Back to Franz Bardon Research
PA: I still don't know who is the author of this article. (Please just drop me a note if you know!). I would like to feature the The reliability of inner experience - an ecksample section, where I like best the "glorious japati - near death-experience" example.
"The most dangerous man in the world is the contemplative who is guided by nobody. He trusts his own visions. He obeys the attractions of an inner voice, but will not listen to other men. He indentifies the will of God with his own heart......And if the sheer force of his own self-confidence communicates itself to other people and gives them the impression that he really is a saint, such a man can wreck a whole city or a religious order or even a nation. The world is covered with scars that have been left in its flesh by visionaries like these."
Thomas Merton
Contents:
I never meant to say that spiritual experiences are not possible in eckankar, since they are possible under any circumstances. However, mystical experiences are not so common that we should be too gullible about reports. But don't such experiences contain some proof ?
People have believed in the earth as being flat for thousands of years, because such was their experience which as such was perfectly valid: it really did appear to be flat. That experience even seemed to be common for most people on earth without any connection to each other. The idea even worked for thousands of years since people never traveled very far from their home.
But: that experience didn't prove the flatness of earth. The earth has never been a disc, not even "for them". That was just their view.
How is it that eckists who have so much insight never see Virgin Mary, Krishna or Cakrasamvara, only the LEM or some Wisdom temples ? Why does a Catholic visionary see Mary but not the Red-Indian Gods? If they all actually existed independently from the practioners view of the world, then we should be able to "see" all of them on the inner just as easily as the others if we wanted to.
Obviously these experiences are expressions, a language of the psyche, projected outwardly as experiences, and thus they cannot be used to prove or confirm any view of the world, only to understand the workings of the psyche (which is the true spiritual value of experiences).
Someone who really wants to know how things actually are must be aware that his obscurations and limits of consciousness do not allow him to see things as they really are. Therefore he cannot rely on his subjective view and "experience" as the ultimate criterion for reality, but must always be extremely critical of his own experiences.
When I scrutinize the reports of subjective experiences, especially "inner" experiences by eckists, the usual reaction is that they say I discount what they "know" through direct revelation, and that I am in no position to do so, most often adding that I obviously haven't had the experiences.
It probably isn't wrong, however, to repeat at this point that I have in the course of time had many of the experiences described in the works of eck. But the main point here is that in such a scrutiny, I don't discount any experience as such, but usually the conceptualization of it.
When you look at the reality of the stories rendered, they are not the experience, but a) conceptual interpretations of b) memories of the c) conscious part of an experiencing process as d) reflected in an unenlightened and therefore unreliable mind.
Of course, that mind itself trust its "perceptions" completely, and therein lies its illusion which has it wander on the wheel of life. In fact pure experiencing without conceptualizing or past impressions, emotions and illusions getting in between is an art which characterizes an extremely advanced spiritual practicioner. And only when this "Freedom from the Known", as Krishnamurti calls it, from the fogs of the past, has become chronical, so to speak, 24 hours a day, do we speak of full enlightenment, and only then can all perceptions be relied upon 100%.
Until then, however, we should deal with our experiences with all the healthy scepticism we can muster, regardless of our desire to give in to preconceived notions in order to belong to a certain society of agreements and confirmations, or even to confirm our vague ideas gathered during childhood.
Experiencing and conceptualization
The unreliability of defiled and conceptualized perceptions becomes apparent even with the simplest cases, and it is strange how seemingly intelligent people never think of questioning themselves in this respect.
Let's look at such a simple example typical of naive theistic faiths: An eckists says "I experience such a longing feeling for God, I know that he calls my Soul, I have to walk the spiritual path". Of course, here we are not even yet concerned with inner visions or anything like that. But even here, people seem to give in all too easily to the conceptualizing impulse.
