Label: gurus

Almost podium place for Paltrow

Almost podium place for Paltrow

“We are delighted to share with you Watkins' 2024 list of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People – spiritual teachers, activists, authors and thinkers that change the world.”

Watkin's annual Top 100 list. A trifle, of course. At the same time as it gives a nice overview of the new spiritual landscape. The names that end up at the top are usually pretty much the same and not that surprising. The Pope, Oprah... But the actress Gwyneth Paltrow in fifth place? One becomes curious as to what she was up to after her film career. The world is so big, so big.

Watkins' Spiritual 100 List for 2024
Psychospiritual honey trap?

Psychospiritual honey trap?

This post relates to a previous entry, which was, among other things, about a protracted copyright dispute in the circle around the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1895-1981).

Actually, I don't care that much about the fuss over literature. It's sad. But let the dead bury their dead, as he said, the Nazarene. However, the discussion that followed my post helped me get to grips with what is and has been my fundamental problem with all of this.

“Everyone does not understand the Master, they cannot appreciate, they do not need him. This is because they are not mature enough. They have not been through as much suffering as we/me. People are at different stages in their humane, intellectual development. Some are before, some are after. It is as it is. Everything is very good.”

You hear that from time to time. (Guess that in the argument about literature, you can hear it from both sides?) But there is something clever about it. Alluring, but devious. Like a psycho-spiritual "honey trap".

("Honey trap" is a term from the spy world. Someone is seduced by an attractive man/woman and can be picked on secret information and/or put themselves in a blackmail situation. That is, something attracts, tastes sweet, but it fetches a high price.)

But, again, I therefore do not take a position on whether such things as spiritual development exist (as in my made-up quote above). One would perhaps want to dismiss the whole thing because it sounds so elitist, old-fashioned or even colonial? But I actually don't. Satisfying myself with psychology. It comes closest.

Are we equipped to handle and face life with this thinking - regardless of whether it is true or not - or will it do something to one, dull, simplify, betray one's mind? (But the downsides I'm trying to describe don't apply to everyone. Some seem to be able to parry it. Is probably not a matter of will, whether you can handle it or not. It is something else that then acts as an "antidote".)

But one might think it is a strange circumstance that so many other movements arose and individuals came forward who formulated their philosophies in a similar way to Martinus Thomsen, then a hundred years ago?

Then in some camps there were also darker, more active dreams, as in the extension of this "some are ahead, some are behind"... Shouldn't one actively try to get rid of those who slow down, who only cause trouble, etc. Philosopher Jules Evans wrote about the dark history of esoteric neo-spirituality in a long, readable text A couple of years ago.


Farewell to the esoteric

Farewell to the esoteric

The title was a bit dramatic. And by the way, I've been resigning gradually over several decades. Up to twenty-five I was inside the world of thought, but after that I have distanced myself more and more. Ten years when I was less and in opposition. When it was time for master thesis on my education and I couldn't come up with anything better, so I chose to write about "new spirituality" of the kind represented by the likes of Rudolf Steiner, Madame Blavatsky, etc. For me, this work also became a kind of reconciliation work.

The title also does not imply that I have come to a conclusion about the truth content of the esoteric basic ideas, which I am now trying to impress upon others. Reincarnation, karma and the individual's gradual development towards perfection, to sum it up briefly. I still know nothing about this.

I dared to express my feelings on a forum around the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) the other day and the conversation that developed from this convinced me even more that - and why - I put the commitment behind me.

But I think I'll start a little earlier! Came into contact with "new spirituality" through a man in the town where I grew up, the yoga and meditation teacher, etc. Sture Emby. Moved to Stockholm in the middle of high school, had various such jobs that one had at that age. Went to all the lectures and courses about Martinus Thomsen that I had time for. Lived in Denmark for six months, attended the so-called "Winter School", at the Martinus Center on Zealand.

Started working at the new spiritual establishment Cafe Pan in Götgatsbacken, Stockholm. Did unarmed service, wrote a book. Continued working at Cafe Pan... Almost every summer I spent 1-2 weeks down at that Martinus Center. In the beginning I participated in study groups and lectures with a good appetite, but gradually it became more and more regular (lovely) holiday stays by the sea.

For the past perhaps twenty years, the Martinus movement has been marked by a bitter conflict over copyright, how the founder's writings should be presented to the outside world.

