Self-Help Gurus, Oprah & Science
11/09/2009 08:39 AM
Self-Help
Leila and I were surfing the internet after our trip to the Krishnamurti Centre in Victoria, looking for some perspective on what we saw there, Krishnamurti as a teacher, and how we view him in relation to other well-known teachers.
I once read at lot of Self-Help books. We have quite the proliferation of self-help gurus and their books in our culture now, and then often moving from that into the mystery world of cults and cult-ish behavior. This can often provide a stepping stone to a larger awareness than those people offer, and sometimes, it can lead us down and spiritual cul-de-sac.
It seems that our culture is so-generally- spiritually immature (and I will certainly admit to being that at earlier times) and left brained- that we grasp onto meaning (i.e. we feel SOMETHING) where there isn't one, and end up believing things that ultimately sound like Barnum statements, that, in effect, tell us that sometimes we are short, and then again sometimes tall. Many spiritual teachers and self-help gurus do this.
All these gurus tell us practically is that we have bent over to pick up a spoon on the first hand, and stood back up on the second. No wisdom to be found there. Yet, because we are SEEKING some meaning we lack, we attribute meaning (through projection of the mind) to things that contain mystery that we really don't understand.
When I left ashram life in the end, I studied this quite strongly, and had had enough of it coming from people who claimed to be spiritual teachers- some even with a sterling lineage. So, when I see people THOROUGHLY dissecting snake oil salesmen, some part of my mind likes people who do this particular thing well.
Self-Help Guru Bashing
We found some interesting websites that 'evaluate' self-help gurus. One was looked at by Leila, and the other by me. This 'looking' has awakened a rather profound interest in the snake-oil salesmen of today. I read quite a lot about it, as I lay sick in bed today, and felt some esprit-de-corps with some of these critical thinkers out 'busting' the bubbles of these million-selling shysters & the gurus who don't remove darkness, but rather obscure truth, or hide their "discovery" of it as being new.
What was interesting about that for me was how emotionally charged any perspective on one's own guru- in my case Swami Sivananda & Swami Vishnu-devananda. Once we got looking, we couldn't stop! My favorite page was a page that REALLY strongly evaluated modern self-help gurus. I LOVED it!
Like most Westerners with no other logical experience besides science, he has a definite slant to his site. BE SURE TO READ HOW HE EVALUATES BEFORE YOU READ. Otherwise, you'll just dismiss his information once he's skewered YOUR favorite self-help rich dude.
If that isn't enough for you- be sure to read this great exposition called "The Fallacy Of Success" from 1909 (yes, the Year 1909, one hundred years ago!) by G.K. Chesterton excerpted from his book All Things Considered- the entirety of which is available from the Gutenberg Project for free. I liked this so much, I downloaded it onto Stanza (my iPhone eReader) and will be reading more of his work quite soon.
Obviously, the person who created this Self-Help Guru Rating website has had no experience with logical traditions of spirituality like Krishnamurti or Osho or Vedantic teachings, which are very very logical and well thought out- he has a very specific scientific point of view. I SO liked that he skewered so many rich self-help book 'gurus' and their astounding puffed up mangling of the English language called books. Almost all the best known people like this were totally bashed- Stephen R. Covey (which is, I am shy to say now, where I started off my journey of self-analysis- or should I say self-esteem at a low point in my life), Wayne Dyer, Jack Canfield, et al. While I read good many of these reviews myself- let's say about half. I only found 2 of which that were rated Good. But it's a LOT more fun reading the Bad ones!
THEN I read THIS wonderful, and INCREDIBLY detailed web page that I think linked to from there. It's by a man named John T. Reed. Just his almost 'doctoral thesis' dissection of fraud-man Robert T. Kiyosaki(the man who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad) alone is worth the amount of time it will take to read it. I LOVE this sort of thing, and love to teach this sort of critical thinking to my philosophy students. What I like most about it was that his message (to me) was that you need to 1) think for yourself and 2) correct thinking is better than magical/hypocritical thinking. When someone really knows what they are talking about, and I think John T. Reed and his ilk does, then you can certainly refute the poseurs with some great effect. One key difference between P.T. Barnum and Kiyosaki and his ilk is that at least Barnum was offering some entertainment in return. Kiyosaki's world view is positively dangerous for the uncritical minds our modern materialist culture are churning out these days.
