Quest Magazine

 Printed in the  Fall 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Stanciu, George, "The Fetters of “Free Thought”" Quest 105:4(Fall 2017) pg. 26-30

By George Stanciu

We Americans so firmly believe that each one of us has freely chosen our own way of life that we immediately reject the suggestion that to a large extent our thinking is programmed by culture; I know I did for years. But culturally-given habits and attitudes are especially powerful precisely because we do not usually reflect on them. “Most of us are prisoners of the culture’s current presuppositions about life’s purposes,” historians Richard and Susan Rapson write. “We believe ourselves to be the shapers of our own destinies, but more often we chase after culturally-defined goals as though we were automatons, unaware of the spate of signals which constantly barrage us and mold our attitudes” (Rapson, 7). So, perhaps, just perhaps, we are trapped within the bubble of modernity and not as free as we think we are.

Every culture tells its members who they are, why they are here, and what the world is about. What defines a culture are the social, emotional, and intellectual habits that are passed on from one generation to the next, whether it is the Lakota Indians, Harvard University, or Google Inc. Culturally given habits are the substance of custom, or “our way of doing things,” and they possess more authority than civil law, because such habits are the essence of daily living. Every culture lays down patterns of behavior and thought that most of its members follow blindly. Often, instead of a person saying “I am thinking,” it would be more accurate for him or her to say that “culture thinks for me.” Psychoanalyst Erich Fromm elaborates: “In expressing an opinion, for instance, we say, ‘I think’ this or that. If one analyzes this opinion, however, one might discover that the person only voices what he has heard from someone else, what he has read in the newspaper, what he was taught by his parents when he was a child. He is under the illusion that it is he who thinks of this, when actually it would be more correct if he said: ‘It thinks me.’ He has about the same illusion a record player would have which, provided it could think, would say, ‘I am now playing a Mozart symphony,’ when we all know that we put the record on the record player and that it is only reproducing what is fed into it” (Fromm, 49).

Ethnologist S.M. Molema, writing about his own people, the Bantu tribe, points out that in premodern Africa a person’s “actions are controlled by iron reins of tradition, his conduct is constrained by rigid custom. His very words are often a formula” (Molema, 136; emphasis added). Prince Modupe of the So-So tribe in French Guinea confirms Molema’s observation: “When I lived with my people in Dubricka, all of my opinions and judgments were formed by them, by my mother and the elders and the teachers in the Bondo Bush. A youth was taught never to question the validity of anything an elder said” (Modupe, 110). Many Eskimo and aboriginal tribes do not even have a word for disobedience. Group expectations are so strong that the young learn to follow custom unthinkingly, and as a result, such ancient peoples have no system of law and punishment.

Ancient Habits of Thinking

At an early age, a person in a premodern culture acquires the habit of understanding himself as part of a larger whole. The French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville emphasizes that an “aristocracy links everybody, from the peasant to the king, in one long chain” (Tocqueville, 508). If I am a link in such a chain, I understand myself by looking outward to see who is above and below me in the social hierarchy. In this way, I form the habit of understanding myself as part of a whole. Later, I transfer this habit to thinking about other things. Thus, in a group-centered culture, the first habit of thinking is: to understand something, see how it is related to the whole. With such a habit, a person approaches every problem as an organic whole, not a composite whole made up of a sum of parts, and understands each of its many interrelated parts in terms of that whole, whatever it may be: humanity, the family, the person, or even an animal or plant. Before a Hopi potter begins to shape the clay, she has the entire design of the pot formed in her mind. No single element of the design has a symbolic significance in and of itself, but only in relation to the whole. The design intricacies of Hopi pottery are shown in the illustration.

	Nampeyo, Hopi ceramic pot, c.1880, courtesy Phyzome, Wikimedia Commons

In the ancient world, the constant reference point was the group. To be separated from the group was to lose one’s identity, or even one’s existence. Modupe says that at the turn of the century in Africa, “Any destiny apart from the tribe was, of course, beyond the limits of either imagination or intuition. It was as un­thinkable as that one of the bright orange legs of a milli­pede should detach itself from the long black body of the creature and go walking off by itself” (Modupe, 53–54). If I am a member of a group-centered culture, I believe that I am social by nature and that without the group I would not exist. Each person about me understands himself or herself as part of a group. I see that I am always in need of other persons; thus when I do not know something, I seek out a person who possesses knowledge and wisdom. In this way, I form a second habit of thinking: seek guidance from masters. Hopi children frequently hear from their parents, “Your old uncle taught us that way; it is the right way,” and “Listen to the old people; they are wise.”

In addition, I realize that my experience is neither unique nor private; I understand what happens to me in terms of experience common to my family, to my clan, or to humanity. I recognize that my understanding is limited, but I have a common treasure to draw upon—the accumulated knowledge of my people. Life, for me, is governed less by abstract thinking and more by a common store of wisdom. Thus I acquire a third habit of thinking: experience will confirm the truth of what the masters say and reveal the wisdom behind their words. Hopis say, “Our way of life was given to us when time began.” 

Modern Habits of Thinking

Alexis de Tocqueville, in “Concerning the Philosophical Approach of the Americans,” an absolutely brilliant chapter of his classic work Democracy in America (published in two volumes, the first in 1835 and the second in 1840), argues that since an American always begins with the self, each citizen forms the intellectual habit of looking to the part, not to the whole, and as a result is a Cartesian reductionist: “Of all the countries in the world, America is the one in which the precepts of Descartes are least studied and best followed” (Tocqueville, 429). Tocqueville explains this paradox: In a modern democratic society, the links between generations are broken, and consequently in such a society men and women cannot base their beliefs on tradition or class. Social equality produces a “general distaste for accepting any man’s word as proof of anything” (ibid., 429–30). Therefore, “in most mental operations each American relies on individual effort and judgment.” Just like Descartes, each American employs the philosophical method to seek the reason of things for oneself and in oneself alone.

From his study of nineteenth-century American life, Tocqueville concludes that “the Americans have needed no books to teach them philosophic method, having found it in themselves. Much the same can be said of what has happened in Europe.” Francis Bacon, in natural science, and René Descartes, in philosophy, “abolished accepted formulas, destroyed the dominion of tradition, and upset the authority of the masters” (ibid.). Luther, Voltaire, and, several centuries later, the man on the street in America submitted traditional beliefs to individual examination.

Proceeding by leaps and bounds, Tocqueville does not stop to give in detail the modern habits of thinking, so at the risk of appearing slightly redundant, let me flesh out his insights.

First, let me note that to grasp the habits of thinking of premodern peoples I had to imaginatively use published accounts by Africans, Native Americans, and Chinese, while to understand modern habits of thinking I just had to look at myself.

As a member of a modern democratic culture, I could not base my beliefs on tradition, custom, or class, because the links between the peasant and the king no longer exist in modernity. By the sixth grade, I did not understand myself in terms of either family or nature. I understand myself as an isolated, autonomous individual. My constant reference point, then, was always myself. Consequently, I formed the habit of always thinking of myself in isolation from other persons, and this habit carried over when I thought about other things. Thus, my first culturally given habit of thinking: to understand something, isolate it so that it exists apart from all relations.

Hence I believed that every part can be separated from the whole and that the whole can be understood as simply a collection of parts. With such a habit of mind, I attempted to understand every whole solely in terms of its parts. But the smallest parts of anything are material. Therefore the culturally given habit of thinking that the whole is a collection of parts made me a firm believer in materialism—I could not think any other way. I just “knew” that the universe, including all aspects of human life, was the result of the interactions of little bits of matter.

When I was a young theoretical physicist, I would have staked my life on the proposition that matter is the ultimate reality. The future philosophers and aspiring poets I knew in graduate school often asked me over beer about the fundamental elements of reality. With no hesitancy, like Erich Fromm’s record player, I could not help but say, “Atoms, genes, individuals, competition, and warfare,” and yet believed I was thinking, not mindlessly repeating what had been programmed into me, and my philosopher and poet friends did not strenuously disagree. I now know that virtually every American forms the intellectual habit of looking to the part, not to the whole, and thus is at heart a Cartesian reductionist.

Because of the principles of social equality that I had taken in, I did not trust the authority of any person and had an intense “distaste for accepting any man’s word as proof of anything” (ibid., 430). As a result, I relied on my own judgment and thought. Although I found philosophy a bore and totally irrelevant to my life, yet I proceeded just as Descartes did: the intellectual method I employed was to seek by myself and in myself “for the only reason for things” (ibid., 429).

Since American culture told me that all individuals are equal and that I could recognize the truth just as well as the next person, I thought that I had no need to seek guidance from others, even acknowledged masters. Indeed, I believed that if I followed another person’s judgment, I would give myself over to that individual, and thereby enslave myself and violate what was most precious to me, my personal freedom. Thus my second habit of thinking: rely solely on individual judgment and thought. Consequently, in American life no masters are recognized, and, in effect, the three great teachers of humankind—the Buddha, Socrates, and Jesus—are seen as just three voices among many. In fact, if anyone holds up someone as a master to follow, most Americans will ignore or dismiss that person, since it smacks of inequality.

