Ah, nothing like a guru-student sexual affair to spice up a churchless blog. Through my friend Randy’s “Gangaji’s Pinprick” and “More on Gangaji and Eli Jaxon-Bear” posts I’ve learned about some Neo-Advaitan hypocritical failure to practice what you preach.
Understand: the hypocrisy is what bothers me about spiritual teacher Eli, who is married to fellow spiritual teacher Gangaji, having a three-year affair with a much younger female student. Affairs happen. Usually they should remain a private matter.
Some of the commenters to an Ashland (Oregon) Daily Tidings story about Jaxon-Bear’s affair wondered why this was newsworthy.
Well, I agree with a Ron who said, “When you have an Ashland-based group that has some national prominence, and that is a spiritual organization whose leader gets caught with his pants down, so to speak, that's news.”
(Another commenter called Ashland “ten square miles of land surrounded by reality.” Neale Donald Walsch of “Conversations with God” fame, the subject of my previous post, also lives in Ashland. Along with other gurus. I love this quirky southern Oregon town, noted for its Shakespeare festival, which is about three and a half hours down I-5 from where I live.)
Coincidentally, if there is such a thing, yesterday I had coffee with my philosophical friend Patricia. She’d brought along the most recent issue of “What is Enlightenment?” It featured a critical article about Neo-Advaita that I found interesting: “Who’s Transforming Anyway?”
The author, Tom Huston, describes his youthful descent into the craziness of this New Agey teaching that we’re all already enlightened; we just don’t know it. Concerning Andrew Cohen and the editors of “What is Enlightenment?” Huston says:
No matter how effective a mystical teaching Advaita might have been in India’s ancient past, its newborn Western child, Neo-Advaita, seemed to be missing something significant. Isolated from its Eastern religious and historical context and taught as a quick-fix, no-frills contemporary path to spiritual enlightenment, they noticed its tendency to ignore traditional values like ethics and the cultivation of personal integrity.
Gangaji is one of the Neo-Advaita teachers mocked in Jessica Roemischer’s related previously-published piece, where Stacey Heartspring encounters the post-modern craze of Neo-Advaita. Here’s a typical Neo-Advaita bit of blather from Gangaji:
There is nothing that keeps you from the realization of your inherent, permanent, present freedom except your imagination that somebody or something is keeping you from that.
Neale Donald Walsch, who by and large echoes Gangaji’s and Eli’s outlook, says pretty much the same thing:
It’s not really a question of stepping into an experience so much as it is allowing it to flow through us more fully and more completely. It is quite possible for anyone to do that without any sort of training, without any particular sort of discipline, without any study, but with just a willingness to have the experience. And the first step is to allow the possibility that it could occur, because of course if you don’t think it could occur, then it cannot.
Well, fine. I haven’t realized my “inherent, permanent, present freedom.” But it’s possible that Gangaji and her hubby Eli have.
She’s written a book that promises to reveal how we all can “directly experience the perfect radiance of who you really are.” And at this very moment spiritual seekers are enjoying the “rare gift of being with Eli in an advanced setting for ten days.” So we have to assume that Gangaji practices what she preaches about desperation:
Find who is feeling desperate. The feeling of desperation only continues because you assume that you are, in fact, something that the feeling is hooked on to.
Hmmmm. I wonder why Gangaji and Eli had to go through a three month separation to resolve their differences if neither of them is a “something” that can be hooked by negative feelings, and if, as fellow Neo-Advaitist Tony Parsons says, “all concepts of good or bad, original sin, karma or debt of any kind are products of an unawakened mind.”
Eli and Gangaji, who somehow spoke as one voice in this interview, say:
Each of us needs to experience the ignorance, to find the place of fundamentalist certainty, fear, aggression, and animal territoriality, and to discover what is deeper. What is deeper is the next stage in the evolution of the human. It is the transcendental realization that you are not limited to human animal-ness. I do not mean merely to understand this, or to believe this, or to hope this is so, but to directly realize it for oneself. This requires the willingness to turn one’s back on personal identity as a male or female human animal.
