stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

186 STRIPPING THE GURUS
port entailed.) He himself further weathered a mysterious, exhausting
illness (RNase Enzyme Deficiency Disease, REDD) for
several years in the mid-’80s, the long-term effects of which, as of
2002, again had him largely bedridden. He also suffered through
the aforementioned six-month staph infection, in which he lost access
to the always-already (but apparently not-right-now) One
Taste state. Those points are surely not irrelevant to his attitude
toward the power of the mind with regard to cancer and other illnesses,
as expressed above, just as Cohen’s perspective on responsibility
and victimization cannot be independent of his own “accidents.”
It is one thing to disparage New Agers for being “regressive”
or “pre-rational” in their reliance on astrology, etc. But why be so
bothered by them simply ascribing more power to the human mind
in the potential for healing than you feel is appropriate? And if
Wilber really has no tolerance for the “pre-rational” idea that we
can heal our illnesses through the power of our own (or of others’)
minds and the associated encouraged energy flows, why does he
(2002a) have his third (ex-)wife “doing industrial strength reiki” on
him, in battling the effects of his REDD? (If she can truly direct
the flow of subtle energies, or even if Wilber himself can genuinely
feel those beyond mere imagination, there is a cool million dollars
waiting for either of them at www.randi.org. Short of their demonstrations
of those claimed skills in a properly controlled environment,
however, the much more likely explanation, for any betting
man or woman, is that they are both simply imagining the beneficial
effects of her “healings.”)
Of course, while insisting that “something actually does happen
with gifted healers,” Wilber has simultaneously disputed their
interpretations of the effects of the subtle energies which they purport
to be able to move. But if such healers can actually see auras
and chakras, and move subtle energies, how could they so utterly
misinterpret the results of their related attempted healings? For,
those purported results would surely be visible in exactly the same
auras. (Brennan [1993], for one, explicitly claims exactly that clear,
unmistakable visibility.) Thus, there is precisely nothing that is
open to “interpretation” in those healers’ claims. Nor should one
feel the least bit comfortable in accepting the existence of subtle
energies simply for one’s own easily fooled or imagined experience
of those in non-double-blind environments, as is the case when kw