This article will appear in Bo Lozoff’s book, We’re All Doing Time, to be published this year by the Hanuman Foundation.
Bo will give a talk on some of the questions raised in this essay Friday, January 27 at 8 p.m. in the Carolina Union, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
An interview with Bo and his wife Sita appeared in Issue 73 of THE SUN. For nearly 10 years they have run the Prison-Ashram Project, part of Ram Dass’ Hanuman Foundation, which helps prisoners interested in spiritual growth (Route 1, Box 201, Durham, N.C. 27705).
— Ed.
No New Is Good New
Creeping steadily toward my forties, I find myself in a peculiar position. On one hand, I’m part and parcel of the “New Age”: I’m chairman of the Hanuman Foundation, director of the Prison-Ashram Project, have studied with a lot of swamis, teachers, and masters, have taught meditation and yoga for a decade, performed many years of disciplines and diets, lived in ashrams, communes, forests and school buses, gone crazy and gone sane, worn long hair, short hair, no hair . . . get the picture? I certainly sound like a “New Age” person to me! And this isn’t the part where I amuse you with my re-entry into society as a successful stockbroker; no, I’m still out here in the bush, threading my way through the mysteries. If anything, I appreciate more than ever the richness of the mystical, the indescribable. It’s at the center of everything I do.
But, on the other hand, I find a few things bugging me as the years roll by. For one thing, the term “New Age” sounds ridiculous and arrogant, as if we’re the first people to reach for wholeness, or the hippest people to ever walk the Earth. It embarrasses me. We’re not “on the verge” of anything; there’s nothing new going on. We’re all just doing what we can, like men and women have done throughout history. Maybe a few years ago the words “New Age” seemed useful to help us get together and to encourage parts of us which were fragile or embryonic, but now the very same words serve only to separate and condescend. We don’t need a rallying banner to set us apart from anyone else; we can’t afford it, if what we’re after is real wholeness. By calling something new, we not only belittle the spiritual awareness of people in the past, but we also splinter ourselves in present-day society rather than contribute to the whole. And worse still, any such banner tends to lump together a lot of people and activities that may not really belong together; it becomes a convenient label for profiteers, megalomaniacs and mad-dogmatics who have discovered how to use space-age communications and computers to manipulate people toward their own ends. In the name of wholeness, such “New Age” hustlers have led us into more painful, fragmented partialness time and again, which brings me to my second gripe.
Gullible’s Travels
Hands down, the clearest ethic of the “New Age” has been to appreciate the diversity of all paths to the One, which of course, sounds one-derful. It’s the stuff of non-judging, openness, tolerance, harmony; right on. But how long have we been distrusting our own gut feelings in the guise of “not judging”? The ethic is great, but our attachment to the ethic has created the largest, wealthiest pool of consumer suckers in history. We’re P.T. Barnum’s wildest fantasies come true: consumers who not only believe everything somebody might claim about their teaching or their product, but who don’t blame anybody when things go wrong! (“Well, it was terrible for me, but I’m sure it’s just perfect for some people.”) After all, who are we to judge, right?
Wrong! We’ve been throwing out the baby with the bathwater. To avoid being judgemental, we have set aside our own much-needed skills of discrimination. We have allowed a high-powered marketplace of growth-oriented teachers, schools, and products to thrive for years without ever being challenged or critiqued. The pure and impure have succeeded equally well because we have copped out on our responsibility to evaluate or distinguish between them. Even the book and movie reviews in the new-age publications are generally in glowing, “uplifting” terms. Doesn’t a book ever stink? Isn’t that worth mentioning? How about all the tender, worshipful testimonials that appeared after Baba Muktananda’s death? I never saw a word about the anguished letter from one of Muktananda’s close disciples, a swami, who chronicled his master’s sexual impurities with girls as young as fifteen. This letter circulated to various new-age “leaders” but of course wasn’t suitable for the new-age press. What kind of wholeness are we shooting for, anyway?
Openness to others is wonderful, but it’s only half-openness. We also need to be open to our own honest feelings. Why do we forget that our hunches and instincts come from God, too? Our own consciences — that deepest sense of right and wrong — may be our closest touch-point to God within us. Sure it’s subtle, very tricky, to weed out our true gut feelings from our busy judgemental thoughts, but it’s a required course. Ramakrishna, a great saint, taught that it’s just as necessary to develop and use keen discrimination as it is to give up judging. Discrimination is wisdom; we can’t get anywhere without it. And we certainly can’t wait until we’re enlightened before we share our opinions with each other.