Yet a student of theirs says that Eli is a “sexual predator who abused his power in the most egregious way.” Sounds pretty animalistic to me.
I’ve got no problem with men or women acting like animals. That’s a big part of what makes sex enjoyable. What ruffles my avian feathers is when a religious or spiritual figure pretends to be something that he or she is not, or says one thing and does another.
Another proponent of Neo-Advaita, Francis Lucille, says that “the only sin is to take yourself for a sinner.” I don’t agree with that point of view, but it is admirably simple and clear.
If it is true, though, then there wouldn’t have been a need for the Gangaji Foundation to issue an apologetic letter to their community of followers.
[Update: This letter has been removed by the Foundation. However, emails from the Foundation relating to the scandal still can be found at another web site.]
What was initially seen as a matter between adults is now recognized to be a betrayal of the teacher/student relationship and an abuse of power. A trust with the larger community also has been broken. This is an important revelation as real harm is being experienced by the student and is being fully acknowledged. The repercussions of this betrayal are reverberating in ways that were never imagined, but are very painful.Tom Huston describes how he awakened from the relativistic nightmare of Neo-Advaita that, for a time, passed for spiritual truth in his excessively nihilistic eyes. There’s a valuable lesson for all of us here: fundamentalism doesn’t only come in the guise of traditional religion.
Tell it like it is, Tom:
Night after night, day after day, I’d storm Zen Buddhist forums, atheist forums, Christian forums, and even Natalie Portman fan discussion forums with my proselytizing passion for the Neo-Advaita way. “You morons think you’re real? Try this,” I’d say, as I dished out the intoxicating truth that renders human beings and their concerns into utter irrelevancy.…“If all is One, then nothing is wrong,” said the notorious murderer Charles Manson. And while I didn’t actually kill anybody as I spread my love of Neo-Advaita far and wide, I probably did as much damage as one can with words alone, subverting all beliefs, trouncing all opinions, actively denying all values, hopes, and dreams—and loving every second of it, as I savored my absolute power over all relativity.
Yesterday Patricia and I talked about the big difference between thinking that you’re an enlightened spiritual person and actually being such. Passionate Neo-Advaita advocates, like all true believers, are prone to confusing the two. Thinking so doesn’t make it so.
If you claim to have turned your back on being a human animal, having a lengthy sexual affair with one of your students is just a touch contradictory (to put it mildly). Still, it’s always possible to take heart from a saying that my friend Hans is fond of repeating:
No one’s life ever is completely wasted. He can always serve as a horrible example for others.
I watch a lot of Neo-advaitic teachers on Youtube and also read lots of books. What I notice is the objections and attacks from the audience always seem to come from a lack of understanding of the teacher's message and a FEAR in the attacker.
The basic issue of doing what's right or being moral comes up often and I amazes me that anyone would equate total freedom with being tempted to do something bad or immoral. Balsekar just tells his followers that they are free to do whatever they wish BUT subject to the consequences (positive or negative) of their actions. Pretty simple psychology in my opinion....we reap what we sow!
I am at a loss to understand why Eli cheated on Gangaji but am confident that basic psychology could explain it way better than advaita or any other 'spritiual' system. I'd paste his moral/emotional 'weakness' on some unresolved childhood issues which, I believe, motivate almost everything we humans do....enlightened or not. Most of what I currently understand has been gained from psychology and therapy more than 'spirituality' and when combined the two disciplines cover much if not all I need to 'get' for now. My hope is that Eli, his mistress and Gangaji will find a loving way through this and come out better on the other side.
Meanwhile, I am gaining all that I can from the 'useful' messages and pointers of all the teachers I encounter regardless of their 'dark sides'...even if I do not understand why they act that way.
Posted by: Jim Richardson | November 07, 2009 at 02:22 PM
Your anger and sarcasm are slightly unbecoming. As a self-proclaimed judge of others, it might be worth looking in the mirror for a change.
