All in the Family

Acharya Rajneesh was his name when he was born. Osho was his name when he died. In between, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, as he was called for much of his life, created spiritual storms and controversies throughout India and America unmatched by just about any other guru of the 1960s generation. Today, fifteen years after he “left his body,” Rajneesh has a successor—sort of. His younger brother, Osho Shailendra, is now teaching in India, unofficially carrying on the family legacy, saying that he represents the path that Rajneesh pioneered. Claiming that Osho's primary ashram in Pune has devolved into little more than a resort, he and two other “enlightened” teachers, Osho Priya and Osho Siddhartha, have formed Oshodhara, a “live mystery school.” And here's the strange part. He's teaching celibacy—kind of like Gandhi's successor teaching armed revolution.

Rajneesh's brother also appears to be quite fond of popular American business guru and practicing Mormon Stephen Covey, often referring to him in his lectures. And we in the West can watch this Eastern guru teaching Mormon wisdom to his Hindu students on the AASTHA “faith channel,” an Indian station available now in North America on international satellite TV in Hindi, Gujarati and English. Globalization, what hath thou wrought?

The Passion of the Peaceful Warrior

For spiritual seekers growing up in the 1980s, Socrates wasn't just the white-bearded guy in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure—he was the wonderfully wise metaphysical hero of The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. In fact, Dan Millman's classic book helped inspire many (this writer included) to take up the path of personal transformation. Socrates was the archetypical spiritual mentor every young seeker longed to have. And while Millman's novel may never be confused with a Penguin classic, it is a classic in its own way—and a damn good story about the student-teacher relationship. Now Millman is hoping it will make an even better movie. Filming recently wrapped on the Hollywood version of The Way the Peaceful Warrior, and the part of Socrates is being played by none other than rough and tough leading man Nick Nolte. Expect to see the movie in 2006. Millman himself never had a teacher, though it is hardly a secret that he flirted some with the guru formerly known as Da Free John, back when the now-reclusive teacher was all the rage. Much of Millman's post–Peaceful Warrior work has been spun off from the peaceful warrior theme, including his just-released book, The Journey of Socrates, which follows the character's early life in Russia. The book looks intriguing, though even the most casual moviegoer knows that sequels and prequels rarely bottle lightning a second time. Here's hoping Hollywood, and Nick Nolte's star power, can translate Millman's original magic to the silver screen.

A Higher Context for Higher Education

The recent move to bring a higher context into higher education continues to pick up steam. Of course, there are some established institutions in the field like Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco. What some may not know, however, is that CIIS was actually founded by Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri, a student of the great Indian philosopher and sage Sri Aurobindo, the first philosopher to emphasize the now ubiquitous word “integral.” Current president Joseph Subbindo has recently forged a new partnership with Auroville, the intentional community in South India founded by The Mother, Sri Aurobindo's partner in teaching. And this year, several new collaborations have started between these twin children of the same spiritual lineage. For example, Mariana Caplan, author of Do You Need a Guru? and Halfway Up the Mountain, led a course on integral spirituality last winter for CIIS at Auroville. And she claims it was the best experience she has ever had teaching. “It just showed you what spiritual education could be,” she told WIE.

Silenced by the Pope . . .

Across the Bay Bridge in Oakland lies another institution with designs on the future of spiritual education, Wisdom University (formerly the University of Creation Spirituality), a school founded by Benedictine monk turned independent religious teacher Matthew Fox. Fox has the unusual distinction of being one of the American priests silenced as “heretical” in 1988 by then-Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI—a distinction he shares with legendary interfaith theologian Hans Kung, a former colleague of the new Pope. Last May, Fox was more than a little perturbed by the installation of Ratzinger in the top spot at the Vatican, and he's not one to repress his feelings. In fact, he immediately wrote a manifesto on the future of the Catholic Church, entitled “The New Reformation: Toward a Mature Christianity,” and headed off to Germany to post the proclamation on the doors of the monastery in Wittenberg where Martin Luther posted his disagreements all those years ago. Then it was on to Rome to challenge our new Pope to a debate. (No response so far from Pope Benedict.) The essence of his beef: Fox feels the Church needs to embrace a more open-minded, mystical, and feminine-oriented version of Christianity. Who could argue with that? Kung has been taking a more wait-and-see attitude to the new power in the Vatican, perhaps hoping that Ratzinger's once-liberal views (he was a reformer in his youth) will somehow resurface in his papacy. Hard to imagine, but the new Pope (whose nickname in progressive circles is “God's Rottweiler”) did have a few pointed things to say about moral relativism right before the vote. “We are moving,” he declared, toward a “dictatorship of relativism . . . that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one's own ego and one's own desires as the final measure.” At least we agree on something.

