Adi Da and Cognitive Dissonance
Posted by Bobby on Nov-19-99 6:02pm
One odd thing about Daists is that they don't seem capable of even conceiving
the possibility that Mr Jones could be deceiving them, or could be confused or
troubled or split within himself. For example, against the charge of cultism,
they will say, "The Master has criticized cultism as an adolescent approach to
him, so that proves he is not a cult figure." The fact that he sets up his
organization in such a way as to cultivate a dead-movie-star fascination with
him via photos, legends, etc. is in direct contradiction to any criticism of
cultism he might utter at other times. But the Daists seem incapable of
conceiving that their master might be deceiving them or himself or both. They
are, in plain words, naive and gullible.
If Mr Jones gets rich off the donations of people struggling to get by, gets
obese and ill off of a lifetime of completely debauched eating, drugging,
drinking, and sexing habits, physically and emotionally and sexually abuses
everyone, well that is interpreted as him "serving" his devotees and all
sentient beings. But if Mr Jones tells a devotee that he must, e.g., have sex
against his will and the devotee questions within himself for a moment if this
is all right, the devotee interprets this voice of sanity within him as the
stubborn "refusal of Narcissus." The divergence grows wider and wider between
the outrages of the master interpreted as egoless God-Love and the simple human
reactions of the devotees, all interpreted as heinous, shameful egoic Narcissus.
Da also programs his devotees with this bill of goods: he says to them
(paraphrased): "If you've given something your careful consideration and decided
it is OK, then you shouldn't always be re-evaluating it. To evaluate me once
you've come to a working conclusion that I am your divine master is the just
cycling of the self-contraction. Ignore the voice within you that questions what
I do. That voice is Narcissus."
So the master's villainy is divine, but my relatively innocent human weakness or
self-protection is vile Narcissus, who desrves to be beaten, insulted, and
abused.
The more outrageous the situation, the more hold Mr Jones has over his devotees,
by the phenomenon called cognitive dissonance.
Bobby