Gurus and Cults

This is the (cynical) content of a reply of mine to an e-mail a colleague once sent me, in which she challenged the validity of Buddhism:

I have to confess, Brenda; Buddhism is one big farce, it’s complete nonsense. Those Masters are guys who all, after years of getting brainwashed and doing trance training and self hypnosis in a sect, work themselves up to some kind of mystical ecstasy and subsequently tell themselves that they have gotten Enlightened. And when they have their own monastery they all turn out to be power hungry fools and cause all kinds of sex scandals and other wrongdoings.

The mind is nothing but a bunch of biochemical processes in the brain and after you die the lights just go out — no room for high flying spiritual fantasy stories.

So just stay alive and reproduce...

Unfortunately I have to say that in many cases the content of this cynical reply is not too far from the truth. At a certain point, after hearing one ‘corrupt Master’-account after another, I even got the impression that being corrupt is a prerequisite to becoming a renowned Master, because most of the famous Masters seemed to indulge in immoral behavior.

Now, how can it be that so many gurus have been involved in scandals, while the Enlightenment they claim to have attained has to do with becoming less selfish and more compassionate and wise? One answer is of course that some gurus aren’t Enlightened in the first place.

The mystical experience may well be a valid experience, in which perceived boundaries fall away and the individual discovers his universal ground of existence. But we should not overestimate the effect of the mystical experience. Evidently the individual remains an ordinary human being, with all his weaknesses.

Maybe some corrupted gurus who actually are Enlightened didn’t start out with bad intentions. But when an ordinary human gets into a situation where people worship him every day, without a system of moral checks and balances in place, the ‘power corrupts’-mechanism will often do its work.

So an important indicator of guru corruption is in how far the guru portrays himself as a near perfect human being. This reinforces the projections the students have about the guru and so enhances the power trip of the guru.

Something else I have noticed is that although a lot of gurus claim to have attained perfect Enlightenment, those gurus often have completely opposing views on matters like the existence of free will and the necessity for spiritual practices and ethical conduct on the spiritual path.

How can their views be completely opposing when their realization is supposedly of the same ultimate perfection? Their teachings are more about their own personal interpretation of Enlightenment than they are willing to admit, apparently.

So when you go out shopping for Enlightenment in the spiritual supermarket, remember to keep the ability to think for yourself...