Hopeful Resolutions

The latter part of this writing was a past writing about my past experience confronting injustices with an international socio-spiritual organization.  Reviewing it made me recall another, more recent experience with an international organization of medical doctors that I am close to.  The story I relate about them is in stark contrast with the story I tell about my experience confronting injustice in that socio-spiritual organization.  I like the idea of pairing this quite positive example with my rather dismal and disappointing personal experience with that other organization.  It helps things end on a lighter note and gives a little more hope for the prospect of justice within more responsible and intelligent human social organizations.  

A few years ago my wife and her colleagues were involved in a situation to resolve a case of sexual harassment within their organization.  She was on a panel with some other people given the duties of reviewing and resolving cases of professional misconduct within the organization.  It was a very difficult situation because the accused party was generally well liked and even a personal friend to a few of the people on the review panel.  However, the proofs against him that revealed his misconduct were all too clear and they were forced to act with impartiality and follow professional protocol which required firing him from his job.  It was very difficult for them but nobody really felt guilty because the situation was very clear.  Not only was it considered a professional transgression but it was just felt to be a wrong situation according to people´s personal sense of correctness as well.  

I had no involvement in this whatsoever, nor had any involvement with their organization.  I could sit back and simply respect how really balanced they were while handling the situation and how they achieved very effective results without scandal and ugly arguments.  These people worked for an NGO providing medical services to people who had very little or no access to medical services in the most rural areas of Chiapas.  Most people were Mexicans but there were also people from the U.S. and Europe.  As the worked in global health, they had many connections with people from all over the planet as well.  Many were very well educated and could easily have been pursuing more financially rewarding medical careers instead of working in the poorest areas of Chiapas.  They are sincere people with very progressive ideas that are being put into practice.  Also, the non-medical staff working with them really seemed to have the same spirit for caring for others as part of their professional work. In short, I would say that they were a very good group of people. I do not say they were perfect and would hate to idealize anybody or any society but I say that they really are congruent with their ideals and really do good things.  Given the current state of the planet and human institutions involved in the madness, these friends have given a very good example of human conduct and ethics at the personal and professional levels.  The world would certainly be a better place with more of such examples.   


The more I thought about it the more I was forced to think about how contrary this case was compared to my own past situations with Ananda Marga.  My friends in Chiapas not all like these pure examples of spiritually disciplined vegetarian yogis who promote the narrative of sacrificing their personal lives to manifest some spiritual mission to enlighten the planet that I encountered in Ananda Marga.  Ananda Marga simply had the tall talk of universal ethics and an ideal society but really did nothing to achieve such a society.  They achieved exactly the opposite.  My doctor friends, while not having the comprehensive all embracing spiritual ideology of the yogis, at least had a desire to help others without putting their own egos first and really have had tangible results. In Ananda Marga I encountered situations much more extreme ethical transgressions. However, there was nothing achieved in these inquiries.  Anybody who even tried to talk about it was silenced and slandered.  They even went so far as to try to accuse the victims.  Anybody with a sense of basic human decency left what they saw was a cult.  People who left were right in doing so because since those terrible scandals that society has had absolutely no progress nor evolution, just degeneration and decay.  I wrote about these situations in my work, Light And Dark Tantra.

I still get some correspondence from people in Ananda Marga who came across these old writings.  For me Ananda Marga is something that has already come and gone.  Of course it took years to reach this state of detachment in my mind.  After all I was arrested with terrorism charges against me because of the dirty arms deals of the monastics that put them on the FBI´s top ten terrorists list.  I defended them on the BBC only to later realize that they were truly guilty of arms smuggling and the organization was using my ignorance and innocence to put me in front of the cameras to create a believable story for the world.  This confusion in my mind;  believing and saying one thing to myself and the world and then learning that I was being deceived by them, took a while to process and reach some clarity.  One wants to believe what one says because it has already been said, yet the story begins to fall to pieces with too many contradictions and one has to use a lot of mental energy to be truthful with oneself and how one tells the story to others.  It is hard to admit that what you once got inspiration from is actually something really harmful, and that one has been used and as a consequence has also participated in their huge lies. 