It's as if they just can't allow themselves to accept their feelings for what they are, but neurotically have to give it a interpretative spin which makes them appear in a highly noble light according to the ideology and society they adore: how can they know that their longing is for a god when they even don't know what they mean by god - let alone himself ?
If one probes further, the fact is that they usually haven't the slightest clue what they are longing for, so they allow an authority (HI, EM) to interpret it for them. Also, according to the teachings of eck, longing (which, no matter how deep, is an emotion) is an "astral" phenomenon, something that ceases on the "causal plane", long before one gets anywhere near those planes of experience where the ideology would speak of "God".
So obviously, the longing itself cannot differentiate at all between God and the causal plane, since it is supposedly transcended on either level. On top of that, since god is attributed with omnispresence, then it makes little sense to say that there is longing for him. In fact, whatever the longing, the desire is for, one thing is for sure: it is not for god.
So why are people in such a panic to quickly put their genuine experience of a deep desire in such a conceptual drawer ? If they didn't and instead decided to fully experience it with all their mindfulness and free of prejudice they might discover highly interesting, even frightening things about the desire, for example that it only arises under certain circumstances which seem to resemble each other in a way. That it isn't independent of the body (most desires even have vague locations in the body), that to look at it without conceptual glasses has a taste of discontent, imbalance and even suffering to it. That they remember the feeling from when they were alone as a child ... I don't mean to put a different conceptualization on this longing, and the above example is just one, although probably quite common, possible result of prejudice-free observation.
Also, it usually takes years to free oneself from the distortions in observing an emotion, as it took decades to build them up. But the example gives a model for the reasons why we are so bent on conceptualizing: precisely in order not to be exposed to full experience ! Because what we would discover is usually discontent in one form or another, the discontent inseperable from the unenlightened state. The example of interpreting desire already shows that we have reason to wonder what an eckist has really encountered when he says "I have met the eck master [so and so] on the inner", because we have (and most often he himself has) no idea how much conceptualizing is a part of his report.
Experiencing and deeper projections
This tendency to conceptualize has an older brother who is much harder to see through: the tendency to personalize and project which is so tied in with our "perception" since the beginningless past that only very advanced practicioners can cut through the illusion. The easiest cases of this tendency, with respect to cutting through them, are when we see the man in the moon or a grinning face where a tree branch is cut off. They get harder to untangle the more primitive the projections are: we see attractivity in a certain type of body form of the other sex, although it is really inside our conditioned brains (or else all dogs and insects would also head for that person as an object of lust) and against all reason we "perceive" a permanent individual self simply because there is awareness, thought and a vague continuity of structure called karma, DNA and a nervous system.
Unwittingly we have touched an important point here already: most of our "perceptions" are an attempt of this illusory self to prove its own existence to itself (**), and it appears that this is the root of passions and compulsory rebirth. And in order to do so, all phenomena must also be given a personal status, because if they were all selfless, how could they provide proof for our own selfishness ? And so we think of deities where there is lightening and thunder, "I" where there is a constantly changing personality, and even when we happen to break out of this egocentric view for a moment and experience an overwhelming sense of oneness, of interdependence and openess devoid of a self (call it love if you must use this misused word), we have a cramplike tendency to - even during the experience - cut ourselves off from it in order to save our seperateness and perceive this as "god".
========
[(**) as an aside, there is an interesting theory mentioned in the Out-Of-Body faq from the newsgroup, alt.out-of-body, that the "astral body" experienced during an OOB adventure may simply be the personality's attempt to maintain its self-representation as bodily existent when an energetic disorientation makes our usual corporeal self-image hard to uphold. This would make sense with respect to the curious disorders in the usual energy flows in the body after such an OOBE.]
