Accepting Abuse in the Name of Enlightenment. Surrender and Exploitation in Spiritual Communities
Recently, I met a former Re:Connective Circle participant for a chat. Let’s call her Ana. The topic: Her experiences of living for six months in a well known spiritual community, lead by a now 80 year old British “New Age Guru”. As her story unfolded, I could almost tell what would come next. By now, the story has become all too familiar: The untouchable guru who enthrones himself beyond question and doubt and who uses his position to get access to power, sex and wealth, freely using shaming, denigration, gaslighting, ridicule, social exclusion and other techniques to establish control and obedience. All hidden behind the veil of “spirituality”, “surrender” and “enlightenment”. By now I have seen this way too often in spiritual groups, which at times come dangerously close to the definition and practices of a sect or cult by breaking the will of the “devotees” in order to establish absolute rule in the name of “the good” and “the true”. Of course, any opposition and questioning of this rule is usually answered with ridicule, shaming, gaslighting, social exclusion and so on. The usual justification by the New Age Guru for his actions is that the devotee is not yet ready for enlightenment (or similar) and still in denial and resistance, instead of acceptance and surrender.
Over the centuries organized religions have used emotional and psychological manipulation to varying degrees on their “victims”. I often wonder where this will to submission to a “master beyond question” comes from. No doubt, many of the people seeking spiritual communities and gurus have witnessed trauma themselves. My current state of observation has led me to the assumption that much of the blatant exploitation of devotees in “guru-type” New Age spiritual communities is possible due to fawning, a trauma response. Fawning is the fourth survival mechanism next to fight, flight and freeze. It is the submission that as a child served to secure survival through the care of parents or caretakers. It finds continuity in the submission (usually called “surrender”) to a guru that requires strict obedience in the name of spirituality and enlightenment.
In the case of Ana, surrender required her to work seven days a week – “work more and sleep less” – and to carry a mobile phone at all times to always be available to receive work instructions that were to be carried out immediately. Ana had to give tantra massages to paying clients without any proper training. On top of that she had to work in many other jobs in the community, often up to 12 hours a day, 84 hours a week. In addition, there were mandatory community meetings in the morning, at lunchtime and in the evening. With tantra massages Ana made around 3000 Euro a month, of which she could keep nothing. For the work she did she received shelter and food and teachings from the guru. Ana was not allowed to leave the community on her own and had to minimize contact with friends, family and the outer world. She also had to surrender to having her trust betrayed by the guru lying to her and to being brought into completely irresponsible situations (such as being subtly coerced into acting as a “trip-sitter” for people on LSD without having any experience with LSD or trip-sitting and then being confronted with two people going through psychotic episodes).
When Ana didn’t “function” (i.e. surrender to whatever she was told [not] to do), the guru would scream at her in front of the whole community, intimidate her, blame her, shame her. He called this “love” and “support” to break old behavioural patterns. Others call this by another name: abuse – of the worst kind.
Unsurprisingly, no one in the community openly questioned how things went or would even dare to openly criticise. But some devotees left. Usually at night without being seen and without telling anyone. Jesus, these people must have been scared… And of course, as any good cult or sect does it, there was a culture of snitching up the hierarchy to the guru if deviant behaviour was detected. The response, as above: the whole arsenal of psychologically and emotionally abusive techniques to break resistance. And of course, how could it be otherwise, Ana’s guru of course also enjoyed to have sex with his devotees, preferably the younger and good looking type, of course. Is that unconditional or universal love? I guess not 😉
During these six months, Ana began to question her guru’s methods more and more, which was answered with social exclusion from the community. The guru called her “toxic” and told other community members to avoid her because of her “negative energy”. He also did this in the name of “love”. Another “proof” of his “love” was his suggestion for her to become his lover. After a mental breakdown Ana finally left the community. She is still recovering from her severely (re-)traumatizing experiences.
I have heard too many of these stories. If we understand the patterns in them, then we can see them repeated – to varying degrees and intensities – over and over again. Such abuse of power is bad enough in normal society. In places where people gather to heal, grow and transform, such abuse is much more destructive as it happens in places where people open up, trust, become vulnerable. The trauma caused by such New Age Gurus is inexplicable. And, as I have come to believe, the urge to become a New Age Guru is often largely due to trauma itself. In other words, many New Age Gurus themselves are driven by unresolved and unacknowledged trauma. What better position than a guru could someone be in to hide this very fact? Yet, I believe that abuse and exploitation most of the times aren’t done intentionally. However, ignorance on the side of spiritual leaders is not a good excuse as people get (re-)traumatized and worse along the way.
I believe it is time for the “conscious and spiritual community” to begin to understand power, patriarchy, capitalism and exploitation. Unfortunately, the most influential New Age Guru of our times, Osho, had very little critical understanding of these issues, despite having been highly intelligent and trained (he used to be a professor for philosophy). He is one of the three main influences Ana’s New Age Guru lists on his website.
Maybe for now I’ll just leave you with some questions and thoughts to get us started:
How come that almost exclusively all gurus are men?
How come that there are hundreds of wisdom traditions that all lay claim to “the truth” or “the right path”? Which one is right? How do we or the gurus know?
How come that patriarchal and hierarchical structures are to be found in the vast majority of religions and spiritual traditions ? (notably diminished in classical tantra, for instance)
How come that most New Age Gurus, in one way or the other, create privilege for themselves?
How come that many spiritual seekers seem to be wilfully blind to the mechanisms of abuse and exploitation?
How come that spirituality is today often reduced to an individualistic, competitive and ego-feeding enterprise of “striving for enlightenment”?
These are just some of the questions that need to be asked if we want to move beyond patriarchal spiritual traditions and practices, while keeping and integrating the positive aspects of their teachings into new practices and approaches, such as Re:Connective Arts.
If anybody is interested in learning more about real life experiences of the shadow side of spirituality and particularly tantra, there is a great Facebook Group named “Tantra not Trauma”. And if anybody wants to see how easy it can be to fake being a New Age Guru, have a look at the insightful, yet ethically problematic, documentary “Kumare”. If you have a similar story to Ana to share, please contact me. I would love to hear it. Alternatively, I have also created a new Facebook Group for people to share their stories of abuse in spiritual and “conscious” communities.
The time of New Age Gurus such as Ana’s needs to come to an end so that spirituality beyond power, abuse and trauma can thrive. The time is now!