American culture also informed me that the essence of individuality is uniqueness. Each individual has his or her own unique beliefs, tastes, feelings, thoughts, desires, and expectations. What is true for another individual is not true for me: everybody is different. Furthermore, each individual has a different way of evaluating his or her experiences. Thus another individual’s word or experience is not proof of anything. However, since all individuals are equal, my direct experience is not proof of anything either. From these cultural opinions, I learned to distrust my own experience. For instance, when I read in Aristotle’s treatises that “the whole is prior to and greater than the part,” “every person desires to know,” and “man is social by nature” are first principles, I did not look to my own experience for confirmation, but instead demanded a proof of some kind, and not finding an acceptable proof, I took each of these statements as assumptions that I could later deny, if I so wished.

Since individual experience is unique and truth is universal, I was led to form a third habit of thinking: accept as true only what can be proved through logic, mathematics, or scientific experiment. For me, reason and the scientific method replaced the authority of direct, concrete experience. In principle, I could carry out any logical argument, mathematical demonstration, or scientific experiment, and thus I never had to submit myself to an acknowledged master or any outside authority. I readily accepted the results of electrodynamics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics because they made no claim on my interior life and never challenged who I took myself to be.

Layered on top of these three democratic habits of thinking are religious dogmas and political ideologies—the equality of conditions does not exist in a vacuum. Many political junkies, those rabid viewers of Fox News or MSNBC, believe that they rely solely on their own judgment; when in actuality, political ideologues, left and right, often parrot what they saw on TV, heard on talk radio, or read on the Internet. Religious dogma and political ideology led to creationism and the denial of climate change, despite scientific evidence.

No one doubts that many Americans today consult priests or psychotherapists for guidance in life, although I suspect not with the blind faith or trust they would have had in the fifties. After the intensification of equality in the sixties, parishioners and clients understand themselves to be the final judges of what is best for them.

That science is the only intellectual authority in modernity seems to be contradicted by the widespread belief in astrology, herbal cures for cancer, and crystal healing for a disturbed psyche. But when science proclaims that life is pointless, can offer only slash-and-burn-and-poison for cancer treatment, and restores mental well-being through tranquilizers and psychotropics, then even the college-educated, out of desperation, turn to alternatives.

The real alternative is to examine the modern habits of thinking, all of which rely upon the fact that the links of the long chain from “peasant to king” have been broken. To say this in a more general way, in contrast to premodern cultures, where people understand themselves to exist only in relationship, in modernity, individuals assume they exist in isolation. One of these understandings of the human being clearly must be wrong.

Ironically, we have already demonstrated that the belief that we exist in isolation is false. No one, not you or me, not Aristotle or Descartes, initially chooses his or her habits of thinking. That ancient and modern habits of thinking exist shows how all human beings are programmed by culture to think in a certain way and is undeniably evidence that we exist only in relationship. This leads to an inevitable conclusion: contrary to our culturally instilled beliefs, modern habits of thinking are faulty and ultimately lead us to a false understanding of ourselves, nature, and the transcendent that has had bad consequences.

To give just one simple example: Chlorofluorocarbons, once used as refrigerants and propellants in aerosol cans, were tested extensively on human beings and found to be harmless. But the tests were carried out on individuals in laboratories isolated from the environment. Years later, scientists discovered that when chlorofluorocarbons are used by real people in the real world, they migrate to the upper atmosphere and deplete the ozone layer. An ozone-depleted atmosphere allows more ultraviolet radiation to strike the surface of the earth and thus increases the incidence of cataracts and skin cancer. The original tests were failures because they did not take into account the truth that human beings are part of an ecosystem. Because Westerners overlook the whole, they repeat the same basic error again and again.

In the Western tradition, anchored in ancient Athens and the Holy Land, freedom is obedience to truth, for to live contrary to reality eventually leads to personal and social disasters. Hence, to be genuinely free, we Americans must give up the flatteries of democratic life, where we exalt ourselves as “kings of the castle,” as the sole judges of what is true, good, and beautiful. We must forsake the pleasure of being “lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms” (Wallace) and instead embrace the knowledge that we are an inseparable part of a whole, so that we can experience the happiness of simplified living and joy of serving others.

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Sources

Fromm, Erich. “The Creative Attitude,” in Creativity and Its Cultivation, edited by Harold H. Anderson. New York: Harper & Row, 1959.

Modupe, Prince. I Was a Savage. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1957.

Molema, S.M. The Bantu: Past and Present. Edinburgh: Green & Son, 1920.

Rapson, Richard. The Pursuit of Meaning: America, 1600 to 2000 (Washington: University Press of America, 1977).

Tocqueville, Alexis de. Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence. New York: Harper & Row, 1966 [1835, 1840].

Wallace, David Foster. Kenyon College commencement address, 2005; https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf; accessed July 3, 2017.

George Stanciu earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Michigan and taught the Great Books at St. John’s College, Santa Fe. He is the academic dean emeritus at Northeast Catholic College in Warner, New Hampshire, and is the coauthor of The New Biology and The New Story of Science. This article is taken from the website The Imaginative Conservative.

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Printed in the  Fall 2017issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Grasse, Ray, "Memories of Yogananda" Quest 105:4(Fall 2017) pg. 16-19

By Ray Grasse

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, I conducted a series of interviews with the yogi and mystic Shelly Trimmer (1917–1996). Raised in the magical tradition of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, Shelly studied for several years with the famed yogi Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi, and from there went on to take on students of his own. Unlike the far more public Yogananda, however, Shelly chose to remain relatively reclusive, living with his wife and family, first in the woods of Minnesota, and finally on the Gulf Coast of Florida, all the while choosing to teach students in a one-on-one fashion rather than through public lectures or publications.

The following exchanges are selected from transcripts of my conversations with Shelly focusing on his interactions with Yogananda in the late 1930s and early ’40s. They are excerpted from my recent book An Infinity of Gods: Conversations with an Unconventional Mystic—the Teachings of Shelly Trimmer. Over the course of my career I’ve come into contact with a wide range of spiritual teachers, but in some ways Shelly was the most interesting of them all. He was also one of the most unusual in terms of his interests and unorthodox ideas. He studiously avoided the limelight throughout his life, never publishing any books or articles. When I asked him why, he explained simply, “My students are my books.” I hope that this book (of which the Yogananda exchanges are a small part) will bring more attention to the fascinating figure of Shelly Trimmer and his thought-provoking ideas about God, reality, the Self, and consciousness. 

	Shelly Trimmer

Ray: How did you wind up studying with Yogananda?

Shelly: When I went out to California, there were two teachers who taught Kriya Yoga–style techniques. There was Yogananda, and there was also an Egyptian teacher [Hamid Bey], and I went out there to see both of them. I was actually more interested in the Egyptian, since most of my studying had been in the direction of the Egyptian schools rather than the Hindu schools. But he happened to be in Buffalo at the time, on a tour of the United States. So I went to Yogananda.When I spoke to Yogananda about the Egyptian, he said, “I won’t lie to you; that Egyptian teaches the same thing that I do. But he does not call it Kriya Yoga. And he claims it came from Egypt. Yet he gets the same results.”

But I found there was one key difference between the two systems. Yogananda said that in order to join his group, I had to take an oath of celibacy. “Under those conditions, I can’t join your organization,” I told him, “because I’ve seen the woman I’m going to marry. I know what she looks like, I know she has been married, and I know she has a son. I even know what he looks like.” I told him, “I’m not going to take an oath and then go out and then not fulfill that oath.” So I said, “I guess I’ll head over and find that Egyptian, and wait until he comes back.” And Yogananda said, “Now wait, don’t be so fast. This is unusual, but I will ask the lineage to see if they’ll make an exception. So come back in three days, and we’ll see whether they will accept you, or whether you’ll have to join the Egyptian.”

So in three days I came back and asked, “What did the lineage have to say?” You see, whether I studied with Yogananda or anyone else, it didn’t matter to me, because I knew what I wanted to learn, and I was going to search until I found someone to teach it to me. Yogananda said, “The lineage has made an exception in your case”—that is, as long as I remained celibate until I met my wife. That was no problem. So I took that oath with the idea that I’d be free from it after I met my wife.

* * *

Shelly: I like to say that there was Yogananda the man, and there was Yogananda the saint. Now, personally, I happened to enjoy Yogananda the man a great deal. Simply as a man, he really tickled my sense of humor. But that sort of judgment is up to each individual, I know. I enjoyed him very much. In fact, he was more of a father to me than my own father was. He played with my mind using a lot of humor, and did a lot of things that I look upon now with great humor.

Ray: But at the time . . . ?