========
It is largely by the same process that our neuronal discharges are seen as dream worlds and people during excercises. It is like the blossoming of a mental seed on the fertile ground of calmness. One can prove this to oneself, since this tendency is more strongly seen the stronger the energy involved with the experience is: simply raise your energy level and see how the projections increase. Those of you who have experience with psychedelics (LSD, mushrooms) will know what I am talking about. Actually, I unrecommend trying, as in extreme cases this is how a psychosis can be released. Many psychotics put personalized projections on everything: every sound ticks off another "inner voice", every light reflex on a bottle another visitor invisible to others, every thought another "inner command", and so they get overwhelmed with millennia of impressions within one minute.
At this point I highly recommend "Seduction of Madness" by Edward Podvoll, a spiritual practicioner and psychiatrist who sheds more light on this process. Here it is enough to say that prolonged attention on brain centers increases the energy level in those areas. It is therefore no wonder that what comes to our conscious awareness as so called "inner experiences" are (except for enlightened experiencers) already highly overshadowed products of our own subconscious machinery, high-speed interpretations of the actual experiencing that takes place way below our conscious awareness, and unnoticed by our defiled mind.
We might discover something totally different if the defilements weren't there. Maybe even the "world" simply is the reflection of our illusions on an even deeper level ? At least it should make us suspicious to hear from masters like Ramana Maharshi that there actually is no creation at all (and of course, therefore no creator either). Let's not get into this aspect for now, though. It is enough to say that not all teachings deceive their followers by suggesting to them that their imaginations are definite reality.
Buddha Dharma, for example clearly says that the true nature of things is totally free from, empty of all our concepts and projections. In that sense all phenomena, including one's own person is emptiness. Note that this is not to become another concept, but that "emptiness" simply denotes the suchness of reality devoid of projections and defilements (and not nihilism as some would have it). So essentially a true spiritual path only aims at freeing us from defilements and projections.
In this context, Paul Johnson's comment (from ARE) may be of interest: "A concept from Shi`ism which I'm currently exploring in relation to Theosophy also applies to Eckankar. In orthodox Shi`ite belief, the seventh Imam went into occultation rather than dying, meaning he disappeared from sight and --since there was no evidence of his death-- it was assumed that he continued to live, waiting to remanifest at the end time. This left a vacuum in the Shi`ite theology, which has been filled with a variety of strange developments, most recently Khomeini's being acclaimed as the hidden Imam.
For hundreds of years, people have been claiming to be in touch with the hidden Imam through dreams, visions, etc. "This relates to Theosophy in that its central Masters, Morya and Koot Hoomi, in fact (according to my research anyhow) died in 1885 and 1887 respectively. Rather than admitting this, Blavatsky allowed Theosophists to believe them still alive, just much less directly connected with the TS than before. Result: a hundred years of Theosophical history marked by competing claims to be in touch with the "occulted" Masters, whose status as living or dead has been a source of great confusion.
"How does this concept relate to Eck Masters? When Paul Twitchell used what Lane calls "genealogical dissociation" to eradicate evidence of his links to Sant Mat gurus, he set the stage for the same kind of occultation. Although the originals for Sudar Singh et al. have indeed died, the Vairagi Masters have lived on. What is most interesting about all this is the fact that occultation somehow strengthens the hold on our imaginations that these characters have. When we can confirm someone to be alive or dead, they seem to be part of the phenomenal world just like the rest of us. But when they are in occultation-- missing but not presumed dead-- this places them in the world of numina where they radiate an otherworldly glow.
"A pop culture example is Elvis, and if we ask what psychological mechanisms are involved in Elvis sightings, the answers may be relevant to the Imam, Koot Hoomi, and the Eck Masters."