A more orthodox phalanx who claim that the only right thing is to continue printing the books in facsimile, with any obvious spelling errors and the Danish as it looked before the spelling reform in 1948. A more modern phalanx, who are also those who hold the copyright (Martinus Institute in Copenhagen, with its board which is traditionally called "The Council"), which has been for a gentle update. Those who are familiar with the conflict can fill in what I missed or don't know at all, the rest of you probably don't need to worry about the details. I wouldn't post this post if I didn't perceive the content to be more general.

I reason around a concept that deals with how everything goes in cycles. The seasons are one cycle, the human life course from birth to death, another. But in this author's model of existence, the cycle idea is absolutely central, all-encompassing. So maybe it can then be applied to Martinu's work and the movement that has formed around this for a hundred years, too?

“Council vs… who is it?

Have to say I stopped caring about this conflict because, what is it, how long has it been going on? Fifteen, twenty years? Personally, I think it has less to do with the Council or those who are dissatisfied. I think that Martinu's big project has reached some kind of phase of decay, old age, decay. The last push as well. Sad in a way, but... It's the "circulation principle" as well. I think his ideas will live on and be able to inspire one or another in the future, but then more in a molten form, via secondary literature and free thinkers.

I have the warmest feelings for Martinus as a person, and the history of the cause.”

Based on the response I received, both support and rebuttal, I thought further, and wrote:

"Does not take a position on whether Martinu's world view will have a renaissance and great importance. But in any case, it is ONE cycle that is now coming to an end. You don't even have to think metaphysically to see it that way, I think.

First, there is a founder with talent, enthusiasm, confidence (whether this is justified or not, whether he really has the abilities he claims to have, or not). In a period when such things are also 'in time'. A movement arises around him. What is written and said is in step with the spiritual currents of the period, feels relevant and fresh, can interest relatively many people.

Envy is aroused, to some extent phalanxes arise. Some are provoked by and challenge the founder himself, some are content to position themselves in relation to other interested parties, the 'crowd' who have not really understood him as well as themselves.

Eventually the creator disappears. The field is now open for battle, polarization is growing. The building weathers and collapses. Those around you wonder what the hell is going on with that little inspired circle? As one did not understand what they were really interested in, but they seem to have had something exciting going on for themselves in any case.

Then if someone digs the books out of the rubble in a hundred years and finds something of value there, that remains to be seen. But clearly what has been going on now means that many who could potentially be interested in this Danish mystic's world of thought do not want to approach. It gives a little too much of an impression of old-fashioned religious warfare, something that seems to be on its way out, a phenomenon that has entered its 'autumn'. At least that's what I think,"

I think that Martinu's texts, whether they are in facsimile, in Old Danish or carefully revised, have in some sense become irrelevant. So both sides are wrong. I've been trying to come up with an analogy.

The old large Swedish company Facit was successful with its typewriters and calculators. (Didn't they even fly in the Brazilian national team to kick a ball with Åtvidaberg FK?) I got a picture of how towards the end rival product teams were bickering about whether the typewriters should be green-grey like before, the "original", or spruced up a bit, to attract new , younger buyers.

While the truth was that the world outside Åtvidaberg had turned half a turn and no one wanted a typewriter anymore. At all.

By the way, when I think about it, there are several reasons why I distanced myself from the esoteric world explanation. What I bring up above in the post is not even the most important.

Another side of it all, which I am reminded of in the exchange I refer to, is the view of the esoteric foreground figures. Their perfection. Within the movement around Martinus Thomsen, this has been an existing, although I would hardly call it a living, discussion. "Could Martinus be wrong?"

This is something that rubbed off over the years. But it hasn't been the most decisive either. Or it's kind of baked in, a facet, of what probably had the most importance because I wanted to keep esotericism/new spirituality at arm's length.

But what is the most important reason then? It's a bit tricky to describe. But is the theme of many other posts here on the website. It's about "mental hygiene", for lack of better words.

A basic thought for me today is that the esoteric/neo-spiritual understanding of life can both pressure and attract the individual to function at a lower, "simpler" developmental level than what is actually hers. And that this has nothing to do with whether the fantasy world is true or not. It might sound strange.

If I were to venture to formulate the basic problem/basic challenge, it would be that esoteric neo-spirituality is working with "absolute greatness" (complete love, perfect knowledge, perfect people, total responsibility for one's own destiny via the "law of karma", etc.), as it the human psyche in the vast majority of cases is not equipped to handle. It risks doing something to one, so to speak.