Posted by: John | May 14, 2010 at 03:57 PM
John, at my age (61) I look in the mirror at myself as little as possible. Thanks for saying that I'm only "slightly" unbecoming. That sounds fine to me. My expectations aren't too high for myself, either physically or mentally.
Posted by: Brian Hines | May 14, 2010 at 04:04 PM
Judge Judy?
Posted by: Bob Crust | October 11, 2010 at 12:44 PM
Tony Parsons transmits the view that he alone is telling us this unique fact that the reality is that we don't exist as seperate beings.
He is a bit ignorant really because that is what every great mystic or prophet has said.
They chose to teach those who still live every breath in the idea of seperation in a way that they could understand so that they would be able to contemplate themselves and find that serenity and peace that is their home.
I have been to Mr Parsons meetings and he is quite a charismatic man. He has a lot of devotees who hang on his every word when peoples questions are dismissed with the set answer "theres no one there" the laughing from the devotees arised as if to say "poor fools If only they knew"
I do not question his ultimate truth but I don't think he is helping anyone much.
All he is doing is giving people another belief system. They go in thinking they can do things to find freedom and some come out thinking that they can't do anything.
He would say that is helping them to put down a burden but that not helpful to most people.
Most people just go away thinking they are helpless but that is a nonsense because if we are all one energy then the point is that you are one.
You are not powerless you are the very source of everything. You have to let go of conditioning by self observation not because you have a new belief system
His background as Sanyasin of Rajneesh makes me suspect that he learnt well and is enjoying his place on the stage and the easy money that it brings in.
His whole site is all about how he is unique and that his method is producing results.
To quote Maharaj :"It is very often so with Americans and Europeans. After a stretch of spiritual practice they become charged with energy and frantically seek an outlet. They organise communities, become teachers of Yoga, marry, write books - anything except keeping quiet and turning their energies within, to find the source of the inexhaustible power and learn the art of keeping it under control"
Posted by: Ben | December 29, 2010 at 07:10 AM
I agree with Peter S. It finally takes one to know one. Trash talk in, trash talk out, and you go nowhere. Words out of context make for religious wars. I'm not impressed by those
who are offended by another's path, and claim their own sense of moral outrage as being the one true way. No wonder Trungpa became an alcoholic philanderer; just so he wasn't held to a scandal prison of the self righteous. The Zen Koans are meaningless without the experience, It is a short path.
Posted by: Eab | January 29, 2011 at 11:30 AM
Projections. Trolls indeed (sorry not all of you).
I wonder if they are Happy Now.
Posted by: Julian Bates | May 03, 2013 at 06:51 PM
That a Zen master can transmit, or that
a typical jnani can transmit, is not true.
You will not even get anything in the company of Saints.
But, there is a rare breed such as Ramana
Maharshi whom could trasmit. Ramana,
a jnani, had contacted Something Else,
which he stated he could transmit.
This is much more than simple enlightenment.
There is a true and real Power behind it.
Ramana stated the Power was on the top
of the head. He stated the Power could
open all brain centers without kundalini
rising, from the top down.
He stated it could only be contacted now.
Ramana called it the Higher Self, which is
an unfortunate choice of words.
He spoke of the Higher Heart center. In
Indian philosophy the kundalini moves up the
shushumna to the 1000 petal lotus.
But, most people don't know that after that it can come back down into the Higher Heart center on the right side of the chest.
Ram Chandra also spoke of this and called the Power pranahuti.
At this point, true compassion opens
to the person. This Compassion is the
Something Else most enlightened people are
unaware exists.
This Compassion has Power and it spreads.
It flows from those in contact to the
outside world and radically changes things
IN REAL LIFE for the better.
Not necessarily for the individual, but
for the world. Compassion is the ultimate sacrifice
and the ultimate Power.
Posted by: Mike Williams | May 03, 2013 at 08:47 PM
This is horrendous, and a lot of you I hope are ashamed to have thought you were involved in Advaita ('real', or 'neo').
