stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

NORMAN EINSTEIN 173
ing opinions are never allowed, and an (alleged) broken promise is
a small price to pay for preserving the sage’s public image.
Given all of the above, one further cannot help but wonder:
Did Wilber himself know about those alleged attempts at suppression?
Recall: According to de Quincey, their mutual friend Keith
Thompson was in contact with both of them after allegedly breaking
his promise of confidentiality to de Quincey. He was also the
same individual who reportedly suggested to JCS that they publish
his analysis of Wilber’s work, rather than de Quincey’s review.
Would Thompson have gone forward with that, without bouncing
the idea off Wilber first?
If Wilber did know about Thompson’s alleged plans, his acceptance
of that way of doing things, even if that acceptance meant
simply doing nothing to stop Thompson, would be absolutely chilling.
The real Einstein, for one, would never have stooped to such
poor behavior.
Ironically, Wilber (2000a) had earlier voiced his own attitude
toward the need for a free exchange of ideas within the consciousness-studies
marketplace and elsewhere. That was given in terms
of the importance of passionately communicating your vision, Kierkegaard-like,
regardless of whether you are right or wrong, that it
might be heard and adjudicated by a reluctant world.
One wonders, though: Would Wilber and Keith Thompson allow
de Quincey equally valid passion in speaking his own vision,
without (Thompson allegedly) covertly attempting to stop the publication
of the latter’s disagreeable ideas?
Regardless, contrary to Wilber’s impassioned but misled plea,
being right does matter. For, being wrong only makes it more difficult
for correct ideas to be heard above the prevailing cacophony.
Everyone who has ever done fundamental, thrillingly original work
in any field—e.g., Einstein, Bohm, Benoit Mandelbrot (via fractals),
etc.—has discovered that the hard way. For, the established
misunderstandings place literally decades of resistance into the
path of the acceptance of right ideas. That Wilber has encountered
far less “wailing and gnashing” of scholarly teeth speaks much
more to the relatively conservative, synthetic and frequently derivative
nature of his own (esp. early) ideas than to anything else.
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