Shelly: Well, at the time I didn’t know he was doing it! That he was testing me out, that is. But he sure set up problems for me. Like the time he had me repair the statues on the ashram grounds. Every time I’d fix one, he’d have another disciple take a club and break it down, to see how I’d react. So finally after doing this three or four times, he remarked to someone, “He’s not reacting. He keeps going right back up to fix them.” He had the impression when I’d first done that work that I was a bit too pleased with my artistic talent, so he wanted to see whether I became emotionally angry over the breakage—sputtered and fumed, that sort of thing. But I didn’t show any Mars, any anger, and I just went ahead and kept on working.

Actually, I’d thought that some vandals had come in and done that damage, so I felt like I had to get it fixed before Yogananda saw what they had done! I thought he might be disturbed. I didn’t realize he had told Victor to hit those statues over the head and damage them! I might have thought about it entirely differently had I known what had really taken place. It wasn’t until sometime afterwards that Vic told me what he had done, and that Yogananda had told him to do it.

Ray: How long did you study with him?

Shelly: Oh, all told, it was about three years. Then I had to go back home, because my family was in trouble. Yogananda wanted me to bring my sister and brother out there, but I figured that was wrong, because my sister and brother would be restricted to his things and not really acting of their own free will, see? And that I go against. I think each individual has a right to choose their particular religious direction, so to put them under his restrictions without their own freedom is wrong. So I went back home. But I was still in contact with Yogananda and still wrote to him throughout the years until he passed.

Yogananda used to like to quote Shakespeare, and one of his favorite quotations was, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Remember, whatever part you’re playing, play it to the hilt. And enjoy it! (laughs). Regardless of what it is. Yogananda certainly did. In the middle of the summer you could see him in his bearskin coat, a derby hat, and a cane, and he’d be walking down the steps to the temple, and there’d be a disciple waiting to take his cane and coat. He hammed it up as much as he possibly could. He had fun with his own personality. And he loved parties, putting on great feasts. But he could put it all aside when he needed to.

Ray: How do you mean?

Shelly: Like the time several of us disciples were recruited to retrieve a priceless statue encrusted with precious gems that was being sent to him by some wealthy shah in the East (laughs). We drove in a pickup truck to get it, but on the long drive back to Yogananda’s center, it somehow fell off the back of the truck and got lost. No matter how carefully we retraced our steps along that mountain road, we couldn’t find it. Naturally, we were concerned that Yogananda would be greatly disappointed, since he was looking forward to seeing it. But when we got back to the ashram and told him what happened and he saw our own disappointment, instead of being upset he consoled us and said not to worry. “It is you I truly value,” he said.

And he never brought the matter up again. As I said, there was Yogananda the man, and Yogananda the saint. As a man, he had his shortcomings; he even spoke about having had a violent temper when he was younger, which almost got him into trouble. But he learned to control these things; he was in control of his personality.                                                                       

* * *

Shelly: When I first came out to California in the late thirties to meet with Yogananda, I was living at a house in Los Angeles and would walk a few blocks down the street every day to a restaurant where I’d have my breakfast. Not far from where I was staying, there was another house I’d walk past, where I’d see a lot of very short men and women coming and going; (laughs) they were even shorter than me. They seemed to be having a good time whenever I’d see them, and a few times I stopped to talk with a couple of them.

One day, one of the fellows said to me, “Say, you’re one of us—why don’t you come and spend some time with us, maybe even move here? I could set you up with a lady here who I think who you’d really like!” But I wasn’t interested in looking for a woman at that point. Besides, I didn’t see myself as being quite that short! (laughs). It was only later I learned they were in town for the filming of The Wizard of Oz. They were playing the Munchkins.                                                                       

* * * 

Goswami Kriyananda, the Chicago-based Kriya Yoga teacher who first introduced me to Shelly, related the following two anecdotes he heard from Shelly about time with Yogananda.

Yogananda often led group meditations in the main hall of his center, but on one occasion Shelly could tell from the brilliance of Yogananda’s aura that the teacher was going much deeper than normal. The other students in the room seemed unaware of that shift in Yogananda’s energies, and eventually began filing out of the room. That left Shelly alone with Yogananda. After some time, Yogananda finally returned to normal consciousness and slowly started opening his eyes. It was then that Shelly moved in closer and eventually posed the following question:

“Were you in God consciousness just now?”

Yogananda nodded in the affirmative.

Pressing further, Shelly asked, “So you were absolutely one with God?”

Yogananda patiently said, “Yes. I was one with God.”

It was then that Shelly pitched the following query: “So when you had completely merged with God, what happened to Yogananda?” Shelly was interested in finding out whether Yogananda’s individuality had been erased in that moment of divine absorption—a concern for many on the spiritual path.

Yogananda was silent for a moment, then softly said, “When I had completely merged with God, Mukunda was still Mukunda.”

That was an even more surprising answer than Shelly expected, because Mukunda had been Yogananda’s childhood name before he had become an ordained swami. The message here seemed to be an important one for Shelly (as well as for Goswami Kriyananda, who called this “perhaps the most important mystical statement Yogananda ever made”): that even in our most elevated spiritual state we still retain a spark of our essential individuality. Or, to put it a little differently, in enlightenment everything is gained, and nothing is lost.

* * *

As Kriyananda related this story to me, Shelly was at the ashram one morning when Yogananda came walking through the grounds. As in the earlier story, Shelly could tell from the luminous energy around Yogananda that he was in an elevated state of awareness. Recognizing this, Shelly immediately went up to Yogananda and prostrated himself at the teacher’s feet. Acknowledging Shelly’s fiercely independent streak, Kriyananda added, “And if you know Shelly, that is definitely not a ‘Shelly’ thing to do.” So on hearing this story from his teacher, Kriyananda naturally asked him, “Shelly, why did you do that?”

To which Shelly responded, “Kriyananda, I was bowing down to the radiance within him.”                                                           

* * *

Shelly: Yogananda said—at least this is what he told me—”I know now that I will finally be free when I die to this world. And when I do, I’m going to a far distant sector in space, as we measure space here, to a place in the astral world that isn’t even close to this point of the cosmos at all. Because I’m not going to reincarnate again, because from here on I’m moving into Krishna [Christ] consciousness. And from there, to God consciousness.”

* * *

I’d just begun thinking about cultural symbols and synchronicities at the time of this next exchange, and about the curious way national leaders appear to be symbolically and astrologically connected to their countries.

Ray: Is the leader of a country the personification of that country, and the general mood of that country?

Shelly: That is what many astrologers say. If he or she doesn’t represent the sum total of the mood of the people at that time, then he couldn’t remain in office. And so he or she symbolically represents the total karma of the people at that time.

And the ruler of a country is a very enslaved individual. Because he is not free to do what he wants to do, he is controlled more or less by the oversoul of that country.

Ray: Is he any less free than anyone else?

Shelly: Yes, he’s much less free. If you want to seek freedom, don’t ever take a position of authority.

Ray: How about someone like a rock ’n’ roll idol, like one of the Beatles? That’s not “authority” in the sense that a president or head of a company is, but they’re having a massive influence on people.

Shelly: That’s still authority, an authority of that type of influence that he has over people.

Ray: They’re being molded almost more by the cultural needs of that time?

Shelly: Yes. This is what makes them so successful! They’re adaptable to the cultural needs of the people at that time. And what they’re feeling is what the people needed; if what they were feeling and expressing wasn’t what the people wanted, they wouldn’t have succeeded.

Ray: So each famous person is in danger of losing some of their free will because of being in the limelight?

Shelly: That’s right.

Ray: What about Yogananda?

Shelly: He felt very enslaved. There was a time I’d been watching him as people were coming in, you know, and they were talking to him. He said to me, “This might look wonderful to you—how important I am, people coming in and asking me all kind of questions, to solve all their problems for them, telling them what to do, and what not to do, and how they wait in line to see me. But I am not free. I am enslaved.”

He told me on another occasion about going down to Mexico three times (to take a break from the responsibilities of his organization). He said, “I know now that the only way I’m going to be free is when I die, when I leave this body. That’s the only way I can be free. My karma won’t let me be free any other way.”

Then he added, “I must free as many people as I enslaved as a result of my last incarnation”—he believed he was William the Conqueror in his last incarnation. And he said, “I enslaved many people as a result of that, and I’ve got to free as many people as I enslaved.” Not the same ones, but as many people. Then he said, “You! You remain free! Don’t you get involved like I have.”

And I listened to him.

* * *

Ray: Is it true that Yogananda originally planned to write a chapter about you in his autobiography?

Shelly: That’s what he told me. But he changed his mind when he realized that that would go against what he felt was best for me, in terms of staying free from fame and organizations, and all the problems he ran into himself

* * *

Shelly: I don’t ever think of myself by my name, I don’t ever call myself by any name. So I have no reference to myself in that respect. And I always refer to myself in the third person, you know. I call myself “he.” I guess most people refer to themselves as “I” or something.

Ray: I know I do. Well, there you go . . .

