stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

NORMAN EINSTEIN 219
cient for him that his scientific mystics test their internal experiences
against nothing more than each other’s internal experiences.
How this would eliminate group bias or error is not discussed.” I
have yet to find that obvious and devastating point addressed by
Wilber himself anywhere in his own writings, before or since that
review.
For, consider Aurobindo’s or Maharshi’s internal visionary experiences.
As we have seen, both of those mystics were communityverified
as being “authentic” and, indeed, as being among the very
best in the world. (They are Wilber’s “favorites” for a reason, after
all.) And yet, in the most reasonable and generous interpretation,
and in my own opinion, neither of them could distinguish between
their own fantasies and “real” spiritual experiences. Had they, and
others like them, been from the same spiritual tradition, those fantasies
would surely have largely conformed to what they had been
commonly taught they should experience in meditation. That,
however, would make them no more real, even though being verified
by each other and by the entire community.
Interestingly, comparably flawed arguments as Wilber’s, in
favor of the “scientific” nature of meditation-based religion, were
put forth by Itzhak Bentov in the 1970s:
I am lucky to have met several people whose [meditative]
experiences have been similar to mine, so that I have been
able to compare my information with theirs. To my great
surprise, our experiences agreed not only in general, but also
in many unexpected details. This knowledge appears, therefore,
to be consistent and reproducible.
(Wilber [1982] quotes from other published aspects of Bentov’s
work. It is therefore likely that he was aware of the earlier [1977]
book from which the above quote is drawn. Or, if he wasn’t, as the
“foremost theoretician in transpersonal psychology” he certainly
should have been.)
Yet, Richard Feynman (1989) more reasonably noted:
[T]he imagination that things are real does not represent
true reality. If you see golden globes, or something, several
times, and they talk to you during your hallucination and
tell you they are another intelligence, it doesn’t mean they’re
another intelligence; it just means that you have had this
particular hallucination.