It’s a cult damn it. Nothing more.

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

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.

 

Let's go back to calling it heresy

This is going to get me into trouble. Reflections on a certain kind of theological reflection inevitably leads to trouble.

My friend the Zen teacher John Tarrant once had dinner with renowned poet Czeslaw Milosz at his house on Grizzly Peak in Berkeley. Among the tales of a fine dinner conversation was this tidbit--Milosz was very interested in studying the various heresies and heretics that have run afoul of the institutional church over the years, even back in the days when the cost of thinking outside the norm could cost your life. Or perhaps the connection between controversy and rigid thinking might have been part of his Polish dissident psyche.

But there is another side to heresy that interests me. What happens when your personal belief system just drives your mind into a wall, and there is no escape? We’ve set the fires aside, thankfully, though we still have religious wars that seem as senseless as ever to the unbeliever, but heresy still wreaks havoc.

Last night, my newsfeed pictured Mgr Jean-Louis Balsa, who was just appointed to the post of archeveque of Albi in southern France. Balsa seems to be a very likable fellow, with a jolly smile, but I have really no idea why Google choose this clip other than I follow the comings and goings of Pope Francis and his response to the dubia that several recalcitrant cardinals throw out as taunts, trying to alter the direction of (in their view) an errant magisterium. I remembered that Albi had been the hotbed of a bloody heresy a millennium ago, but it seemed implausible that Google’s algorithm reached back to 1163. The Albigensian heresy held a rather gnostic view of man’s fate, caught in a fierce battle between the forces of pitch-black darkness and the glorious light of an afterlife. 

So much passes as religion in this day of political and spiritual correctness. The same news feed informs me that Mormonism is the 9th wealthiest religion in the world, just ahead of Scientology. Then they proceed to describe the LDS as a Christian sect. Not since 1896 when Mormons renounced polygamy as the price for admission of Utah to the Union has anyone dared call Joseph Smith a heretic, but I will, at least from any accepted understanding of Christianity. At least L Ron Hubbard was honest enough not to label his sect a Hollywood version of Dale Carnegie’s self-improvement courses or tell us that Jesus in the Temple in Jerusalem told his followers to sell everything they owned so that he could buy a private jet or pay an astronomical price for “going clear.” But my reading of the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum in 1844 was precisely because of objections to his 40 wives, some as young as 14. This was not a practice that led the early martyrs to death in the Coliseum. (I am not saying that there are many upright god-fearing Mormons who love their children and pay their taxes, but Mormonism is a cult with very strange connections to the life and teaching of Jesus).

Returning to 10th century Albi, the Cathars held certain beliefs about Jesus and the doctrine of the Incarnation that were outside long-held institutional beliefs, but there were also beliefs about human nature that the established Roman church found threatening. They held that humans were spirits trapped in fleshly bodies engaged in a conflict between the forces of Light and Darkness. The consequences of that battle were all that mattered. The institutional church of Pope Innocent III aligned with the French House of Caput found this belief so threatening that they redirected the armies of the Crusades from retaking Jerusalem from the Muslims to southern France, where they slaughtered thousands of people and destroyed the remnants of these Manichean believers. Religious wars were bloody in olden times, though humans still engage in this kind of doctrinal war, gauging from the reported number of casualties in Gaza since October 7th. 

In New Age California, among the Light and Love crowd, there is a lot of uncritical talk about the body being some kind of learning vehicle for the soul. We are spirits having a learning experience by being incarnated in bodies or some such bullshit. Bob Hoffman even goes so far as to try to give trapped souls an emotional component, which he called the Quadrinity--the body, spirit, intellect, and emotional self, each separate and distinct and operating at less than optimal capacity. I am not out to ignite a religious war to engulf Berkeley and other hotspots around the world, but this is complete nonsense springing from the supernatural understandings of the Spiritualist Church movement. 

I am going to try to resurrect “heresy” and simply define it as adherence to a particular school of thought and separate it from bloody crusades or burning at the stake. What are other heresies floating around today that pretend to be Christian?

Heresy: The Prosperity Gospel from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” to the predatory Rev. Ike and Rev. Creflo Dollar. (That can’t be his real name, but I admit that it has a kind of ring to it). Motivational speaking has been developed and honed, particularly in the United States, but it is not Christianity. 

Heresy: I have to include dear, well-intentioned Mary Baker Eddy and her Christian Science. Bows to Mind over Matter, elevating this prattle to a higher level, but it is not Christianity, even though my Irish mother thought that Mind over Matter was the underlying rationale of the Sermon on the Mount. 

Heresy: The Westboro Baptist “Kill the Fags” cult is high on my list of perverted religious ideologies. Another cult. The leaders rely on a very selective reading of selected passages from the corpus of Christian texts. The problematic texts do exist, however the condemnation is a bit extreme and the reading very literal. God apparently abhors metaphor or analogy.

Anathema: Franklin Graham et al. Liberty University and the Empire of the Self-Righteous. They just seem to be self-serving, greedy pricks. I know it is the same kind of language that they hurl against the libtards, but what the hell, if we are throwing all the use of language and critical thinking to the dogs, I have chosen not to waste words. Go take care of your pool boy toy, Franklin, and try to keep his mouth shut. And just shut up.

The Narcissistic Heresy: There may be something about the positive psychology of Norman Vincent Peal other than to have trained Donald Trump in doublespeak, but looking at what was preached from the Marble Collegiate Church, it is nothing more than a sanctification of American greed. That he was honored by Ronald Reagan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom speaks volumes. It may be hard to really trace the lineage of Trump’s assault on the rule of law, but there is nothing positive in this line of thinking. It is narcissism. God did not create other people for our individual abuse and exploitation. 

Enough. You get my point.