Shelly: It’s always as though I’m observing myself, and that I am something different maybe. I got that from Yogananda—always watching what you’re doing like you’re an actor on the stage playing a part.

* * * 

In this next exchange I was talking with Shelly about the afterlife. Just before I turned on the recorder he had been explaining how most people drift into a semi-dreamlike state once they’ve settled onto the other side. This section starts with him describing Yogananda’s encounter with a female disciple in the astral shortly after she had died.

Shelly: Yogananda told me that when one of his disciples was dying, she made him promise he would come and see that she was all right over there. Now he had a little difficulty finding her, since it’s not very easy finding someone over there, and when he found her, he called out to her—several times, in fact. In her semi-dreamlike state she was tending a garden, but she looked up at him, and thanked him for coming. Of course when he came, she woke up just a little bit more, but then she went back to her semi-sleep stage and continued gardening. You see, we gravitate to those things over there which suit us, in other words. Another example would be a man who worked hard all his life. He might just sit and rock back and forth in his rocker, because his idea of heaven would be not having to go to work. See?

So they’re in a semi-dreamlike state, and like a broken record they run over the important events in their life. Eventually the sum total of their life experience causes them to desire to be reincarnated again. And they are drawn—instinctively, you might say—to the new body which is contiguous with their nature, so that their astrological code and their genetic code is a representation of their natures and expresses their particular level of balanced self-conscious awareness. So that they don’t feel like a fish out of water, see? As it is, we are all a little bit alone in this world anyhow, we feel just a little bit like we’re a fish out of water. This is basically a lonely place. You’re born alone and you die alone; it doesn’t matter how many people are around you.

* * *

Shelly: When I was with Yogananda we used to exchange what I knew about Pennsylvania Dutch magic for his Hindu magic. This had nothing at all to do with God consciousness, of course, but it was very good for passing the time (laughs). I told him I knew a method for making two beings fall in love with one another, and of course he wanted to exchange certain magical things for that. He said, “I’ll give you this if you give me that,” and I’d say, “No, no, this is too good for that!” We’d barter like that (laughs).

Now there was a woman there at the ashram who hated a certain man, and he was an ex-Marine. There was quite a bit of age difference between them; he was in his thirties and she was in her seventies. So I said to Yogananda, you’ve got to get three strands of hair from each individual. But remember: they must give it to you, because love has to be given, it can’t be taken! He said, “Oh, that’s no trouble, no trouble at all. They’ll give me anything I ask.” Yogananda said this would be a good experiment to see if it worked. So he picked the two most difficult individuals he could possibly find, you see? (laughs).

The rest of the disciples knew what was going on, and they thought that I was teaching Yogananda black magic, and that I was in danger of making Yogananda a black magician. And they kept knocking on his bedroom door where we were working, but finally he told them that only if some very dire and violent thing happened were they to disturb him! Otherwise they weren’t to come in and pester him anymore. He finally said, “Now we’ll have peace.”

So I was chanting away there, and I was weaving and combining the hairs, and when I finished it I was going to put it in my [unintelligible], and he said, “No, no, let me keep it!” He added: “I’ll take all the karma, I’ll take all the karma.” I said, “OK, but they might take off and get married, Yogananda!” “Well that’s OK, I’ll take all the karma, I’ll take all the karma.”

At the end of Encinitas [California], where the hermitage used to be, there was a movie theater. And once a week I would go to the theater there and see a movie. I liked movies. And as I went in, the man who owned the theater said, “You know”—he named the ex-Marine and the older woman—“they’re slipping down behind the main streets, hand in hand, giggling. They come down here to the theater, but they don’t really watch the movie since they’re so wrapped up in one another.” Yogananda had his own grapevine, so he found out about this, too, and he was telling me about how all this took place. He was clapping his hands with glee over what was going on, because it was all working out as planned, you know.

Then he came to me and said he wanted three strands of my own hair. Why? I asked. Because he had three strands of a donkey’s hair and he wanted to combine mine with the animal’s so that I would fall in love with this—he called it a jackass. I said, “No, I’ve got to give it to you! You can’t take it from me!” But he said, “I’ve found a way around that!” And knowing Yogananda, well, maybe he did find a way around that (laughs). At any rate I wasn’t going to get close to him so he could get three strands of my hair! So he had a wonderful time chasing me to get those three strands. He would wait behind doors and behind trees, and everything else, to try and sneak up on me. But he finally said, “I can never sneak up on you, you can always feel me in your spine, can’t you?” And that was true. I could feel him in my spine.

Eventually that all passed. He was just having fun with me. These are some of the things that he pulled on me. We had a lot of fun, I liked him.

 * * *

To my mind, one of the more unusual stories from Shelly’s time with Yogananda was an anecdote about his interaction with a fellow student in the community, a wealthy businessman from Kansas named James T. Lynn. While the incident struck me as motivated largely by curiosity, it was clearly out of bounds, and Shelly got called out on it in a very public (and clever) way by Yogananda. Whatever else it conveys, the story is instructive for what it says about mind control and the potential dangers of hypnosis.

Shelly: There was a wealthy disciple of Yogananda’s who he referred to as “Saint Lynn” because of what Yogananda said was his high spiritual attainment. I was simply curious whether that was true, and I decided to find out. So one day Saint Lynn got up to give a talk before the group, and I left my body and I floated up to the front of the room where Saint Lynn was standing. I started giving him hypnotic suggestions, just to see how in control of his mind he was. I started telling him he was getting sleepier and sleepier, and after a short while he started looking a little tired. Finally at one point he began to yawn, and he eventually said to the group, “I’m sorry, but I’m very tired. I’m going to have to lie down.” And right there up on the platform, in front of the entire group, he began lying down on the floor.

At that point Yogananda finally figured out what was going on, and abruptly stood up from his chair and turned around to the group and said, “Everybody, stand up! There’s a demon afoot!” You see, back in those days I couldn’t get back into my body very fast, so while everyone else in the group rose quickly to their feet, there I was, still sitting in my chair. And so of course from that point on everyone knew exactly who the “demon” in their midst was (laughs).

As this conversation took place shortly after George Lucas’s first Star Wars film premiered, I couldn’t help but think of the iconic scene in which Obi Wan Kenobi hypnotically intones to the storm troopers blocking his way, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” That idea is repeated in Return of the Jedi, when Jabba the Hutt speaks of “Jedi mind tricks” and says to Luke Skywalker, “Your powers will not work on me, boy.” Incidentally, it’s worth noting that Shelly came to feel a great fondness for Lynn, and described him as a sensitive and sincere soul.

 * * *

Ray: Can a person really transcend the difficult aspects in their horoscope?

Shelly: I’ll explain it like this. Yogananda’s secretary was a good astrologer, and she wrote for astrology magazines. But Yogananda told her she was too enslaved by it. So he said to her, “Pick out the worst possible aspect for me to do something, and I will do it just to show you that I can transcend the planetary energies.” So she gave him just such a time.

He wanted to bring a church made out of redwood that he liked down to Hollywood. This was a big project, and he needed money to do it, so he put out fliers to everybody, and the money came in. They moved the church from its original spot; but a telegram came in saying that the trailer had broken loose and crashed into some farmer’s yard. That led to legal problems, as well as damage to the crops.

As a result, Yogananda needed more money, and sent out another flier. He had hoped to get the church into place by Easter—and he did so, but by the skin of his teeth. He finally had it set up so that people could go into it. And by then, all the adverse aspects had finally passed. He said, “You see, you can transcend your horoscope. But not without difficulty!” (laughs).

* * *

Shelly: Yogananda came over to this country, and they gave him coffee, you know. He got to where he thought this habit of the Americans was a nice thing. Then one morning he didn’t get his coffee, and he had a headache. So he said, “I don’t know why I have a headache.” And someone said, “Oh, you haven’t had your coffee, have you?” “Why no,” he said. “Aha! Now that coffee is controlling me, instead of me controlling it.” So he stopped drinking coffee. This is the whole trouble with any form of narcotic or alcohol. It’s a modality that controls the individual; it’s in the opposite direction to the one in which God consciousness exists.

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Ray Grasse is a writer, editor, and astrologer, and author of several books, including The Waking Dream (Quest Books, 1996), Signs of the Times (Hampton Roads, 2002), and Under a Sacred Sky (Wessex, 2015). He is also the former associate editor of Quest. He is a consulting astrologer, and his website is www.raygrasse.com. 

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Printed in the  Fall 2017   issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard, "Justice and Mercy: An Interview with Rabbi Rami Shapiro" Quest 105:4(Fall 2017) pg. 10-15, 40

By Richard Smoley 

Rabbi Rami Shapiro has an impressive array of credentials. In the past he has earned rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College and a Ph.D. from Union Graduate School, created a synagogue, worked as a management consultant for Fortune 500 companies, and been initiated into the Ramakrishna Order of Vedanta Hinduism. “Today,” he writes on his website,“I am a freelance theologian making my living writing and talking. I know. I can’t believe it either.” In addition, he has been a longtime student of the Ancient Wisdom.

