I envy people who are able to have great faith in their beliefs for the sense of security it brings them. I find myself answering ‘what do I believe?’ with ‘I don’t know’ more and more. Faith becomes more distant and unattainable. The scientific/materialistic view requires a powerful faith as much as fundamentalists’. The allure of the guru makes a lot of sense, but I’m incapable of putting my trust in one.

Reflecting on my own place and time (Northern California, for God’s sake), I’m in contact with people who are blindly faithful in anyone who claims messages from ascended masters to devout Christian fundamentalists, and here I float in my ocean of not ‘knowing’ anything. I’m waiting to be knocked over the head with a revelation and I suspect I’ll wonder if it was a hallucination.

I imagine what it was like to live in a time and place where everyone believed the same thing and didn’t question it. I’ve heard radio interviews with women in Middle East Moslem countries who state that their restricted and sometimes sequestered existence provides a sense of security. I crave a sense of security but turn suspiciously away from it. What a strange time to be living.

‘In Western usage, the meaning of guru has been extended to cover anyone who acquires followers, though not necessarily in an established school of philosophy or religion.’

You ask me to check out books that you assume I am unfamiliar with. One really must research before commenting. Proof of your not doing so comes from your comment:

‘You sound like a bright kid … ‘

At 52 years of age, I’ll take that as a compliment.

In the west we have but scant knowledge of true mystics. Our list begins with Jesus and ends with Buddha. In the Easrt there is an incredible heritage of true mystics who can leave the body at will and return to it and who can lead other souls across that void as well. In fact that is the purpose of the guru to lead souls from here back home.

Check out “The Ocean of Love” by Kabir. Then read Rumi, Hafiz, Shams-i Tabriz, Nanak, Paltu, Mira Bai, Sarmad, Tukaram, Tulsi Sahib and others to find out what a mystic is and what a guru is and what they are not.

You sound like a bright kid so I hope this helps clear up any confusion about cults and gurus for the former comes to obscure the latter.

The way sanity has traditionally been used, it means a commonly agreed upon definition of reality, and the functional relationship with it. A sane person, therefore, is able to sense and participate in a commonly agreed upon reality. An insane person is challenged in this regard.

To say, therefore, that society or the masses might be insane invalidates the word being used. To what commonly agreed upon reality are the masses ignorant? Who are the commoners who better understand reality than the masses? The operative word in the definition is therefore “common,” not “reality.”

Those who use the term to play philosophy may be implying that some may be able to sense aspects of reality that are not commonly understood or accepted precisely because they break with the prevailing viewpoint. Sane, it is implied, might represent a viewpoint that isn’t in touch with reality, and to the insane fall the burden of the real. I accept the intension of the argument but not the use of the terms “insane,” or “sane.” Rather describe the typically sane viewpoint as disassociated from sensorial accuracy and those people better connected to their senses as sensitives.

If everyone is insane, then that becomes the new sanity. It can’t work both ways, or the word ceases to have meaning.

Hi Techne,
We haven’t talked for a while. You should pose those ‘buts’ more often.
The video you mention sounds fascinating. You ask if the human race has ever known sanity? I don’t think it has, or ever could, for we have emotion, passion, and that overpowers rationality. Take that away and I think we would cease to be human.
You also mention we have ‘think tanks’ today, but in a strange way they are less ‘human’ than the remarkable experiences of those kids. And just imagine the spiritual value they would have got if their first experience on leaving the cave, was sharing that turkey with you?

I read your essay with my usual “yes, but..” running in the back of my mind, but I have to say I am in complete agreement with your conclusion.

At one time in my life I had been involved in a spiritual group which certainly had cultish aspects to it, if not being an outright cult. There is good and bad here. In one sense the group literally saved my life, but in another it was completely dysfunctional. From my perspective (and apparently that of others on this blog) nearly anything, especially political, can become a cult. It becomes normalized when it is a dominant majority in society.

There was a video documentary in the late 90’s called “From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brother’s Warning” about a deliberately self-isolated South American tribe who make contact with society to warn them that something society is doing is destroying the ecosystem high in the mountains (this was all pre-global warming hoopla). The interesting thing about this tribe is that they deliberately created shamans to lead the tribe spiritually by isolating certain children and raising them alone in caves with just enough light, food and contact from one person to keep them functional. At the age of about nine they are suddenly brought into the world for the first time. Apparently the combination of isolation and loneliness combined with the shock of seeing the miracle of life in all of its forms causes these children to go within and form a contact with something that allows them a vision into reality that others don’t have. Even moreso, this doesn’t produce an isolated guru with a single vision, but a group of spiritual leaders who all have the same vision. Cruel, yes…but interesting based on your observations. Don’t ask me what it means, I don’t know; but it apparently was satisfactory for that tribe. I guess today we have “think tanks” instead.

I wonder if the human race has ever known what sanity is, or if it’s even attainable? About the only thing we can say is that most of us do feel a need to belong in some way, and have a sense of something greater than ourselves simply because we are contained in a universe that appears greater than ourselves.

An interesting thing about leaders is that supposedly they have a “vision” that the followers do not, otherwise they would be the leaders, and the followers have to base their trust in the leader on faith and belief since they do not have the capacity to see. Whether the leader is seeing accurately or not is another question, but my point is, when all is said and done we are all followers based on faith (or laziness). The only antidote is science, but science can only test the “vision” if it is material and within the paradigm of science, otherwise it is considered false. So we have the “cult” of science vs. everything that is not science.

Fortunately for me a very good meal can be a temporary answer to all of these ponderous questions, and I rarely question the veracity of my vision when the turkey is on the table.

Techne