The Enneagram — “Histoire de Jour”

"What's your soup du jour today?" "Cream of tomato, just like every other day."

Originally published Wednesday, December 28, 2022

Yuval Harari says it would be nearly impossible to get 20 baboons to organize a coordinated effort that would produce a widespread effect. But homo sapiens has created narratives that allowed our species to organize large-scale efforts to subdue and exploit every inch of the universe we can reach. This is our propaganda for the superiority of the human race. If 20 baboons had been able to organize themselves and create a convincing narrative, we’d be living in ”The Planet of the Apes.''

In the history of religions, the creation of a supernatural narrative spearheaded the invincible superiority of monotheism. Modern scholarship has shown that the story of the Exodus was fabricated by the rabbinic and prophetic leadership after the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem in 586 BCE. The Narrative of the Good News was created and propagated by mostly Gentile Jews after the death of Jesus. About 600 years after Jesus, the Prophet was visited by the Archangel Gabriel and set the world on course for a more militant form of monotheism. In another part of the world, stories about the Buddha's enlightenment touch on another side of the human psyche that propelled meditation into legitimacy. The Bhagavad Gita played a pivotal role in the 19th and 20th-century Hindu revival by modernizing its teachings into a practical, accessible philosophy for social action and national identity.

The Origin of the Enneagram

As one of Claudio Naranjo’s first students when he introduced the Enneagram, the nine-pointed diagram that he’d learned from Oscar Ichazo, I’ve become very interested in what’s become known as the Western transmission of the Enneagram. I’m fascinated by competing narratives about its esoteric roots. (I’ve written about it before). This is the exact phenomenon that Harari describes: proponents of particular Enneagram styles have crafted creation narratives to bring their products to market. One universal side effect of enlightening mankind through the Enneagram is that it separates you from your money.

This brand of histoire de jour is, at best, self-serving, pieced together from bits and pieces of hearsay evidence, and in some cases, outright fraud.

Here is a preposterous statement on the first page of Helen Palmer’s website for her Narrative Tradition: With a history of centuries, the Enneagram is arguably the oldest human development system on the planet. During the past decade, the system has undergone a renewal of scholarly attention within the context of current personality typologies.

In the interest of the scholarly attention that Ms. Palmer lauds, here’s a clear, distinct, verifiable historical record of the beginning of the Narrative Tradition of the Enneagram.

In the late Spring of 1975, in a large living room of a nondescript house on Berkeley’s Arlington, Kathy Speeth organized a series of nine evening presentations about the Enneagram for the “therapeutic” community. In attendance were approximately 15 therapists interested in the Enneagram who were not members of Naranjo’s SAT group. Among them was Helen Palmer. She’d heard about the Enneagram from Naranjo’s students in her own practice of psychic readings.

I remember these presentations very clearly. They were a departure from the usual work of Naranjo's SAT group. Speeth and Bob Ochs had asked me to be on a ‘panel’ of Seven’s, ego ‘Plan’ as both Ichazo and Naranjo referred to the point “Gluttony.” This was the first time several people with the same fixation spoke in front of a group and answered questions (the identical format of the Narrative Tradition). There was one evening for each of the 9 major fixations.

Naranjo began the sessions with psychological descriptions of the 9 points. In itself, this was not unusual, but his comments were definitely tailored to an audience of trained professionals rather than the conversational tone he normally used when directing a student’s personal work in SAT. The authentic tone of self-observation may have been present, but I felt that the professional/technical language distorted the feeling of each point.

There’s the Narrative Tradition's “history of centuries” condensed to about two weeks of evening presentations, and I was present! Voila

Other enneagram enthusiasts have fabricated other stories and sources. 

The source of the Enneagram, or Enneagon, is Egyptian Gnosis. In Heliopolis, the center of worship of the Ennead, there were nine deities of ancient Egyptian Mythology about which we know next to nothing, and we haven’t yet deciphered the hieroglyphics for fixation.

Other proponents of the system trace the variations of the Enneagram symbol to the sacred geometry of Pythagorean mathematicians and mystical mathematics, but Pythagoras left no clear teachings, though he apparently once went to Heliopolis, with its nine gods, or something.

Plotinus’s Enneads. There, at last, a use of the Greek word for 9. However, we have to credit a dude named Porphyry for the somewhat artificial division of Plotinus’s writings into six groups of nine. Connecting the Enneagram with Neoplatonic thought is perhaps a stretch too far, but fear not, there are other choices.

We can cite Adam and the Kabbalistic Trees — leave no stone unturned and rope in Jewish seekers.