            He is the author of thirty books, including Recovery: The Sacred Art; The Twelve Steps as Spiritual Practice; The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness: Preparing to Practice; Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent; and the forthcoming Holy Rascals: Advice for Spiritual Revolutionaries. He is also the editor of The World Wisdom Bible: A New Testament for a Global Spirituality.

            Rabbi Rami came to the TS’s Olcott headquarters in May 2017 to do a lecture and workshop on compassion, and I had the opportunity to interview him during his visit. I was particularly interested in his views on the balance between justice and mercy—a central theme of Jewish spirituality. When we were finished, I took him for a very pleasant drive around the area, including a visit to the nearby BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha Hindu temple and the center for the Jain Society of Metropolitan Chicago, which was just up the road in Bartlett, Illinois—two of the most impressive religious sites in the vicinity of Olcott.

            Chris Bolger, head of IT at Olcott, recorded the interview and contributed a question at the end. 

 

Richard: Could you tell us how you became interested in the perennial wisdom?

Rabbi Rami: Since I was sixteen, I was interested in comparative religion. I was always studying Buddhism and Hinduism as well as growing up in an Orthodox Jewish household, but when I found my rebbe, my Jewish rabbinic guru, who was Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he at one point said to me that I am a Jewish practitioner of perennial wisdom, and I resonated with that as well. I look at religion as language, and my mother tongue is Judaism, but I am—at least I desire to be—as fluent as possible in a variety of religions.

I’ve been doing that since I was a teenager, because I think the greater my understanding of the world’s religions becomes, the more nuanced my understanding of reality is, because my vocabulary expands.

Richard: People sometimes criticize this approach for blurring over significant differences between traditions. Do you consider that a problem?

Rabbi Rami: I think it’s an issue. So, for example, Stephen Prothero from Boston University has a book called God Is Not One, and he tries to make the case, and he does it really effectively, that each religion is a unique language. It has its own theology: salvation in Christianity is not enlightenment in Buddhism. You can’t just flip those terms and imagine them to be synonymous. He says each religion has its own unique stance and needs to be honored in its uniqueness.

I have no problem with that. What I’m interested in is the core teaching of the mystics, and then I don’t think there is a difference. There’s language differences, but the mystics know that the language is just a finger pointing to the moon, to use a Zen phrase.

 In 1984, Father Thomas Keating invited me to be part of the inaugural Snowmass Group, where he brought twelve contemplatives from twelve different traditions together to live with him at Saint Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado.

Our days were structured. We followed the prayer life of the monks who were living in the monastery, but when they were working, we were meditating together and discussing different things. Father Keating had only one rule. He said you cannot talk for your tradition. You can only talk from your tradition, because that’s your language. That’s what you’re steeped in. It didn’t take very long to realize that, even though each of us was following her or his own meditative practice, something was happening, and whatever that something was seemed to be the same for all of us.

When we came back to our normal, waking state of consciousness, we’d all feel lighter, more loving, more compassionate. We lived a more just existence, and we took our own religious traditions less and less literally, and even less and less seriously. We knew they were languages, and we weren’t going to get hung up on semantics, because ultimately we were dealing with something that was ineffable.

Richard: One common theme in many traditions is the problematic nature of human existence. Something is wrong, whether that’s considered to be original sin or dukkha or maya or delusion. All of these point to something that seems to be problematic or defective in the human condition. Where does this come from?

Rabbi Rami: Well, Prothero again takes that model, and it’s sort of a medical model. The religion says you have a disease, or dis-ease, and then it sells you the cure. On one level, that to me is just marketing. If you want me to be a Christian, you’re going to have to convince me I have original sin first. In a sense religion at that level is iatrogenic. You go for the cure, but they give you a disease first. So every religion has its disease, and then it sells you the cure.

 My own sense of it is it’s not a disease. It’s not a bug; it’s part of the software itself. We are broken, we do suffer. Our lives are fundamentally unsatisfactory, in dukkha, when we live the uncontrollable drives of hunger and desires. So we’re all broken, but that’s just part of the system. It’s not a problem. It’s just the nature of our reality.

 So can we embrace our own brokenness and see the greater wholeness of which it is a part? That, to me, is the spiritual work—not to stop being broken.

There’s an interesting teaching on this, in Leviticus 19:18, where it says, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” In the early 1800s, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, one of the great Jewish mystics, said, “Don’t read, love your neighbor, rea, as yourself. Read ra, evil.* You shall love your evil, your brokenness, your dark side as yourself because it’s a part of yourself.”

 So you don’t have to fix it. You have to embrace it. The ancient rabbis said that you have to channel that negative energy into something good, but there’s no need to fix yourself, simply to radically accept yourself and everyone else, and then move beyond that.

Richard: That does make a lot of sense, but at the same time, so many religions seem to be focused on sin, as in the Hebrew Bible: sacrificing animals to atone for sin. Again, there’s something wrong that needs to be repaired with the divine. Does that idea make any sense to you?

Rabbi Rami: I think it’s Iron Age BS. It’s the theology of that time. What’s interesting to me is this notion that God in and of God’s own self is somehow broken, and that’s a Kabbalistic notion from the 1500s.

Rabbi Isaac Luria taught that when God created the world, God didn’t know how to do it. It was the first time, he was definitely a novice, and the way it was done, God shattered in the process like Humpty Dumpty.

The notion that God is broken was very compelling, not just to Jewish mystics, but to lay people. They really caught on that God is broken, the universe is broken, and it’s the Jews’ job to try to repair it with justice and compassion.

Isaac Luria came up with this after the Jews were exiled from Spain and Portugal in 1492, and it explained why we were kicked out. His answer was, you healed Spain. You have to leave. You don’t want to leave. You’ve been there a thousand years, you’re comfortable, so the only way I can get you out to the next job site to put together the next piece of brokenness in the divine nature is to have you kicked out. That’s how they understood it. It was no longer a punishment from God. It was part of the job description. We have to keep moving.

The way they would heal the world is not just through ritual, but through a very high level of interaction with animate and inanimate objects and beings. You’d kiss a book, and that was the way of honoring a book. You didn’t waste food, and you treated animals a certain way, and all of this was considered a methodology for healing the universe, which is fundamentally broken.

When you get to the 1700s and the Hasidic movement comes in, the Baal Shem Tov and his early disciples basically said what we’re taking as ontology, as some kind of true scientific fact, is not that—God cannot be broken; God includes the whole and broken and transcends it—but that you and I psychologically are misreading the whole thing.

Richard: What you say brings up a certain dichotomy in the world’s religious traditions. I will oversimplify it greatly here: It would seem that the Abrahamic traditions have conceived of this problematic nature of the universe in terms of a moral error of some sort—sin. Whereas in the East, much of the time, it seems to be a problem of a cognitive error—avidya, ignorance, which is more what you’re pointing toward. So insofar as human existence is problematic, do you see it more as a cognitive problem, so to speak?

Rabbi Rami: Yes, I think it’s a cognitive problem. When the mystics read the Garden of Eden story from the mystical point of view, they notice some things that we miss when we get the Sunday School point of view.

 We imagine that eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a sin, but in fact, in the mystical tradition, it’s what God wants you to do. That’s why the serpent is sent, and without getting into the weeds of Jewish Kabbalistic stuff, the serpent is often understood
(because of numerology) to be the Messiah in snake’s clothing.

So God sends the Messiah, puts the forbidden tree in the middle, points it out—sort of reverse psychology. “Don’t do this,” hoping they’ll do it. When they don’t do it, then the snake/Messiah goes to the woman to get her to do it. Why the woman rather than the man?

By conventional thinking, it’s because women are weak, but in the mystical reading—and it comes right out of the Torah itself—the woman is superior to the man in her capacity to become wise.

She saw the tree looked like it would be tasty, but she doesn’t eat it. She saw that it was beautiful just to possess it, but she doesn’t grab it. Only when she sees that it’s wise is she willing to risk her life (because God says, I’ll kill you if you do this). She’s like a Hebrew Prometheus character. She steals wisdom—if, in fact, it’s stealing.

The mystics said we should read this as three different encounters with the tree. The first time she’s wrestling with her natural hungers. It’s delicious-looking, but she masters her physical hunger. The second time she’s attracted to beauty, so it’s more of an emotional thing, but she resists that and masters her emotion. The third time, she’s experiencing an awareness that this is going to transform her intellectually, psychologically, and spiritually, and then she eats it.

Then it says she gave to the man who was with her also, and he ate. Adam eats without any process. She masters the physical, masters the emotional, and takes the risk for the spiritual. Adam just eats it, like Homer Simpson with a donut.

From that point on, we get the punishments. After those punishments are laid out, the language shifts to completely masculine singular language. When God says now that the man—and it excludes her completely—now that the man has taken from the Tree of Knowledge, lest he now reach out and take from the Tree of Life also, we’re going to kick him out of the garden, and only Adam is kicked out of the garden.

