Issan said, "I have things to do."

Originally posted April 23, 2010

Photo: ©Rick Gerharter

One night during Winter sesshin, John Tarrant opened the floor for questions and comments. He began by saying that the real point of all our meditation practice was finding a place of freedom, no, I misspoke, it is not a place, not some approximation or substitute that might be available when we experience a lesser degree of the suffering that goes hand in hand with life. The point of our practice was really FREEDOM.

For some reason, or maybe none, memories about Issan had been surfacing during my meditation. In Issan’s life, the fact that he loved was no secret and no one doubted its depth. Even though he was an open book, some aspects of his love few people could understand. Those memories formed a kind of backdrop for my work on “Little Jade.” In the koan, a noble lady utters the name of her servant just so that her secret lover can hear her voice.

I had a friend who had been recently diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. He asked his doctor if he could postpone the only treatment they recommended, a resection followed by chemo. He said, “I have things to do.” Yes, we all have things to do, and taking care of them is exactly the crux of the matter. I am caught so often between what I really have to do and what responsibilities are just manufactured. Where in between is there any space for freedom?

The last ten days before Issan died were such a powerful experience that I've spent almost 20 years digesting the gift that he gave me and many of his friends. With the words "I have things to do" that week sprang to life again, and I reconnected with my friend and teacher and to that brief moment of his life in a way I had not experienced or understood before.

I am trusting that I can write the story with enough clarity to allow the freedom of the moment to shine through the jumble of my words.

Issan had an appointment with his oncologist. It was to be the last time he left Hartford Street, but if we knew it, no one said it. He was quite weak. His skin was bleached, working hard to cover his bones. He was a sick man—he knew that. We all did. Steve Allen and Shunko Jamvold helped him into the beat up car that had become the hospice taxi, and off they went to General Hospital.

Two hours later, maybe it was as long as three, they returned. I opened the front door and was shocked. Issan looked ghost-like. The pain on his face brought tears to my eyes. He couldn't even look at me. He clutched onto the banister for dear life, while Shunko lifted him from step to step.

They reached the top, and I heard the door of his room close. I turned to Steve, who was standing with me at the bottom of the steps, and asked, “What happened?”

Steve recounted the doctor’s visit in a very flat voice. I am almost certain I recall all the details of the story, though I know that Steve’s emotions and mine certainly color what I will say.
Issan was scheduled to have an MRI. They had waited for a long time for the doctor to arrive. Steve described Issan as smiling as he was placed on the moving platform, and the machine’s loud clacking began. Steve stood next to the doctor as they watched the images flash on a screen. Cancerous areas appeared as a soft glow, and Steve said Issan looked like a Christmas tree—every part of his body lit up.

The test ended. Steve, Shuko and Issan went into a private room with the doctor. He said to Issan, “You’re dying.” Issan tried to smile and said, “Of course, I know I’m dying, but I have things to do. It will take at least a month. I have to give Steve transmission, I have to ordain David and Harper.” I could almost hear his voice trailing off. The doctor looked at him and said (it is not difficult to imagine the tone of his voice. This kind of message can only be delivered with love), “No, Issan, I don’t think you quite understood me, you’re dying now.”

Steve described Issan’s response as a simple matter-of-fact question: “How long do I have?” The doctor told him that he could die at any time, or he might last a week, even ten days on the outside.

Issan thanked the doctor for all that he'd done. An automatic “Oh, thank you” never came from Issan’s mouth, and certainly not in this situation—they both knew that it would be their last meeting.

That doctor was the first of a long line of people who would say good-bye—and thank you.

As Steve spoke, I understood the anguish that I saw in Issan’s face. The stage had been set for the last moments in his life. He was a Buddhist priest, an abbot, a roshi, a gay man, loved by hundreds of people. And I’d seen an entirely human being, clutching onto the banister as he struggled to get up the stairs.

I usually dropped into Issan’s room before the 6 PM meditation to see if he needed anything. Steve and Shunko had been taking shifts to be with him all the time, so perhaps Steve had asked me to check in that night so that he could get ready for meditation.

I knocked and heard Issan’s telephone voice. That man loved the phone! I opened the door, and he pointed to the chair next to him. He was talking with his teacher, Richard Baker. “Oh, roshi, you can’t get out of here before the 10th? That is too bad. The doctor told me just this afternoon that I won't last that long. Yes, I'll miss you too. I do love you. Yes, goodbye for now. I'll call again or have Steve call if I have no energy."

Here was a different man than the one who only a half hour earlier had been clutching the banister. And it was absolutely the same man, but with a brightness in his voice that shocked me—if I said surprised, it would be far too mild to register the degree of the transformation that I felt.



I can’t remember exactly what Issan said next, but after only a few minutes, I had clear instructions to make sure that everyone coming to say goodbye would feel welcomed.

He told me how much he liked my fresh tomato marinara sauce, and that it would be a good dish to serve because he couldn’t know how many people would stop by. There would be hundreds, actually, and although he didn’t have the energy to see them all, they still came.

He also asked me to please do whatever Steve or Shunko asked of me. It was clear that Issan, through Steve, would orchestrate his last days, hours, and moments to accomplish as much as humanly possible of what was on his plate, and whatever that was would be exactly enough.

He was dead 10 days later. He took full advantage of the outside limit promised by the doctor. Richard Baker came to San Francisco to be with his student and dharma heir before he died.

Richard told Issan how much he wished that he could change places with him. Issan laughed, “Don’t worry. You’ll get your chance.”


To read more reflections about the life of Issan, see some photographs, read his dharma talks, go to my Record of Issan page.

The Cosmic Coincidental Control Center may be at work.

If not, let’s kick-start it.

July 1, 2025

Before the last Enneagram International Association Conference in July 2025, Jerome Wagner and Patrick O’Leary, both former Jesuits and pioneers in the Modern Enneagram movement, gave a presentation on their experiences before all the books, before Palmer, before Almas, Sandra Maitri, and Naranjo’s new, Spanish SAT groups. Along with a small cohort of Father Bob Ochs’s first enneagram students, they were the only people who had never signed either a non-disclosure agreement or a pledge of confidentiality, which became the focal point of the lawsuits that followed. This is part of my correspondence with them regarding that early history.