Spiral Dynamics expert Don Beck also has an interesting take on the new Holy Father. African churches are currently best served, claimed Beck in an email to WIE, by having a conservative Catholic Church leadership, because liberal Western religious values simply don't go over well in African parishes. And right now, much of Africa needs strong, conservative religious institutions to help ease its transition out of tribalism. Moreover, he wrote, a conservative Pope will help spur greater reform in Europe and America, inspiring Catholics like Fox to take more radical steps. I don't know if that's a big perspective or too big a perspective, but it sure isn't politically correct—sort of like saying it's good that Bush was elected because it will help Democrats become stronger and evolve. Come to think of it, our favorite spiral wizard said that too.

New Leadership at Wisdom U . . .

Getting back to education, major changes are afoot at Wisdom University. Matthew Fox recently convinced State of the World Forum cofounder and political philosopher Jim Garrison to take the helm of his institution. And the new president has plans to turn Wisdom University into a cutting-edge forum for educating global leaders. We look forward to seeing how Garrison's brilliant mind, remarkable organizational ability, and voluminous Rolodex transform this quiet East Bay institution. You heard it here first: expect big things at Wisdom U.

The Rhythm of Consciousness

Gary Lachman was the bass player for the eighties pop band Blondie—not exactly the usual life path for aspiring scholars. But Lachman is making quite a second career for himself as a respected author and expert in the history of Western esotericism. His work is tracking the development of consciousness through Blake, Blavatsky, Krishnamurti, Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Gebser, the Fourth Way, Theosophy, the sixties, and on into a new century. Having turned out five works in just the last three years, Lachman is now busy with a biography of Rudolph Steiner, the brilliant German founder of Anthroposophy. Steiner mixed the ideas of Goethe, Kant, Hegel, and Theosophy, offering one of the first comprehensive integral maps of the evolution of human consciousness. After Lachman completes his survey of Steiner's life, he is threatening to tackle the biography of yet another underappreciated and brilliant mystic/scientist—Emanuel Swedenborg.

Time isn't What it Used to Be

The marketing genius of the year award should go to Ramtha. For a 35,000-year-old warrior, he/she sure knows a thing or two about modern culture. The movie What the Bleep Do We Know!?, written and produced by students of J.Z. Knight (who channels Ramtha), is everywhere these days and has become an international industry in and of itself, with study groups and conferences based on the film being held in the U.S., Italy, Canada, and Sweden. Yes, it's a “what the bleep” world; we just live in it. And fans of the movie are more emboldened than ever, claiming all kinds of things about quantum physics and “creating their own reality” at a quantum level. If you want someone to blame, or thank, look no further than Fred Alan Wolf, one of several physicists who appear in the movie. Wolf is no stranger to strange ideas about reality. His last book, The Yoga of Time Travel: How the Mind Can Defeat Time, takes on the physics of time travel, a subject that historically hasn't been treated seriously outside of Hollywood. What is Wolf's secret to time travel? Surrendering the ego. “Time is a projection of mind,” he explains, “and by changing our ego-structures we can defeat our ego-conditioning and become aware of our ability to time travel.”

Now it should be said that Wolf, for the most part, is talking about the stuff of traditional mysticism, with some physics theory added into the mix. But he's not the only one taking the matter seriously these days. Templeton prize–winner and physicist Paul Davies has added his scientific thoughts to the subject in a book entitled How to Build a Time Machine. Einstein's theory of relativity opened the theoretical door, and even Stephen Hawking is said to be convinced of at least the possibility. Students at MIT recently held the first-ever time travel conference. A few months ago, the new book Breaking the Time Barrier: The Race to Build the First Time Machine passed across our desks. It delves into the hard science that will empower tomorrow's “chrononauts.” And WIE recently discovered an entire spiritual community quite dedicated to the idea. North of Turin, Italy, there is an unusual experimental village named the Federation of Damanhur, which—with over 800 inhabitants and thousands of supporters—is famous around the world as a highly successful model of communal living. Residents work, meditate, and study; they dance, sing, and raise children; and yes, they time travel—from a gigantic underground temple the size of an eleven-story building, which they refer to as a giant capacitor! Dubbing themselves “temponauts,” the time travelers of Damanhur have set up a website to chronicle their experiences—some of which are in “subtle bodies” and some of which, they claim, are actually physical. Are they for real? The truth, as they say, may be out there—or in this case, under there—but the real question when it comes to time travel is: If it's possible, where are tomorrow's temponauts today?