The woman is never kicked out. She’s never forbidden from eating from the Tree of Life.

According to the mystics, Adam did not possess wisdom. He got a little more smart, but he’s still spiritually dumb, and if he eats from the Tree of Life, he will be frozen in that state for all eternity.

The woman has processed it. She’s now awake, enlightened, and if she ate from the tree, she could stay in that state forever. So he’s kicked out, and in the next chapter, she is out. The assumption is that she realizes that she now has to guide this guy so that he can become wise also.

Then it says that God places a cherub with a flaming sword to guard the way. Again, the way we’re taught in Sunday School is it means to keep them out. But the Hebrew is ambiguous. The Hebrew simply says to keep the way safe, and the idea is it’s safe for them to come back when she’s finally taught him to process it and become wise on his own, and they can both come back together.

That’s when he names her the mother of all the living. At that point, in a sense, the jig is up, and you realize we’re talking about the Divine Mother, the divine feminine. She exists in every religious tradition.

Richard: Where does evil fit in with the whole picture?

Rabbi Rami: I think there’s palpable evil in the world. Is it simply part of the structure, the way the brokenness is part of the greater whole? I tend to think that’s what it is, that you can’t have evil without good, you can’t have good without evil.

Isaiah 45:7 has God say, “I create good, I create evil, light, darkness, I do all these things.” So I think it’s just built into the pie.

The rabbis say that humanity is born with a capacity for good and a capacity for evil. They say without the capacity for evil, you wouldn’t get married, you wouldn’t build a business, you wouldn’t have children. They’re really talking about concern with the self.

My understanding of it from the rabbinic model is that we have this capacity for self that can go into selfishness, but also a capacity for self that could go to selflessness. You want to stay somehow fluid and be appropriate on that spectrum, depending on the situation that you’re in.

I don’t see evil as a separate, conscious devil character. I think that’s just something we made up. Evil is our capacity to go so far towards selfishness that we do great harm to other people, and then even so far towards selflessness that we are either irrelevant to the world or maybe even do harm to ourselves.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, in the 1700s, had this notion—this is way before we had bell curve, but he had the notion of the bell curve. He said that people are born on a spectrum.

On one end you have what he called the rasha. That was the evil person. That person could not do a good thing. It would never even occur to them to do something that wasn’t evil.

Right next to them was the almost-evil  person, and that was someone who thought about doing something good and then said, “Nah,” and did something evil. At the opposite end, you had the tzaddik, who was the pure saint. Next to that was the near-saint, who would say, “I could do something bad—nah, I can’t do it.”

He said those extremes get no demerits, if you’re on the rasha, evil, side, and no points, if you’re on the saintly side, because you have no choice. God has to manifest infinite possibility, those are the extremes, so if you’re a sociopath, a psychopath, we want to put you away because you’re dangerous, but you can’t damn them to hell, because it’s just the way they were made. The same on the saintly side.

So, he said, most of us—and this is where the bell curve comes in—he called them the beinoni, the “in-betweeners.” That’s where we can be selfish, we can be selfless, and we have to ask the question of what’s appropriate at the moment.

You can link it back to Ecclesiastes: there’s a time for everything under heaven, so one of the practices is to basically ask yourself, what time is it? Is it a time for gathering stones? Is it a time for throwing stones? A time for joy, a time for weeping? Whatever it is, the key is to know what time it is and how to respond to that.

Richard: You obviously feel a strong connection with the divine feminine, and you obviously feel that this divine feminine is returning or making herself more manifest in the world. How do you see that happening?

Rabbi Rami: Is there actually a divine feminine, or are we as a species, humans, returning to a level where we can be more aware of that quality? I think it’s the second. I have a hard time imagining volitional beings out there that are consciously doing all these things.

I tend to think that human consciousness is on a spiral going up. It could go down, and sometimes I look at the newspapers and say, “Oh, it’s going down,” but that it’s on a spiral, so we keep going around. We keep hitting the same perennial issues, but maybe at a higher, more conscious level as we do.

The Divine Mother starts to reappear in the late 1800s. Carl Jung, when he died, said the most important thing is the return of the divine feminine. Bede Griffith, I think, said that pretty much on his deathbed.

We’re more aware of her presence in our traditions. Hinduism never lost her, but Judaism, despite having so much feminine language, lost that whole dimension, but it’s returning. So I see that as a hopeful sign. I think it’s us experiencing this feminine dimension, and by feminine dimension I don’t mean it’s all love. It’s more like Kali. It’s a fierce love.

My own experience is of the Divine Mother, whose searing love, for me, or everybody, manifests by burning away everything I’m holding dear, everything I’m clinging to spiritually, theologically, psychologically. Every time I get a grasp on something, then the grace of the Divine Mother takes it away from me.

Richard: I have a question about this view of the return of the Divine Mother. At this point, any value that was traditionally considered as feminine in a positive sense—giving, caring, nurturing, being compassionate—these are the very virtues that seem to be withering away in the world. We see fewer feminine values in this country now than we did fifty years ago. How do you reconcile those two facts?

Rabbi Rami: This is the way I understand it for myself. The more we are opening to her on the one hand, on the other hand we are shutting down because we’re so frightened. We’re so afraid of what might happen.

Just read the newspaper in the United States, and you read about all the horrible things that the government wants to do, and there are millions of women who voted for the current government. So the fact that they’re going to take away health care for millions and millions of people would seem like not a loving, compassionate thing to do, but both men and women are willing to do it.

My argument is simply that when a portion of the population is becoming more open to the divine feminine and the values you’re talking about, another portion is seeing it, being frightened by it, and shutting down.

So now there’s something crazy going on. I’m hoping it’s simply a reaction to the elevation of consciousness; the group that wants to go the other way, it’s their last gasp in this cycle. I have no idea if that’s true, but if not, I can believe it’s the Kali Yuga and the whole thing’s going to hell anyway, so it won’t matter because then we’ll have another Golden Age.

But I’m hoping that that’s not going to happen, and that this is just a reaction to what maybe is the deeper transformation. There’s no guarantee. You can’t sit back and simply say don’t worry about it, God will take care of things.

Richard: One of the main themes of the Kabbalah is a balance between Hesed (mercy) and Din (judgment). A lot of your work has to do with teaching compassion and lovingkindness, so what do you see as the best way to balance these two forces?

Rabbi Rami:  Yes, in the Kabbalah, they are two opposing forces, and only when they’re balanced is there health in the system. The whole Kabbalistic Tree of Life is about balancing these opposing systems. Reb Zalman used to have this thing where you’d stand, and he would look at you, and he was like a spiritual chiropractor. He’d say, “There’s too much Din, too much judgment, not enough compassion. Work on compassion.” The idea was to balance that always.

My own sense is that justice and compassion really are flip sides of the same coin. It’s not that they’re opposing forces. You really can’t be compassionate if you’re not also just, and you can’t really be just if you can’t have compassion. Justice without compassion is violent, and compassion without justice is just wimpiness. So it’s a matter of what the Buddhists would call upaya, skillful means, knowing what’s really necessary here. I don’t think it’s ever just compassion or just justice, as if they were separate, but compassion and justice.

Richard: I have had any number of sincere, practicing, intelligent, educated Jewish friends say that Judaism has no teachings about the afterlife. Could you respond to that?

Rabbi Rami: Judaism has no official teachings about the afterlife. We don’t have a theology. We don’t even have official teachings about God. Really, it’s pretty wide open, but we have a variety of possibilities that different Jewish teachers have entertained. So, for some, and maybe most Jews, the answer is there is no afterlife. You die. That’s it. You’re finished.

Then there are some strands of Kabbalah that say, no, we believe in reincarnation. Some who believe in reincarnation say you get three shots at fulfilling your destiny, and if you don’t do it the first time, you come back, and if not the second, you come back again. If after three chances, you’re still not an awake, aware, loving, caring human being, then you come back as a rock. Not a little rock, but a rock that someone could sit on, and you’ll be a rock until a wise sage sits on you, at which point you enter the reincarnation cycle and you can try again.

There’s a teaching that says when you die, you, the Bible says everyone, goes to a place called Sheol, which is like a Motel 6 where they don’t leave the light on for you. It’s this gray area. Everybody’s there until the resurrection, and then everybody gets out.

We don’t have a notion of eternal damnation. That Judaism just doesn’t have. What speaks to me more powerfully than any of those is the notion that the nondual Jewish mystics have that you arise in the divine and then you simply return to the divine. Then, the question is, is there a personality that survives death? I’m of the school that says no.

What happens to all my experiences? Who knows? I haven’t died that I know of, but one theory says they just go into Rupert Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields. They just go into that, and they enter into the human consciousness pool, so people can learn from your experience forever. Some people say it’s that way. Some people say nothing remains, it’s all gone. I have no idea. I find very comforting the idea that I arise from this infinite divinity, and then I return to that.  So that’s my afterlife scenario. You go back to being what you already and always are: the divine, the energy, the universe, whatever you want to call it.