A while ago I listened to a show about contact with the dead. Some medial talents claimed to have contact with the soul of a person whom all had believed to be dead. All this seemed very impressing until all (including the medium) learned for the first time that the person turned out to be still alive. Other examples have been alluded to by Paul Johnson's last paragraph above: During near death experiences, fans of Elvis Presley have had glorious visions of "The King" in a tunnel of light. It must have been the deepest experience these people can remember. An Indian woman who had spent her life in the kitchen saw a glorious japati (a form of pan cake) in her near death vision. Do we deny any kind of transformational value of such experiences ? No. But do we have to conclude that Elvis Presley and the japati were self-existent spiritual masters ? There is more on this subject in the chapters ylane+myst*.txt
Genuine visions
Let's assume one has developed not only inner vision, but (much harder) the wisdom to discriminate between appearances arising from macrocosmic karma ("real" visions of "other" beings) and appearances arising from my personal microcosmic karma (projections). How, if one is not fully enlightened oneself, is one to know whether these beings are expressions of enlightenment ? Or whether they are even trustworthy ? Shouldn't any disembodied being be able to impress an earthling greatly without being reliable ?
When we travel to another country on earth, or when we pick a lover we are less naive. Strange enough, if we visit the "astral plane", we believe everyone, even though it should be easy for that being to create a whole city of grand illusions which fit our beliefs to feed on our life-force of attention. Also, it seems as if someone sent out so called "elementals" which look exactly like their creators imagine them to be, in this case like the pictures of eck masters that eckankar issues. It is part of any magicians education, and if one wants to know how it is done, one could take a look at the works of the german 20th century magician Franz Bardon.
I would be surprised if Twitchell hadn't been familiar with his works, or at least with the techniques, maybe through the connection with Ron Hubbard and possibly Aleister Crowley. It is typical for simple models of this sort to appear in one's presence and simply be there and stare. More luxurious models could probably show some features like giving simple messages and act like a being with a mind.
According to most genuine spiritual traditions we should have a friendly attitude towards a being that approaches us on the inner (very hard sometimes) but not take notice of it, just let the experience pass like an itch. "The kingdom of heaven lies within you" means you shouldn't mind any phenomena which appear to the mind too much, regardless of whether it is physical or subtle. In this respect it matters little whether you are attached to ESP, light and sound experiences or pornography.
This is an integral part of all genuine spiritual traditions. Such experiences have mostly been discounted in their importance as "temptation" (Christian mystics, "When Jesus appears to you, spit him in the face" [Theresa of Avila]) as mara/kama, or as makyo (Zen, "When you meet the Buddha on the way, kill him"). The only good thing about these experiences is that they show that your contemplation goes deeper. Other than that, they only serve to lead astray.
If you have a genuine spiritual teacher, he should have made it clear to you that anything which appears to you cannot be your true nature and therefore doesn't lead to liberation. If not, or if he even told you that it is highly important to gather such experiences, then it is most likely he is not at all interested in your liberation.
The reliability of inner experience - An ecksample
One participant eckist on ARE, let's call her "divine" for now, gave all of us on ARE an estimation of the reliability of most of what eckist would call "inner experiences". Her example is interesting because the results of her inner voyages could be tested. Usually, eckists instinctively keep away from the realm of the testable because they have an intuitive feeling (which they won't admit to themselves) that their experiences are mostly self-projected.
Divine, however, might have had some genuine experiences and thought herself to be beyond the necessity of checking her experiences. This is what happened:
Over the months, divine's tone suggested she was some sort of universal witch, a free yogini who used eckankar as a springboard while going much deeper. And it took me many months on ARE to openly come to a different conclusion: she went right into the classical trap of overestimating her spiritual achievement.
One of the first things which made me supicious is the way she talked about traditional meditation forms of another path (yidams). From her words, it was apparent that she didn't really know what they are about, giving them the samsaric status of thinking of themselves as "I" and feeling emotions of hatred and desire - which only showed that she swallowed a complete misunderstanding of what they represent. But it seemed that she liked them anyway, so I didn't want to interfere too much with it.
It was frivolous, though, the way she reported her "inner meetings" with some of them. She met the Green Tara (whom she considered her inner master even more than "Wah Z") the way others run over to the super market to get butter. These reports made me highly suspicious, since meeting a high bodhisattva in sambogakaya form is said to be more like pulling the electricity supply of NYC through one's bones.