Fifteen years ago I did a dozen interviews with people who embraced the esoteric-neo-spiritual notions of reincarnation, karma and the individual's gradual development towards emotional and cognitive perfection. I then put the answers and statements I received against the human "existential conditions" as these had been formulated by an experienced psychoanalyst, Adrzej Werbart:

Werbart (2000) writes that we humans are "irretrievably doomed to live as separate 'in-dividuals', dependent on each other, divided into two sexes and several generations, vulnerable and mortal...". Elsewhere, the same author writes that we have to "accept the existential conditions of man: our separateness as separate individuals, our division into two sexes and the impossibility of being both, the division into the parent and child generations, our aging and our mortality" (Werbart, 1996 ).

In conclusion: We humans are separate, alone. We are divided into two genders (in which case we cannot be "everything"). Furthermore, we are included and arranged in parent and child generations. We are dependent on others and each other throughout life in various ways. We are all limited in terms of talent, abilities, strength, etc. Subjected to aging, we become weaker and eventually die.

The result? My impression was that the group actually denied all the existential conditions. The esoteric-neo-spiritual worldview seemed to offer reasoning or answers that invalidated them all. However, the interviewees still seemed to be able to be divided into three groups, which I once formulated roughly like this:

  1. Those who are very disoriented (“deny the existential conditions”) even before the encounter with the neo-spirituality and the neo-spirituality allow them to remain in this state.
  2. Those who are normally healthy/normally ill ("wrestling with the existential conditions") and the new spirituality may be tempted to avoid continuing to wrestle.
  3. Those who are psychologically more mature (“have come to terms with the existential conditions”) and can find a healthy balance between theory and practice, between belief and emotional reality.

My conclusions can be read in more detail in the discussion section to the study, whoever wants to.

This may seem academic and distant. Who do I think I really am (who have I been)? Group 2 I would say. Incidentally, the very largest of the groups. That is my assessment. But Group 3 exists (Group 1 included for that matter). These psycho-spiritual unicorns!

A small town mystic

A small town mystic

Sture Emby (1921-2011)

"In 1948 - when J. was 27 years old - something happened that continues to shine as a beacon and a promise. /'Alltfort' – means 23 Nov 1987/. And which far outshines all other experiences.”

This is how the author, meditation teacher, etc., Sture Emby, begins a text in which he describes a strong experience he had in his youth. (The text has been posted on the website for a long time Vivotopia, together with many similar "enlightenment" experiences, but take the opportunity to copy it while there is time, you never know how long such things will be available.)

Sture who worked almost his entire adult life in Borlänge, Dalarna. With certain assignments to lecture in other locations. Held courses in Western esotericism (especially Martin's cosmology), meditation, yoga and graphology. Besides being a therapist/soul saver for many who sought his contact.

I got to know Sture Emby when I was in my freshman year of high school. It was a time of searching for me, and meeting him was very significant. We had contact for many years. Eventually I needed to distance myself. The reason for this was no conflict or anything, I just stopped having contact. There is certainly something to think about about this. But it was quite a natural process, I feel. A need for release. Certainly a kind of recoil on long-term idealization as well.

There is much more to tell about Sture Emby. Once he showed a binder he had prepared, a kind of biography, with typewritten sheets and the occasional photo. (Including one where he stood next to a small propeller plane. Surely that was what he did his military service as, a meteorologist, who sometimes had to go up in the air? That's how I remember it anyway.) A skilled pianist, with the ambition to become a concert pianist, but hearing loss in one ear meant that he had to abandon that dream. He began a career in banking, something he soon gave up.

Sture Emby was a loner. There were probably several reasons for this. Personal disposition was one, his natural reticence. All his adult life (after that experience he had) he was ideologically faithful to the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen, which he always referred to, but never particularly employed or involved in the movement around him. In his "study letters" that he sent out at regular intervals to subscribers, 7-8 typewritten and stenciled pages, the first pages were always Martinus texts that Sture himself painstakingly translated from the Danish. Only then came some sheets with his own reflections or poems. He was actually one of the first to take an interest in and teach about Martinus' cosmology in Sweden, so long there was not much else available in the Swedish language.

At the time, that's how I understood it, there were a couple of things that other followers could find disturbing about Sture, mistrust him for, or maybe even harbor envy because of: Firstly, that he held courses in meditation and yoga, partly that he did not hide the fact that he had his own "enlightenment experience" which to some extent gave him his own authority. When I last had an insight into the Martinus movement, this was not directly disqualifying, but in the 1950s and 60s it probably was.

Yes, one more thing! Sture sometimes took the liberty of making his own "symbols", based on Martinus Thomsen's symbolic language. Which at least at the time was controversial, even considered dangerous. (There was an anecdote that was passed around, about how Martinus would once have warned a mother, whose son dabbled in such things.) But they were rather inoffensive pencil drawings, one might think. Or things he drew with chalks when he was teaching. But I have heard that it was not looked upon kindly by some other people interested in Martinus and contributed to him being perceived as suspicious.