The need to be congruent in thought word and deed is paramount to insightful spiritual practice.  Tantra Yoga is too intense of a practice for a mind twisted and confused with unoriginal and deceptive ideas.  Tantric meditation vigorously pushes the mind into union with the Infinite.  The mind flows into vast ideas and has no choice but to be consumed with the flow toward union.  The mind turned toward the finite world can willfully move in so many directions and with so many desires.  The mind directed toward the Infinite moves only toward the infinite and is guided by spiritual intuition.  All disparate tendencies are surrendered to the witnessing consciousness, the Atman. 

The mind must be purified of all false ideas in order to resonate with the conscious truth that consumes all the limitations of the finite mind.  The force of the practice will cause the distorted mind to fall with exponential intensity.  Instead of heightened mental energy used in the pursuit of self-realization, the very same energy is used to make the mind move towards its limited desires.  In this process there is also truth, but very dark and hard truths.  The mind merges into its delusions and suffers the consequences with much intensity.  Hopefully, this fall awakens one with a desire to be more sincere.  If not, then the mind falls even further into darkness.

During this personal process of redefinition after the Arms Drop scandal the organization was unravelling and all of the dirt hidden beneath the surface was becoming so painfully evident with all of their hidden mafia activities: drug and gun smuggling, sexual crimes, political infighting and even assassinations.  My closest friends in Ananda Marga all left out of a sense of shame of being associated with such a deceptive cult.  We were in a swamp of cognitive dissonance and existential confusion.  How is it possible to be a sincere human being while being associated with people who propagate such lies?  Instead of being in an enlightened spiritual society we felt we were in a dangerous cult.  

I feel I was as honest and impartial as possible when writing about my subjective experiences with that organization some decades ago.  My critiques were two-sided in that I wrote about some very positive aspects with certain people in that society yet I did not try and cover up any of their scandals.  

Some people are affected by the negative information I shared.  While it is true that the negativity is substantial enough to invalidate the whole movement and make people think they are in a cult, I can say at least your practices and philosophy have truth in them.  In Light And Dark Tantra I did write that I believe that the corruption entered Ananda Marga even before Anandamurti had died.  I never stated that he himself was corrupt, but argued that at the end of his life the organization slipped out of his control and that the fall of his disciples took its toll on his health.  In short, their waywardness crucified him.  I think it is safe to say that Anandamurti was a viable teacher and even his social movement had a great beginning and endured for several decades.  

Anandamurti taught that tantra is a vast spiritual science based on the spiritual laws of the universe that cannot be negated by the downfall of any single social organization or person.  The organization may collapse into dogma and religion but tantra yoga will live on.  I no longer have any strong opinions on the current state of affairs.  I ended my connection with them several years ago and only hear things from old friends who are still on the fringes of A.M.  Every once in a while I hear rumors of good things happening, however.  For example, I heard that the family acharyas, or lay teachers somewhere in Europe prohibited the monastics from their society.  I have always thought that if A.M. were to ever have a chance of survival, then it would have to be with the elimination of the monastics from the movement.  This would not be nearly as difficult as removing the priests from the Catholic Church.  Ananda Marga does not have an influence over the ages like the Catholic Church.  Although it is dominated by priests it is still a relatively new institution with a clear and rational philosophy.  Actual spiritual practice instead of established dogmas is the ideological base.  Also, it was founded by lay spiritual teachers.  The monastics came later, as did the corruption.   The good monastics have already come and gone.  A monk or nun in uniform nowadays is either a hardened criminal, a weakling who lies to oneself and others, or just completely naive.  There may be some younger monastics who came into the order that were attracted by the ideals and did not really understand what they were getting into.   I would hope that they were respected and be allowed to mingle freely with a new and open society, although without any official status as monks or nuns.