Discernment

Further Reflections on the Deepak Saga and Spiritual Teachers

NOTE: BELOW THE MESSAGE ARE A COUPLE OF BRIEF ANNOUNCEMENTS AND A PREVIEW OF NEXT WEEK’S GITA STUDY SESSION.

In the circles I travel in—more accurately, the emails and links I get—the fallout from Deepak Chopra’s appearances in the Epstein Files has surged, thanks to Deepak’s public response, which was widely considered—to put it mildly—unsatisfactory for its lack of transparency and accountability.

The feelings are stronger than I would have imagined, ranging from shock and disillusionment to revulsion to “What did you expect?” to fury and outrage. I guess I didn’t quite realize how many people saw Deepak as more than a skilled speaker and charming presence who had churned out book after book (with the unacknowledged help of a ghost writer) that changed a lot of lives. For many, he was evidently not just a teacher but a guru figure, and they were not just students but devotees. They didn’t just respect and admire him, they idealized him, and some may have tripped over the edge into reverence.

Same as it ever was with spiritual teachers and their followers (he said, cynically). See my previous post on the subject.

Maybe this will be a tipping point for the disillusioned. Maybe it will be a lesson deeply absorbed, not about Deepak as such but about the culture that commonly develops around spiritual teachers. I hope one of the takeaways is the importance of a quality that is lauded in Eastern spiritual traditions but is often diluted when those teachings get adapted to the west: discernment (viveka in Sanskrit).

There is a tendency in spiritual circles, especially the so-called “new age” variety, to denigrate the mind. This can be seen as a overreaction to the exalted status we’ve bestowed on rationality and the scientific method, along with the insight that spiritual realization is beyond the reach of the mind. Teachers tell us to get out of our heads and into our hearts. Good advice in a lot of circumstances, but like a lot of things in life, a good thing taken too far can be dangerous. In this case it can lead to misology, the hatred of reason.

Ironically, no one knew that the mind is a useful tool better than the spiritual giants who taught us how to use the mind to transcend the mind. They would agree with Galileo, who said, “I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.”

At the highest level, viveka helps us distinguish the real from the unreal, the eternal from the temporal, the beneficial from the harmful, the true from the false. Where teachers are concerned, discernment can keep us from mistaking charisma for character, Wiki-type knowing for wisdom, propaganda for proof, articulation for awakening.

I once joked to a well-known spiritual teacher that I could make ton of money if I let my hair and beard grow long, put on orange robes, and claim to have been enlightened in the Himalayas. We laughed, but we also knew I could probably pull it off because I know what people want to hear and how they want it said.

That’s scary.

Use your head.

For more on this matter, see the Association for Spiritual Integrity’s substantive statement (disclosure: I’m on the ASI board and had a hand in crafting it).

ANNOUNCEMENTS

Join me this Saturday, noon Eastern, for a free webinar “Dharmic Roots and Cultural Ripples.”

I’ll be giving talks and workshops in the Los Angeles area between March 12 and 16. For info, scroll down to those dates here on my website.

The Bhagavad Gita series for paid subscribers resumes next Tuesday, 3/3, 7:30 – 9:00pm. We’ll pick up where we left off last time, with Chapter 2, verse 47, and then get to what I consider the MOST IMPORTANT verse in the Gita.