stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

HELLO, DALAI! 239
Both of those authors, Jeremy Hayward and Francisco Varela,
have been followers of Chögyam Trungpa. Hayward helped to
found, and has taught at, the Naropa Institute/University; he is
currently the “Acharya-in-residence” at the Dechen Chöling meditation
center in France. He also sits on the Board of Editors of the
refereed Journal of Consciousness Studies. Varela sat on the same
board until his passing in 2001, and was a founding member of
Wilber’s Integral Institute. No word on his reincarnations yet, but
if your new Xbox or iPod is acting up....
For my own part, though, I do not consider that proposed reincarnational
scenario to be at all likely. In the interest of full disclosure,
however: I myself used to program computers for a living.
Yet, in spite of those sixty-hour weeks, the “non-human” half of me
is still more Vulcan than semiconductor.
Interestingly, Ken Wilber (2001b) offered his own opinion on a
very closely related subject to the above reincarnational suggestions:
[T]his whole notion that consciousness can be downloaded
into microchips comes mostly from geeky adolescent males
who can’t get laid and stay up all hours of the night staring
into a computer screen, dissociating, abstracting, dissolved
in disembodied thinking.
Well, “geeky adolescent males” ... and certain respected lamas.
Also, sort of, Allen Ginsberg’s semi-coherent, unapologetically misogynistic
friend and fellow admirer of Chögyam Trungpa, William
S. Burroughs. (Burroughs was also a huge fan of the work of the
orgone-fancying and orgasm-celebrating psychologist, Wilhelm
Reich.) For, when not busy playing “William Tell”—and missing
the target, if not the devoted head supporting it—with his thencelate
wife, Burroughs (1974) mused the following:
They are now able to replace the parts [of the human body],
like on an old car when it runs down. The next thing, of
course, will be transplanting of brains. We presume that the
ego, what we call the ego, the I, or the You, is located somewhere
in the midbrain, so it’s not very long before we can
transfer an ego from one body to another. Rich men will be
able to buy up young bodies.
The aforementioned “geeky adolescent males” and females entertaining
similar dreams may well choose to abandon all hope of