The Secret Teachings of Jesus (via the Desert Fathers) — sure, why not? But in my view, far more persuasive is the Jesuit connection: the frontispiece of the "Arithmologia" by the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680), published in 1665, depicts a figure not identical to, but somewhat similar to, the Enneagram. Jesuits mucking around with esoteric religious writing lends credibility.

Many purveyors of various Enneagram systems say it was originally created by the esotericist George Ivanovich Gurdjieff via the Naqshbandi Sufi order about 100 years ago. However, there is absolutely no evidence in Gurdjieff's voluminous writings that he ever used the Enneagram as Naranjo, Ichazo, et al. do. Zero. I repeat ZERO Evidence.

Dr. Naranjo claims his source of the teaching was his mystical experiences in the Arican desert. He claims the Enneagram's historical origins are in esoteric gnosticism and occultism, based on channeled material from automatic writing, which was then verified through observation. I am particularly fond of the story that a book fell from a shelf in the esoteric library of Ocsar Ichazo’s uncle in Bolivia and opened to a page with the 9-pointed diagram. Let's just skip the verification bit altogether.

Professor Harari points to storytelling as a means of coordinating mass human efforts, but I am suspicious of lesser enterprises employing the same methodology. These people are selling snake oil. They use the “histoire de jour” like a struggling restaurant, using yesterday’s leftovers to increase the bottom line.

“Something is missing” is a constant complaint running through all these narratives. We lose our connection with the divine, have to reconnect, and, in most cases, are unable to complete the circuit without some assistance that costs money. It is one answer to a felt experience of the human condition, and one of the most accepted. There are others, but their popularizers were not as adept as those who captured humankind’s attention.

At best, these histories are "Cream of tomato, just like every day." But probably they’re closer to yesterday’s leftovers.

It’s a cult damn it. Nothing more.

“Love your kids more than evolution requires.” --David Brooks

Other Posts regarding Bob Hoffman and the Fisher-Hoffman Process of Psychic Therapy

The Ontological Odd Couple, and the Origins of the Fisher-Hoffman Psychic Therapy

Bob Hoffman was a Lunatic, a Liar, a Criminal, & a Fraud

Why Do Cults Need to Rewrite History?

The Truth about Bob Hoffman

The End of Patriarchy and the Beginnings of a Cult. 

It’s a cult, damn it. Nothing more

The Sad Demise of Bob Hoffman 

Jonestown and Our Deliverance from Cults

Bob Hoffman was a criminal. Simple 

I was just listening to a podcast by Andrew Gold, interviewing Jon Atack (A Piece of Blue Sky), about Charlie Manson and Scientology. Alack describes a cult in its simplest form as a group that reveres a particular leader or doctrine. Bow down and surrender. Isn’t that the first thing you heard after you’d knocked on the door? 

A general rule is that cult leaders are not necessarily brilliant, or enlightened, or even educated. As a matter of fact, very often they are none of the above, but they know how to weave a spell, to hypnotize, to create a myth, and make promises that sell themselves. The best and the worst were con men (or women) with an uncanny ability to mirror our insecurities and then reflect back a crafted solution that paid them, usually more than its real value.

In the late 1960s, particularly in California, a new group of high-flying self-help gurus emerged, promising a level of personal awareness that would free us — if we worked with them. We were told that we’d been programmed by a familiar network of parents, schools, pastors, priests and rabbis, tribal culture, liberal (or conservative) political prejudices, the sexual taboos that hounded us along with innumerable generations before us. The gurus pointed to obvious evidence, and we jumped at a ready solution. We’d all suffered through the deadening post-war social homogenization. We’d all experienced the ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation, driving under our desks since the first grade (I remember these drills today when the threat of armed maniacs in schools is very real and certainly statistically more deadly). The Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love erupted and, I think, clearly demonstrated a deep hunger for relief.

The new age gurus promised that we could be deprogrammed from this hypnotic state. This was an attractive offer. It was universally agreed among my affluent college-educated peers that we were all caught in the thrall of automatic action and reaction. We also felt that our level of discomfort was somehow unfair. It was just hard to name the culprit. We were told that the buck stopped with us, but we had to pinpoint who we were “being” when push came to shove. A friend paid a sizable chunk of money to spend a long, sleepless weekend sitting on the floor of a yoga studio, asking and answering the repeated question “Who are you?” 

We were told that any possible freedom or newly discovered enlightenment would require work. We rolled up our sleeves and opened our wallets, or at least contrived alternative ways to pay for services. There were groups and rivalries. Bob Hoffman badmouthed Werner Erhard. Mainline Gurdjieff groups paid no attention to Claudio Naranjo’s Enneagram. Gurdjieff teachers questioned the credentials of people who set themselves up as doing “The Work.” Oscar Ichazo sued Helen Palmer, and Scientology had a very long list of defectors in the docket, including Werner Erhard’s est. 