Tradition very much differentiates visualizing sambogakaya forms and actually seeing them. And one who sees them, usually doesn't talk about it so openly.
Another thing was her judgement of my person. I am very well able to say that I am not the way divine described me in one article. Would someone who has access to high sambogakaya bodhisattvas so frivolously misjudge another person, and spread those errors on the internet? Of course, this made my mind bolder for deciding on divine's spiritual stature: she was deluding herself. She thought she had contact with enlightened energy, when she was really talking to her own projections, interviewing her own prejudiced mind.
Still I wanted to test one of the "experiences" divine reported on ARE: A while earlier, she seemed to be very fond of the idea that "master" means "image", making a little etymological discourse (I never checked if there was anything to that). Of course, the word "master" is western and didn't primarily develop in a spiritual surrounding, so I tickled her by asking if this had any consequence in spiritual matters, after all most masters were called guru, baghavan, lama, roshi, not "master".
Then came a fabulous story of her meeting the Green Tara where she got the idea that "Gu" means light and "ru" means dark, so guru = Light+dark = image. Voila ! Now if there had anything been to this, one couldn't have objected to the way divine got there. But there isn't (see below).
It is truly nonsensical. And in light of this we have to conclude: she was using projected forms of yidams to get confirmation for her prejudices, using them as mouthpieces for what she wanted to see. Unfortunately, what made it harder for her too see through this, is the fact that she may have had some success at other times, genuine intuitions, and also energetic phenomena which seem to convincingly resemble those told by mystics and yogis.
Moreover, she seemed to have great talent for visualization, so that her projections probably appeared extremely realistic. However, transrational intuition, if it can be tested, turns out right. Else it is just prerational fantasy. But it seemed she could not and did not want to distinguish between the two: self-deception. This was truly in line with the tradition of Twitchell and Klemp.
Now for some evidence of what "guru" means: The word is not at all mysterious, it's an adjective and means "heavy" (with knowledge or wisdom or experience). guru heavy guriyam heavier gurishta heaviest So the guru is a man heavy with wisdom thus able to guide. That's the meaning of the word, neither does gu mean light nor ru dark, nor is light and dark equivalent to image. This construction (beside being far fetched) is so based on false information that it renders divine's reliance on such experience for what it is. It was also clear that she meant the reports seriously, since she repeated to stress the experience as a great gift to us in a later post. I picked divine above not to finish her off, but because her case is a typical example of how eckists get confirmation for the rightness of their views and path through untested "inner experiences", deceiving not only themselves, but others as well, by telling them these fairy-tales.
Meeting with the LEM
Many of us might remember the energies involved when we went for our first date, when we had to talk in front of a lot of people or where overwhelmed by the one-on-one encounter with a celebrity that we had a high estimation for.
To say that we felt emotions is probably a way of putting it mildly. From my own experience, I have to say that such moments can spark off tremendous processes which may very well have the dimension of the religious or magical.
For others, I heard, this may be even stronger. In none of the cases, however, did this mean at all that the encounter involved an extraordinarily advanced or highly spiritual being. On the contrary: stories abound of how totally unnoticed an advanced practicioner can walk among people, how they are unwilling to allow charisma to influence people's minds. What do the impressing stories mean then, that people spread about their meeting with EMs ? Obviously not much. We would have to judge a so-called master's qualities when he feels unobserved, totally without a public position, or when he is in danger of losing all of his disciples. Gross's whining when he got thrown out, and Klemp's dishonesty to keep members says a lot in this respect.
Recognitions of "vairagis"
Stories abound about meetings with EMs such as these from ARE: "A non-eck friend of mine who had no previous experience or knowledge of Eckankar (except what I had shared with her verbally from time to time) spontaneuosly (without any promting from me) regognized my picture of Rebazar Tarz on my apartment wall as someone who she had seen in her inner experiences." Strangely though she is still a non-eck friend. Obvioulsy she is not too convinced of her "recognition" herself. Of course, the eckist was because he wanted to be.