Oprah
THIS inquiry led me, somehow, to Oprah Winfrey.
Hug her, Eckhart, she MADE you, dude!
Reading all this got me to thinking about the Oprah-fication (read the links out from there, they're good) of our literary tastes- she goes so far as to take books like "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle as NEW INFORMATION, when I went to sign up for the New Earth videos. I just couldn't watch past about a minute.
HAHAHA!!!!
One MUST laugh at the absurdity of it all. Eckart Tolle is, for me, like the Elvis Presley of the-philosophy-formerly-known-as-Indian-Philosophy. He took what the brown men of India couldn't awaken in the West without inducing paroxysms of cult fears (like with Osho and many others), and made it mass-market. I imagine this itself to be something of a talent, only time will tell if it wil be as enduring (is enduring even possible in the modern age?) as the perennial philosophy of ancient India- which FAR exceeds in longevity the narrow Greek viewpoints we seem to continue to this very day.
Maybe this will, in the end, prove helpful to people to get further into what is certainly much deeper than he explains, into the ancient Indian philosophy. One can hope.
Of course, as a "white guy" who is teaching Indian philosophy myself, maybe I shouldn't point my diatribe at Eckhart Tolle himself, but rather the profiteer named Oprah Winfrey who makes or breaks people on her show using her legions of followers. My problem here is that she casts herself as a self-styled media guru herself- and from all indications, she has the following of one. What is not clear to me is that she's using her vast empire to any real good.
For now, I have ommited commenting on the site Leila was reading, as that site was very slanted and has quite a lot of detractors. When I read Swami Sivananda's rating to be :
Leila and I were surfing the internet after our trip to the Krishnamurti Centre in Victoria, looking for some perspective on what we saw there, Krishnamurti as a teacher, and how we view him in relation to other well-known teachers.
I once read at lot of Self-Help books. We have quite the proliferation of self-help gurus and their books in our culture now, and then often moving from that into the mystery world of cults and cult-ish behavior. This can often provide a stepping stone to a larger awareness than those people offer, and sometimes, it can lead us down and spiritual cul-de-sac.
It seems that our culture is so-generally- spiritually immature (and I will certainly admit to being that at earlier times) and left brained- that we grasp onto meaning (i.e. we feel SOMETHING) where there isn't one, and end up believing things that ultimately sound like Barnum statements, that, in effect, tell us that sometimes we are short, and then again sometimes tall. Many spiritual teachers and self-help gurus do this.
All these gurus tell us practically is that we have bent over to pick up a spoon on the first hand, and stood back up on the second. No wisdom to be found there. Yet, because we are SEEKING some meaning we lack, we attribute meaning (through projection of the mind) to things that contain mystery that we really don't understand.
When I left ashram life in the end, I studied this quite strongly, and had had enough of it coming from people who claimed to be spiritual teachers- some even with a sterling lineage. So, when I see people THOROUGHLY dissecting snake oil salesmen, some part of my mind likes people who do this particular thing well.
Self-Help Guru Bashing
We found some interesting websites that 'evaluate' self-help gurus. One was looked at by Leila, and the other by me. This 'looking' has awakened a rather profound interest in the snake-oil salesmen of today. I read quite a lot about it, as I lay sick in bed today, and felt some esprit-de-corps with some of these critical thinkers out 'busting' the bubbles of these million-selling shysters & the gurus who don't remove darkness, but rather obscure truth, or hide their "discovery" of it as being new.