Once I lay awake all night in a motel room with paper-thin walls, listening to the amorous passions of a famous swami having noisy sex with one of his followers. The swami was supposedly celibate, preached chastity, and made many public statements about the purity of his own lifestyle. As bizarre as this sounds, I was so true to my new-age ethic that I convinced myself for three years that maybe he was teaching her a profound pranayam (breathing technique), although every fiber of my being really knew what was going on. Finally the young lady left him, in despair and anguish over the hypocrisy in which she allowed herself to become a pawn. (I’m withholding his name here because this happened a dozen years ago, and I’d like to think he can change as radically as most of us have in that time.) But how unworthy, how separate from God, must I have felt, to have denied my own senses so fully!
We have copped out on our responsibility to evaluate. . . . Even the book and movie reviews in the new-age publications are generally in glowing, “uplifting” terms. Doesn’t a book ever stink?
Quack Quack
There’s an old saying: “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and smells like a duck, then maybe it’s a duck.” At some point we have to begin calling things as we see them, realizing that of course we’ll turn out to be mistaken sometimes, but that’s okay as long as we don’t pretend to be infallible. Jesus encouraged us to be trusting, but he also said to be as clever as foxes. Meher Baba said that following a false teacher is like letting a madman sit on your throat with a razor. The Buddha told us not to accept teachings based on what other people say, or on what the teacher claims or promises, or on the enthusiasm of other followers, but rather solely on the basis of our own gut feelings, our own personal experiences.
I’m not talking about being cynical or closed-minded. But we’ve got to appreciate that the “New Age” is not immune to corruption, sophisticated fundamentalism, empire-building, or sincere delusion. In any age, a variety of appealing fads will be taking place alongside genuine spiritual evolution. The decision to surrender to a teaching or teacher is not one to be taken lightly. I’m definitely not suggesting that we only look for things that feel “good” or which we can understand; not at all. Feeling “right” is very different from feeling “good.” Often the very best teachings are those which rip us apart, force us into our pain and weaknesses, and push us past our rigid models of how holy people should look or act, or what our spiritual journey should be like. Make no mistake about it, I deeply honor the painful parts. But as Mike Harper, an inmate at Georgia State Prison, wrote recently:
My mind is open, my Spirit seeking light, but not so gullible as to embrace any and every philosophy stumbled across. Not every light you see is the coming of dawn; it may be just some bum firing up his stogie.
Bhagwan Rolls-Royce
Making our own best guesses, from as quiet an inner place as we can find, requires a lot of courage. It’s a lot easier to let a teacher or friends or the “New Age” define things for us. One of the most hopeful and courageous decisions I’ve heard about lately is that the organizers of a “Unity in Yoga” conference in Portland, Oregon, declined to invite Bhagwan Rajneesh’s people to make presentations at the conference. Good for them! Rajneesh’s arrogant, opulent scene in Oregon looks, walks, and smells so much like a duck it’s almost quacking, and it’s inspiring to see a group of tolerant yoga people get up the guts to say, “We don’t want to be aligned with you.” What does Rajneesh’s empire have to do with yoga? His disciples publicly denounce the frightened people of Antelope, Oregon, as “stupid, ignorant, small-minded bigots.” They pride themselves in the Rajneesh Times, their newspaper, as being “as ruthless” as anyone who may oppose them. They’ve taken over the politics, economy, and school board of a small town, and brag to reporters that “we like to live like kings and queens; we’re going to make a lot of money.” Rajneesh’s chief spokeswoman, Ma Anand Sheela, described the people of Antelope as “indolent old people doing nothing but marking time until they die.” And Sheela herself is the head of a new religion, Rajneeshism. That’s a religious viewpoint of ordinary people? Yoga means unity, togetherness, a yoking of our energies toward the One. Should the world accept Rajneesh as a great yogi just because he claims to be? He’s obviously got a lot of spiritual power, and he’s a brilliant writer; maybe he’s even a philosopher-king. But “Bhagwan” means “God.” And in my heart I know that God doesn’t round up a few thousand followers and then say, in effect, “Screw the rest.” A Guru loves us all.