I have neither applied nor would I be admitted to the august halls of high-level Enneagram deliberations, but I will take your emails as an opportunity to sound off on the early days of Enneagram enthusiasm. My perspective is quite different. The “8” in my email address comes from neither 7 nor 9 being available among the addresses Google offered me when Gmail was in beta. So I’ve left it as the impetus of a strong eight-wing to cut through the inertia of a nine. 

I find myself in a very reflective period right now. I have been isolated in Asia for the last seven years, beginning during the COVID-19 lockdown in India, which was extremely restrictive. It continues. For the past two and a half years, I have been in Thailand, leading a solitary, almost monastic life. I did not foresee any of this, but things have a way of happening. I have been reflecting and writing. 

My retreat is not self-directed. Since 1988, I have been a formal Zen student. I work on the koans in a structured way—the whole nine yards, including daily meditation and frequent meetings with my teacher. I’ve tried helter-skelter, but I wind up in lalaland pretty quickly. I started zazen as a confirmed atheist, but as I said, things have a way of happening, and my current teacher is in the same lineage as the Jesuit Zen Master Father Emiyo LaSalle. So when pressed for a faith statement, I call myself a Jesuit agnostic.  Why am I saying any of this? I woke up this morning with a relatively rasa tabula, and I'm tired of watching Trump on YouTube destroy most of what I hold dear about being an American.

You will be addressing a self-selected group of Enneagram enthusiasts. And it’s an off-the-record exchange. Perfect. My views are unvarnished, critical, and extremely grateful. Of course, it is not the only perspective. This is completely off the record, but I’m presenting it to you for your use. I never aspired to teach the Enneagram, but I am now fairly adept at developing the kind of concentration that enables self-observation.  You said you were going to invite people to talk about what has remained part of their practice. The Enneagram, Naranjo, Ochs, and SAT have been an enormous part of what, I suppose, is my spiritual narrative for more than 50 years. And because it is so basic, it remains. Like being a Jesuit.

The first thing that I would say to the assembled host is that not one of them would have an Enneagram job or income without Bob Ochs. Not a one. Hameed and Sandra’s teachers are few, and they are the only Enneagram teachers who do not, in one way or another, trace their lineage to Ochs. The other exception is perhaps a person with a vaguely Sufi name, Laleh Bakhtiar. However, I would still bet that even he or she would not have written a single word or worked with a single student if it were not for what Bob did at considerable personal cost. It was enormous. 

My sources are my recollections of conversations with almost all the early major players, except Ichazo, plus my experience of SAT for the whole time Naranjo taught in Berkeley; I did not miss a meeting in five years. I am a Nine, though I posed as a Seven, and I think I would characterize my participation as “dogged.” I was not one of the stars -- sometimes to my chagrin. Other times I consider it a blessing.

I have maintained close contact with several members of the first, second, and third SAT groups over many years, and we continue to unpack our experiences. I cannot say if Hameed would even remember my being in the group. That’s OK. He’s as boring now that he's become an enlightened being as he was in Group 1. But to begin the list, I was very close to Father Joe Scerbo, a gay Franciscan friar who is now gone; MM; Michael Smith; Glen Lewis, who was in Arica with Caludio; Daniel Shurman; AL, very full of herself; and CD, toitally full oif herself; Claudio and Rosalyn; Catherine Thur. We all talked. Charlie Tart is still a pompous asshole. He didn’t remember me when I reintroduced myself at a talk by his teacher, Sogyal Rinpoche, founder of Rigpa, who was credibly accused of sexual misconduct. Charlie was too busy congratulating himself and kissing ass to pay me much attention. I didn’t miss much. I’ve had email exchanges with Idries Shah’s son, Tahir, who is a truly remarkable guy. He was a classmate of a friend, Cynthia Merchant’s brother. Cynthia was not in SAT but became one of Claudio’s close assistants when his teaching was mainly in Spain and South America. She is seamlessly bilingual. I got in touch with Tahir because I loved his writing and wanted to cross-check information I had heard from Ochs about Doris Lessing and Tahir’s father. I mention all these names so that you know that I ain’t just whistling Dixie.

After I left the Hoffman Institute, on a whim, I asked Claudio to allow me to interview him about a possible article I was calling “The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram.” He spoke with me for several hours a day over a week or so. I prepared a transcribed version of our taped conversations, and he gave me permission to use the material as I saw fit. Alas, I lost the whole damn thing in a computer crash and the tapes disapeared in some attic clear out between boyfriends. So I will rely on my memory and intuitive sense to recreate Claudio’s reflections. They were not very positive. I have some very subjective ideas as to why this is so, and when I get to that material, I will say so. (Spoiler alert: it was the drugs.)

Where to begin? The Jesuit Transmission of the Enneagram. Claudio was emphatic: there was no Jesuit transmission because “they” (you guys, Helen et al) made too many mistakes. You could not type an Eight if your life depended on it. Helen said something like “In our work, we see far more Eighths coming into the 'Work' than Claudio did. When I quoted her, he might have even used the word “bullshit,” though he rarely used gutter talk. Another thing that I remember well about this series of interviews was that there was no humor, a few nervous chuckles, and no jokes. It was all deadly serious.

Claudio asserted that he had only authorized Bob to convey his “indications” to the Jesuit groups (JSTB and Loyola), and that was it. There was to be no personal spin or interpretation. As an example, he cited the “now infamous” meeting where all of you, priests, nuns, men, and women, were to disrobe as a sign of fearless self-inquiry and surrender. He said that Ochs would not have dared give that direction on his own. AL tells me that it was she who came to the group that night in Chicago and had everyone take off their clothes in the closing ceremony; everyone did. I have just heard the story. It was more extreme than the directions or “Indications” given to any Berkeley group. Claudio told me that the idea came to him on a sudden “whim.” 

