Letters to the Editor
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World Enough and Time
By net standards this discussion is long over, I suppose. It's so last week, and there are already over 100 responses, after which the law of intellectual attrition seems to set in.
I enjoyed reading this article. I've been interested in Castaneda and ideas of spiritual exploration, since I was a teenager in the '70s. I read an expose of his fictional anthropology several years ago, so that part wasn't surprising. I didn't know he was such a stereotypically swinish hippie guru cultish type until this article, however. His way with women reminds me rather of Ira Einhorn, another charismatic spiritual type who ended up offing his girlfriend for failing to believe in him anymore.
What I don't get is the arguments for or against the authenticity of spiritual experience that have been expressed here. It is not logical to argue that because Castaneda, and others like him are exploitative con men who emotionally abuse their followers that spiritual belief, or experience of other dimensions of reality is a dangerous illusion. Nor is it logical to argue that men like Castaneda are tapped into some deeper spiritual reality despite their behavior, simply because they describe such experiences.
I've seen some of the sorts of things Castaneda describes in his books, and other sorts of things that he doesn't. Lots of people do. It's not that big a deal. Reality is a very large place, and under certain conditions, ones perceptions of reality go beyond the immediate. But so what? Such perceptions really aren't particularly special, and the ability to perceive them doesn't make anybody more spiritually advanced.
On the other hand, I've met a handful of truly spiritually advanced people. None of them exploit and abuse their followers. truly spiritually advanced people don't exploit their followers. Spiritual advancement and abuse and exploitation of others are mutually exclusive modes of living by definition. Such advancement doesn't have anything to do with perceiving other modes of reality. That's a party trick. It has to do with recognizing the interconnectedness of all things that exist, and the fact that those connections matter, make us who and what we are. It means treating other people and the world around us accordingly.
Anybody can do that. It's nothing special. And many people do--the quiet ones. The ones who tend to children and messed up family members every day. The ones who seem to know exactly the right thing to say. The ones who work tirelessly for social change because they believe in humanity.
Seeing white glowy orbs isn't difficult or special. Living in a way that's fully alive and fully responsive to others is incredibly difficult and sometimes very painful--for no other reason than because there is not a lot of support in this world at this time for the hard and quiet work of just being, and just trying to make being a little easier and a little brighter for others.