What was interesting about that for me was how emotionally charged any perspective on one's own guru- in my case Swami Sivananda & Swami Vishnu-devananda. Once we got looking, we couldn't stop! My favorite page was a page that REALLY strongly evaluated modern self-help gurus. I LOVED it!
Like most Westerners with no other logical experience besides science, he has a definite slant to his site. BE SURE TO READ HOW HE EVALUATES BEFORE YOU READ. Otherwise, you'll just dismiss his information once he's skewered YOUR favorite self-help rich dude.
If that isn't enough for you- be sure to read this great exposition called "The Fallacy Of Success" from 1909 (yes, the Year 1909, one hundred years ago!) by G.K. Chesterton excerpted from his book All Things Considered- the entirety of which is available from the Gutenberg Project for free. I liked this so much, I downloaded it onto Stanza (my iPhone eReader) and will be reading more of his work quite soon.
Obviously, the person who created this Self-Help Guru Rating website has had no experience with logical traditions of spirituality like Krishnamurti or Osho or Vedantic teachings, which are very very logical and well thought out- he has a very specific scientific point of view. I SO liked that he skewered so many rich self-help book 'gurus' and their astounding puffed up mangling of the English language called books. Almost all the best known people like this were totally bashed- Stephen R. Covey (which is, I am shy to say now, where I started off my journey of self-analysis- or should I say self-esteem at a low point in my life), Wayne Dyer, Jack Canfield, et al. While I read good many of these reviews myself- let's say about half. I only found 2 of which that were rated Good. But it's a LOT more fun reading the Bad ones!
THEN I read THIS wonderful, and INCREDIBLY detailed web page that I think linked to from there. It's by a man named John T. Reed. Just his almost 'doctoral thesis' dissection of fraud-man Robert T. Kiyosaki(the man who wrote Rich Dad, Poor Dad) alone is worth the amount of time it will take to read it. I LOVE this sort of thing, and love to teach this sort of critical thinking to my philosophy students. What I like most about it was that his message (to me) was that you need to 1) think for yourself and 2) correct thinking is better than magical/hypocritical thinking. When someone really knows what they are talking about, and I think John T. Reed and his ilk does, then you can certainly refute the poseurs with some great effect. One key difference between P.T. Barnum and Kiyosaki and his ilk is that at least Barnum was offering some entertainment in return. Kiyosaki's world view is positively dangerous for the uncritical minds our modern materialist culture are churning out these days.
Oprah
THIS inquiry led me, somehow, to Oprah Winfrey.
Hug her, Eckhart, she MADE you, dude!
Reading all this got me to thinking about the Oprah-fication (read the links out from there, they're good) of our literary tastes- she goes so far as to take books like "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle as NEW INFORMATION, when I went to sign up for the New Earth videos. I just couldn't watch past about a minute.
HAHAHA!!!!
One MUST laugh at the absurdity of it all. Eckart Tolle is, for me, like the Elvis Presley of the-philosophy-formerly-known-as-Indian-Philosophy. He took what the brown men of India couldn't awaken in the West without inducing paroxysms of cult fears (like with Osho and many others), and made it mass-market. I imagine this itself to be something of a talent, only time will tell if it wil be as enduring (is enduring even possible in the modern age?) as the perennial philosophy of ancient India- which FAR exceeds in longevity the narrow Greek viewpoints we seem to continue to this very day.
Maybe this will, in the end, prove helpful to people to get further into what is certainly much deeper than he explains, into the ancient Indian philosophy. One can hope.
Of course, as a "white guy" who is teaching Indian philosophy myself, maybe I shouldn't point my diatribe at Eckhart Tolle himself, but rather the profiteer named Oprah Winfrey who makes or breaks people on her show using her legions of followers. My problem here is that she casts herself as a self-styled media guru herself- and from all indications, she has the following of one. What is not clear to me is that she's using her vast empire to any real good.
For now, I have ommited commenting on the site Leila was reading, as that site was very slanted and has quite a lot of detractors. When I read Swami Sivananda's rating to be :
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