Richard: That’s very powerful and very beautiful. Is there anything else you might add?

Rabbi Rami: Here’s my plea to people of any religious tradition. Lots of people don’t have one, but if you do have one, don’t let them dumb it down for you. There’s this deep, mystical core in every religion that we talked earlier about—this perennial wisdom that everything arises from the one thing, and you can know that directly.

That’s at the core of every religion, and we let our clergy just ignore it and teach us the surface. We should not be satisfied with the surface. We let religion off the hook. We shouldn’t let it off the hook. Whatever your religion is, you’re at the tip of the iceberg, and there’s so much more that, for whatever reason, you’re not being taught.

So my plea is go to the heart of it. Go to the depths of it, and when you’re there, you’ll discover that everyone is at that same deep point. We’ve transcended religion, we’ve transcended language, and now we’re in this spiritual deep point where we gather in silence in the face of or as manifestations of the ineffable.

Chris Bolger: Would you talk a little bit about your thoughts on the Theosophical Society?

Rabbi Rami: I became aware of the Theosophical Society in my teens, and I didn’t even know what it was. I used to spend a lot of time at a used bookstore in Springfield, Massachusetts, Johnson’s Bookstore. It was a huge loft with all these books, and there was a lot of stuff from Annie Besant and Mme. Blavatsky and Theosophy.

 At the time, I was just getting into this comparative study of world religions, which is one of the Three Objects of the Theosophical Society. Here was a group that’s been around since the 1870s, I guess, that had been doing this all along, and I was like, “Wow. These people have done the hard lifting. All I have to do is now learn from them.” It was very eye-opening.

Then I lost track of it. It fell off my radar. I went to the university. I got degrees in different religions, but when I rediscovered Theosophy, and I first came across it just a few years ago at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Salt Lake City, and they had a booth. I said, “You’re still here. How amazing.”

Then, when I was invited  to come and speak here, I really felt this was an opportunity to go back to that period in my life when I first found it, but come to it at a much higher level. I am very, very excited that it’s still thriving and that there are still people out there who don’t have to be convinced that there’s a deeper, shared, esoteric perennial wisdom that the religions have, and they don’t have to be convinced that we should study from all of these different religious traditions. Here’s a group that’s been doing this forever, and it’s already inclined to go as deep as they can go with it.

So, my own sense of it is A, hallelujah, and B, it needs a bigger megaphone. I go to places, interfaith conferences, but only at the Parliament did I see the Theosophical Society represented.

So I’m trying to reinvent the wheel. You have the wheel, and it’s not rolling. My concern is that there’s been a disconnect between the gift that the Theosophical Society has and the people who need it. Somehow people have to become reacquainted or acquainted for the first time with the work that the Theosophical Society is doing and has been doing for so long. This is a gift that has to be sent out again so people unwrap the genius that it has to offer. I guess being here now is such a gift for me personally.

 

[*] In Hebrew, these two words are spelled exactly the same.

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Printed in the  Fall 2017  issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bruce, David, "Vengeance or Justice?" Quest 105:4(Fall 2017) pg. 16-19

By David Bruce

A father learns how to forgive his son’s murderer.

Theosophical literature has much to say on the subject of karma, the universal law of cause and effect, which is closely related to the concepts of justice and fairness. As a child, I had the wonderful opportunity to come into contact with teachings of the Ageless Wisdom tradition through my parents, both of whom were members of the Theosophical Society in America. Consequently, my worldview was shaped and influenced in large part by them, as well as by the many Theosophical books in their home library. The conversations I had with my mother, a teacher by profession, and the knowledge I absorbed from my parents’ Theosophical library became a part of me and informed my outlook on life.

Then, as an adult many years later, I found my Theosophical worldview put to the test. It was the evening of September 26, 1996. At that time I was married, with one child, a boy named Robert, who was a month shy of his nineteenth birthday.

I had met my first wife, Chong, while serving in the U.S. Army in South Korea. When my tour of duty was completed in 1971, I brought my wife-to-be home with me to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She found a job making printed circuit boards in an assembly plant that contracted with the military, while I enrolled at the University of Wisconsin to pursue my teaching degree in musical education. Within five years we had our first and only child, a handsome lad with distinct Asian facial features and a gentle temperament. When Robert was a teenager, I enrolled him in a martial-arts school where we both eventually achieved our black belts in the Korean style known as Tae Kwon Do. As an adult black belt, I was expected to teach the colored-belt class, which generally consisted of younger students, and that is what I was doing on the fateful night of September 26, 1996. On the way home, I received a panic-stricken call from Chong: one of Robert’s friends had called her and told her that Robert was hurt and was taken to the hospital. We had no more details at that time, but it was enough to send my wife and me into a state of alarm.

When I heard the news, a cold chill went down my back, and I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. I hurried home, picked up Chong, and sped to the hospital, not caring that I was exceeding the speed limit by at least twenty miles per hour. Having arrived safely at the hospital, we were ushered into a small room, where we were greeted by a detective from the Milwaukee police department. He had that no-nonsense, weary look that is often found on those who see death on a daily basis. He informed us that Robert had been shot and unfortunately had died before the ambulance could get him to the hospital.

I felt as if something had snapped inside of me. A few hours ago, Robert was alive and well, intending to play basketball with his friends at one of the school playgrounds. Now my wife and I were told that we would never again see Robert’s smile, never again hear his laughter, or feel the touch of his hand or his warm embrace. How do you process something like that? It’s like having the bottom of your world suddenly yanked out from under you, violently, irrevocably. As a parent, how do you deal with this sudden, brutal reality of knowing that your only child is gone—forever?

I have watched enough detective shows to know that people process grief in different ways. My wife’s reaction was immediate—tears, uncontrollable sobbing, outright hysteria. My reaction was also immediate, but with far different emotions. An uncontrollable rage swept over me. “Anger” is too weak a word to describe the powerful intensity of my emotions at that time, which were an eruption of white-hot, seething rage, the likes of which I had never before experienced. I kept it contained while talking to the detective, but just barely. The rage was there, under the surface, gaining strength and just waiting to explode. The tears and sorrow came later in the days that followed, but at that fateful moment I was a keg of dynamite. I wanted to get my hands on whoever was responsible for killing our son. I remember feeling an irresistible and overwhelming urge to inflict severe bodily harm on whoever had done this. Put me in a room with them—alone—for just five minutes. I was primed for retribution!

After the detective had finished asking us questions, we drove home from the hospital, our world shattered, Chong sobbing uncontrollably, my desire for righteous vengeance still churning inside, building in its power and intensity. Somebody had to pay!

But what happened to me that night as we lay in bed, hoping in vain that sleep would wash away this horrible nightmare, was quite remarkable. After I lay in bed for hours, still not able to fall asleep, the cyclone of emotions tapered off, leaving me in a state of exhaustion. Just as I was about to drift into sleep, a distinct voice, seemingly out of nowhere, spoke words to this effect: “You’ve been studying Theosophy all your life and this is how you’re going to react?”

That was the turning point. I remembered that it was wrong to return evil for evil, to react to violence with more violence; that it was wrong to take the law into my own hands. As a Theosophist, I knew that I should trust the divine law of karma to hold the perpetrator, or perpetrators, accountable for what happened. It also became crystal-clear that harboring anger would poison my soul and turn me into something I didn’t want to be. Moreover, how could I possibly support and care for my grieving wife if I allowed myself to be consumed by rage and hatred? So, in light of these realizations, I did the only thing that I could do, and I did it in a heartbeat: I simply let go of my anger—just like that—in an instant.

How was it possible to turn on a dime, going from an emotional cyclone to a state of mind that was calm, resolute, and devoid of anger? It had to be on account of my many years of meditation practice and Theosophical study. It was as though my higher Self had issued a mandate to trust in divine justice (karma) and remember that everything happens for a reason. Repeatedly, over the weeks and months that followed, I reminded myself of these things, and the anger never returned—not even once. I say this not for the purpose of self-congratulation, but as a simple fact illustrating the power of Theosophy.

While my anger never returned―not even when I was seated in the courtroom months later facing the murderers―a profound sense of grief and unspeakable sorrow soon filled the emotional vacuum. My wife, Chong, was hit particularly hard, as would be the case with any parent. Her whole life had revolved largely around her son, and without having the support of a religious or philosophical background, she soon drifted into chronic depression, which was only relieved by her covert trips to the local gambling casino in the months and years that followed. As for me, I relied heavily upon Theosophical teachings in order to bear the ordeal. I knew that the death of the body did not mean the death of the soul, and in fact I had several meditation sessions in the days that followed where I detected the presence of Robert. Another thing that helped me was the fact that each day, each week, hundreds of other parents in this country lose a child. The knowledge that many others had experienced what Chong and I were experiencing somehow made my sorrow easier to bear. However, we both wanted the perpetrators to be caught and face justice in a court of law. Our hopes were soon answered.

