A More Complete Perspective
Thank you for another superb, even transcendent, issue of WIE. Your Spring/Summer issue on "The Self Masters," which included an interview with me, represented a fair, balanced and positive exploration of issues bound to be as controversial as they are stimulating. I hope the issue generates further dialogue about the nature and purpose of everyday life and the path to (or realization of) enlightenment.

To your vast credit, I found the issue refreshingly open-minded in its treatment of the subject matter. This free exploration resonates with the best traditions of both scientific and spiritual inquiry—an approach rare among the many sectarian approaches.

I'd like to address one oversight, more on my part than yours, that might distort my approach to "everyday enlightenment" as expressed in my interview. You noted the action-oriented influence of Dr. Shoma Morita on my approach to "behavioral enlightenment." This is quite correct, but incomplete. One of my most recent and influential teachers is Dr. David K. Reynolds, whose books on the topic of "Constructive Living" have influenced and enriched my own life and teachings. Constructive Living combines both the action-oriented work of Dr. Morita and the more reflective inner work of Ishin Yoshimoto called Naikan ("looking inward").

As described in my interview, an important facet of Morita's work can be summarized as: (1) Accept your feelings (as they are, as natural, without trying to fix them), (2) Know your purpose, and (3) Do what needs to be done (whether or not you are in the mood). This seems a useful approach to living well, but taken alone, as Dr. Reynolds has pointed out, it can create problems. For example, applying these three principles for effective functioning might also help one become a more effective assassin.

Yoshimoto's Naikan reflection provides a moral foundation and sense of values based upon realistic insight into one's own character. Simply put, this reflection involves one's relationship to others, via contemplation of three questions: (1) What have I received from this person? (In specifics, not abstractions.) (2) What have I given to this person? And, most important, (3) What troubles or difficulties have I caused this person? (We are already good at noting what troubles others have caused us.)

Such reflection provides a yin/yang balance to the otherwise action-oriented approach to life you focused on in your interview with me. Naikan provides spiritual inquiry and insight—shadow-work and self-knowledge likely to generate deeper compassion, a sense of gratitude and a desire to repay the world—without which "effective action toward goals" may become either misguided or result in achievement-mastery irrelevant to our spiritual journey.

I thank you for the opportunity here to offer a more complete perspective to your readers, and look forward to your further explorations of the eternal question, "What is Enlightenment?"
Dan Millman
San Rafael, California

Dear Editors,
Reading your issue of What Is Enlightenment? Entitled "What Is Enlightenment? Does Anybody Know What They're Talking About?" actually changed my life, I believe. At first when I read this issue it made little sense to me, but one night, when I was sitting up in my room trying to understand, I experienced an awakening.

I'd been thinking about how the words of all these spiritual leaders might relate to my life. Religion was definitely something missing from my life, and something I'd always been searching for. I was given your magazine as a gift because I had started studying Buddhism and considered myself a Buddhist. I tried to keep an open mind, and at the same time to avoid believing in something just because someone else says it's true. That night when I was sitting in my room trying to make sense of what I'd read, I had the most spiritual experience of my life so far. I actually felt something hit me . It was like a beam of energy or light, and suddenly everything was clear. Perhaps you know this feeling. It was like my eyes, mind, and soul had been close all my life and now had finally opened. I know how the blind man felt when God performed miracle and gave him sight. I had been "blind" all my life, and for the first time I could "see." I know I witnessed a miracle.

No words can describe the joy I felt. I saw everything for the first time with my new vision, and everything was ineffably beautiful. For the first time ever, I cried tears of joy. For the first time ever, I didn't feel alone. I felt the presence of God and now I have proof that he is real. I learned the true meaning of freedom, and I know I'll never be imprisoned as long as my soul and heart are free. Since that night my life has been so much better in so many ways, I'm grateful to the editors of this magazine and the people interviewed in this issue. May you all be blessed with wisdom and happiness.