There are plenty of those "recognition" cases, but the pictures are purposely kept so vague (as in comic books) that anyone can easily "recognize" all sorts of shapes as the men on the pictures. There's a lot of wanting to be important and accepted involved in those acts of "recognition". Hundreds of people "experience" things on the inner which fit in with the expectations of others so they gain some recognition with them, especially if romantic love is involved.
And if someone has some ability in ESP (and all of us have it unconsciously, especially when in love), he can dream of pictures another has in mind. With some knowledge of the workings of the psyche, one would not be deceived so easily. Isn't that what a master is there to teach us, rather than to confirm and use our self-deception ?
When Gampopa, the heart son personal student of the great Milarepa came to tell his master of a great vision of all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas he had had, Milarepa answered that he can also have a lot of visions by pressing on his eyes hard enough. Then when he had a vision of terrible hells, Milarepa just answered that Gampopa's meditation belt was sitting too tight.
"Another friend of mine had her daughter point to the picture of Rebazar Tarz and report that she had seen him in her dreams on a number of occations." Children stories such as these are a favorite among eckists. First of all, what does it mean that a child reports to have seen a face in a dream that looked like the extremely vague picture presented at eck events ? There are thousands of ordinary people who look like the Tarzs given on the picture. Secondly, aren't dreams sometimes prophetic and does that exclude children ? Why shouldn't a child dream of a picture she would see a few days later ? Thirdly, see the "elemental" possibility from above. Fourth, Children subconsciously implement great parts of their parents personality into their own, as it is a matter of survival. We wouldn't believe how much we have stored unconsciously long before we are able to consciously reflect on what we experience.
From the story, as given on ARE, that mother was obvioulsy already inclined to embrace the teaching and was looking for evidence. Little children have an almost supernatural detecting device for such parental desires and can create "experiences" in no time. If the child needs recognition and feels that it can attract her love by confirming what she wants to be true, very often this is what the child does.
A few years ago year I saw a young girl sitting on a tree branch talking to her teddy bear for minutes and minutes, on and on until I left. Would one call that "evidence" that the Teddy Bear is really a conscious being ?
"A mother told of how her young daughter, with whom she had not yet discussed the various eck masters except for the then-current Living ECK Master, came to her one morning excited about a "dream" from the night before. She said a man who called himself "Rubber Tires" identified himself to her and took her somewhere. When the mother found a picture of Rebazar Tarz and showed it to her daughter, she immediately recognized him (from an inside book cover) as the man from the night before."
First of all, the possibilities from above, especially the "elemental" one, need no repetition. Then, if one takes a closer look at what actually happened, such cases will definitely appear in different light. I have heard many such stories, and then when I inquired about the true situation, it was all different.
Besides, if it is published in the Eck Mata Journal, it may well be just another one of the many stories published in there where reality is mixed with fiction. Also, I remember myself in a certain phase having slightly made my experiences more of a "proof" than they actually were in order to get confirmation from the outside.
One participant on ARE admitted that he was one of the people quoted in the early discourses of eckankar who claimed to have experiences that serve as serious evidence. It was only on ARE that he could set the story in a more realistic light.
You will likewise find experiences of "inner beings" full of glory telling other people from other sects how evil the eck masters are. Each one is playing his own game with himself in this context as long as one takes one's own projections as proof.
That is one reason Milarepa kept disappointing Gampopa in the example above. A true master doesn't allow such self-deception in the long run. Most genuine teachings agree that any visions and inner travels and so forth should not be clung to or taken seriously as proof of anything. If a master doesn't teach you this, he probably cannot lead you to liberation.