Within a few days of Robert’s murder, we learned from the police what had happened. Robert had driven his car into the driveway of his friend Jose, stopping there only to pick him up in order to go play basketball. It was a rough neighborhood on the south side of Milwaukee, an area known for gang activity. I was never comfortable with Robert driving around that part of town. Earlier that week there had been a shooting on the street where Jose lived, and consequently members of the Spanish Cobras, a gang on the south side of Milwaukee, were on full alert. Two of them observed Robert pull into the driveway with two of his friends with him in the car. One of the gang members asked Robert, who by this time was getting out of the car, what the hell he was doing in their neighborhood. My son, a second-degree black belt and not knowing who they were, told them to buzz off. The two gang members responded by pulling out their nine-millimeter handguns and shooting in Robert’s direction. Bullets flew through the back windshield as shattered glass showered over the passenger in the back seat. Robert turned away and tried to run, but a bullet caught him in the back of the neck, severing his carotenoid artery. The other passenger in Robert’s car, having stepped out of the car with him, was hit in the leg by a bullet, which cut through an artery. The ambulance managed to get him to the hospital before he bled to death, but Robert died en route. Jose was about to walk out the side door of his apartment when stray bullets pierced the wooden door, mere inches in front of him. Had he stepped outside, Jose might have been a casualty too. During the investigation, the police found bullets in the kitchen wall of a house located a block away. It was total mayhem for a few fatal seconds, leaving one person dead, another severely wounded, and friends and family in shock.

Within days, the police had identified the two shooters. Within two months, the suspects were apprehended and brought into custody. One was a fifteen-year-old boy named Adam Procell, who had once been on the school honor roll, but was now a member of the Spanish Cobras. The other was a twenty-one-year-old named Victor Cruz. During Victor’s trial, I wondered how his parents felt: their only other child was already incarcerated and serving a lengthy sentence. The police also arrested the leader of the Spanish Cobras, assuming that he may have ordered the hit. A jury later acquitted him on the grounds of insufficient evidence, but the two shooters were found guilty and were both sentenced to forty years, the maximum allowed in Wisconsin. But before we reached that point, Chong and I had to endure the long, painful ordeal of the legal system at work, which meant sitting through three separate trials, one for each of the youths. Over and over we had to return to the courthouse. Again and again, we had to relive the circumstances of Robert’s murder. It was not easy. At times we even feared for our safety because of the presence of other gang members attending the trials. Fortunately, none of them ever did more than glance at us with their arrogant and intimidating sneers.

During the sentencing phase, the judge gave me a chance to speak before the court. This would have been my opportunity to get on the soapbox and tell those two kids what despicable human beings they were, and that I hoped they would rot in hell. As a Theosophist, I could not do that. I did not want to be an instrument of hatred and bitterness. Instead, I spoke quietly, soberly, telling each of them that what they had done was so very wrong, and that now they were about to face the consequences. I implored each of them to use their time in prison wisely, to reflect upon their actions and try to be a better person. After my remarks, the judge said that she’d never heard such a remarkable statement from a member of a victim’s family before.

During Adam’s sentencing phase, I actually felt a bit sorry for this fifteen-year-old youth who came from a broken home. Neither of his parents showed during trial or for the sentencing, which I found to be incomprehensible and profoundly pathetic. Yes, I still wanted Adam to face justice, but I couldn’t help wondering how lonely and abandoned he must feel. None of the gang members showed up for his sentencing, which tells you something about gang loyalty. The only person who was there for Adam was a scrawny girl, who appeared to be no more than thirteen or fourteen years old and looked as clueless as he did.

Immediately after Robert’s murder, my wife and I took a leave of absence from work, very much needing the opportunity to grieve with family and friends, all of whom were very supportive. Within ten days, I made the decision to return to my normal routine, which meant returning to work, resuming my martial-arts classes, and attending the meetings of the Theosophical Society in Milwaukee. My attitude was that although somebody had snuffed out the life of our son, I was not about to let them destroy mine! I’ve seen plenty of parents who, having lost a child to violence, continue to carry the anger and bitterness around with them for years and years. They are never quite the same. It’s very understandable, and I’m not judging those who react in this manner, but I was fiercely resolved not to let that happen to me. For me, the best way to deal with grief is to immerse myself in my work, not to sit at home and wallow in misery and self-pity. I returned to my Tae Kwon Do classes and passed my third-degree black-belt examination in November. Returning to my sales job and talking to customers over the phone was difficult, but when the tears welled up without warning, I discreetly disappeared into the men’s room, where I would remain until I regained my composure.

One person that helped me through this time of grieving was Dora Kunz, a noted clairvoyant and former president of the TSA. Ed Abdill, another member, had suggested that I give her a call and ask her if she could tell me anything about Robert’s condition on the other side. I hesitated for several days, not knowing Dora personally. Eventually I found the nerve to call her. After listening to my request, she paused for no more than a few seconds and then gave me a detailed report on Robert’s situation. I don’t know how she did this; she had never met Robert and she really didn’t know me, although I had passed her in the hallway a few times when attending programs at Olcott. Dora informed me that Robert was on the astral plane with other youngsters who had recently lost their lives. They were all being watched over by an older and wiser being, and she assured me that they were in good hands.  I had no way of verifying this, but I wanted it to be true, and it certainly provided me with a measure of solace during the darkest period of my life.

Sadly, my wife was not able to process Robert’s death very well. She became another person, almost a stranger, one who had lost the zest for life and who succumbed to long bouts of depression. She closed the living-room curtains, shutting out the sunlight, and drifted off into a gambling addiction that lasted for years before I knew about it, and which resulted in eventual bankruptcy and the loss of our home and marriage.

Three years later my mother gave me a newspaper clipping from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The story was about the youngest male ever to be sent to the “supermax” prison in Boscobel, Wisconsin. It was Adam Procell, the boy who had murdered my son. Adam had been fighting with guards and other prisoners, so the authorities sent him to a maximum-security prison, where he would be held in an isolation cell all day except for one hour of solitary exercise.

By August 2007, I was working at the national center of the Theosophical Society when my mother mailed me another newspaper clipping. Again, it was about Adam, but this time the article was upbeat, describing how Adam had turned his life around after a few rebellious years in prison, and was now tutoring other prisoners and counseling them to stay out of gangs. This impressed me so much that I sent Adam a short note of encouragement. He returned the favor with a long and moving letter, expressing his sorrow and regret for his actions on the night of September 26.

In October 2011, I received an official apology letter from Adam, a step that was necessary as part of his parole process. It was a sincere and heartfelt letter, expressing profound regret for his past actions and the pain he had caused. Four more years passed, and in June 2015 a package was delivered to my apartment. It was a book written by Adam and sent to me by his uncle, who lived in Colorado. The book, Anatomizing the Gang Culture, was Adam’s 552-page effort at atonement, the express purpose of the book being to discourage young men from joining gangs. Again, I was favorably impressed with this young man’s effort to turn his life around, so I wrote him a letter of appreciation, letting him know that I held no malice in my heart for what he had done some nineteen years ago, and that I hoped he would continue his good work while in prison.

What is justice? To some people, justice is an eye for an eye, tit for tat. You took a life, therefore you do not deserve to live. This view sees justice as a form of revenge, of retribution. Others see it in strictly legal terms, where a criminal must be held accountable and serve the appropriate amount of time in prison. But a prisoner can serve thirty or forty years and emerge from prison worse off than he was before entry. Or a prisoner can use the experience of incarceration as a wake-up call and take steps to change the direction of his life. As a Theosophist, I naturally think in terms of karma and the evolution of the soul. It is said that life is a great school to which we return again and again. We make mistakes, some of them quite serious and life-changing. Don’t get me wrong. There are some criminals who need to stay behind bars, because they have been and continue to be a menace to society. But there are others who wake up and begin to change their lives, something that is quite possible with younger prisoners who have not yet become hardened. Adam Procell is a case in point. His crime was committed when he was a mere fifteen years old. Today, twenty-one years later, he is no longer a boy, but a man, one who has done intense soul searching and found the strength not only to express regret for his crime, but to reach out to other prisoners and help them set their feet upon a better path. I have written twice to the Wisconsin parole board, telling them that I feel Adam has served enough time (twenty-one years to date) and that he should be given another chance at returning to society.

 I don’t know how much weight my letters have with the board, but I have made it clear that I believe that the Adam Procell of 2017 is a far different person from that Adam Procell of 1996, and that I would certainly support their decision to grant him parole.

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Today David Bruce lives happily with his wife, Donna Wimberley, who is also a longtime Theosophist and former secretary to TSA presidents Dorothy Abbenhouse, John Algeo, and Betty Bland. David works full-time at the national center of the TSA, where he serves as national secretary and supervises the TSA Prison Program.

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