Both Claudio and Icnazo’s “holier-than-thou” shtick gets a bit heavy. When I say that Naranjo granted me permission to use the material as I saw fit, that was a significant gesture, and he delivered the statement of release or commission in a very formal tone. He made a big deal in these interviews that his notes and Ichazo’s Arica file had escaped without his permission, and their use was unethical, even immoral, because we had all pledged not to use any material without explicit permission. I think I know the source of the major leak (I’m sure, actually), although it is also the source of a lot of denial and counterargument. I can talk later about the missing 73rd (think the number is correct) that Ichazo did not retrieve when the 10-month Arica training was completed. 

(Helen also states somewhere in the court documents about her use of Osacr’s enneagon that she never saw nor used Ichazo’s confidential and, I presume, copyrighted notes. Oh, that Helen is a slippery one. She’s almost Jesuitical. Of course, she saw it, but you will never get me to say that publicly.)

To get Claudio to share, I let him control the conversation. There was a clear, definite subtext: he was deeply upset (I’ll use a gutter expression, “pissed off”) about the huge number of Enneagram titles available. I didn’t press the question. Market share was the true source of the upset. That he considered many of the interpretations to be misdirected, if not entirely flawed, was secondary. Believe me, he didn’t read many (if any) of your books; rather, he heard reports about the typing and might have cross-checked here and there. The issue was that he’d lost control. Although he always spoke of Oscar in a guarded, slightly disapproving way, it was always couched in the mystery that Ichazo was the link between the Enneagram and Gurdjieff’s teachings. With that link was some (to me) weird, esoteric, almost mystiical connection. Ochs had no authorization to pass on that imprimatur or seal of approval because Naranjo imagined Bob had bungled the job, which was unforgivable.

Let’s pick up the timeline again. These interviews happened after Naranjo had stopped returning Ochs’s phone calls; it might have been when I was still at Hoffman, but before 9/11. The serious and hurtful blaming had begun and was taking its toll. Bob had stopped teaching at the JSTB, or anywhere. He moved out of the small faculty residence that I found on Hillegass Avenue at the American Baptist Seminary of the West. Perhaps he had been asked to leave. When we talked, he was evasive. He told me that he’d rented a tiny, dark in-law apartment in a converted garage, in a very Asian neighborhood up the hill in El Cerrito. The Jesuits had given him a leave of absence, or sabbatical, plus a small stipend. I was not clear about his canonical status, but his connection to the Society was tenuous at best. He told me that he told his superiors he was working on a book, and they were (how shall I say this?) eager to see results which would never materialize. I surmised that they really didn’t know what to do with him. 

As I said, Claudio had stopped returning Bob’s phone calls, which upset him terribly, and he was no longer visiting the tantric Master Yogi Chen. His only visitor was Susan Diridoni, a lovely woman from either my group or the one directly after mine. I knew Susan and knew that she and Bob had a romantic connection. Susan has also died. I would never have mentioned their intimate connection while they were alive. I am not even sure if I should now, at least publicly, though Bob would not be the first heterosexual Jesuit to develop a strong, exclusive, romantic relationship that at some point included sex. Theilard apparently had a lover, and I knew the woman who filled that role for Avery Dulles, though I am absolutely sure they never had sex.

I called Bob at regular intervals for perhaps a decade. Sometimes it would take him a week or more to respond. We would meet at a particular restaurant where he could eat, particularly a Peruvian one on Mission in San Francisco. He complained that he had no energy; he found a doctor/dietician who prescribed a matchbook-sized piece of protein to be eaten between 1 and 4 in the afternoon. Or something that crazy, so crazy that it would drive a One off the rails. 

He told me that he was trying to write. At the time, I found hundreds of titles, which had increased to more than 300 the last time I surveyed them in 2019. https://enneagrambibliography.blogspot.com/2019/07/all-things-enneagram.html

He was not jealous, though he did mention that all these (his) teachers were generating good incomes and he was living on less than 2,000 USD a month. It didn’t feel like jealousy. I recognized a burden in the way of One’s, to compare and contrast his output very critically. It paralyzed him. It was a sense that he had been the source of so much good work, but every time he started to write, he would produce a few pages and then mercilessly throw them in the waste basket after a week. He felt obligated to produce something unique, worthy of the guy who kicked the ball into play, and he couldn’t do it.

I asked him what he wanted to say. He would respond vaguely that no one had ever looked at the major authors of the Western canon from an Enneagram perspective. However, somehow typing Tolstoy and launching into an analysis was not working out. I didn’t know how to respond, but my gut feeling is that, as with some of the more extreme Enneagram enthusiasts, he was asking the Enneagram to do something that it is not designed to do.

He was obsessed with two writers, Camille Paglia and Doris Lessing. How he lumped them together, I don’t know. With Paglia, I sensed some vindication that he’d been treated badly, even excluded for unjust reasons, and with Lessing, he was obsessed with finding another path to Gurdjieff. He told me that part of his practice was to write to Idries Shah — that letter writing was a revered Sufi practice. Shah might have sent a sentence or two back. When he died in 96, Bob wrote letters to his son as he was sure that Tahir had inherited his dad’s mantle. When Tahir responded that he was not a Sufi teacher, Bob continued to write his letters. He told me: “That’s what he’s supposed to say.” 

Looking back, I have to consider that Bob, a truly important person in my life, had suffered a psychotic break. He lived in a cave and entertained bizarre obsessions. His superiors were helpless. Bob was a solemnly professed member of a religious order with a track record of involvement in a significant spiritual movement. That credential has no value in the real world of academia and job applications. Thank God they did not cut him off. He would have been helpless. He told me that Susan had a profitable therapy practice and helped him out. (She also probably watched out for his mental state.) I was not in any position to help. I was also on a marginal income. Part of me wondered where all the people he’d helped were. Why didn’t he receive invitations to speak or contribute articles? Of course, by the time we had our Peruvian dessert, I realized that it would have been impossible to work with him. He gave us the Enneagram, and when it chewed up his life, we had to stand by helplessly.