With love,
Sailinda Lauren Tobutt
Cary, Illinois

My Idea of Cool
Coming from a background of five years as a Silva Mind Control director, the issue of "self-mastery" was never a question for me; the transcendence of that whole paradigm is what landed me in this catastrophe—"the work"!

But I've got to tell you, that Susan Powter is fabulous—one of the singularly best interviews you've ever had in the history of your magazine. Congratulations on publishing it. She is totally my idea of cool.
lee lozowick
Prescott, Arizona

Joy Is the Spark
Seldom have I had the experience of words serving to stimulate spiritual and psychological as well as mental and physical growth beyond the world of words. For me this occurred as a result of reading your latest issue's several interviews with, and commentaries concerning, practitioners of self-mastery and others who are knowledgeable about enlightenment. I found myself being stretched from comfortable, intellect- and knowledge-based spirituality toward the less familiar turf of physicality and hence challenged to grow in all sectors of the circle of human consciousness.

All eight main interviewees surprisingly overlapped in that each gave a central place to joy, and preferably transcendental joy. Joy is the common spark that ignites and fuels their realization of spirituality and excellence. Thus, it defeats laziness (Evander Holyfield). It out-muscles negativity (Jack LaLanne). It wears away and prevails over the "shortcuts and easy ways and psychological tricks and motivational techniques that don't work" (Dan Millman). It demolishes the hypocrisy of those who "know" they're enlightened (Susan Powter). It breaks through fear (Anthony Robbins). It enlarges the arena of self-mastery beyond "some particular domain," be it "sensorimotor, interpersonal, introspective, cognitive, in the spiritual domain, or developing command over one's emotional life" (Michael Murphy). It can still the mind's deliberations so that the spirit can act (Vernon Turner). It unites, balances and enhances each of several levels of the self—sensory, psychological, mythic and spiritual—allowing us to express the deepest truths about ourselves (Jean Houston).

Blessedly, there may well be something for everyone in the words of these eight different personalities where lightning has struck, and we may, as a tribe, a society and a world speed up our evolution accordingly. Rumi wrote, "Whoever travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two-day journey." Thank you, WIE, for these living guides from and for our times. There is a lot here to put to use. We can harmonize or choose among them or synthesize them. A runner's high can approximate a mystic's high. Being unstuck means being neither one hundred percent spiritual nor one hundred percent embodied; as Michael Murphy says, "There's the 'I Am' helping out the 'I Can.'"
David K. Trumper
Bala-Cynwyd, Pennsylvania

The Decline of Western Civilization
I found your Spring/Summer 1999 issue not only disappointing but truly disturbing. It is, for me, just one more of hundreds of indications of the degrading deterioration in our society, and it is especially sad to find it in a journal that claims to be about philosophical/spiritual rebirth.

Commercialism, profitability, material success, violent sports, obsession with physical prowess and pop psychology masquerade as "inspiration or direction from God." This nonsense merely elevates the crude, vulgar, banal urban pop culture that demeans and masks profound meaning in the mysteries of the human and cosmic condition.

Adding to my disgust with this issue is the device and easy way out of composing articles by the use of interviews printed with all the annoying profanities, double negatives, split infinitives and other unpleasant speech mannerisms used by these high-profile figures, illustrating surely not the way to enlightenment, but rather another step down in the decline of Western civilization.
Lucille Salitan
Canaan, New York

Bringing Heaven to Earth
I thoroughly enjoyed your latest issue, particularly the way Andrew Cohen expressed the distinction between "I Can" and "I Am." My own personal opinion is that when one balances both the "I Can" and the "I Am," then one must be a truly enlightened being literally bringing heaven to earth—understanding the axiom "a spiritual being having a human experience," understanding the "I Am" through spiritual practices and living a principled and ethical lifestyle by using the power of the "I Can." In this way, one is working for the good of others and the self through conscious awareness without wishing oneself off the planet.

