Jeffrey Masson visited India as a teenager--in the 1950s. His family had been students of a Theosophical guru named Paul Brunton and had learned Advaita from Brunton and later studied with Atmananda.
Masson describes himself and how he coped when he was shocked by Bombay.
Arthur Koestler visited India at about the same time the Masson family did. He wrote about it in a small book, The Lotus and the Robot.
Koestler was struck by one feature of Indian life in particular--the staggering levels of noise and the utter lack of privacy. Even the temples were noisy.
Koestler that he found it easier to find contemplative peace and quiet in New York City than in India.
Worse, those in the Indian spiriutal elite, including MK Gandhi had the attitude that if one was a sufficiently spiritual person, one would not be bothered by this ambient noise.
Though Koestler did not use the term dissociation (the term did not exist in the 1950s), it appeared to him that all too often in India yoga and meditation were used to split oneself off from a problem or from a painful situation, rather than acknoweleging the situation, the stress one actually felt, and then examining ways to solve the problematic features of that situation.
Am starting to wonder if advaita developed as one of a number of methods to dissociate oneself from social suffering.
There's little privacy and quiet in India. What is a sensitive person to do?
In the early 19th century, Richard Francis Burton commented on the lack of privacy in India. (Personal Narrative of the Pilgrimage From Medinah to Meccah")
Perhaps many Indian religious practices developed as ways to carve out some personal relieve in a cluster of cultures notable for instrusive snoopiness, envy, and lack of privacy.
Those of us acculturated in Western cultures characterized by excessive social isolatation might have very toxic reactions if we were to apply dissociative strategies that developed as coping strategies in the non private, instrusive social structures of India.
Whether in India or the West, it appears that many can abuse Advaita or Buddhism as a kind of dissociative strategy.
And, such teachings can be easily abused by assholes and downright predators to confuse their prey.
A teacher who faces crowds and who possibly is running away from his or her own human feelings of vulnerability wont be able to assist students who are tempted to use
this material for dissociative purposes.
Masson describes himself and how he coped when he was shocked by Bombay.
Quote
'This was my first trip outside of Europe and the United States' Jeffrey Masson writes. '..and my first visit to a Third World country. I was not prepared in any way for the reality of India, fo rthe poverty and human suffering that I glimpsed for the first time in my life from the window of the taxicab driving past some of the world's biggest and poorest slums. The only way I knew to deal with this sudden descent into the real world was to immerse myself even more in the shadow world of spirituality. The appalling poverty and disease I saw when I arrived in Bombay did not really exist: it was Maya, an illusion. What you see is not what you get. What you see, the sufering you preceive around you, is unreal, a philosophic illusion ("the external world is a joke and a very poor joke at that", and therefore not be attended to.
'India was particularly well suited to the spiritual insularity I had developed. It too suffered from some of the same debility, so we were well matched. Indian philosophy long ago solved the puzzle of human suffering by depriving it of reality.
The philosophers were constantly discoursing on a cosmic double standard. Suffering, misery and unhappiness were defined as such only form the lower(Masson's italics) point of view. From the higher point of view, there was no difference between the wealthy man and the beggar. It was, needless to say, extremely convenient as a balm for any conscience that threatened to erupt when faced with the suffering all around.
THis powerful rationalizing phrase---which parallels many other spiritual traditions---was invented by a priviliged Brahmin class to distract (dissociate? C) from the poverty and misery created by this same class.'
page 112
My Father's Guru:A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Arthur Koestler visited India at about the same time the Masson family did. He wrote about it in a small book, The Lotus and the Robot.
Koestler was struck by one feature of Indian life in particular--the staggering levels of noise and the utter lack of privacy. Even the temples were noisy.
Koestler that he found it easier to find contemplative peace and quiet in New York City than in India.
Worse, those in the Indian spiriutal elite, including MK Gandhi had the attitude that if one was a sufficiently spiritual person, one would not be bothered by this ambient noise.
Though Koestler did not use the term dissociation (the term did not exist in the 1950s), it appeared to him that all too often in India yoga and meditation were used to split oneself off from a problem or from a painful situation, rather than acknoweleging the situation, the stress one actually felt, and then examining ways to solve the problematic features of that situation.
Am starting to wonder if advaita developed as one of a number of methods to dissociate oneself from social suffering.
There's little privacy and quiet in India. What is a sensitive person to do?
In the early 19th century, Richard Francis Burton commented on the lack of privacy in India. (Personal Narrative of the Pilgrimage From Medinah to Meccah")
Quote
But caste divides a people into huge families, each member of which has a right to know everything about his "caste-brother," because a whole body might be polluted and degraded by the act of an individual. Hence, there is no such thing as domestic privacy, and no system of espionage devised by rulers could be so complete as that self-imposed by the Hindus."
Quote
...one cannot retire into oneself an instant without being asked some puerile question by a companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one's shoulder; when from the hour you rise to the time you rest, you must ever be talking or listening, you must converse yourself to sleep in a public dormitory, and give ear to your companions' snores and mutterings at midnight.
Perhaps many Indian religious practices developed as ways to carve out some personal relieve in a cluster of cultures notable for instrusive snoopiness, envy, and lack of privacy.
Those of us acculturated in Western cultures characterized by excessive social isolatation might have very toxic reactions if we were to apply dissociative strategies that developed as coping strategies in the non private, instrusive social structures of India.
Whether in India or the West, it appears that many can abuse Advaita or Buddhism as a kind of dissociative strategy.
And, such teachings can be easily abused by assholes and downright predators to confuse their prey.
A teacher who faces crowds and who possibly is running away from his or her own human feelings of vulnerability wont be able to assist students who are tempted to use
this material for dissociative purposes.