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 are con men (or women) with an uncanny ability to mirror our personal insecurities and then reflect back a crafted solution that pays them usually more than its real value..
In the late 1960’s, particularly in California, there emerged a new group of high-flying self-help gurus who promised 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 pretty much 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 personal 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 of “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 rivalry. Bob Hoffman bad mouthed 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 huge expense of legal fees 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 who 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, 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 it 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 other worldly 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. In my personal case the abuse was both emotional and sexual.
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. Everyone of them would have to admit to strained working 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 try to tackle the question of whether the Western adaptation of Buddhism loses something by closely identifying with the Self-Help Industry. Stay tuned.
