Re: Mooji a cult?

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When Ramana Maharshi went to Arunachula, he renounced everything, and survived only by the help of some local sadhus. Slowly, over the years, an ashram grew up around him, but Ramana would never allow it to be commercialized in the least.

He forbid anyone to solicit donations, and he and his fellow renunciates lived on the spontaneous kindness of local people, who would donate food or supplies as needed.

Ramana said repeatedly that they should simply rely on Grace to bring them sustenance, and this occurred, not in any great avalanche of support, but enough to keep the ashram alive, and slowly growing in a simple way over the years through patronage. Ramana felt that if what he was doing was genuinely worthwhile, the support would appear, and if not, so be it.

The same ought to be true for the modern western spiritual movements and teachings. There should simply be no commercial enterprises associated with spirituality, aside from the very basic needs of publications and occasional places of worship or meditation.

The basis for any spiritual “movement” should simply be human intimacy and love, people sharing with one another the fruits of their own spiritual practice, without money changing hands. There should be no charge for “satsang” or teachings of any kind – except, as needed, some books and publications. But even these should not be heavily promoted as some kind of commercial enterprise, hawked like late-night infomercial products advertising salvation. Genuine spiritual teachers should inspire private patronage for the most part, and if they do not, they shouldn't expect to be supported by “consumers” of spirituality.

It's not merely the cult-model of spiritual organization which needs to be done away with, it's the entire commercial model of salesmen and consumers. Tony Robbins is not what we want the future of spirituality to be about.

These people and their emulators (I'm talking to you, Ken Wilber) have no genuine spiritual teachings to offer, they only have something to sell to people who are bereft of the spiritual. But like fast-food, these things do not satisfy. They don't provide the human intimacy and love that are the real signs of genuine un-cultic spirituality. They are trying to sell something which can't be sold, which can't be bought, but which is only excluded by the effort to create such an enterprise.

I have nothing against business, money, commerce (or sex for that matter), but it simply is not part of spirituality.

If anything, spirituality is a way of disciplining and guiding our use of money and the ethical participation in commerce, which is difficult enough within its own world. But there's a natural hierarchy here, and it only goes one way. Money should not dictate our spirituality, or shape it in any way. Spirituality should, if anything, dictate how we earn and use money.

If we find ourselves shaping our spirituality into a money-making enterprise, we are turning it upside down and in effect reversing its power, turning it into something which degrades us rather than elevates us. This happens even on the smallest of levels, when we ask for $5 at the door for some spiritual “talk”. Most spiritual teachings can, like Prem Avadhoot's, be delivered for free in someone's living room. If it requires a giant hall, it's probably gotten out of hand and will no longer serve anyone's genuine spiritual interests.

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The very notion that “new is better” needs to be called into question. In many respects it is not. There's certainly much that is corrupt and cultic about old systems of spirituality, but one has to appreciate how well-oiled many of them were within the context of their cultures, and that removing them from that context often leaves behind many of the safety mechanisms that actually protected people from being exploited by cults.

There are a great many traditional maxims in Hinduism, for example, that can help identify genuine Gurus and discriminate them from those who are of suspect morality and ethics and lack real qualifications to teach. Very few modern spiritual teachers could pass the tests those cultures create for spiritual teachers.

And likewise, those cultures also created qualifications and tests for spiritual aspirants, which weeded out those not well suited to the seriousness of the spiritual path, and kept people from straying beyond their real aspirations into esoteric practices they were not suited for.

Among those guidelines for both teacher and student were some very specific rules for living that might seem to us to be rather ascetic and hard to live up to, but if we look at them more closely we can see the wisdom of them.

The first and in some ways the most obvious rule was that money and sex should not be involved in spiritual pursuits.

Ramakrishna famously warned that “women and gold” were the great dangers that all spiritual aspirants should stay clear of. Most modern spiritual teachers and seekers tend to ignore this injunction, referring to it as antiquated, not in keeping with the times, and ignoring the necessity and centrality of both money and sex to human life, and especially modern human culture. It turns out that they do so at great peril and risk, and few of them are able to navigate thought these waters successfully.

If there's a lesson in the experience of modern cultism it is that Ramarkishna was basically correct. Wherever we see commerce introduced into the world of spirituality, we find corruption, exploitation, degradation of morality and ethics, and spiritual teachings and practices become so corroded by the needs of commerce as to become indistinguishable from any other sales category of modern economic life.

The notion that spirituality should be set apart from such things is treated with contempt and derision. The notion that sacred relationship should actually be cultivated is considered an anachronism unsuited to the needs and qualities of our age. And yet, if we look at the evidence dispassionately, and without constantly deferring to the commercial needs of the marketplace, I think we can see that this influence has had a deadly and deadening influence upon everything it has touched.

I am not merely referring to the most exploitive of Gurus who attempt to drain off the financial resources of their devotees.

I refer just as much to the whole range of commercial enterprises, most of them quite legitimate in many respects, that surrounds spirituality in our time. I refer to the endless number of spiritual teachers who charge money for their services, for their “coaching” of others, for their seminars, programs, books, audio and videotapes, for “readings”, for channeled services, for ashrams and centers and retreat facilities. The list goes on. Many of these enterprises are, on the face of it, even justifiable. Certainly we cannot expect books and tapes to be free. Certainly if someone gives a public lecture, there will be expenses that have to be paid for. And such people have to make a living somehow, and if they have to work an ordinary job, they won't have much time left to teach.

All these explanations make a certain amount of practical sense. And yet, in the course of making these spiritual pursuits into a career, a business, a machine that is dependent first and foremost on a cash-flow machine, the spirituality becomes corrupted by the entire process.

This is why the traditional admonition for those who become spiritual teachers is to take vows of poverty, and not to profit from their teachings. They are permitted to accept small donations that are enough to give them the bare basics of life, but not much more. Nor is it expected that they would need more than that.

In this way, a basic degree of integrity is maintained for these teachers, and most of all, for their relationship to those they teach, which is relieved of the whole obligation to act as businessmen serving their clients, but as the living embodiment of spiritual wisdom itself.