stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A GOD 167
For a self-professed bodhisattva, [Cohen] was awfully contemptuous
of human frailty. He bragged to me about how he
had scolded a schizophrenic student for blaming his problems
on his mental illness instead of taking responsibility for
himself (Horgan, 2003; italics added).
That same contempt is, of course, part of the same “Rude Boy”
attitude which Wilber so inexcusably celebrates in Cohen.
This, then, is Cohen’s apparent worldview: His own stepping
into the path of an oncoming vehicle has no cause, and therefore no
responsibility, truly making him a “victim.” But severe mental illness
afflicting others is to be overcome by an acceptance of responsibility
from which he himself explicitly shrinks.
Further, since Cohen gives no examples of good things happening
equally “without a reason,” one might assume that only bad
things are thus spiritually acausal. Indeed, finding one’s “soul
mate” or having a book on the New York Times best-seller list—
Cohen is in no danger of either—would both presumably still occur
“for a reason.” That is, they would happen perhaps for one’s own
spiritual evolution, or for the sake of the dreamed-of “revolution” in
one’s grandiose life-mission.
And to such gibbering “Buddhas” as this, one should then “surrender
completely,” for one’s own highest benefit?
Cohen describes enlightenment as a form of not-knowing.
And yet his guruhood, his entire life, revolves around his belief
in—his knowledge of—his own unsurpassed perfection.
To borrow a phrase, Cohen is a super-egomanic. His casual
contempt for us ordinary, egotistical humans is frightening,
as is his belief that, as an enlightened being who has transcended
good and evil, he can do no harm. Cohen may not be
a monster, as his mother claims, but he has the capacity to
become one (Horgan, 2003; italics added).
All potential monstrosities aside, however, even Cohen would
surely agree, after his own “accidents” and many “persecutions”—
not to mention having his own Jewish mother compare him to Hitler—that
“sometimes you feel like a god ... sometimes you don’t.”