Eventually, my calls became far less frequent, and he stopped responding. My own life was in deep shit. After going to meetings and quitting crystal meth, I did a year of intense traditional psychotherapy at Langley Porter. I had tried to trick myself into believing that the Enneagram, or Zen, could do the work of healing. In some ways, it made things worse, or maybe just brought them more into plain sight, while leaving any corrective actions for another time. I’m a Nine so you know how that went. 

I’m a recovering addict. I’m coming up on 15 years clean and sober. I’ve managed to travel the world; I write and tutor English, primarily to Buddhist teachers who want to work in English — that is where the money is for them. They do not pay me. I’ve worked on translating a Zen sutra into Tibetan that has been missing from their canon since approximately 950 C.E. I call myself the executive translator, getting the right materials to the right people at the right time, raising money and organizing the work. I know the Sutra well, but I do not know Tibetan. I have no temple. If I manage to return to India, I will be one of only three or four Zen teachers (and two of them are Jesuits) in a population of over a billion. Lots of Buddhists, though not many Indians. My teacher and I think that I might try to start a meditation hall near the Jesuit houses of formation in Delhi. There are 4000 Indian Jesuits now, more than in either the US or Europe. My boyfriend went to one of their colleges in Bihar.

So, how did things with the early Enneagram get so fucked up? I have a simple answer that is pretty straightforward, but one that is not talked about for good reason — it was the drugs. I didn’t use any drugs during SAT, not even during “Lines,” when it was recommended. Later I took LSD once with supervision, but I became addicted to crystal meth for amost 6 years. So I have to be careful with my judgmental One wing, but the first of the Steps is admitting that life with drugs had become unmanageable and out of control. 

The drug use in SAT was out of control, though everyone claimed that it was normal, or even a privledged state of mind. Almost everyone used drugs pretty much continually. Every weekend a new drug was passed around. People were always high, coming down, or recovering. There were drugs to summon the angry protectors, drugs to calm them, drugs to invite the Virgin to drop her viel of protection, LSD, MDA, MDMA. It was also illegal. Claudio could have lost his license if he had recommended any of these drugs, as several members later did, notably Speeth.  

Naranjo was perhaps the biggest abuser. He taught when he was high; he avoided teaching when he was high; he eventually had to quit SAT to dry out. He was brilliant, and he was a fucking mess. He was in no state of mind to conduct any solid or useful experiments. SAT was not a pharmaceutical spiritual testing ground. There were no controlled debriefings; there were no sober monitors. And of course, we couldn’t talk about it. Ochs was involved, perhaps not to the degree that most people in SAT were, but he experimented. I know because we shared the same floor at the faculty residence at the American Baptist Seminary of the West. Ones are not good drug addicts. Save that for Sevens. He tried to hold down a position at a Jesuit house of study; he failed. I left the Jesuits, moved to San Francisco, and drove a cab. 

I have more to say.  I'm not sure what to do with this, but thank you for allowing me the opportunity to say it. I have a few things to say about the Gurdjieff cult and how Helen obtained her information. You may have some suggestions. I think that this information about SAT and drug abuse does need to be said, but I am not clear enough to know how to do it effectively. You see, what you guys did was in so many ways some of the most valuable of all the Enneagram work. You saved it from the cult. Bob always told me, “Ideas make a difference. Good ideas can be a source of good action.” The Enneagram is such a source.

Going to button this up and call it a day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfjgO2amPSY&list=PLBqkQmExk0GJ_UdSxaSzbR_BDjcw1xGVR

The Ethical Slut goes in search of a Zen teacher

I had an email exchange with a well-regarded senior Zen teacher from the same lineage as I practice in. Our conversation quickly veered off into a dead end, and I was left wondering what I’d said wrong. I am going to talk about private communication, so I will not name names, but I will flesh out the full context of our exchange. I was not teacher-shopping. I simply asked a question. 

Roshi X asked me whom I practiced with. My answer included some of the most senior teachers in his school and some well-known people in another lineage. I’ve been practicing Zen since 1988, and for most of that time, I have talked with a teacher both on retreats and at regular intervals. I’ve made the formal request to train with several different teachers, but it was always serial monogamy, never two at once. Four of my teachers are dead; two died while I was working with them, and one sent me to his senior student and then died. One died after I began koan work. We parted on very friendly terms, but I think she was happy to be rid of me--another tale.

Rigid Roshi came down on me like a ton of bricks. After questioning the credentials of several of the teachers I mentioned, he asked how I could expect to make any real progress unless I found my master, stuck it out, drilled down, and got to the heart of the matter. I may be generalizing a bit, but that was the tone. I was looking for a place to do retreats near where I live, but I quickly decided that it would not be with Rigid Roshi. 

Yesterday a Zen friend asked me why we need teachers anyway? A good question. It is, of course, pretty standard practice in Zen to seek out a teacher at some point. I’ve heard the tired old saying that when you’re ready, the teacher will come to you. I like the mystical lyricism of the sentiment. It even has a touch of magic, but there’s definitely a lot more involved. Usually, something happened on the cushion that made you want to go deeper, some experience caught you off guard and merited further exploration, perhaps you just wanted someone to talk to as you ventured into unfamiliar territory, or maybe you got lucky and met someone you clicked with, a true dharma friend. I can locate some or all of those motivations in my own search for teachers at various times. For the most part, I’ve always had a teacher over the nearly 50 years I’ve practiced. I do better when I have one. I’m more focused, happier. I actually encountered Buddhism when I met someone whom I could really call a Buddhist. I’d read a few things, and then I set out to meet a teacher. Although I didn’t ever formally become his student, I visited this very experienced meditation practitioner many times over the years, listening to him, asking him questions, participating in his practice, and observing how he behaved. So I’m prejudiced. I’ve had several connections with other men and women who were solid practitioners. I've been lucky. They were very decent human beings. There was a connection. It can go deep. And for the record, I was never emotionally, sexually, or financially abused.