Here is the continuation of Sture's story (and at the end of the post there are links to contributions from others, which may be of interest):

“J. had left the shack a few hours ago for an errand in the building, a phone message to my dear host and client in Gustafs. However, the mission was not carried out, he could not be found.

Somewhat dejected, J. began the mile-long and uphill journey home. /Bicycle - and it was if I remember correctly in the month of June/. So was a little tired when j. sought out a place to rest. Preferring not to be confronted with people on this occasion, I headed to 'Agne's Great House', where there were many spaces and resting places. /Colony members as well as visitors on this day, a Sunday I think, stayed in the 'main building'/.

After a few minutes of pleasant relaxation in one of these bunks or boarded-up, richly decorated rest rooms, a wonderful thing happened to me. Without previous 'warning' or hint - j. was suddenly placed in a new dimension of life for me. I was in some way 'electrified' or illuminated, at the same time that j. himself came to shine through, experience and be penetrated by new and higher worlds according to what j. perceived. My interior as well as the entire surroundings began to vibrate, also lit up by some spotlight-like light, not uniformly but with and in different variations and angles. The experiencer was mesmerized and still dazed, but at the same time fully aware of, for example, the exteriors in the room and outside the windows. If someone had come in to me - which fortunately didn't happen anyway - j. supposes that the vision or the experience - even if somewhat distracted - remained. /This happened later in the day, when j. gradually came to meet my friends/.

I came to perceive how existence had no beginning, no end. That the individuals - I was clearly in focus here - had always existed and would always remain so. There was absolutely nothing to fear. We were all in the enclosure of Providence, and to an equal degree. I saw past scenes of human development, I saw barbarism and complete chaos of the senses, but also how this was fully explained through the later chapters of the life scenes, yes how all this and everything else, were necessary fragments for the construction of perfected and loving psyches, for the construction of highly creative and rich personalities, who were all our inheritance. In this process - for me wonderful, because I had not experienced anything like this before - some were more advanced than others, but therefore not favored but on the basis of their wider measure of suffering as well as life experiences etc.

The currents of infinity worked in and out and through me. They were accompanied by cascades of light and heat. Wherever I directed my inner – and even to a certain extent outer – gaze, I was met with divine embraces. I, the quiet, withdrawn, ignorant Sture Emby.

On this basis it was not so strange that in no phase of this vision did I experience any fear or that I wanted to withdraw. On the contrary: It was as if I could not get enough of these heavenly glories, which at the same time meant vital nourishment for my sensitive being as well as for my intellectual, for thought and variations of thought. /C: 2 years later, j. had a similar but weaker experience/.

That time was out of my control here was probably quite natural. As I gradually got up from my camp and headed out – still without meeting anyone – away from the settlement and onto familiar paths in the woods and moors. Still in the atmosphere of 'natural' intoxication vibrating within me, as ONE with all living things, ONE with eternity and bliss.

It was completely clear to me how the Top Management in all phases of life took care of and followed each one with the absolute greatest care - and without the feeling of freedom and independence being violated. This certainly not only applies to humans but without exception all creatures in the small as well as in the large. And that also the great plan and the great mystery would be revealed to each one. I with my present illumination and experience was certainly not an exception or something unique. - I also learned that I would receive further instructions and management. - When I finally returned to mine on the seat, the vision - albeit somewhat weakened - remained. Even for about ten days afterwards. Then it happened that I - as if with an inner x-ray vision - could from time to time experience the history of human development through several earthly lives, not in detail but in general."

Here are a couple of links with material from people for whom Sture Emby had great personal significance.

A video interview with Sture Emby made by Hans Oldhage and Stefan Frankel:

An interview, etc., by Gunnar Martin Aronsson. (The blog post also includes the obituary, by Per-Anders Hedlund, which was published in a valley newspaper.):

Interview with STURE EMBY
My Krishnamurti

My Krishnamurti

But look there! In the mandatory bookshelf with light reading left at the hotel. Hero of my youth. I recognize the name, but have no idea what the title means.

Krishnamurti, with his unlikely and twisted upbringing and his equally remarkable break-up and adventures after that.

Over time, I have come to partially reevaluate him. Perhaps no coincidence that he appealed so much to a teenage mind precisely? Rowdy, rebellious, demanded to be free. (Maybe it's that book of his, "To be Free"?) As he continued with the rest of his life. Partly because he needed it, for himself. With its baggage, its spiritual-esoteric trauma, overload. Partly because it was a repetition, I think, just lost momentum, that's how you wanted him. I probably got a little grumpy too, perhaps learned about it all, in the autumn of my age.