The infighting became cannibalistic. Here’s an example--Scientology sued the Cult Awareness Network, which bankrupted them with the massive legal fees required to defend themselves. Scientology, through an agent, then purchased the shell of CAN for the fire-sale price of $25,000 and made it an arm of the Church of Scientology, which became the resource for distraught parents whose children had become Moonies, an Osho Sannyasin--or recruits for Scientology’s Sea Org. And the Scientologists in charge took their jobs very seriously. I was on the phone with them when a concerned family member raised concerns about the “human-development” seminar company I worked for. They knew the precise questions to ask to uncover a cult.

This kind of feeding frenzy spread like wildfire in dry grass. Not only were our leaders fighting amongst themselves, with lawsuits and unbecoming slander and innuendo, but we took on each other with a righteous, determined vengeance to do the hard work of Ego Reduction. If we were not aware of our patterns of programmed behaviors, rackets, bank, negative behaviors, without lapsing into passive-aggressive behavior ourselves, how could we root them out? Like good soldiers in the war against the dark side, we ganged up on each other, all with some expression of gratitude or at least lack of complaint. In retrospect, our behavior was more like gang bangers than seekers after truth or truth warriors. It also served a dual purpose. It deflected attention from the leaders who were more like tribal Neanderthals with automatic weapons than compassionate, enlightened beings acting for the deepest good of all humankind. 

I knew one of these gurus for almost 30 years. It was an on-again,off-again acquaintance. Bob Hoffman was a very difficult man, most likely suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder. I cannot say that he was dumber than a stump. I don’t know his IQ, though I do know that he dropped out of school in about the 6th or 7th grade and never received a GED. For the almost 30 years I knew him, he never finished a book though he did try several times. He opened E.M. Forster’s “Maurice” when he heard that it was his gay novel, but he never finished it. He told me that the storyline was too bleak. He also tried Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man," but lost interest when he realized Isherwood was not Danielle Steel. He asked me to fill him in on the end of the story. He was disappointed. He loved a happy ending. 

Hoffman channeled the Quadrinity Process from his spirit guide, his psychotherapist, Siegfried Fisher. Because it came from “the other side” Hoffman claimed the highest level of validity. He would stand in front of a group and ramble. I never saw him go into anything like a trance. Most times, the sessions were recorded and Hoffman had them transcribed, edited, and cleaned up by a small group of people who had had, admittedly, some rather remarkable personal experiences following this otherworldly methodology. Because Hoffman tried to hide that he had actually been Fisher’s patient, the whole tale became twisted with lies and information that was “somewhat less than factual,” and it became ripe ground for manipulation.

When I read some well-thought-out passage online attributed to Hoffman, I know that it was obviously written by a ghost. Hoffman liked it short, dirty, and crude. His teaching style was in-your-face aggressive. On a scale of professional to barbarian, he was unapologetically barbarian. He “broke you down to build you up,” and you had to be grateful for his gifts of wisdom. You did things his way, or you’d be shut out. Some of the people who succeeded him will boast they never stooped to or countenanced his crude confrontation, that they told him so to his face, brave souls. They stretch the truth. Every one of them would have to admit to strained working relationships. At some point, everyone close to him just blocked his ranting, and as long as he got paid, he learned to live with it. 

But the adjustments, the edits, the lies are necessary. Hoffman is still the guru face of the Process that bears his name. It is a cult. Is there something more? Is there anything that can be saved from this river of teaching? I will also tackle the question of whether the Western adaptation of Buddhism loses something by closely identifying with the Self-Help Industry. Stay tuned.

 

New Age Scum

I spent over a decade as a Jesuit with vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. I’ve known and talked with hundreds of priests and seminarians, members of religious orders, and parish priests. They are scholars, missionaries, mystics, teachers and preachers, gay and straight, celibate and non-observant. The vast majority are dedicated men and women who follow the way of Jesus and give of themselves to help others. I knew only three men who were in any way implicated in the sex abuse scandals that rocked the foundations of the church, and only one had inappropriate contact with adolescent boys. Two spent time in prison. All paid dearly for their behavior, careers and lives in shatters. 

Of course, we are dealing with human nature, and human nature being what it is, we can be sure that the problem still exists. The best we can do is set some ethical standards, try to enforce them, and ensure some consequences are in place to act as a deterrent.

However, don’t imagine that sexual abuse is confined to Roman Catholic priests and religious. People like me who think that leaving the church of your mothers and fathers opened up vast fields of honey and bliss will find that some issues do not disappear by substituting one religious pantheon for another. 