Excellent work. Keep up the great questions.
Kathleen Ginn
via email

The Polarity Doctors
Thank you for another interesting and humorous issue of WIE. The "Self Masters" issue points out, and rightly so, that many people who are spiritually seeking are making a total mess of their lives and trying to cover it up with Vedantic and Buddhist bull about life being an illusion—a projection onto Brahman, unreal, and empty or void.

For the most part, WIE has interviewed people who have been trained or "self-realized" within an Advaita Vedanta or Buddhist negation tradition. These are world-renouncing, monastic traditions. Teach these ideologies to laypeople living in the world, and the result is always the same—a deeper polarization between the world (seen as unreal, impure) and Brahman (the realized state—pure consciousness). Duality.

You are right to be intrigued by these "Self Masters." They walk their talk. They're disciplined, in control and successful by material standards. Enlightened? Hardly, but they have developed some skills. They don't suffer from the spiritual malaise so prevalent in spiritual circles today—but they have certainly missed a chunk of the picture as well.

I suggest that you interview the polarity doctors, the spiritual practitioners who live quite at home in the world, some amidst great abundance, while remaining unaffected. They enjoy the world of the senses and still remain self-liberated or, as they would most likely say, in the perpetual process of self-liberating.

I'm speaking of the tantrics, of course. Not the Barry Long, Margo Anand type. Not neo-tantrics, but hard-core, classically trained tantric adepts who aren't obsessed with sex and their own self-image and gratification, but work with abundant energy of liberation in the world and also contribute significantly to society and the liberation of all beings.

Interviewing true tantrikas for a future issue would go a long way toward helping your readership gain a healthy understanding of the enlightenment process.
Dharmanidhi
Spiritual Director,
Tantra College of America
San Francisco, California

The Real Heroes
Congratulations on another excellent issue. I found your interviews with the "Self Masters" to be inspiring . . . but also annoyingly simplistic. I'm skeptical about anyone who says, "Look at me; I made a million dollars—and so can you," or, "I healed myself—and so can you."

Obviously, these people are blessed with strong and healthy minds. Not everyone is so fortunate. To those who suffer from mental illness, success means accomplishing one thing per day, such as doing the laundry, going to the supermarket, or paying a bill. Healing means accepting one's limitations, and being grateful for the things one has.

The real heroes are the people who live day in and day out with a debilitating and destabilizing illness, yet manage to get through each day without hating themselves or cursing God in the process.
S. Patterson
Bridgeton, Rhode Island

Integration or Desecration?
I found the trite comic/thoughtful Ramana Maharshi/body-builder photo to be FAR LESS offensive than I imagine some readers did. Still, something about it bothered me, and I am not even a Ramana devotee. Granted, Ramana himself is probably tickled with it, but I am sure some of his devotees would consider it disrespectful. I would have thought that WIE would have been more sensitive. But overall, I was very, VERY inspired by this last issue.
Daniel Stein
West Newbury, Massachusetts

I am appalled and affronted by your latest issue, in which you have pasted the head of Ramana Maharshi on to bodybuilder Frank Zane. By what right do you cut up this picture of one of India's greatest saints? Who gave you the license to desecrate Ramana Maharshi's memory in this way? You claim to be a spiritual magazine, yet you have so little respect and reverence for the living embodiments of spirituality that you feel you have the right to mock them in this way. Shame on you, a thousand times over. I also feel very embarrassed for Frank Zane, who is an extremely sincere spiritual seeker with the greatest respect and love for all masters.

You are digging your own grave with this kind of article, and I do not see any way that your magazine can have a future.
Vidagdha Bennett
Jamaica, New York

The last issue was no better than a tabloid on the newsstands, focusing on people telling me how to feel good. And Ramana Maharshi's head on the bodybuilder's body struck a raw nerve in me. It just didn't feel right.