One of my close friends lives at Rajneeshpuram, Oregon, and is one of Rajneesh’s many lawyers. (God needs lawyers?) Sheelu and I are in the midst of an ongoing debate over Rajneesh and his whole 64,000-acre, $60 million-plus empire which now includes a town; an ashram; restaurants; discos; nightclubs with strip-tease shows, blackjack and poker tables; boutiques; a hotel; an investment company; several other businesses; a university; a new religion; a host of lawsuits and political lobbies; and of course, his celebrated array of 30 — yes, 30 — Rolls-Royces, in which he tours his holdings as his disciples line the road to bow on the ground as the majestic vehicle drives by.
Sheelu writes me that Rajneesh simply “challenges the mind and all its set ideas.” I can appreciate that. When Ram Dass met his Guru, the first thing the old man said to him was, “You come in a big car?” Ram Dass said yes, an expensive Land Rover. The old man said, “You give it to me?” Now that certainly challenged Ram Dass’ mind and pushed all his buttons, which of course was the point. But the Guru didn’t really take the car! When Jesus told the wealthy man to give away all his money, he didn’t say, “. . . and give it to me!” Rajneesh has created a powerful kingdom, not for God, but for himself, on the fortunes he has amassed from his followers.
My friend also chides me that I must “approach Bhagwan with childlike innocence, with a non-judgmental mind.” That’s exactly what I’m doing. Children are completely up-front about their gut reactions to people; they don’t pretend to like somebody when they don’t and they may love a person everyone else hates. Children don’t doubt their hunches and instincts; and that is a big part of their innocence. And so far as judging Rajneesh — I don’t think he’s doing anything I’m not capable of, nor do I see him as a bad person or myself as a better one. I know we’re all just children wandering through the forests of our passions and fears, and we’re all going to get caught many times by various gremlins and demons who sneak up from behind as our attention wanders from the path to something bright that glitters. Rajneesh is still part of our family, and he’s got quite a lot of spiritual attainment. But he’s also what he looks, walks, and smells like: a clever, wealthy, powerful duck who is very much caught in the mundane world.
McMantra’s
Nearly fifteen years ago my wife Sita and I took the TM course (transcendental meditation). We liked the method and used it every day for a few years, but we were a little put off by the “our-way-is-the-best-way” smugness which came from the organization. It was our first glimmer that there can be a huge difference between a method and the people who teach it. Then, about five years ago, we noticed the sensational ad campaign for TM’s “Siddhi” course, which promised to teach people how to levitate and develop other siddhis (powers) associated with profound penetration into yoga. Definitely tacky; it should have been called “Mc-Siddhi’s.” This year, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s TM empire ran a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal and other places which really knocked our socks off. He’s gone from smug to tacky to totally insane! It would be just a light laugh were it not for the fact that he advertised in the most expensive publications in the world. His ad reads:
GOVERNMENTS INVITED
To Solve Their ProblemsThe World Government of the Age of Enlightenment announces its readiness to solve the problems of any government regardless of the magnitude and nature of the problem — political, economic, social, or religious; and irrespective of its system — capitalism, communism, socialism, democracy, or dictatorship. Governments are invited to contract with the World Government of the Age of Enlightenment to solve their problems on the basis of cost reimbursement after the target is reached.
The ad goes on at some length to include details as:
. . . the government will set the target, specify the stages, and determine the criteria of success at each stage. The World Government of the Age of Enlightenment will design the project accordingly and implement it.
I can just imagine South Africa saying, “Hey Maharishi, our target is the pesky black movement, always striving for human rights; show us how to play with their minds and make them submissive.” Or how about a Central American government saying, “Right on Maharishi; come teach us some mind control methods to neutralize these damn intellectuals who keep stirring up the peasants!”
The “World Government” ad almost seems to seek that sort of client, not only through its emphasis on “any” system, but also in another part of the ad which claims, “The World Government has already developed techniques to fulfill any requirement.” And by assuring that the existing governments can “set the target, . . . determine . . . success,” what does the TM empire expect to happen — ruthless dictators suddenly setting goals of peace, freedom, and equality? It’s scary. It’s especially unfortunate that Maharishi’s name includes the word “Yogi,” and that their product bears the word “meditation.” Is this another path to the One just because he claims that it is?