What is it with these guys?

And they are always guys. I am going to talk about two cases of men in New Age groups who had to know that their sexual acting out was immoral but did it anyway. When it threatened to become public knowledge, they were swift to duck for cover. Words no longer had any meaning; it’s all circumlocution. This is, for me, key for discerning the pathology. Cardinal Edward Egan was caught in a nasty argument about condemning gay priests for the cost of paying retribution to abuse victims. His response was classic: "I would just say this. The most important thing is to clean up the truth. And the truth is I have never said anything." Of course, the truth is, Your Eminence, that you said many things. Just because your statements were lies and double talk does not cancel them out or make us deaf. They just require cleaning up. (Hint: the truth doesn’t need a thorough cleaning. It’s us, Eminence).

But before I discuss the cases of two men I know personally, I want to talk a bit about the public discussion of sex abuse. It seems there are two paths, and both have severe limitations. One is complete denial and silence; the other involves talking too much. 

Swami Muktananada hid behind the religious persona of a holy man and never admitted to having sex with underage girls. It came to light after he died. The religious sect he established continues to say nothing. The irony is that everyone knows about his sexual behavior. If followers believe in Sidda Yoga and his successor, Gurumayi, they are asked to participate in the public lie, and Muktananda gets away with his sins in the name of a higher good. The brother of his anointed successor was expelled from the group for sexual misconduct, and his name was expunged like a scapegoat. The income stream was protected.

The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh was also a serial abuser, but he never pretended to be a celibate holy man. In Osho’s case, drugs clouded the picture. In my view, neither were models for living a spiritual life. It is stupid to rely on Muktananda, Gurumayi, or Rajneesh as role models to guide a life of integrity.

My example of talking too much is a man I knew who wrote a book hoping to become the poster boy of registered sex offenders. Jake Goldenflame was convicted for molesting his daughter, served a jail sentence, and then worked hard to get on Opray to talk about it. He wrote Overcoming Sexual Terrorism: 40 ways to protect your children from sexual predators (2004). I spoke with him weekly when he began his project. He eventually hired a ghostwriter with a track record and produced his book. His goal was to become the expert on protecting children against the likes of himself. In the end, to quote one of his critics, Kathleen Parker (April 2, 2005, The Spokesman-Review): “His self-outing is a form of therapeutic confession that purges his own demons while imposing them on the rest of us. He feels better, and we need a bath. Our passive complicity constitutes, if not tacit approval, at least a level of involuntary involvement that is both voyeuristic and prurient.” I should not have tried to help him. He defended his pathology by refusing to deal with it. He set a trap, and I fell for it, I suspect, out of some impulse to be fair-minded and even-handed. I didn’t recognize the pathology, and the pathology remained unchallenged.

_____________

I write with a heavy heart. On June 28th, my great friend Stan Stefancic died; We communicated briefly after he was diagnosed with cancer, and I tried to express how much I appreciated our friendship over the years. I remembered our conversations. We could talk to each other in a no-holds-barred way, even when we disagreed. Our worldviews overlapped, and we generally held similar opinions and assessments. The bone of contention was what actions were appropriate. Stan was far more conservative, supporting the status quo. Me, I am no company man.

There was one situation where the obligation of friendship prevented me from talking openly about a case of sexual exploitation by a man we both knew. Now I can talk about it. Before, the consideration that he and this man were also friends held me back. Stan used his considerable skills to try to craft a settlement to address the young girl’s needs. He failed. I remained hesitant to write, endlessly weighing the pros and cons. However, I am no longer obligated to be silent, or perhaps it has become the obligation of friendship to speak up, and I have been freed to speak. What I wish to discuss goes far beyond friendship.

The other case is a man who abused his daughter. I’ve known him for many years. We were in Claudio Naranjo’s SAT Group. I heard about his abuse from his wife whom I’ve known for decades. The mothers of both girls are dear friends, and I trust them to talk with their daughters and speak the truth. These mothers also tell me they do not talk a lot about the incidents because it restimulates the abuse. 

I cannot name names. Both the men I’ve talked about are still alive. In neither case was there a formal accusation or trial. The man from the SAT Group disappeared into obscurity in a small town on the East Coast, and the other still has a position in the Hoffman Institute. I do not have the resources to undertake an investigation, nor would it be appropriate. I am not a party to the injury. Their mothers have not taken legal action. They need to create a safe space so that their daughters have a chance to heal—another reason why abuse remains in the dark. 

