I have little sympathy for the virulent criticism leveled against such groups by anticultists, who lean toward religious fundamentalism rather than unbiased thinking.

I joined and left on my own free choice. It was not easy to remake my inner and outer life, just as it has not been easy to adapt to life in a spiritual community.

Old friends and colleagues had reacted to my decision to "drop out" of the academic world with incomprehension, some even with hostility.

Similarly, my former fellow deciples quite failed to understand why I had to leave. Some even reacted angrily towards me, and few still harbor ill fellings.

Diffi-cult - to adjust and to drop out.

In part, I left because the clash between their understanding of the spiritual process and my interpretation of it became increasingly difficult ("diffi-cult !" - dao. ) to negotiate in a peaceful manner. I never felt that my commitment to the spiritual process and my teacher in any way implied that I should become a non-entity; or that my mystical ego-death means the obliteration of the personality; or that renunciation must squelch life`s vibrant colors; or that faith necessarily excludes doubt; or even that obedience to one`s teacher consists in the total suspension of one`s innermost feelings and intuition.

Fortunately, I had not inbibed the powerful ideology, or pseudomythology, by which closed communities tend to maintain themselves in a state of relative isolation from the world, or by which members justify their enthusiastic personality cult around the spiritual leader, which breeds only lovelessness, idolatry, narcissic introversion, and an insidious power struggle for access to the guru.

More important, I left when I knew that I had learned whatever lesson I needed or was able to assimilate. I trusted my instincts and made myself available to new lessons. Among other things I realized that the autocratic way of teaching favored by most gurus is ultimately alien to my being.

The ego has its reasons ...

Indeed I beleive that it is alien to the being of most Westeners, and for very good psychohistorical reasons: Our postmodern world is a world of intense individualism - a fairly novel phenomenon in the history of human consciousness and culture. Many spiritual teachers - espaecially those from the East, where individualism has not yet made the same inroads - ignore this vital fact. They tend to treat the human personality as an illusion that must not be taken seriously. But this profound mistake - from both metaphysical and didactic point of view. The ego, the sense of being a skin-bound island, is an immediate experiental fact for everyone, exect maybe the rare enlightened being.

That there is a condition, namely enlightenment, in which the ego-sense is transcended, is true.

That this ego-transcending state is in itself desirable, is also true.

But this does not away with the experience of billions of beings, who are not so enlightened - myself included. Even if the ego where a hallucination, it would still hold true for the hallucinating person. This fact should always be acknowledged and respected. I believe, that because of their illusionst metyphysics, most Eastern or Eastern-type traditions have on balance failed to effect deep and long-lasting transformations in their Western adherents.

Gurucentric spirituality.

Nonetheless, I look back upon my own period of discipleship with gratitude. I learned much about gurucentric spirituality, community life, and not least about myself. Some lessons were delightful, mayn were painful, but all were useful and fitting. I have no regrets. I realize, that every spiritual approach has its advantages and drawbacks, and that everyone must locate his or her appropriate response at agiven time.

For the past years I have followed the Gautama the Buddha`s fine advice, applying the wisdom brought forth in me by my former teacher and others: I have exercised the virtue of self-reliance on the spritiual path. Once the spiritual process has been initiated, it assumes a life of it`s own, providing it constitutes to be consciously cultivated. The "guru" is still under my skin, and I would have it no other way. Still, there comes a time, when a genuine teacher must kick a disciple out of the nest, or when a disciple must, in the words of Zen-master Rinzai, kill the buddha, when he or she meets him on the road.

If this move is not made when it is appropriate, a disciple merely stunts his or her own growth. As a Sufi maxim has it: When the door is open, throw away the key. I do not wish to preclude the possibility of a lifelong teacher-disciple-relationship. However, for this to make sense in the West today, the teacher must be willing and able to transcend traditional autocratic ways in favor of a more symmetric, dialectic relationship.

Georg Feuerstein: Holy Madness, Paragon House, New York, 1990.

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