I look forward to your future issues that give attention to the sacred, to the holy spirit. Though informative, I look to WIE to present me with more inspiration and heart.
Howard Peck
Pennsburg, Pennsylvania

No Enlightenment
Congratulations on yet another fascinating issue of WIE. Having myself lived in and around several spiritual communities, I have no doubt that the message of the "Self Masters" would be extremely beneficial to many, possibly most, spiritual seekers, who all too frequently demonstrate an alarming level of disempowerment in their daily lives. However, to what extent this might address the discovery or revelation of enlightenment is another matter.

It's clear from all of this issue's interviews, with the possible exception of Vernon Kitabu Turner, that the interviewees—truly remarkable individuals though they all clearly are—do not know what enlightenment is, nor indeed whether it even exists. Once Self-realization/ enlightenment has occurred, at least three things become very clear: first, there most certainly is something to "get" or realize; second, unless you are absolutely sure you've found it, then you haven't; and third, until you are Self-realized, you really have no idea what you're talking about!

I enjoyed John Wren Lewis's letter (as I have enjoyed his previous correspondence and articles), where he writes about the efforts he shares with his partner Ann Faraday to describe their enlightenment experiences in everyday terms. I appreciate their worthy attempts to express the feeling of the experience, but I wonder if this really serves any purpose in helping seekers on the path?
Jeremy Lyell
Portofino, Italy

The New Godhead
One question regarding the "Self Masters" issue of your magazine: If these people whom you've interviewed were not so successful in pulling in the almighty buck, would you have considered them for the "mastery" position? But more importantly, would these people still be doing what they claim to be so "high on" if society were not pouring so much money their way? There's big dollars in this "mastery" of the small self. Is that what Western spirituality is coming to? The new Godhead of the millennium—MONEY.
Molly O. Myers
Norwalk, Connecticut

It's All in the Language
I have just finished reading issue 15 of WIE. Over the course of the last few years, I too have wondered what people mean by "enlightenment," but I never wondered about the relationship of "being" and "doing." I was taught and shown that they were complementary.

Both my Pennsylvania Dutch carpenter grandfather and my high school English teacher would have laughed—with gentle and bemused smiles—at your contrasting "doing" and "being."

When I was working with my grandfather, helping to build the house I grew up in, I stopped to sharpen a pencil with my pocket-knife. I was about nine years old. Pappy watched me for a moment and, reaching to take my knife from me, said, "That knife is dull and dangerous. It binds up and then slips. It's not sharp enough to cut the wood, but it's sharp enough to cut you." He sharpened it and handed it back. "There," he said with an air of satisfaction. "Now you know it will do what you want it to."

My English teacher had the same perspective on language and speech. Whenever she heard us talk about "doing" and "being" as if they were different things, she'd take us to task for using the language as a dull tool. She'd rub our minds against hers—like a blade to a whetstone—and put a sharp edge back on our perception. Many, many times she said: "The verb 'be' is a linking verb. It's also called a 'copula'—yes, as in coupled, joined or union. It takes a predicate noun or adjective as a complement, not an object. A complement relates to the subject of the sentence, not to the verb, and it follows verbs expressing condition rather than direct action.

"When you say 'I am a carpenter,' be careful! YOU are not a thing called 'a carpenter.' You ARE 'as a carpenter IS.' Immediately you ask: 'How are you? What kind of carpenter? How good? How knowledgeable? How skilled?'

"And this is just as true if you say: 'I am a man' or 'I am a woman' or 'I am a student' or 'I am a teacher.' The answers to those questions come not from what you say, but through what you do and how you do it. The present condition of your being—your present state of being—is revealed by what you are presently doing. Remember this, and you will not get stuck thinking that you ARE some thing. Whatever you see that you are—now—is a condition of being because you are acting in a way that creates that condition—now. Remember this, and you also will not get stuck in thinking that doing something makes you any thing. It always creates a condition—a state of being."