However, in a broader sense, we were all injured by both men’s abuse. This is what I want to talk about. It is a difficult conversation for all of us in the spiritual community because it reflects poorly on the work of personal self-observation I value. Like the priests of my youth or Swami Muktananda, who provided comfort and reconciliation and then destroyed it, these men's actions have obstructed the path of introspection for other people. 

But we must find ways to talk about sex abuse. One of the mothers wrote, “It’s difficult to even think about. And when this happened in your own family, it’s really hard to believe it. Yet they can’t remain hidden since they’re incredibly toxic if they do.” The first step seems to be to admit that there is abuse. 

However, just holding abusers accountable does not seem to be enough. Looking at the history of a few very high-profile cases in the Zen community leaves me with the impression that permission to blame tends to restrict the conversation to blame. Communities write up what they consider to be clear ethical statements for their members and teachers or others in positions of trust and then imagine that they have fulfilled their responsibility. But the cycle of blame does not end. Sometimes, removal and discipline of the offender bring back some semblance of normalcy, but in almost all the cases I am familiar with, there is a stubborn layer of rehashing the argument that persists. Why?

Is it because the insult to our sexuality is so intimate that it touches a deep level of personal trauma--a trauma that remains unresolved and ever ready to raise its nasty interior argument? Was it that the trauma was never really addressed? Denial has thousands of dark paths. That was my situation when Bob Hoffman’s sexual abuse surfaced many years later. 

Is it because, in our attempts to be OK with co-workers of sangha members, we gloss over the subtle, covert, and offensive sexual messages that come from a staff member who had been deeply involved in a sex cult before he or she sought therapy? We’ve simply failed to identify the depth of the pathology. This was the situation with Jake Goldenflame.

Is it because after the sexual revolution of the Summer of Love, the new normal has become so muddied the water that personal boundaries are weak and ineffective? There is a thin line between setting boundaries and not judging individual choices. In cases of pedophilia, the harm is so clear that it should not be hard to keep boundaries, but in many cases, the boundaries vanish. That was undoubtedly the case of many Roman Catholic bishops and religious superiors who chose saving face over weeding out and exposing the relatively few priests and religious who abused young men and women and nearly destroyed an institution that has guided and comforted men and women for thousands of years.

Was it that in these cases, the sexual nature of the abuse forces it underground, and when it surfaces, the sudden reaction is uncontrollable? Or is it instead that we, despite our practice, have not been able to move past “the blame game?” 

It is our obligation. The practice points to the only way we can heal: deal with our reactions, settle what was hiding, and examine ourselves before and after we lay blame. Of course, it will be different for each of us. Because I cannot recommend a general fix-all, it does not free us from the obligation of dealing with ourselves.

None of the above discussion, however, removes any consequences for an abuser’s actions. I will tell anyone connected to the Hoffman Institute, directly and without hesitation--you are complicit. You can ask some hard questions if you are considering one of their programs. The organizers allowed this man to escape with no consequences, personal or financial. He is still in good standing within the organization and in the financial stream. And they have failed in their first duty as a therapist, “to do no harm.” They’ve poisoned the well. 

Was Muktananda High-Level Chicanery?

Published Sunday, April 28, 2024

Muktananda

What I remember most about the evening was the fancy BMV with the vanity plates GURU 1, driven by a uniformed chauffeur. Muktananda and Werner Erhard were in the back seat. Baba’s translator, Swami Yogananda Jain, sat in front with the driver. The venue was the Masonic Auditorium atop Nob Hill. It had the impeccably smooth and professional rollout of an est event, but it was not, at least in my opinion, the important presentation of Siddhi Yoga it pretended to be. I would have to dig deep for anything that piqued my curiosity. I had listened to far too many sermons about grace, shanti, or shakti. What I saw was the Westernization of an Indian sadhu, sanitized but still containing a few tastefully presented cultural artifacts that might be interesting to spiritual seekers of New Age California. We might have been dusted with a peacock feather as we left, but I was definitely not impressed. 

This was the second of Muktananda’s world tours. A few Westerners had become disciples. They’d purchased and begun refurbishing a large hall with a kitchen and some staff quarters in Emeryville. It was either ‘74 or ‘75 because I had taken my exclaustration and was living on the Oakland-Berkeley border with my fellow SAT member Hal Slate. It was also close to the end of the first SAT groups, but all the group members were still in active communication. One day, either Hal or I got a call that someone had arranged a private Darshan with Muktananda to be held late that afternoon before the public event at the ashram.

