you want and the disciples must acquiesce if they do not want to jeopardize their only chance at enlightenment. No matter how sincere that the guru may have been at the start of his or her quest for enlightenment, it would be very difficult to not enjoy the adulation from a multitude of unquestioning true believers who treat him or her like a rock star. This is bound to change anybody who has that much power over others into a monster. I don't imagine that I would do any better under those circumstances.
Even though the book is mostly a compilation of the works of others who have examined the guru industry, Falk does bring in his own personal experience as a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. It is a revealing insider story of his disillusionment with a dysfunctional organization (Self-Realization Fellowship) that suppressed individuality and put great responsibilities in the hands of incompetent managers who enjoyed their high position due to their loyalty to the guru rather than their leadership skills. After an experience like that, I can understand his anger at the whole guru experience. While I grew up in the Episcopal church and other Christian organizations and was not supposed to question the central doctrine of salvation through Jesus if I wanted to stay in good standing with fellow Christians, it was a much less intense example of enforced orthodoxy than what was found in Guruworld and it was not difficult for me to walk away from it. Not as difficult as it was for someone who immersed himself in a totalitarian ashram in which any questioning of the guru can sabotage your journey to enlightenment. In the final chapters, the difficulties of staying sane in authoritarian spiritual communities is described in depressing detail. Anyone considering following a guru should read this book before joining a spiritual movement. At least, one will go in with eyes open and not be surprised when the guru loses his or her luster upon closer examination.
However, I have a few issues with the book. First, the tone is often sarcastic and disparaging. It is not that the gurus did not often deserve it. They did and more. However, I would have preferred a little more professional detachment from the book's subject. In short, the sarcastic tone started getting on my nerves about halfway through the book. His chapter on Ken Wilbur sounded like his griping about his ex wife with whom he just had a nasty divorce. I understand his anger. But a little more emotional disengagement would have improved the book considerably.
Also, the book's indictments of gurus were strongest when aimed at specific persons. The chapter on Thailand's Buddhist monks seemed to be an attempt to paint all or most of the monks in Thailand with broad strokes on a basis of several possibly isolated incidents. Are the incidents described in this chapter an indictment of a few bad apples or a broader indictment of the entire Buddhist monk community in Thailand? I do not believe that the author made the case for the latter.
Falk should also be careful in his assertion that high schools are the same in kind as prisons, if not in intensity (p. 399). One factor that separates high schools and the military (except for boot camp) from prisons and ashrams is the lack of social isolation. I spend time in both high school and the military and can say that the ability to interact with the outside world allowed me to maintain perspective on these institutions when I was in them. If anything, the difficulties faced by high school teachers often emanate from the outside world that students bring into the schools every day. A student who comes from a household with an alcoholic father is going to bring a lot more baggage to high school than a student who has loving stable parents. I do believe that there is a difference in kind between high schools and the spiritual communities described in this book in that a high school are often part of and are far from being isolated from the larger community. The best way to control people is to isolate them from the surrounding community and deny them the perspective of those who look at their isolated community from the outside. This does not always require physical isolation. Keeping one busy with ashram business so that he or she has little time for outside activities and relationships is just as effective.
However, these are fairly minor gripes on my part. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to take off the blinders when it comes to spiritual enlightenment. What does this book have to do with skepticism? A lot in my opinion. We should remain skeptical of every claim that exceeds ordinary experience. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. If a guru claims to have perfect enlightenment not ordinarily experienced by the rest of us, we should challenge him or her to prove this. If the guru claims miraculous powers, this should be also challenged, too. We should not take any claim at face value without examining it. Too many people have wasted their lives pursuing spiritual "fools gold" that a skeptical outlook would have prevented.
Also, human knowledge is a communal enterprise. If someone claims to know everything that you need to know, that claim should be viewed with suspicion. Even Einstein had a somewhat limited knowledge of the universe beyond his scientific specialties and we know how smart he was. No one has the monopoly on any or all knowledge, not even the "enlightened" ones. One of the best thing about science is that ideas are constantly tossed around the scientific community until someone comes up with a consensus that everyone can live with for at least a little while. While this may frustrate many looking for absolute unchanging answers to mankind's greatest questions, it is better than relying on a pied piper guru who plays a wonderful tune right before he leads you over the cliff.
If you want enlightenment, read a book, preferably a science book. The often plodding pursuit of knowledge by scientists may seem excruciatingly slow at times, but it is still the best way to attain enlightenment that never disappoints.
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© 2005 Curtis Wolf