As David Rife adds on this question: "To be perfectly honest, I don't know. There are several possibilities. [My person] pointed out a few already. I would not discount thought transference as one possibility. I believe at some level, we are all connected in mind and spirit. IMO, It is possible that information can be passed between two or several people on an unconscious level. This is just my opinion, I don't know what your beliefs are on this topic.
I do believe that if there were no pictures of Rebazar Tarz, everyone would have a different description for him. I think the picture of Rebazar that Eckankar circulates plays a substantial role in solidifying the image of Tarz in everyone's mind.
"The first time I visited the Eck temple, I walked into the little room with the pictures of the Eck masters. They immediately struck me as false. Maybe it was the lack of detail, I don't know for sure. This disturbed me at the time. I really wanted to believe in the masters. It was hard for me to accept the evidence that they were cover names for other masters and not real people. But in the end, my desire for truth was stronger than my desire for security, at that moment, I saw through it all."
Visualization and the spiritual path
One participant on ARE mentioned: "If one hopes to make any inner progress on the spiritual path, the discipline necessary to accomplish this task is one that, to my thinking, can not contain any degree of imagination. After all, imagination is part of the mind's arsenal against the soul." Whether I agree with him or not, this follows even from the theology of eckankar. But such consequential thinking has never kept eckists from the blissful confusion of imagination and reality.
If visualization is to serve its spiritual purpose, however, it has to be practiced very precisely according to a genuine tradition. A visualization excercise which has any spiritual value at all will not only remain with visualizing an actual symbol of enlightenment derived from genuine visions by an enlightened mind (not any self-created image) with the right attitude (the generation phase of meditation) but also end with the completion phase of meditation which really is the goal of the generation in the first place, and which includes a complete dissolution of all the energy contained in the visualized object as well as subject (!) into centerless light and openess, resting in original nature of being.
Imagination methods without completion stage tend to lead to increased attachement to the practioner's own creations and crystallized thought forms which may then have magical effect, misleading even the practioner himself who may take his thought forms as proof of the dogma he follows.
When it comes to something as revolutionary as the actual practice of visualizing meditation, however, I would discourage following hearsay. I'd advise following a personal physical teacher who can transport a genuine tradition undistorted.
On the path I follow, the highest (and most simple but very subtle) meditation instructions are not given until after years of diligent and systematic preparation, study of philosophy and purification.
Otherwise one is almost certain to get stuck in some type of frozen pseudo-meditation which is not of liberating quality. And after all, isn't liberation and enlightenment what meditation is all about ? Are we even sure we are talking about the same goals ? It is a pity, but one has to follow one genuine tradition or another sooner or later. We cannot "gather the most useful" from each one, just like the most modern parts of all streets to Rome together won't lead us to Rome.
Common argumentation
"I have found, long before I came across any of the contrary evidence presented that the outer organization of Eckankar is only the thinest, outer-most veneer or public interface of a program that exists primarily on the inner."
As Dave Rife said: "Are we supposed to believe that the inner is so important that it is OK for the outer organization and leaders to go around lying to everyone? If the outer is mostly lies, then what makes you so sure that the inner is true?" [...] "They have effectively sold almost everyone the notion that the inner is so important that the outer organization can do as they please and not be held accountable for their actions. Please think about this."
It boils down to this: how much evidence does that eckist have of his ESP abilities concerning even the common physical reality ? If he is not an exceptionally accurate ESP-crack, what makes him think his "perceptions" of even much subtler realities are accurate ?
Most eckists never test their experiences in this light: it would be too frustrating. "I find proof in my inner experiences" As long as we cannot exclude that the experience arose from our own (storage) consciousness then it doesn't prove much else than what our state of consciousness is.
"Eckankar is an individual path, so everyone must find out for oneself what is truth" For something to qualify as an individual path, first it must qualify as a path. If to give spiritual council to yourself, only with the help of books and fellow students, is part of a path - without putting yourself to decent tests under a recognized master, recognized by genuine traditions, preferably more than one independently -, if a path endorses tales like divine's and Morimitsu's as epitomy of spiritual experience, this may be individual, but it hardly passes for "path".