There were no more than 20 people in the room. I recognized Helen Palmer. As soon as Baba Muktananda entered and took his seat, he gestured towards Helen who got up, bowed, and went into the adjoining meditation room. She later told me that she was there because Muktananda was the best “hit” in town. Following a few remarks by Jain, Muktananda gestured towards me, and Jain asked me to come forward. I’d tried to find an appropriate gift. We were told that he liked hats. I had an old white Panama Hat from college that I’d trimmed with an orange ribbon and the end of a peacock feather. I’d wrapped it in plain white paper. I had already decided to skip the whole foot-kissing ritual. I sat before him in a kneeling position, said hello, and handed him my gift. After Jain or another assistant unwrapped it, he laughed uproariously, took off his hat, and put on the Panama. Then he handed me his orange skull cap and said in English, “Hat for a hat!” Then Jain translated a few questions about who I was, what I did, and something about a prince that I missed entirely, but others in the group were impressed. I returned to my seat.

Then Muktananda pointed to someone behind me and asked who he was. The young man said he was from Franklin Jones's (Da Free John) group and had come to extend their greetings to Baba. The conversation was suddenly doused with cold water. The drift of the questions I could follow went something like, well, I do hope he’s well, but where is he? He’s swamped, but he sends this box of cheap crummy chocolate balls from the ashram’s kitchen as a token of his respect. I had tried to be respectful within what I felt were my limits. Da Free John’s people didn’t swear or make foul gestures but seemed deliberately confrontational. Someone on the staff would be asked how the group made it onto the list of guests.

An hour in, I had a sense of heightened awareness, so when Jain invited questions from other guests, I was unprepared to respond to one woman’s question. She said she was epileptic. Was there anything she could do to prevent seizures? Muktananda became oddly professional and said he’d been a doctor before becoming a sadhu. He recommended drinking cow urine, preferably still warm, fresh from the cow. Now that I’ve lived in India and have some experience of village Ayurveda medicine, I realize that cow piss is a bit like aspirin. It is applied widely with little discrimination. But at that moment, I was facing total culture shock. Here I was in a guru’s ashram wearing his orange skull cap, getting carried away with lots of high energy, watching him dress down a fallen-away follower’s disciples, and listening to medical advice about the benefits of cow piss.

At that point, Jain said that we had to wrap things up. The time had come for the chanting, talk, and Darshan in the public hall. Afterward, please stay for dinner. I’m sure Hal and I stayed. Chanting the Guru Gita was very long. The poem praises the eternal guru, and his followers identified Muktananda as that guru. Singing praises of the divine guru in the presence of a human guru was a bit over the top for me, but I was also doing my best to dispel my preconceived ideas and prejudices.

The next day, I had a meeting at the Jesuit School. After meditation, I walked down Telegraph Avenue towards the campus. There was a bank just past Ashby, and I stopped to get 20 bucks from the ATM. I made my way back to the sidewalk, turned left, and stopped on the corner of Russell, waiting for the light. Before the signal turned green, my entire world was transformed. The experience is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to describe. It lit up. I’d been plugged in. First were colors I had never imagined. If I said I was floating in a whirlwind of electric particles, that wouldn’t do it justice. I knew exactly where I was and what I was doing, but the world was buzzing. It was somewhat akin to the few drug experiences I had had but far more vibrant, and I was present, not just an observer. It was wildly expansive, but the center held. I cannot say how long it lasted. It disappeared just as quickly as it had arrived. Part of me was stunned, but it was not the kind of experience that required me to put on my analytical hat and ponder it for a month. It just was. When I noticed that the light had changed to green, I had no idea how long I’d been standing there. I looked at my watch and realized that I would be late for lunch at the Jesuit School if I lingered. The universe returned to what it had been a few minutes, seconds, or nanoseconds before, and I continued walking north, though I remember being extremely careful of crossing traffic.  

Later that afternoon, I realized I had received shaktipat, which yogis describe as the awakening of the dormant divine energy. I also realized why very little is written about these experiences other than that they happen. It was a wild experience. Maybe I could blame it on the orange skull cap.

I would have been a fool not to follow up on my experience to see if it led anywhere. I returned to the Oakland ashram but did not become a regular by any stretch of the imagination. I didn’t much like the Hindu trappings. I should be more precise: I didn’t particularly dislike them either, but I wasn't falling in love. The singing started to feel like uninspired Catholic guitar masses of the 70s. I felt that the people around Muktananda were there to feel some kind of spiritual high or bliss, but it was extremely self-centered. I had conversations with several Western sadhus again but was not inspired. I could not shake off their guru worship.