There’s a great passage in the book Ramayana, which seems to describe this lunacy perfectly:
At night the demons yell to one another: I AM NARAYANA! (God) I AM THE MOON! I AM EVERYTHING! These are their more meek and modest boasts. What can I say of their serious praise and sincere drunken flatteries?
Another passage poignantly describes the discrepancy between true spiritual freedom and the lavish worldly kingdoms which many semi-holy people have created in this “New Age”:
Ravana is mighty strong, but he is poor, for it has been very long since he stood out in the open grass under a green tree he did not own.
Which Came First, The Duck Or The Egg?
It’s interesting to reflect on how some of these empires may have come about. Almost a million of us have bought and treasured Ram Dass’ monumental book, Be Here Now, since it was published in 1969. To legions of us who had struggled through the psychedelic era and were a half-step away from abandoning our last shred of faith in anything greater, Be Here Now was a lightning bolt of wisdom and grace. Its purity, vision, relevance, and sheer spiritual power provided a great deal of the momentum for our “New Age” subculture.
And much of that power came from Ram Dass’ account of finding and meeting his Guru, Neem Karoli Baba (known simply as “Maharaj-ji,” a common title of respect in India). Through the pages of his book, we witnessed the transformation of Richard Alpert, Ph.D., into Ram Dass — a bhakta, or lover of God. We shared the most painful experiences of his ego, of the limitations of his mind, and we came away with renewed hope for our own transformations.
But it was inevitable that we would also pick up some new limiting models, like the deeply-imprinted scenario of sitting at the feet of an enlightened being, a genuine Christ. How wonderful it would be to have such a saint chide us, tease us, force us beyond and beyond and beyond, all the while heaping divine love upon us as we had never experienced before. But Maharaj-ji himself wouldn’t cooperate; within just a couple of years — as soon as a few hundred Westerners had tracked him down as a result of Be Here Now — Neem Karoli Baba left his earthly body; he died. Such an interesting timing, too, since some Indians say that he had been in that same body for more than 300 years. He left the stage just when the scene around him became worldwide, and he firmly instructed Ram Dass not to have any ashrams or disciples. Ram Dass was able to lecture and love and write and teach, but he was to leave each person freer than before, not more bound.
What happened next? Swamis and yogis came to the West as they had for years, but now what they found were hordes of us who were deeply yearning to experience what Ram Dass had felt at the feet of a real-live Guru, a living Christ. The word swami is a Hindu religious title analogous to a priest; it describes a man who has renounced normal worldly life and possessions in order to minister to people’s spiritual needs. The word yogi is much more vague; it can be self-applied by anyone who feels he or she (yogini for a female) lives fully within the practice of any form of yoga. Neither swami nor yogi imply any sort of enlightenment, no more than priest, minister, or practitioner. These are quite different from the sacred word Guru, which should only be used to describe a true saint, a liberated master. But the swamis and yogis wore long robes and looked like God, and were very nice. Some of them had a lot of power and wisdom, some were very eloquent. So we nearly raped them into being Gurus in our own reenactments of Be Here Now (or maybe be there then?). We insisted on calling them Guru and treating them as saints, and after a while many of them stopped protesting. I remember how startled I was in the mid-seventies when I received a letter from Swami Satchidananda’s secretary, and the letterhead read: OFFICE OF SRI GURUDEV (Divine Guru) boldly across the top. He was such a nice swami, too! What’s going on here? I felt like we were children dressing up in our parents’ clothes.
We may get our robes and beads and instructions, and enjoy living out our fantasies, but there is a serious price to pay when we go around inviting spiritual teachers to be Christs. Jesus left the stage early on, as soon as he had gotten his message across. Neem Karoli Baba often denied his powers and yelled at people who told others of his miracles. Ramana Maharshi, another modern saint, said that the only purpose for a Guru is to awaken faith in a few disciples; when that’s done the Guru can leave his body. At the time of his own death, a disciple cried, “Oh Master, don’t leave us!” Ramana Maharshi looked surprised and replied, “Where could I go?” These are very different beings than those whom we have ensconced in luxury villas, private airplanes, limousines and bodyguards, and complex multinational corporations. It hurts to think many of us settle for a false perception of a saint and thereby stifle the true seeker within, doubting all our genuine dissatisfaction as a lack of faith.
