stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

NORMAN EINSTEIN 185
to be the energy of spiritual awakening, an energy that lies
dormant, asleep, until aroused by an appropriate person or
event.
In describing, to his second wife, his own experiences in a session
with a laying-on-of-hands healer, he expounded further:
I could definitely feel the energy moving.... I think something
actually does happen with gifted healers (Wilber, 1991).
If such energy flows exist, however, there is no reason why
their intensity could not be increased by relevant practice, to affect
oneself or others in both spiritual awakening and in profound healing,
e.g., even of cancer. (Conversely, in the same view, a long-term
restriction of such flows within one’s own body could indeed result
in illness, as Brennan [1987] and many others have asserted.) Indeed,
that increase is the very basis of the claimed temporary and
partial transmission of enlightenment via shaktipat and darshan:
Since shakti is the divine energy, and since the guru is concerned
with the transference of divine power, the use of that
energy in such a transfer produces an immediate impact.
That is shaktipat—the almost instantaneous transfer of divine
energy, by touch or word or even look, from the guru to
the [disciple] (Brent, 1972).
Further, with regard to the claimed power of the mind in healing,
as the widely admired Aurobindo (1953)—one of Wilber’s evident
heroes—himself put it:
It is my experience and the [spiritual partner] Mother’s that
all illnesses pass through the subtle consciousness and subtle
body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious,
one can stop it entering the physical, one can develop the
power to do so. We have done that millions of times.... Selfdefense
may become so strong that the body becomes practically
immune as many yogis’ are.
Wilber’s second wife sadly died after a long battle with cancer,
providing the context in which he was first confronted in a highly
emotional way with often crassly applied New Age “blaming/responsibility”
ideas regarding disease. (Having lost my own mother
in the same way, I deeply sympathize with the suffering and sup-