The staff announced a retreat, a long period of meditation at a center in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was to last a week, which I could not manage. Still, I wanted to experience a longer concentrated meditation period, so I asked Muktananda personally at Darshan if I could attend only on the weekend. He quickly assented. I arrived late Friday afternoon after the long rush hour drive from San Francisco. I signed in and was directed to the shared cabin I’d been assigned. I set off into the woods. On the path, I passed Muktananda with his perpetual entourage of VIPs; Naranjo was among them. They were headed up to the main meditation pavilion. I bowed towards them. Muktananda nodded back. I continued to struggle along the densely overgrown path toward my bunk when suddenly I heard a deafening cracking sound. It sounded like a giant with enormous hands snapping his fingers right over my head or close to my ear. Then again. I found my cabin, threw down my sleeping bag, and made my way to the meditation hall. I wouldn’t return to bed for 36 hours. 

An elaborate Krishna shrine had been set up in the middle of the room. Men would circumambulate for an hour, and then the women would take up the dance. It was not like the ecstatic airport Hari Krishna chanters, but that was the song, and it was not quiet. There were as I recall live musicians as well as spontaneous twirling and jumping. The chanting was modulated with slow and faster sections. When I did circumambulate, I was extremely restrained but didn’t feel out of place or forced into a fake religious fervor. We sat in what zen monks would consider a very loose meditation posture, men on one side of the room and women on the other. A guy in front of me was bouncing off the floor with what I was told were some kind of kriyas or loosening of the kundalini energy. Once, Muktananda came into the room and led the procession of men circling the Krisha shrine, but most of the time, he sat on the side in an elevated chair. There must have been a few breaks when Muktananda talked or answered questions. I remember the guy in front of me thanking Muktananda for his experience. Food was available during certain periods, but I don’t recall formal meal breaks. The dancing and singing went on day and night. It didn’t stop. The drive back to San Francisco was about 4 hours on a hazardous highway, so I made sure that I had a few hours of sleep before leaving, but other than that, I was in the meditation hall.

Once was enough. Despite these intense meditation experiences, I began to feel more and more disconnected from Muktananda. I continued to visit the Oakland ashram occasionally when he was there, which was less frequent. He had engagements in New York and southern California. There were now a huge number of people gathering around him. It had a cultish feel. There was also an extraordinary amount of money flowing into the organization. 

One time, we were told through the SAT grapevine that Hoffman would visit. Knowing that Hoffman only went to make a public display of himself as Muktananda’s equal or to find some way to denigrate Muktananda, I was not going to miss it. After Hoffman’s private meeting, I wasn’t present, so I don’t know about the encounter, I was standing at the edge of the dining hall with others when Hoffman reappeared. Suddenly, he disappeared, and then, after a few minutes, he came into the room sheepishly carrying a plate of food or a bowl of soup, complaining loudly about Muktananda’s guards. “I know he’s very lonely. So I wanted to share soup with him and keep him company, but they wouldn’t let me in.” 

I will now try to describe an experience that I have never written about or even talked about other than on one or two occasions and then privately. I think I’ve been afraid of either being called a madman or a failed sannyasin, neither of which is personally appealing. I can’t say with certainty what did happen other than it happened. I might have been deluded or hallucinating or carried away by an induced fervor, or perhaps it did occur, as I am going to describe. But I can't avoid telling the story if I demand complete honesty from Muktananda. 

I forget the circumstances of my invitation. I was not a regular member of Naranjo’s inner circle, but either late afternoon or early evening, I went to Kathy and Claudio’s house in North Berkeley above the Arlington circle. When I arrived, there were only a few people. I only specifically remember my friend Danny Ross being there. Cheryl Dembe, who later became Sundari, might have also been present, as well as Luc Brebion. Other than that, I would have to pick and choose from a list of the usual suspects. I would have remembered if there’d been a very close friend with whom I might have shared and even asked questions about what seemed to happen.

One of the first things I clearly remember was a Scientology E Meter casually set up on the breakfast table. Until then, I had only heard rumors of Nanranjo’s experimentation with Auditing. However, seeing the device, which is nothing more than a galvanic skin response lie detector, the rumor was no more. 

There was undoubtedly the usual friendly chit-chat. As it was beginning to get dark, Speeth and several others arrived. They came in through the front door. She was carrying a plain square cardboard box, slightly smaller than a bank box. In it were copies of a thin book, talks by Muktananda* that she and Donovan Bess had edited and published. She said that they were hot off the press, and the reason she was late was that she’d been at the airport saying goodbye to Muktananda before he and his entourage flew back to India, and she had wanted to share the new publication with him before he left. She gave us each a copy. We were sitting on the floor near the breakfast nook and some casual seating. I still had a clear view of the front door. The group was politely enthusiastic about Speeth and Bess’s work, thumbing through, reading bits and pieces here and there, smiling, laughing.

