This book about one woman’s intimate involvement with Carlos Castaneda and members of his inner circle affected me on a very personal level, as one of the spiritual groups I was involved with borrowed heavily from the teachings of Carlos and his female colleagues. Reading Amy’s account of the dysfunction and cruelty within that group, as well as discovering information that discredited many things that I had believed as fact, caused a crumbling of a large chunk of my world view that felt a lot like finding out there is no Santa Claus.

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I live in Boulder, Colorado, a town with such an alternative spiritual bent it was referred to by Alan Ginsberg as “Kundalini Heights.”  Over the years, I’ve met many people here who were active students of a variety of teachers both locally and internationally known.  In doing research for this book, I found many, many of these teachers listed in the very comprehensive database of controversial groups maintained by the Rick Ross Institute.  It was with grim fascination that I learned of the scandals behind even those teachers who I’d thought had the greatest veneer of legitimacy. 

Ross’s database is imperfect in that it consists primarily of reprints from news articles and legal documents, a collection which rarely presents a full-sided view of a particular group.  Despite its size, the database is also is lacking information on groups that are more local and don’t inspire dramatic national news coverage.  Still, even just reading a few articles on some of the more major names reinforces the fact that no spiritual group is immune to corruption and abuse. 

The Rick A. Ross Institute

I found this book useful when I was attempting to understand how I had gotten myself involved in a cult-like group. The authors are very thorough in their deconstruction of the dynamics of authoritarian relationships both in spiritual groups and in society as a whole. In reading it, I gained a great deal of insight as to my own relationship to those tendencies.

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This book was one of my first introductions to the idea of following an unconventional spiritual path.  Rereading it recently, I found the story of how Max Demian guided the young Emil Sinclair away from his familiar world and into the pursuit of spiritual fulfillment just as engrossing as I had the first time. 

I was also struck by how similar Demian’s message was to so many modern spiritual teachers today.  The idea that he and Sinclair were among a select few with the courage to break free of societal limitations and help humanity leap forward into a new stage of evolution sounded exactly like something I might have heard yesterday from the local guru-du-jour.  I found myself wondering just what it says about human evolution that this book was first published in 1919—does that mean humanity made a quantum leap back then, and is now working on a new one?  Or are we still trying at that first one almost a hundred years later?  Hmmm…..

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Suzanne Segal was living a secular life in France when she experienced an abrupt shift out of ordinary consciousness and into a state of no-self.  Though six years prior to this event she had studied extensively with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, she did not understand what had happened to her until she found her experience described in a Buddhist text well over a decade later.

Segal’s book is fascinating both as an intimate description of what it feels like to live without identification with a sense of “I,” and also as a compelling example of just how profoundly our beliefs affect our experience and interpretation of that experience.  According to the modern psychiatry Segal sought help from for years, she was experiencing a serious personality disorder.  But according to long-standing Advaita and Buddhist traditions, she had achieved a state that people struggle towards for lifetimes.  Being able to view her experience from both perspectives is enlightening in more ways than one.   

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