But to get back to Rigid Roshi’s criticism. Why just one? Where does that lead? What kind of relationship is required? What are the boundaries? What happens if it becomes a tired, old, stale relationship like a dead marriage, or what, and this is not unknown, if it becomes abusive? What is the value? What if, when you haven’t found true love, you play the field and sleep around? Like many Westerners, I’ve sampled from various traditions. I’ve spent time in at least two Tibetan traditions, or at least spent untold hours studying, going to classes, even seeking refuge and receiving empowerments. I’ve done Vipassana retreats and read their literature. I’ve worked with four Soto teachers, done many sesshins, and lived in practice centers. I’ve done koan practice with at least 6 authorized teachers. I’m a total slut. I began my checkered Buddhist practice in 1973. With several extended hiatuses for psychological work and a painful exploration of the world of drugs, I’m coming up on 50 years of practice. Do I still work with a teacher? Yes. Does it take time to develop a fruitful collaboration with him or her? Obviously. Do I have boundaries? You betcha. Do I recommend it? The jury’s out. But I do know this: in the West, we do not have a solid tradition of established Buddhist practices rooted in our culture. As you walk down the street, the Methodist Church is right next to Saint Catherine’s parish, but the Rinzai temple is not to be found. The Tibetan lama has just opened his center in an old fraternity house, but he's very busy, way too busy to give you much individual attention. Of course, you’re going to look around for a little love and affection. We’re humans. 

Which brings me back to my original question: How does an ethical slut find a teacher and actually develop a good relationship?

I will be clear about what I want and what I’m willing to give or give up. You have to be clear, too.

• Sure, it can get down and dirty. That’s the point. 
• We’re equals in the relationship. There's a lot I don't know. If you have the answer to a question I’m looking for, I will be grateful if you share it. But that’s it. I am assuming that it comes with no strings attached. If I see telltale signs that you are going to demand something that I’m unwilling to give, it’s time to say goodbye.
• I don’t do well with either domination or subservience.
• I do not do homophobia or sexism.
• I don’t pay for sex. I have, but it was over quickly and, in retrospect, not worth it.
• The understanding is that there will be mutual respect, and nothing lasts forever.

So, no thanks, Rigid Roshi, I will not be coming around. I don’t even know you, and you dropped a load of garbage on me. How can I expect to be treated as a unique human? You do not know something I don’t. I assume that you are in the business of offering some service to humankind for the benefit of others and a taste of freedom. In that case, I can recommend a few practitioners with a little more savoir-faire who can coach you in some interpersonal skills.

Big Changes for Jesuit Spirituality

Newsflash! Pope announces changes to the Spiritual Exercises

13 March 2024

Pope Francis will hold a joint press conference with Father Arturo Marcelino Sosa Abascal SJ, Father General of the Society of Jesus, to announce the first major revision of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius in 500 years. This follows the discovery of a document in Saint Ignatius’s desk with instructions not to be opened until the tenth year of the reign of the first Jesuit Pope. 

The Jesuit Curia has released a translation of Father Ignatius's letter.

Rome, January 4, 1556

As I near the end of my life, I pray (and worry) constantly about the future of our Company. Although it seems to be thriving, supplying extremely well-trained priests to stem the tide of the reform movement and missionaries around the globe, something haunts me. The vision that I had by the River Cardoner is fading. I have been particularly troubled by the prospect of losing that vision after I die.

The administration of the Society will not suffer, there are plenty of talented men, but I fear our collective understanding of God’s will is more than slightly cloudy. .I am worried for the visionaries. Our men are certainly a cut above regular priests. We have a lot of second sons of high-ranking families, bright kids, eager, many are extremely devout, but it is almost as if they do everything too perfectly. The gay ones have to hide out because there are so many trying to prove themselves. Damn, macho post-medieval tribal culture is deadly.

Then I had an experience with a young applicant to the Society, a mestizo who came back with some missionaries from the Americas. He can neither read nor write, and his Latin is rudimentary, so I had to have him work in the kitchen while he catches up. He claimed to have had a vision of the Blessed Mother that directed him. He started talking to me about it, and I was deeply moved. I have weighed the spirits carefully, and it is clear to me that Mariano had an authentic vision.

Mariano says that the Virgin told him that we Jesuits place too much emphasis on earning God’s Love. I blame myself for the emphasis on love through actions and not in our hearts. (Love is expressed through actions, but it has to do with intent). He says that the Virgin told him that priests who are privileged and jealous of their position become blind to the immediacy of God’s love and can’t see that this love comes without any conditions. He’s absolutely right, but centuries of fighting have conditioned us to enforce conditions rather than see beyond them.

I would turn our enterprise over to Mariano if I could. I know this is God’s will, but I can’t carry it out. The Inquisition would go ballistic. The Pope’s funding scheme for Saint Peter’s would collapse. The Society would split apart with the infighting. Sometimes I am tempted to just let the cards fall where they may; those snobby Jesuits who spend years studying the minute distinctions in the writings of Avicenna and Aquinas need to do more quiet meditation, but I will have to leave that aside. I have decided to send Mariano into hiding,

This is where I am being led right now. I have to get this young man to safety and protect his vision. The time will be ripe at some point, but not at this moment. Until then, we must protect this inspiration. The fires of the Inquisition need to be extinguished, and warring factions need to at least reach a detente. The church does need reform, and a strong hand is necessary right now, so fight fire with fire, but make sure that the proposition of “ends justify means” is discussed in the ratio. Keep an open mind. Things change.

I have authorized the foundation of a clandestine cell of Jesuits near Buenos Aires in the New World. Mariano will lead this small community. Their practice will be kept alive by recruits from the indigenous community, who will serve for as long as it takes. I want to keep the flame alive while things sort themselves out. Mariano has told me that the Virgin told him that the Jesuits will begin practicing the quiet meditation that Xavier wrote about from Japan, and that she approves. I find that perhaps the hardest thing to believe of all the wonders he shared with me, but I suppose it is possible.