Then I looked up and noticed a very bright light that seemed to be coming through the front door. It was a long, oval shape and fit the door frame. It increased in intensity, the edges becoming brighter while the inside seemed reddish or orange. Suddenly, the actual shape of Muktananda’s body became clear. It was dressed as we had always seen him in darshan, but the clothing was diaphanous and brightly lit. His distinct facial features were also clearly visible. He was walking at a very deliberate pace, though the legs may not have been moving at all. He had the appearance and movement of a real human body, although it did not seem solid. I could still make out the door and the walls through him. It was eerily lifelike.

I do not know if I was the only person who saw this. There was no discussion, no questions, no expressions of shock and awe. The only thing that did happen was that someone in the group began to sing Om Namah Shivaya very softly. The figure started at the edge of the circle opposite me. It stood behind each person. I cannot remember if they were gestures, but the person became quiet. The figure moved clockwise until I could sense it standing behind me. That was the last thing I recall until we began to gather our things together to return home.

I am surprised that after an extraordinary experience, and I presume that others had some experience, we just returned to our everyday lives. I have hesitated to speak about it openly for almost 50 years. Many possible reactions exist to an apparent, even violent breaking of ordinary perception. One is silence. Nearly all modern writers talking about their drug experiences have expressed frustration. Most writings by the mystics are rarely self-explanatory. When you can’t say anything, nothing may be the best option. I have not used any language designed for extraordinary mystical experiences. Muktananda was not projecting an astral body. I am not calling it an apparition. I wonder if close disciples of devotees simply have these encounters and accept them as the “new normal,” but what I experienced was not ordinary by any stretch of the imagination. 

What I can say honestly is that a revered Indian guru who was on a scheduled international flight from San Francisco to Mumbai appeared in an ordinary Berkeley house in the early evening. He was a real person or appeared incredibly life-like, although his body was diaphanous and bright. He was alive, not dead or resurrected, as in the Jesus narrative, but afterward, I could see Thomas’s meeting Jesus differently. And if the story of Thomas putting his hands in Jesus’s open wounds actually happened, I could also understand that the conversations recorded in the 20th Chapter of John took a few years to emerge. 

Baba-ji is a lecher

The number of followers around Muktananda became overwhelming. Darshan was a circus. I can’t recall one talk I thought was memorable. No one seemed interested in psychological investigation. I stopped going. Siddha Yoga is a practice of energy transfer and a connection between the guru and his or her student. That wasn’t happening.

It was also clear that in a larger group, there were those who were close devotees or considered themselves close and those aspiring or even jealous. There was also an enormous amount of money now available. This is ripe terrain for abuse, distrust, and even warfare. It never reached the outrageous heights of Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, but cults are cults. The disintegration in trust was the beginning of the leaking of salacious details about Muktananda’s sex life.

Hoffman had been wrong, or perhaps very right. Muktananda did not lack company, and he may have been very lonely. I will not delve into his motivations, but soon, there were credible rumors that the guards who had blocked Hoffman from the private apartments invited many younger women, some even allegedly underage, to join Muktananda. He was not a celibate sadhu. 

I’ve read many accounts from insiders, malcontents, and disenchanted followers. At some point, Muktananda gave up the celibate life, but he couldn’t just trade satguru for the role of a conventional married man. Krishna Murti’s long involvement with an older married woman might be a good example of a relationship I can understand and even sympathize with. What I think I can say with some understanding of the cultural divide between traditional Indian culture and Westernized ones, especially New Age California: Muktananda could not prey on younger Indian women--the taboos are too strong--but with many younger American women with liberated attitudes available, the doors opened. Most reports said the doors opened frequently, and it was not about nurturing human relationships. It was sex.

People try to defend him. I will only point to one of Muktananda’s most ardent supporters, Claudio Naranjo’s explanation: “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 his cultural mission 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.” 

Claudio, let me be clear--your analysis is wrong. He was a lecher. His behavior was unethical and exploitative. If he were a Catholic priest, he would have been defrocked, or even in jail. He does not get a pass for trying to play the role of a Brahmacharya in some huge cultural shift.

Baba-Ji, you lied to us. You were not who you claimed to be. You were a lecher.

I’m unsure where I can begin to separate the man from the yogic powers or even if I have to. But I know where to place my allegiance and when to withdraw it.

Honesty is such a lonely word

Everyone is so untrue

Honesty is hardly ever heard

And mostly what I need from you

--Billy Joel

*The publication date of “Swami Muktananda,” edited by Kathleen Speeth & Donovan Bess is 1974, so my mental calculation is slightly off.