The True Enlightenment: There’s Cult Leaders…and Then There’s Cult Leaders

Here’s a pretty great insight (so says me) by costumeoff in the comments to the recent piece entitled “Once More with the Fellowship of Friends“:

The true enlightenment is not necessarily the state of illumination but how that knowledge and moment then informs your choices and actions thereafter. You could say that people who get hooked on psychoactive substances are confusing the map for the terrain just as much as any willing victim of dogma, and think those moments of personal insight are more important than what they do with them, until they aren’t capable of dealing with the responsibility which that knowledge charges them.

There’s so much we could discuss with regards to consciousness altering substances, enlightenment and the like from just this one quote. Where I want to take it though, stems from juxtaposing it with a few thoughts Ted Heistman put forth in the comments to a related recent essay:

I know you are familiar with Robert Anton Wilson, what do you think about a person with a fully active neuro-somatic circuit attracting followers?

That kind of thing must be behind at least some of all these so-called cults. Definitely behind all the cults that became world religions.

They can’t all be con artists...

For those not already familiar with the neuro-mystic musings of the late Bob Wilson, you might want to take a look at the Wilson/Leary 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness, taken from Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger.

The 8-Circuit Model of Consciousness and Cult Feedback

The neuro-somatic circuit is the fifth circuit of consciousness in the Leary-Wilson model, beyond bio-survival, emotional, dexterity-symbolic, and social-sexual circuits, which most of us flit between throughout our daily (and entire) lives.

As Wilson describes in Cosmic Trigger, the neuro-somatic circuit corresponds to:

The transcendence of gravitational, digital, linear, either-or, Aristotelian, Newtonian, Euclidean, planetary orientations (circuits I-IV)…

He also describes the associated sensations of this type of consciousness:

When this fifth “body-brain” is activated, flat Euclidean figure-ground configurations explode multi-dimensionally. Gestalts shift, in McLuhan’s terms, from linear VISUAL SPACE to all-encompassing SENSORY SPACE. A hedonic turn-on occurs, a rapturous amusement, a detachment from the previously compulsive mechanism of the first four circuits.

Wilson adds that he personally triggered this “circuit” via pot and tantra, for what that’s worth to you.

Okay, so back to the question at hand:

… what do you think about a person with a fully active neuro-somatic circuit attracting followers?

That kind of thing must be behind at least some of all these so-called cults. Definitely behind all the cults that became world religions.

What do I think of someone with a fully active neuro-somatic circuit attracting followers? Well, I should think that it would only be natural. Aren’t we attracted to people who are positive and energetic? And, provided what they say doesn’t butt against our own mechanically-conditioned thoughts and behaviors too severely, don’t we tend to find such folks charming and great to be around? Why wouldn’t people naturally be drawn to individuals who seem to be operating from a freer, more open and, relatively speaking, “higher place” than they do?

Now whether the group that forms around such a person becomes a movement, a community, a “cult” or anything more than a tribe of friends with a relatively benign alpha at its center, a tribe destined to die out with its root members, could depend on all sorts of factors. Not least of these factors would be the dynamic between the fifth (sixth, seventh, or eighth)- circuit activated individual and the people gathered around hir. What’s the primary circuit upon which the majority of the would-be followers/disciples/friends/tribesfolk operate? What intentions, needs, weaknesses and strengths do they bring to the table? And how do their intentions and needs influence this “higher”-circuit individual? How does that influence translate into hir thoughts and actions in relation to hirself and in relation to the masses attracted to hir? And the other side of this equation also comes into play. Aside from the circuit this “higher” individual operates upon, what are hir intentions, needs, weaknesses and strengths? How do these influence those around hir?

It’s a feedback loop.

Another question quickly emerges.  At what energetic level does the loop settle? And from where does the energy come to keep the loop from depleting itself completely? If it is coming from the disciples, then the leader likely becomes a vampire. If it comes from the leader hirself, then she will be depleted, leached upon. Should that happens, the leader may end up assuming the role of vampire for sheer self-preservation. The leader may weed out certain followers here and there or, like Rajneesh/Osho (and his is by no means a unique case), create an “insider group” as a buffer between hir and the more needy followers. This often marks the beginning of the leader’s corruption and fall. It depends on how this separation changes hir self-image and sense of accountability.  It also depends on how the separation changes hir connection to the greater mass of followers. (We won’t even get into the issue of whether the leader has wise or dubious criteria for selecting the “inner circle.”)

If, however, the energy loop created by leader and followers is not a closed system, but draws in energy from some other source, the above issues either will not arise or will be limited. If that energy source is the Ineffable or some lofty manifestation from it, the group appears more likely to grow into a viable, authentic and “true” spiritual community. And I’d suspect that when this is the case, it sometimes leads to the creation of something that lasts, in the form of a spiritual tradition or religion.

Of course, the open system leader-followers’ energy loop may also draw its energy from something very much lower than the Ineffable; this may also result in a tradition or religion with longevity, albeit one with more ambivalent, if not totally unsavory characteristics…

I’ll say no more about that because I simply do not know.

A Question of Labels: There’s “Cults” and…Then There’s Cults

And here I’d say, not all “cults” are cults in the pejorative sense. Some only get mistaken for the malignant cults we’re used to in the common dialogue. As suggested above, both the malignant cult and the beneficent one may at some point become religions. Moreover, some malignant cults, long after the negative cult-leader has died and hir memory has been replaced with an idealized isht-deva of the same name but with vastly more positive energies, transform into something a little more genuine, just like some genuine spiritual communities may degenerate and fall into entropy as the original connection to the Ineffable subsides or breaks down.

Some cults and some genuine groups both claim the same founder or the same god(s). That’s just on the level of “labels,” though. They aren’t really worshipping or emulating the same thing at all.

There are Cult Leaders and… Then There are Cult Leaders

And finally, I bring us back to costumeoff’s great insight:

The true enlightenment is not necessarily the state of illumination but how that knowledge and moment then informs your choices and actions thereafter. You could say that people who get hooked on psychoactive substances are confusing the map for the terrain just as much as any willing victim of dogma, and think those moments of personal insight are more important than what they do with them, until they aren’t capable of dealing with the responsibility which that knowledge charges them.

Just because someone’s a con-artist or cult leader doesn’t mean they can’t have a fully active neuro-somatic circuit. I’m not saying most cult leaders do. That’s doubtful. Most are just very good cons, with either an innate talent or developed skill at street hypnosis and mass psychology. But some cult leaders, I suspect, do have active neuro-somatic, maybe even higher, circuits of consciousness. That activation is no guarantee that they are psychologically or ethically grounded enough to do any good to themselves or others with it. And at those levels, when the “high” to be had as the object of devotion to so many people is so powerful, it’s no wonder so many become addicted to it, despite their so-called enlightenment.  It’s no wonder, then, that so many choose to maintain their high in a destructive way, failing to accpet the obligation towards others that their enlightenment entails.

It’s no surprise to me, then, that most who will claim sainthood or higher spirituality or have it claimed for them are just cult leaders in the negative sense. Very, very few of them, even the one’s you might want to personally believe in, could possibly be the real deal. And most of us are not in any position to distinguish between the false and the real guru without lots of error, pain, suffering and time.  Even then, we’re not guaranteed to develop the proper discernment. The odds appear against us here, I hazard to guess.

There are so few Faqir Chands and so very many Rajneesh/Oshos.

There are Cult Leaders…and then there are Cult Leaders. Only you can decide whether going down the path that might lead you to experience the difference is at all worth it.