It is just as many other blogs on the internet: Assuming you know the 'other', rather than Dialoguing with them. RRather, some of you are in a battle with another person, whom you do not know!
Also, the claims about some teachers are the same thing. Who knows? Certainly not most of you lot! Urgh!
I hope some of you will -if not agree- then laugh with what I have said. By now.
Posted by: Juli | May 11, 2014 at 03:31 AM
" Much of the impact of an advaitic (or neo-advaitic for that matter) teacher is the experiential shift that occurs in the consciousness of the student in the presence of the teacher."
---Experiential shift from what or where? If that is what much of the impact is, then what is the minor remaining part?
Posted by: Roger | May 11, 2014 at 02:35 PM
The neo-advaita is an unfortunate watered-down deluded version of traditional advaita!
Here is an article that analyses 6 core differences and problems with the neo-advaita approach: http://liveanddare.com/neo-advaita/
It speaks similar criticisms to the ones in this post, so I think you will enjoy.
Posted by: Giovanni | September 26, 2015 at 06:31 PM
The problem with Neo-Advaita is it doesn't speak about the Transformation,Purification of the Mind.
It is a western - nonsense - way of reducing the spirituality to a joke.
It doesn't matter if one is self realized or not.The Mind should be free from clutches of Lust,desires,attachment and hate,negativity,anger etc etc.That is wisdom.
Just telling there is nothing to do and you are already that is nonsense and it defeats the purpose.
Meditation,Purification - inner transformation is the Goal.To be a good human is the Goal.
Not SR - superficially claiming I AM Consciousness.
Ok if at all answer is all ready given - You are the consciousness - so one will act with out Using Mind and Body - one will think,react with the same conditioned mind.
Who is getting transformed,purified etc are pure bullshit served - intellectual nonsense.
Advaita Vedanta is about transformation of Mind and then transcending.
It is not transcending the Mind with all impurities and realize some thing.
Posted by: JK | June 20, 2016 at 06:58 AM
At school I had a very temperamental and dysfunctional history teacher, he was nevertheless the best teacher I ever had. If individuals were more interested in content instead of containers, there would be less apathetic diciples and less spiritualised egos to gurify them.
Regarding Neo Advaita, I always considered it was a fast food, half baked approach to awakening. Fantastic for the western crowd who love that "nothing to do", "nowhere to go", finally a nice "awaken while you sleep" philosophy.
My life experience is that the dissolution of the ego is a very tiny step on the process of rebirth. Most of those self-appointed Neo Advaita YouTube "teachers" are stuck in this limbo zone and are pushing their disciples in the same hole.
Nisargadatta: “To go beyond the mind, you must have your mind in perfect order. You cannot leave a mess behind and go beyond."
Sri Aurobindo: "…These things, when they pour down or come in, present themselves with a great force, a vivid sense of inspiration or illumination, much sensation of light and joy, an impression of widening and power. The sadhak feels himself freed from the normal limits, projected into a wonderful new world of experience, filled and enlarged and exalted;what comes associates itself, besides, with his aspirations, ambitions, notions of spiritual fulfillment and yogic siddhi; it is represented even as itself that realisation and fulfillment.
Very easily he is carried away by the splendour and the rush, and thinks that he has realised more than he has truly done, something final or at least something sovereignly true. At this stage the necessary knowledge and experience are usually lacking which would tell him that this is only a very uncertain and mixed beginning; he may not realise at once that he is still in the cosmic Ignorance, not in the cosmic Truth, much less in the Transcendental Truth, and that whatever formative or dynamic idea-truths may have come down into him are partial only and yet further diminished by their presentation to him by a still mixed consciousness. He may fail to realise also that if he rushes to apply what he is realising or receiving as if it were something definitive, he may either fall into confusion and error or else get shut up in some partial formation in which there may be an element of spiritual Truth but it is likely to be outweighted by more dubious mental and vital accretions that deform it altogether."
