Being and becoming

 

"Buddha at the Gas Pump" or BatGap is a YouTube channel featuring interviews with a long range of spiritual teachers and personalities, most of them broadly New Age or Buddhist. The show host Rick Archer is a former member of TM. In this episode (the latest), Archer interviews Carter Phipps, the former editor of the magazine "What is Enlightenment?". I think it´s fair to say that the group behind this publication, the Andrew Cohen Community, was a cult. For what it´s worth, even Cohen himself might agree with this today! As for Phipps, he comes across as a kind of more self-critical version of Ken Wilber. Some people probably do need to hear his message. 

The video is titled "Does Spiritual Illumination Create its own Intrinsic Blindness?" and it´s pretty clear that the answer given by both Phipps and Archer is "yes". TM´s guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi believed that once you take care of the "spiritual root", the entire tree with all its branches will flourish, but alas, it didn´t turn out that way. Archer has met very devoted TM practitioners who were also criminals! And while neither contributor makes a direct reference to Adi Da Samraj and Andrew Cohen, I think the connection is obvious. Instead, Phipps criticizes Ramana Maharshi, or rather the adulation of him in certain circles - also a daring move, I imagine.

The main point of the presentation is that intense mystical states, while important and beautiful for the individual having them, simply aren´t enough to make you "the pinnacle of evolution" or a "fully enlightened being". Archer believes that such people are extremely rare, and those who exist must be both spiritual and highly ethical. Phipps doesn´t seem to believe in "full enlightenment" at all - at least not during our present phase of evolution! Indeed, the belief in such things could even *hinder* our evolutionary progress, which must take place in the material world, the world of culture and politics. 

One of Phipps´ central points is "Don´t turn the ground of being into the goal of becoming for you, for me or for us". An experience of the divine ground of being could become a starting point for further evolution, but emphatically isn´t the "goal". Of course, mystics often disagree. Mystical states have a "fragrance of finality" about them and lead to "the myth of the given" as the mystic takes his spiritual state super-literally. In reality, what often happens is a weakened self-structure. During mystical states, the "super-ego" is taken off line, so to speak, making people feel extremely free and self-confident. This can lead to disastrous results if the person scores high in narcissism. In fact, both people with too high self-confidence and those with low self-esteem might feel all-knowing due to such an experience (I think the funny example given in the interview refers to then-TM-member John Gray, who later authored books about gender roles). 

Another problem with these states is that they can function as a psychological response to trauma - the paranormal is "better" than the trauma-filled normal world. Indeed, even lightning strikes can cause paranormal states in humans!

But what should be done instead? To be honest, Phipps´ perspective could very easily be combined with atheism. It could become a kind of "spiritualized materialism", in which mystical visions are seen as just another interesting psychological method to improve our condition in the "real" world (the only one that matters anyway). After all, the evolution he is talking about seems to be societal, not "spiritual" (except maybe in a very broad sense). A Christian could argue that while "pagan" mysticism does indeed lead to super-egoism, Christian ditto (or perhaps Christian non-mysticism?) leads to humility. But even humility can become a narcissistic exercise, a kind of bizarre form of masochism. 

Another possible response would be to argue that the experiences described by Phipps come from the astral world (or the "inner worlds"), rather than from the real divine dimension. But of course, anyone can say that - unless you can prove that a certain form of mysticism actually does lead to the desired evolutionary responses...