And then, like my grandfather, she'd leave you with this newly sharpened perception. You could act with less chance of hurting yourself. You could make what you wanted. They both assumed you knew what you wanted. They would have enjoyed this issue. I think they would have agreed with the women who resisted using the word "mastery" and found Michael Murphy's "both/and" point of view very familiar. I think they would have found Vernon Kitabu Turner's description of being and doing most like their own experience. They lived from being and through doing regardless of the task. They wouldn't have called it enlightenment because they didn't think in this language. They just did it.
David Altemose
Rahway, New Jersey

Role Model?
After reading the Susan Powter interview, I came away disappointed. She comes across as the Sandra Bernhard of the fitness world! While I respect her honesty on some issues, I am disturbed by her often venomous answers. Her analysis and responses were often very callous. Overall, she seems to be a very angry woman. She has no problem blasting Anthony Robbins, yet she seems to lack insight about her own anger and bitterness. While her points about patriarchal, organized religion and society have merit, she lacks clear insight about a very real, ever present God that made both MEN and WOMEN.

She talks about Deepak Chopra—proclaiming that he is rude. Yet she clearly is pretty rude herself. She says, "screw India" and "[India's] a filthy damn place!" I'm not even Indian, yet I find her words offensive! Then in the next breath, she proclaims that "her message" is very loving and very positive! And then she has the audacity to proclaim that with all her influence she is no role model!? Can anyone take this statement seriously when thousands of women come to hear her lecture? Is she really that clueless? To brand her as a woman of many contradictions is putting it mildly. Is she an example of a progressive woman of the nineties?! Susan Powter is right. She is not the best example of a role model. You would have done better interviewing Rosa Parks.
L. M. Dawson
via email

The Yoga of the East
I just picked up my first issue—number 15—and ended up reading the interview with Anthony Robbins. Though I found the article engaging and Robbins very forthcoming and sincere, I was amazed by what I perceived to be the lack of simple coherence in the conversation, and Robbins's lack of mastery in engaging the differences between Western techniques for accomplishment and Eastern ones.

Simply put, the Eastern methods of internal accomplishment through dedicated meditation or the Western methods of outer accomplishment, i.e., self-mastery, are flip sides of the same coin. Those who have quenched their desires through outer accomplishment arrive at the same place as those who have engaged and quenched the same essential desires through active nonaction, or meditation.

Mr. Robbins degrades the Eastern methods based upon an unexamined assumption that active nonaction equates with inaction, or the lack of activity or withdrawal from life. Not having engaged in a genuine Eastern meditative path, he naturally does not understand the Zen concept of dynamic nonaction or the Zen theory of nonaction in action, or correct meditation or correct action.

With all due respect and deference to Mr. Robbins, I personally think that though he does not theoretically understand the above-defined subtle concept as it applies to Eastern yoga, he nevertheless probably personifies it in his life. So, I believe that he probably owns the reality behind the concept, though he could not and did not articulate it in the interview.

Having said all this, I confess that I do admire the man.
Arthur Ardashes Minassian
via email

A Questionable Agenda
I enjoy your magazine very much and love the topics you investigate. But I often feel that some of the interviewers are leading those they interview. It's as if the interviewer's opinion or agenda matters most, and the response of the person being interviewed had better fit in or they'll just ask the question again until the interviewee gives the "right" answer.

I especially felt this while reading the interview with Jean Houston in the "Self Masters" issue, where the interviewer continually used the term "self-mastery" when Jean Houston said that she would never use the word "mastery." It just felt like the interviewer wasn't listening to the responses but was only waiting to ask another question. And what finally pushed me to write to you was what I believe was a total misunderstanding of a response Susan Powter gave in her interview. As if to prove a point about women not wanting to be role models, Amy Edelstein, in her interview with Beverly Slade, uses Susan Powter's statement, "I'm not a role model, I'm just a housewife who figured it out," out of the context in which Susan was speaking. Ms. Powter, I believe, was making a profound point about living and speaking honestly and just being real and open with one another. And I just don't think you were being fair to her to comment on what you think she means.

Susan Powter's blunt and simple remarks were a refreshing addition to the interviews that I think sometimes try too hard to prove a point.
Christine Van Heerden
Rochester, New York