Mariano has my permission to restructure the Spiritual Exercises. I will note them here so that anyone who reads this will know that I approve of the changes. He has turned them on their head. The first week will be the Contemplatio ad Amorem. The main meditation instruction will be the fourth method, to follow the breath as it rides on the sound of a word in prayer. Mariano says that human beings can instinctively find God in all things. He is right. In my version of the Exercises, I thought I had to lead the retreatant by the nose. We don’t need to go through hell to experience the Presence in rocks and stones, mothers and babies, even in the clanging of pots and pans.

This experience will be the basis of the meditations on the events and sayings in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ during the second week, which will stand as they are, with the exclusion of the stories about Mary. The third week also remains as it is, but without my interpretation. We can approach the meditation on His sacrifice and death, allowing them to speak for themselves and create their own inner narrative. But again the story of Mary going to the tomb will be left for the entirely new fourth week.. 

The new fourth week is a series of meditations which Mariano received in his vision of the Blessed Virgin. She was the person who really allowed God to become human. I hope we don't have to wait 500 years to experience how Mary the Virgin can help guide us to continue the Incarnation, but 500 years is just a drop in the bucket of eternity. We can all begin to experience immediacy right now in the moment. We don’t have to wait. Waiting for the present moment is an oxymoron. However, the changes in my Exercises will have to wait.

Mariano tells me that in the clandestine Buenos Aires cell, washing dishes will be part of everyone's daily practice. It should smooth out the rough edges between Avicenna and Aquinas. There may be random occurrences in the universe, but few mistakes.

Father Ignatius

The Intuition Network, A Thinking Allowed Television Underwriter, presents the following transcript from the series Thinking Allowed, Conversations On the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery, with Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove.

APPROACHES TO GROWTH: EAST AND WEST with CLAUDIO NARANJO, M.D. 

JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D.: Hello and welcome. Our topic today is a look at techniques for human growth, a comparison of Eastern and Western approaches. My guest, Dr. Claudio Naranjo, is a seminal figure in the human potential movement, the author of several books including The Healing Journey, coauthor of On The Psychology of Meditation with Robert Ornstein, and also the author of The One Quest. Welcome, Claudio.

CLAUDIO NARANJO, M.D.: Thank you.

MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to have you here. One of the things for which you will be remembered in the history of the consciousness movement was your role in bringing the Arica school to the United States from Chile. Maybe that's a good place to start, since Arica introduced many, many different techniques, and attempted, I think, to synthesize Eastern and Western approaches. Can you tell me a little bit about how you got involved in Arica?

NARANJO: Well, I worked in Chile before coming to California.

MISHLOVE: You were a psychiatrist there.

NARANJO: Just before migrating I left many people hanging. I had a group that had become a therapeutic community, where I had partly applied the inspiration of Esalen, where I saw many approaches under the same roof that were normally not found under the same roof in other places. I undertook to do something of that sort, but just with my resources, so I created a program with meditation and Gestalt therapy and readings from mystical literature, fencing, and so forth — a collage of approaches, which I thought were converging. Naturally people were a bit desolate when I left. It's said that when there is a need a teacher appears, and probably there's some truth in that, in that this group contacted Oscar Ichazo, or Ichazo somehow appeared in their midst soon after I came to the States.

MISHLOVE: In other words, he filled in the vacuum that you left at that time.

NARANJO: Yes. People in that group wrote me and said, look, there's a very interesting Sufi here that you might want to meet one day. When you come to Chile next time, make a point of knowing this man. I was then traveling every year to spend vacations with my son, after a divorce. So when I did come to Chile I did make a point of meeting Ichazo. A good friend of mine, who at that time was head of the Chilean Psychological Association, had invited Ichazo to give a series of lectures in Santiago. In addition to the two months of lectures — I don't remember how many times a week — I was invited by him to spend hours every day with him. He said, "I want to give you this attention because I feel you will bring other people to me." I said, "I don't see myself in a role of propagandizing for anything. If I want to work with you, that's what I'll do." He insisted, "Other people will follow, whatever you do." And that's how it happened. I was very ambivalent about the experience of those months. I came back to California, and particularly to Esalen, where I was considered an associate in residence and held workshops. I came back feeling that I had had remarkable spiritual experiences by meditating in his presence or by following directions, and at the same time I felt great distrust for the man. I felt he lied a lot, and I told him to his face just before departure. I told him, "What should I do about this? I perceive you as a liar and as a manipulator, and I don't know whether I can work with you under these circumstances."

MISHLOVE: It was very forthright of you to say that.

NARANJO: I came from the Gestalt tradition; I rather believed in that approach. He said to me, "In this manner of working, we don't need sanctimonious reverence. All that is necessary is that you work and you let me work. Honor your distrust; you have been deceived in the past. And allow yourself the time to know, because you cannot judge now; you can only judge by the fruit. So if you work with me you will come to Arica" — and this is the part of the story I've never told publicly before; I think at this point I can — he said, "You will know very soon, because what I will do with you is take you through a process involving only several weeks of retreat in the desert, a very powerful process after which you will know for sure." He made a great emphasis on that being secret at the time. Now what happened later was — well, to say it succinctly — a new birth. I experienced a new beginning.

MISHLOVE: You went to the desert.

NARANJO: I went to the desert, and I could validate that indeed it had been a good idea to accept his offer. At the same time he played like a typical Sufi trickster. At the end he told people that I had gone to the desert on a Jesus Christ trip, disobeying his orders instead of staying with the rest of the group in Arica. Because indeed many people had followed my footsteps. First it was five; Ram Dass wanted to come, and Stanley Keleman and John Lilly, very well known people. Ram Dass ended up not coming, and Stanley Keleman didn't come.

MISHLOVE: But John Lilly did.

NARANJO: But they attracted many people, because knowing we were coming, others wanted to. And then Oscar asked me and John Liebtraub, who is still with him, to select no more than fifteen. Then it was no more than twenty, then no more than thirty, and the group kept increasing. The maximum was thirty, but forty came.

MISHLOVE: For a training in Chile.

NARANJO: For a training in the city of Arica, which is the northernmost town.

MISHLOVE: For which the movement was named.