He is one of the greats. One of the great spiritual "psychologists" I would say. His greatness also lies in the fact that he was who he was, serving his analyzes of spiritual-esoteric lock-in, precisely at the time and in the context in which he did so. Groundbreaking (as far as I know & know, religiously historically). Can you understand him psychologically? Maybe it only works to a certain extent. His message cuts like a knife, crystal clear. (My personal favorite quote, the one that comes to mind the most, is: “Remembering is brutal.”)

His message was about radical freedom. If you don't at least partially try to explain this, his persistence and sharpness, based on his own unique upbringing, confinement, then you almost have to idealize him. As I see it.

Sri Chinmoy on the Plate

Sri Chinmoy on the Plate

Passed through the city this afternoon. Outside the subway stood a group with some spiritual message and selling books. Don't know what it was about? “Babylon”…

A little way from there I spotted a sign, with a familiar name. Sri Chinmoy. As far as I know a neo-spiritual guru who was known for claiming to be the best in the world at everything. Wrote 10.000 poems & lifted more than anyone else in the bench press (!) (Free from memory.)

I wonder how he got to put up a sign in that place, and that no one wanted to take it down for twenty-five years.

Who is independent?

Who is independent?

“Still waiting for a qualified, independent socio-religio-philo-psychological etc clarification of this movement & its history. Independent in the sense of non-affiliated. That is, by people who are not beforehand invested or too happy in their subject of study.”

When I posted this post on my private page a couple of years ago (which I reposted today as a "memory", with the text above) I met objections.

At that time I had written:

"130 years ago today, this man, Martinus Thomsen, was born in a village in Jutland. Poor, not much for schooling. He eventually trained as a dairyman.

In his thirties, he had a strong religious experience that would shape the rest of his life. He began to write, lecture, and paint. A couple of hundred outlandish images (like the one he's working on here). A Scandinavian "mystic", one must call him.

Still, quite a bit of a doldis. Only now is an independent academic mapping of what he actually accomplished, I've heard, and the movement that grew up around him underway. Congratulations, Martinus!”

It was this thing about "independence". Because academic essays have been written about Martinus and his "cosmology", which have been approved, at various academic levels. A-, B-, C-, Master's level. Yes, recently there was even a doctoral thesis. However, as far as I know, exclusively by followers. But aren't these works independent, after all? At least at a higher level, there are rigorous requirements for the reasoning to be of good quality?

And I still feel that it is something I am missing because I think it could be really interesting.

It has something to do with Martinus Thomsen's claim - and how he is thus perceived within the movement - to be a perfect individual with infallible knowledge, which I have difficulty seeing that it does not risk setting it up.

Someone objected that time, that, for example, psychoanalysts write about Sigmund Freud, is that background also disqualifying? Isn't their in-depth knowledge of history, theories, etc. rather an asset?

But I find it hard to buy it. No one, or at least very few, and they probably enjoy no greater respect, would claim that Freud was infallible, irreproachable, a perfect human being who recorded only the truth in his books.

My spiritual journey

My spiritual journey

This is where my spiritual journey began. Actually exactly forty years ago. In the middle of Christmas shopping -81. A man in a baggy parka and a much too big hat, with a basket on his arm, called to me who was out to buy patties for the family.

The ad appeared in the FB feed just now & I visited the website. Must be some subdivision of Hare Krisna in Sweden? The books look exactly as they did then! I bought/got the titles from him, & they then went with me in many moves, stood on all the bookshelves. Don't think I ever read them though...

So, above all, it was the conversation with him that triggered something inside me. We stood there in the cold for probably an hour or more. Ethical, moral issues. I was at an impressionable, searching age. Shortly afterwards I became a vegetarian, etc.

Then followed a few years of what you might call "sectarian tourism", a curious wandering, snooping. Like a bird watcher ticking off exotic specimens in his list 🙂 (Went from time to time and ate at their restaurant, Govindas, at Fridhemsplan in Stockholm & it was only a few years since it crashed again, so it had time to lie there for a long time.)

Thinks of the Hare Krishna movement with some warmth actually. Then they can be as sectarian as they want.

Tulku (2009)

Tulku (2009)

"Gesar Mukpo was three when he became one of the first people born in the West to be recognized as a tulku the present-day reincarnation of a Buddhist master. For his entire life, he's been trying to figure out what that really means.”

https://www.nfb.ca/film/tulku/