Others ~ Selected Correspondence

Religion

One might well ask how do I know I didn’t just jump from the frying pan right into the fire, so to speak – in other words, since I had fallen for cultic behaviour myself, first with the Quakers and then on the Krishnamurti list, how do I know that I am just not repeating that pattern on the Actual Freedom list? The answer to that lies, I think, in my awareness of the issue of cultism. Since I had been aware of the feelings and passions involved in my own cultic behaviour (albeit a mild example of cultism), I was the more prepared to inquire and investigate into this issue when I first approached the Actual Freedom mailing list. I didn’t and still don’t want to end up in a cult. And I don’t think this is a cult. Uniformity of language, terms, and definitions concerning actualism. Yes, that does occur. But I do not think that is prima facie evidence of cultism. Were uniformity or similarity of linguistic expression a sign of a cult, you might just as well say that social work is a cult, or that teachers are a cult. Gary to Vineeto

One of the things that fuelled my intent to move on ‘beyond the common aversion to cults that most human beings have’, as you put it, was the frank recognition that I had myself fallen into the trap of cultism with Krishnamurtiism. In fact, I think I had recognized this well in advance of my break from Krishnamurti. I had been taken in, suckered as it were, into a deep adoration for the man that I finally recognized to be a sign of religious devotion. I was to a large extent blind to the obvious faults of Krishnamurti the man and I was quite oblivious to the charge of Krishnamurti being a spiritualist to the core levelled by Richard. But I did see a kind of devotional fervour on my part towards Krishnamurti, even though he is dead, and it is a fortunate thing that I could see this as it hastened my departure from Listening-L.

I also saw the same thing with Quakerism. My involvement with the Quakers predated my involvement with Krishnamurti. I jumped ship from the Quakers with the conviction that their way was not ‘the Truth’ and found Krishnamurti, whom I believed had found the Truth. Eventually and predictably, I became disenchanted with Krishnamurti.

What had attracted me to Eastern spiritualism was the situation that there was a living guru to admire and adore, whereas in my Christian upbringing, Jesus had been dead for presumably two thousands years. Therefore following a live divine teacher was for me one of the important factors in belonging to an Eastern religion as I had found the Christian religion too impersonal. At the time I had no qualms about adoring a man I considered the latest divine incarnation. It was only years after his death when none of his promises came true that I began questioning if I was really on the right path. My own life, and observably that of other devotees, was as miserable and as self-centred as that of non-Rajneeshees.

However, it took another leap in awareness to seriously investigate and discover that it was not the fault of my spiritual practice and not even the fault of a particular divine messenger, but that the message itself was wrong – there is no God apart from passionate imagination. And it is the belief in God by whatever name that backs up the authority of every spiritual guru from A-Z.

I watched a program recently in which these archaeologists were looking for the original tomb of Jesus Christ. The entire program was devoted to an in-depth examination and exploration of where the original tomb lay and of uncovering it. I went to bed before it was over. But what a fuss! It was a revealing look at the capacity of human beings for adoration, veneration, and religious idolatry. When in the midst of such splendour, it seems like a uniquely ‘human’ activity to go rooting around endlessly looking for some old smelly tomb in the bowels of the earth. What a hoot it was to see the religious supplicants bowed in prayer, queuing up for a look at the supposed tomb, even though there was no definitive proof that it was the tomb. And even if it was, so what? Gary to Vineeto

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