NARANJO: After which the movement was named, after everybody left Arica and came back to the States. But at this point we went different directions. I became the black sheep of that group, because I didn't abide by the group's decisions after a while; it was a choice we all had to make. I chose to be my own person — a little bit like Gestalt tradition again. And so I came up a bit earlier, and started teaching in Berkeley in my own way, which was integrating the Arica experience with my earlier Gurdjieff background, with Gestalt, and increasingly with Buddhist meditation.

MISHLOVE: I suppose it's worth mentioning that within a few years, two or three years, of your experience there with Oscar Ichazo, the movement spread in the United States, and must have encompassed thousands of people.

NARANJO: Many thousands.

MISHLOVE: And has shrunk down now.

NARANJO: Yes. I think his purpose in doing that was very different than the Arica experience. The experience of the few of us who were down there was, I think, deeper and of a different nature, in which he was improvising. Then he created a kind of spiritual supermarket designed, I think, to turn people on to the quest in great numbers, since he was convinced that it would make a difference politically one day — or in even a wider sense, that the future of our species, according to the old prophecies, would depend on the degree of spiritual orientation.

MISHLOVE: Well, we are faced today with this supermarket situation, and I suppose it's fair to say that you in your own work have combined a variety of Eastern disciplines with a Western psychotherapeutic practice.

NARANJO: Yes. Not only have I combined them, but I have also espoused the attitude of creating exercises that people can take home. I think we are in the midst of a democratization of psychotherapy. First psychotherapy was part of medicine. Then it became wider; it broke the professionalism and went into psychology social work. And then I think a new shamanism has emerged — a phenomenon of contagion that goes much beyond professionalism, a phenomenon of vocation.

MISHLOVE: I think you'd have to say that here in California, where there must be thousands and thousands of people practicing psychotherapeutic disciplines outside of the recognized professions.

NARANJO: Yes, and I think there is a hope in that. At the time when psychotherapy started with psychoanalysis, psychoanalysis has a very imperialistic attitude, a monopoly which discouraged self analysis. I think today it is more suitable to encourage the potential everybody has to work on himself and to assist in the work of others. So I'm all for support groups and self-help procedures, only I think there are particular tools that need to be generated and training that needs to be given, so professionals might now turn their attention to a different function in the community.

MISHLOVE: One of the parallels that I suppose one might draw between the Eastern and Western approaches is that of the guru, the Eastern teacher who is often very authoritarian, and the therapist, who in his own way can also be quite authoritarian. You yourself seem to have run into some difficulties with this. How does one, especially a Westerner, deal with the authoritarian aspects of it?

NARANJO: It's a very interesting question. I have lived it very personally, since as I have mentioned my first powerful influence after psychoanalysis was Fritz Perls. I believed in the democratic, all-American attitude — personal transparency. And even though Perls had a masterful use of authority, it was different from the guru's authority. It was not supported in holy books or anything beyond himself; it was only supported in his wishes and in his impulse. And then, after working with Oscar, I came to believe in the possibilities of being a group manipulator in Eastern ways too, and I adopted that for a while.

MISHLOVE: What do you mean by that, in Eastern ways?

NARANJO: I was very charismatic during that time. I attracted lots of people. Little by little I started to accept the position of a taskmaster.

MISHLOVE: The mystique of the guru, perhaps.

NARANJO: I started using authority in a subtle way. I haven't spelled it out very carefully to myself either, what it consisted in. But I only know that at some point I was feeling uncomfortable about being at the same level as others. It is as if I had something at stake on being one who knows more, one who is followed. It was a long process to regain my original stance, and now I would say I have come through experience to a point where I get respect, I am heard in a way, even more than I have in the past, when I was unconsciously seducing the audience by being brilliant. But I can see in retrospect that many people today are caught up in the guru role — therapists who have found refuge in the guru role without quite being up to it. There is such a thing as being addicted to applause and not knowing the difference, which is different from the role of a true master, Oriental style, who can sometimes handle that situation — who can hold court, as Muktananda, for instance, used to do, in a masterful way, without really needing it for himself. He can sort of use the human energy polarized to him, and act the role of a hierophant, or like some of the great Tibetans, and use the paraphernalia, like the throne, as the Pope does.

MISHLOVE: It seems if you look into the writings of the followers of even some of the well recognized gurus, such as Muktananda, there's a lot of gossip that comes out, that they didn't fulfill the idea role ultimately. They had their foibles.

NARANJO: Well, I think Muktananda's case is very complex. My own interpretation of him is that he was playing the role of a saint according to Western ideals, or to cultural ideals in general. I think he was a saint in the real sense, which has nothing to do with that. For instance, it's the popular idea that a saint has no sexual life, and he was playing the role of a Brahmacharya, which I think was part of a cultural mission he was on, to be an educator on a large scale. It was fitting that he did that role, and my own evaluation of him is that he was clean, because he was not a lecher. He had a healthy sexual life, let's say, but he was like some of these Orientals that I have called tricksters. I think it's an old tradition that runs all the way from days of shamanism up to contemporary teachers, particularly in the Middle East, that have this characteristic. I think because the human ego is such a trickster, it can be very useful to have a trickster to play chess against for the ego, to be tricked beyond oneself. Some people have taken up this subject in contemporary therapy, like the followers of Erickson. It's not the core of the humanistic movement, but I think there's something to be said for that.

MISHLOVE: You mean Milton Erickson, the hypnotist, who would trick people into trance states.

NARANJO: Yes.

MISHLOVE: Very interesting. I'd like to talk a little bit about meditation, since you have authored a book on that subject. When we think of Eastern techniques, surely meditation must be the archetypal Eastern technique. It's one that seems to be the most acceptable from a therapeutic point of view, wouldn't you say?

NARANJO: It is self therapy. It is one thing anybody can do for himself, and it has much to do with psychotherapy. For instance, one aspect of meditation is paying attention to one's experience in the moment. This was the earliest form of Buddhist meditation, Vipassana, and it was rediscovered by Fritz Perls with Gestalt. It was coming with the evolution of psychoanalysis, but Perls could be called the prophet of the here and now. He made this discovery a socially accepted, socially valued idea.

