And The “One-ness”
Experience
I highly recommend "The Guru Papers~Masks Of Authoritarian Power" by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad regarding religion, cults, one-ness experiences, the split in modern people between "good" and "bad" selves, the futility of trying to eliminate the "bad" self and how trying to do this feeds susceptibility to things like cults, drugs and other so-called addictions.
I highly recommend "The Guru Papers~Masks Of Authoritarian Power" by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad regarding religion, cults, one-ness experiences, the split in modern people between "good" and "bad" selves, the futility of trying to eliminate the "bad" self and how trying to do this feeds susceptibility to things like cults, drugs and other so-called addictions.
For instance
we are all capable of having what the authors call a "One-ness"
experience, where we experience the interconnectedness of everything, the
"all is one" moment. We are, of course, equally capable of
experiencing our separateness. Where this split exists in a person, the kind of
split which says that love, one-ness, whole-ness, etc.. is "good" and
separate-ness, ego, personal enhancement are "bad", then it naturally
follows that one should live all the time in the "good" or One-ness
experience. It further follows that it's possible to do this, that there are
people who do, and of course, one should surrender to these people and do what
they say in order to arrive there ourselves. The problem of course is that ego,
selfishness and self-enhancement are deeply wired parts of us have major survival
value and will not just go away, no matter how hard we try to banish them. The
stage is then set for endless inner conflict, purges, true believing, etc.
The authors
advocate for a more balanced approach, one that jives well with my Taoist
leanings. It's fairly simple really. We all have selfish as well as loving
impulses, One-ness as well as separate-ness experiences, competitive as well as
cooperative natures. No one part of our natures is where we should live all the
time. Rather let each kind of experience or aspect of our nature's manifest as
it does, when it does, and embrace the whole of our natures. I find this true of
so many aspects of life. Not black or white, or even gray, but black AND white
in a dynamic exchange. It's not easy though. It's much easier to see the world
as Good versus Evil than to embrace the ambiguities and tensions between the
different sides of ourselves.
The authors
apply this dialectical approach to all kinds of life arenas, including
addiction treatment, religion, cults, etc.. I liked the book a lot and plan to
re-read it down the road.
I'm not a
purely scientific or spiritual person, nor am I purely reasonable or intuitive.
I don't trust any particular model to bring me to some absolute Truth. I think
there are many valuable and useful lenses to look through in this life and some
of the ones I look through contradict each other. But surely the scientific,
logical one is extremely valuable and I always, at the very least, find it
interesting. Again, to me it's not a question of being totally materialist or
totally spiritualist, where one is "true" and other must be banished.
I think the "Truth" is an unknowable mystery, but the more points of
view I try on and understand, the better a sense of it I get. And when people
start to frame what I consider crackpot ideas "scientifically", I
think they should be held up to the very standards they themselves evoke.
I don't
believe in the whole enlightenment project either, the idea that a person can
reach a place where they "live" in the "one-ness". And,
even if it were possible, I don’t think it’s desirable or healthy, and I
certainly don’t think being able to do it means you know how to take or lead me
or anyone else there. One of the phrases of the late J.Krishnamurti's that I
especially liked is: "The *truth is pathless land. No one can lead you
there." *Meaning
here spiritual truth, the ultimate nature of reality.
I do think
one-ness experiences are real. I've had some myself. I do believe in a kind of
ultimate one-ness or interconnectedness of everything. I do think there is a
mysterious wholeness that permeates everything. But I also believe in
separarate-ness, at least relative separate-ness.
I think a
good actor or a charismatic leader isn't doing something supernatural. And yet
I also think there is something miraculous, mysterious and magical in a good
performance of any kind. And by magical, I don't mean unexplainable, I mean
magical in the sense of seeming to have more energy than the sum of its parts.
People used to say about The Beatles that something happened when all four of
them were in the studio together that didn't happen with any other combination.
People said it was palpable the minute the fourth one showed up. I'm sure
there's a neurobiological explanation for this that I would not fault, and I
still think it's magic or magical too.
("A line
from my fabulous song, "Digeridon't": "It's true on some level
when you say, 'We're all one', but it's not on the level where any work gets
done..")
I don't think
I can live in the "one-ness" or that someone else can show me how to.
I don't believe that it's even desirable. It's like having an orgasm and
deciding that because that was wonderful, I should "live" in
"orgasm-ness" all the time. Orgasms are like peak experiences or
one-ness experiences to me. They're to be tasted and enjoyed, not held onto or
willed into being.
I don't
believe it's good to be anything "all the time". I think life is a
mysterious movement that is always throwing us for one loop or another as the
waves come and go. Many different responses to these waves of life seem to be
needed if one is to survive very long. I like having a range of responses
available to me, from anger to one-ness to selfishness to altruism to laughter
to competition to love to hate to indifference to awe to sadness to cooperation
to whatever. If I want to meet the next thing that happens fully, I think the
only way I should characteristically be is ready. I do try to cultivate as much
readiness as I can. But I can't see being any other way all or even most of the
time.
I think we as
a species are longing to escape from the human condition, what with the
awareness of death, and the endless task of resolving the contradictory aspects
of our beings: animal/civilized, feeling/thinking, competitive/cooperative,
selfish/giving, the whole raft of consciousness/free-will side effects.
It's very
attractive to surrender this impossible-to-resolve tension into the
"certainty" of a mass movement, or cult group, since to accept the
unresolvable-ness of life means to accept our ultimate lack of control. To do
this is a kind of surrender too, but it's a much harder kind that involves
constant attention and work, like walking a tight rope. So while I do think that
there are people who are very seductive and skilled at weaving certain
"spells", I also think they are exploiting a deep human weakness that
lives in all of us.
Personally,
I've benefitted a lot from owning up to this weakness and gradually cultivating
more and more tolerance for being a human being, with mixed emotions, mixed
motives, mixed thoughts and a mixed nature. The more I can live with the
unresolvable tension of being human, the happier I feel. The more I cross the
line between seeking resolution and forcing resolution, the less happy I feel.
And in general, I feel less interested in escape, and therefore less
susceptible to the "spells" that I encounter people trying to weave.