Posted by: Hokken | December 01, 2016 at 05:54 AM
Sri Aurobindo, from above ... says:
'... he may either fall into confusion and error or else get shut up in some partial formation in which there may be an element of spiritual Truth but it is likely to be outweighted by more dubious mental and vital accretions that deform it altogether'
I wonder what Papaji would have to say about Mooji, that's if He could get a word in edge-ways/wise!
Posted by: JJ | December 11, 2016 at 04:18 AM
Disclaimer: I'm not a follower of Gangaji and I believe Neo-Advaita teachers in general got it all wrong.
Nevertheless...
“If you claim to have turned your back on being a human animal, having a lengthy sexual affair with one of your students is just a touch contradictory (to put it mildly).”
Discovering your real nature doesn't keep you from being an animal, like discovering all of a sudden that you are wealthy doesn't keep you from being stupid. You really have little clue about what this is about.
"Another proponent of Neo-Advaita, Francis Lucille..."
It's clear that you cannot even make the difference between Advaita and Neo-Advaita and they are really far away in their methods and aims: http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/trad_neo/trad_neo.htm
If you know nothing about a particular subject maybe you shouldn't go into that, dude.
This article is gossip and nothing more.
Posted by: adivaita | February 01, 2017 at 11:36 PM
Master Charan Singh once said that, ultimately, we are all God. Our outer Master projects himself from the Shabd. He projects himself as the Radiant Form so we can recognize him inside. We merge in to our Master, the Shabd, and the Shabd merges in to The Father, making us ultimately God. But in that same conversation, he also said that souls recognize other souls in Sach Khand which is Sat Nam, the Goal of Sant Mat. He also said a flame of a lighted candle may be merged in to a larger flame, then removed with a candle flame still burning, So is that the same flame that merged, or a new flame when it was removed. It s a Conundrum of Advaitism.
Posted by: Jim Sutherland | February 02, 2017 at 04:54 PM
Tao tightly wrapped in EGO
Posted by: Anne | May 06, 2017 at 10:27 PM
I have attended one of Gangaji's workshops and listened to many of her CD's and Video Tapes. For me, she has been one of my greatest teachers. By her examples of working with her workshop attendees, I was finally felt safe enough to inquire deeply into my own issue with my Mother. I discovered that the issue was never really about my mother. I also realized how much I was like my mother. The result is a deep and honest experience of forgiveness. It took 5 decades. By Gangaji's example, I have reached a comfort in my skin that elicits much more respect from those who I meet. One thing I love about Gangaji is that I have not been asked to believe anything. I have only been asked to inquire within myself. As a result, I have had many experiences similar to her attendees. We are asked to give up all strategies for enlightenment and see what remains. The interesting thing about that is that strategies are from the past. Inquiry is in the present. This is why when inquiring about our fear to only see what is there, it disappears. Inquiry can only be done in the present where fear does not exist. I can only surmise I am in the present moment from hindsight when my sense of I disappears and I have nothing to defend. Is this enlightenment? I don't know. I haven't heard Gangaji comment on it. I know my life is better off for it in all ways. Gangaji has also stated she is NOT a guru. She also states she has challenges just like everyone else. She also talks about more subtle states of consciousness rather than higher states. Am I enlightened? I don't know. That is not an issue for me. Experiencing more and more that love that is beyond understanding is very important. That ability to listen more deeply to my wife and others I meet is very important. Feeling safe enough to fully experience the energy associated with childhood trauma is very important. I see the teachings of Gangaji as an important step, not the ultimate.
Posted by: Robert Shideler | May 19, 2019 at 09:50 PM
This seems extremely strange as these Gurus should be well aware of karma and the Hindu duality of being,
keeping control of the material self should be lesson one in his existence, I do not understand how he could even presume to teach others if he has not conquered or can at least control his emotions and senses,
it should not be considered a juicy tidbit to gossip over but a sad state of affairs for these beliefs, not being able to give the spiritual power required for his Atman to prevail is unfortunate and hopefully, in his next lifetime he and or they will do better.
Posted by: Lance | July 30, 2020 at 02:38 PM