MISHLOVE: Yet he wasn't conscious that he was deriving it from Buddhism.

NARANJO: He was not, he was not. He had some acquaintance with Zen. But that is not the core of Zen. The core of Zen is non-doing, dropping the intention to do anything. But the earlier Buddhism, the first five centuries of Buddhism, converged on this practice of finely recording one's experience, paying attention not only to the mind but to the experiences of the body, even experiences that we would consider psychologically trivial, such as posture and breathing. This Perls rediscovered, and the difference is that in Gestalt and in the many therapies that Gestalt influenced and that go with different names — eclectic, group therapy, existential therapy, and so forth — there, it is paying attention to oneself in a social, relational context. But it's the same basic tool, and in this way there are many aspects of meditation that are also shared by therapy, only in meditation the situation is simpler. It's done by oneself before coming into contact.

MISHLOVE: What you're talking about as you describe meditation sounds almost identical to me to a technique developed by Eugene Gendlin which he calls focusing — I believe at the University of Chicago.

NARANJO: It's a convergent thing — Perls with the continuum of awareness, and Gendlin with the focusing idea. It was one of these ideas that was ripe at the moment, and as Nietzsche says, when the fruit is ripe, it's part of the zeitgeist; anyone can just pluck it. Many people in the same generation sometimes pluck the same thought.

MISHLOVE: But in the Eastern tradition, the notion of the guru is essential for meditation, is it not?

NARANJO: Not so much for meditation. That's different in different traditions. For instance, in early Buddhism the meditation teacher is more a specialized instructor, not so much a guru. It is with Zen that the idea began of a personal transmission beyond instruction — the idea of the contagion of being that could happen not only through the practice of meditation, but by just being around an enlightened being.

MISHLOVE: Muktananda used the term the Shaktipat, the transmission of Shakti energy.

NARANJO: The transmission that goes from heart to heart beyond the scriptures, is the way it's put in Zen. Which are also the words Beethoven used to express his intention to express himself in music — to go from the heart to the heart. I think it's a universal phenomenon that Zen acknowledged — that there is a much richer interaction between people than the mere sharing of a technique, and particularly between a more conscious person and a beginner. This was an evolution that culminated in Tantric Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, where the guru is so important that there is a specific place for initiation. Initiation is not only a ritual situation, but also a situation where the teacher not only instructs but demonstrates a mental state by infusion, so to say — making you feel a way of being through his presence, and saying, "Well, this is it. Now you have to cultivate it."

MISHLOVE: This is common to the Sufi tradition.

NARANJO: Yes, not only the Sufi tradition, but it was in Christianity at the beginning of Christianity. The idea of baptism was originally very different from now. It was originally an adult that was baptized after immersion in a river and experiencing the risk of drowning. It was an act of insufflation by the holy spirit. The priest or the holy one, the patriarch, would blow the ineffable quality of sanctity over the novice to precisely convey this presence.

MISHLOVE: Well, as we're discussing all of this, Claudio, I get the feeling that really the differences between the Eastern and the Western approaches are minimal. And yet, somehow intuitively that doesn't quite seem right to me. One thinks East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.

NARANJO: I think the main difference is that traditionally the East has specialized in going inward, introspectively and individually; whereas what the Western contribution is is the expressive component. Psychotherapy began by being expressive, by being a talking cure, with Freud. It continued being even more expressive with Wilhelm Reich, who believed in breaking through, not only becoming aware of repression — not being aware of repression in the Freudian sense, which is making something unconscious, but also to liberate the human impulses.

MISHLOVE: In the body, literally.

NARANJO: Liberate behavior from the straitjacket of culture, an excessive constraint of the social ego, let's say. Reich and D.H. Lawrence, in literature, were champions of this. So the later movement, and particularly with the new age — and Perls was very important in this again — was a step further, was a liberation movement, like many liberation movements. More and more an expressive quality came — the use of dramatic means, and the use of letting go, of relinquishing impulse control as a way to know oneself. Traditionally the way to self knowledge was one of self observation in containment: stop yourself from acting, and then you will know yourself. If you put your hand against the water, you feel the resistance of the water.

MISHLOVE: Now you say traditionally. Do you mean in the East?

NARANJO: In the East, and in the past, implying also the Western spirituality — rather Christian spirituality, and Islamic. It was a life of virtue and contemplation and not acting out of one's impulses, whereas in modern therapy there's an invitation to catharsis of the good and the bad — expression which is in many ways — well, catharsis in the Aristotelian sense. It's something like an exorcism of the passions, or a psychological judo, you could say — a process by which letting the anger out, or letting the greed out, in the form where you become a caricature of yourself, you end up being able to take distance to a whole layer of your psyche.

MISHLOVE: I suppose in a sense that may stem from the influence of the theater itself on the Western tradition.

NARANJO: The theater was important, and Perls was trained by Max Reinhardt, had that background. But many other ingredients came; psychodrama with Morino was important. But I think it's also in the spirit of the Western culture.

MISHLOVE: That notion of catharsis isn't present so much in the Eastern traditions, is it?

NARANJO: Certainly not. Social life in the East is regulated by etiquette, by norms, whereas in the West it is an adventure of improvisation. The libretto is not written before we're born into it.

MISHLOVE: We have greater freedom.

NARANJO: It's a creative challenge, and psychotherapy is a help in exploring that creative challenge of human relationships.

MISHLOVE: Well, my sense is that for people living today in our modern world, we can draw on East and West as you have done, and it's almost incumbent upon us, I suppose, if we are serious about our own growth, to taste of the richness that is available to us.

NARANJO: Yes, I think it is not only useful for us to meditate as well as engage in psychotherapy, to absorb from both, but there's much to be said for the interface of both. I have particularly been interested in creating what I call psychospiritual exercises, where there is a psychological content, but a meditational task too at the same time.

MISHLOVE: Claudio, our time is up. It's been such a pleasure having you with me. Thank you very much.

NARANJO: You're very welcome. It's my pleasure.

END 

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