Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction In the summer of 1990,

returned to western Massachusetts to teach for two weeks and while there was invited to meet the world-famous yogi and teacher Amrit Desai. Several of my students and I first were given a tour of the grounds and facilities of his very impressive Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, and then were taken to meet him at his beautiful house near the main building. 1 had known about him for several years and had been impressed by what I had read about his mastery of the life force, which in yogic terminology is called prana. Several hundred people live as permanent members of his ashram while hundreds of others visit for short periods of time for different kinds of health-oriented programs and meditation and yoga courses. A beautiful man in his early fifties. Yogi Desai has long dark hair that falls down to his shoulders and a radiant face with refined features. We spent three hours together during which he was extremely gracious and hospitable. Truth h Stranger Than Fiction We spoke about many different topics, including the sub- ject of spiritual community. Although he is a man of his lime, in many ways life (or the formal residents of his ashram is lived in a traditional Indian manner. Most men and women practice celibacy, live separately and are even encouraged to socialize with one another as little as possible in order to avoid temptation and distraction. I was struck by what seemed to be an old-fashioned and unrealistic way to deal with the difficult question of sexuality and rela- tionship in the spiritual life. Also, it apparently wasn't working very well. Before I went in to see Yogi Desai, some of his students had told me that in spite of the emphasis on celibacy, there was still a fair amount of clandestine sexual activity in the ashram. When 1 told him that many of my own students practiced celibacy he became very interested, but was visibly shocked when 1 said that some men and women shared rooms together. Shock seemed to turn to disbelief though when

told him that there had never been any sexual misconduct, in spite of the fact that there was so much intimate contact. remember being a little surprised by Yogi Desais response. But it wasn't the first time. 1 have seen people respond in ways much more extreme than Yogi Desais to what apparently has become an almost unthinkahk^ possi- bility That the law of love could become manilcsl to such a degree that people could find a way to iruK come logclher in an extraordinary manner. Tlial an inlimacx so proKnuui /06 Ai] I 'niondilumal Rcldlnmship (o l.iji existed that it defied all cynicism and doubt—an intimacy so pure that in its presence maya could find no hiding place in which to preserve the illusion of a separate existence. For many years now, 1 have been surprised to find how rare is the knowledge of true intimacy On one hand, far too many people don't believe that it's possible; and on the other, most are deeply terrified of actually finding it. This has been and continues to be the most mind-boggling aspect of my journey through life as a spiritual teacher. Ironically, even in the modern spiritual world more seem to be threatened by the possibility of truly coming together than are really interested in it. That is because the price that needs to be paid for the experience of true intimacy to become more than a brief interlude is real ego death. The kind of vulnerability that that demands seems far too terri- fying for anyone who is not yet interested in going all the way home in this life. Because the law of love demands such a high price from the seeker after Truth, those who are not ready to go all the way seek for easier routes. They seek for bargains. Bargains can indeed be found, but time will reveal them to be only cheap imitations that masquerade as the real thing. As long as the seeker wants to survive, as long as the seeker still wants to be somebody and be free, the result can only be a condition that continues to be fundamentally divided. Indeed, the whole point of spiritual practice and experience Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction is lo finally come to ihc end of thai division, and so as long as the seeker lias not yet conie to that point where they are ready to make the necessary sacrifices to become whole, the result of spiritual practice and experience will usually be more of the same. It is a constant revelation to me the way in which people who are not yet ready to make those sacri- fices choose to accept and subscribe to partial and corrupt views about enlightenment, simply because they serve to shield them from the overwhelming implications of having to come to a final reckoning with life and all of their karma, absolutely and without conditions. If we desire liberation, if we sincerely want to know what it means to be free in this life, then to win that free- dom we have to be willing to unconditionally accept responsibility for our actions, past, present and future. We have to be willing to wholeheartedly come to a final reckoning with life for the first and last time. This is what it means to die unconditionally. One of the traditional definitions of enlightenment is that once enlightened, one ceases to create karma, which 1 define as no longer acting out of ignorance in such a way that causes suffering to others. To be fully enlightened would mean that not only is one no longer creating karma, but one has also destroNcd or burned all the karma that one has c\'cr created. That means that for the one who is fully awake, there is no longer any karmic debt lo pay— nothing left undone and nothing left to do. iO(S . Am ( mondidonid Rcidiionship fo /.i/( Each time we act out of ignorance, a momentum is generated that over time accumulates weight, speed and mass. Through constant repetition this movement becomes self-generating. Gradually, this movement, which is ignorance, becomes a tremendous and very destructive force. It is the veiling power of this karmic momentum that creates the wall of separation and isolation that is ego. It is only through the cultivation of an unshakable will- ingness and unwavering determination to take responsi- bility for every last drop of all of it, that we can even hope to attain genuine liberation in this life. It's a mad world and truth is stranger than fiction.

never would have guessed that my mere insistence that it is possible to be free as long as we are willing to be held accountable for our actions could cause grown men and women to run for their lives in fear. And not only that, but could cause intelligent and even some deeply awakened people to defy the laws of common sense. For several years now I have stated that what we do is who we are—not what we think and not what we feel. What we choose to do or not do is the unambiguous expression of what we have realized and how far we have come. This has caused quite a reaction. When asked, "Do you believe that a guru is responsible for his actions? Is this a valid way of determining the quality of a teacher?," questions obviously inspired by my apparently controversial Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction leaching, my former teacher gave himself away. "First of all, the guru is not commanded by any person. He is a free man. No one can command him. Not even God can command him. God listens to his commands," he said. So upset was he by my absolute stand that he went so far as to tell his chief disciple to literally follow me to the four corners of the world in order to "purify the corruption"

was spreading. "Andrew the righteous one," the Indian professor of physics said to me in a barely veiled, mocking tone as we were having breakfast together at a yoga and consciousness research conference in Bangalore, India. I had just finished reading "A Crisis of Trust" from this book to the audience at the conference. It was the professor himself who had arranged for me to speak there. "You're setting yourself up for a fall," he said. At first I was dumbfounded, surprised at the intensity of the feeling with which he was speaking to me. We had met six months earlier and I had been particu- larly impressed with him. When speaking together about spiritual matters, to my delight, because of his scientific background he was able to be objective in a way that most spiritual practitioners, including many teachers, seem to have a lot of trouble with. I was stunned to see him now expressing the same outrage I had experienced from others at my insistence that if enlightenment was to mean sonic- thing truly significant, then a high ethical standard liad lo be upheld. no An [hKomhlional Rclatumship to Life Ever amazed and even sometimes amused to discover that my emphasis on integrity is interpreted as a form of spir- itual fascism by many, I often wonder if I have lost my mind. When some of my students were speaking to a well- known Buddhist journalist about writing an article, he responded with disinterest, saying he didn't want to have anything to do with the controversy surrounding my breakup with my teacher. Then his face brightened and he said, "But if there were a scandal around Andrew, now that would make a very interesting article." (Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.... I had always respected Yogi Desai for the fact that in a time when almost all the great Indian yogis who had come to the West to spread the ancient teachings had fallen in disgrace, he stood alone as an example of purity and integrity. Four years after I met him, during the editing of this book, the Yogis shock and disbelief at the fact that male and female students of mine could share rooms together without incidents of sex- ual misconduct was explained. A widely publicized scandal broke revealing that the Yogi, a married man who had stressed celibacy for his own students, had been carrying on affairs with his female students for over ten years.) Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction The Science OE Enlightenment