We may get our robes and beads and instructions, and enjoy living out our fantasies, but there is a serious price to pay when we go around inviting spiritual teachers to be Christs.
Jao! Jao!
If we read Be Here Now more carefully, we would notice that as idyllic as Ram Dass’ Guru-story sounds, he spent much more time stumbling about on his own than at the feet of Maharaj-ji. Maharaj-ji’s most oft-used word was Jao!, which means “Go!” Like Jesus and Ramana Maharshi and countless other saints, Neem Karoli seemed to be trying to get a point across: “Go away; go get happy and sad, wise and confused; go get corrupted and ashamed and repentant and angry; go mix and mingle, live anywhere, do anything; I am with you always.” Hasn’t it always been the same message? It leaves room for us to grow and learn, to become hermits and stockbrokers and potheads and teachers and police and parents — the whole range of human possibilities. And at those times when we despair, when we sit brokenhearted and empty of all but the thinnest sliver of faith, we can reach inward to the Guru and discover the tender quiet guidance which we usually go to great pains to ignore. Christ, Maharaj-ji, Meher Baba, Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Ananda Mayee Ma, Mother Mary and many others are available to all of us just as much as to the people who may have sat at their feet. Meeting such a being in the body may or may not happen to any of us; only God knows. But imitating such a meeting — and making an absolute surrender to one who is not truly free — corrupts that person as well as ourselves.
Think about the various organizations boasting “Gurus.” Can any of them afford to say “Jao!”? When they have mortgages, staff salaries, retreat centers and ambitious plans for expansion which require millions of dollars to support, can they encourage self-reliance? Can they be objective about sending us out into the open world? I was floored when I found out the treatment to which Yogi Bhajan subjects his followers if they decide to leave his organization, 3HO (Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization). I’ve heard it several times, but one example is of a dear friend who was regional head of 3HO for eight years. When he and his wife thoughtfully decided they needed to move on, they were harassed for weeks by high-level “holy” ones who warned they would take many lifetimes as cockroaches if they left now, and that within two years of leaving they would be worse off than during their drug and hippy years before they entered 3HO. Their closest friends stopped speaking to them. Other 3HO people called me to ask that I try to talk them out of this “terrible mistake.” Is this the sort of divine mirroring which shows us that the whole world is in the palm of God’s hand? All they wanted to do was to take off their turbans and mingle for a while!
I Live In Every Heart
True Gurus seem to awaken in each of us our own indestructible connection to God — a connection which can hold up in the streets of Calcutta or a beautiful countryside ashram, in a Manhattan penthouse or at the hands of a Salvadoran death squad. Like mother birds, they kick us out of the nests so we can discover that there’s no “cold, cruel world” out there; indeed there’s no “out there” at all! Neem Karoli Baba said, “Christ is the Atman (soul), living in the hearts of all.” He also said,
I am like the wind, no one can hold me. I belong to everyone, no one can own me. The whole world is my home, all are my family. I live in every heart, I will never leave you. I am as near to you as you are to me.
It’s ironic that the story of this saint is in part responsible for the Guru-explosion of the last decade. But then again, look at what happened to Christ’s teachings. Maybe it’s part of the design.
But also part of the design, which I honor more than ever, is an article such as this. I know all these words don’t really amount to anything, that there’s no such thing as “mistakes” in the cosmos. But if the love-and-light parts of the journey are going to be held sacred, then the critical side needs to be sacred as well. This is how we feed each other, face each other, and grow.
In the movie “Network,” a television anchorman exhorts his nationwide audience to go to their windows, stick their heads out, and scream: “I’M MAD AS HELL AND I JUST WON’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” Maybe this has been my way of doing that to the “New Age” and to all my own neuroses and attachments which have led me to feel foolish too many times to count. But it’s all delightful, it’s absolutely mad and I love it. Our hearts are still the God-given ballast which keeps us afloat as we toss about on this stormy sea of desire and despair. Blessings to us all, nothing but blessings — to the caught and the catchers, the free and the bound — as we mix and match topsy-turvy in the waves. Jaya! Victory!
© Copyright 1984 by Hanuman Foundation