So the only argument for the notion that eckankar is individual, is an indication for it not being a genuine spiritual path. Other than that, what's individual about eckankar ? Students hardly ever get to speak to their personal master during their whole life, they only see him on stage along with an audience of other thousands of people. They are all fed the same discourses.
From all appearances, eckankar is one of the most unindividual mass-movements on the planet. If one has a break-through in one's spiritual unfoldment, one needs to be able to access one's master in physical form very soon. It can make the difference between advancement and insanity.
The way eckankar handles the role of mastership, it is clear that all responsibility involved with an individual one-to-one relationship between student and master is rejected by the organization. Students are dealt with only in a mass manner. An extremely irresponsible approach to something as explosive as the psychic and spiritual realities.
"The inner master is with everyone individually" Since "inner master" is simply an expression for our enlightened nature that we have to discover, there's nothing about it that eckankar could lay a claim on. No argument for eckankar being an individual path.
"Some eckists never had such experiences, as they are already beyond such phenomena" If they were free from illusion then, that would be great. However, most of these eckists are not. So it is hardly possible that they have already gone beyond illusory phenomena, it's just that they restrict themselves to everyday illusions.
When I remember those poor eckists I used to be a part of at our eck center, this thing with "going beyond the phenomena" and paying attention more to everyday life was - healthy as that advice may be - obviously an excuse to console and pacify those who were starting to accumulate doubts because nothing ever happened. Now they are content because they think they are too progressed to experience much, taking their little dreams for grand spiritual realizations.
"I think it's more than an excuse. 'First there is a mountain then there is no mountain, then there is.' What I hear you saying is that the middle step is important"
Shortly before true insight, visions and "inner trips" are said to completely make your view of the world change. However, the changed view is just as illusionary as the old one, only more powerful and misleading. Zen speaks of "Makyo" experiences, false enlightenment.
The real art is how to stay on earth when the energy really gets going. Then mountains are just mountains again. But the "mountain after" cannot be compared to the "mountain before". One who sees the mountain after wouldn't look for phenomena or be sad that he doesn't have them. So anyone who is looking for guidance in eckankar (or anywhere) or even asks why he doesn't have the experiences certainly does not see the "mountain after", he sees the "mountain before".
To tell one who sees the "mountain before" that he already sees it "after" is a severe spiritual disservice. Most eck leaders do this crime out of ignorance. Besides, I don't think that the experience that eckankar aims at is the "mountain after". They just want to go to the top of the mountain, not knowing that after you go to the top, you'll have to come back down, and nothing really changed. Gross is still full of lust, Twitchell was bitter, Klemp is still full of tensions and so on.
"My position is that one's inner experiences, as you seem to agree are not proof of any conclusions that can be drawn on this physical plane. Even one who is completely enlightened cannot offer his/her proof for someone else that did not experience the same for themselves. By the same reasoning we cannot reject another person's inner experience as obviously false or as "fiction" without violating the same priciple."
We can oftentimes prove a statement wrong when at the same time it is impossible in principle to prove that statement correct. Example: Statement: Mr X is a Master according to his own definition of "master" and claims that a master is absolutely honest to everyone. One can never give proof that Mr X is a master in his own sense. Even if not lying would be the only criterion for mastership, it would be impossible to prove that he had always been honest with everyone ever since he claimed to be a master. It is principally impossible.
However, it is enough to find just one case of dishonesty of Mr X to prove that he does not fit into his own definition of mastership. There's hundreds of examples of statements which cannot be proven right but can very well be proven wrong, in principle. Also, it is true that absolute certainty gained through experience uncommon to speaker and listener cannot be transferred. That's why I tried to mainly rely on argumentation which is based on experience accessible to all of us: documents, and statements by the persons at issue.
Get your own Free Home Page