Sal Lucania’s (co-founder of Adidam with Adi Da) thoughts on Shaktipat, shakti experiences, transmission
Posted by Sal’s friend to Lightmind website
I have known Sal both in and out of the community for many years. In the community (1976), I watched people have kriyas while "sitting" with Sal in the "red circle", and even heard people say that sitting with him was exactly like sitting with Bubba.
About five years ago, Sal and I talked about this, and about his so-called spiritual experiences with Bubba. He feels that there is a primal, subliminal dynamic that occurs between people that can be heightened under certain types of circumstances. It is a primitive, tribal type of influence that is probably derived from our evolutionary descent from pack animals, where the leader exerts a type of visceral control over the pack members. Some people are particularly charismatic, and know how to create this tribal dynamic through body language, setting, timing, etc, aided by the expectations of the "followers", and even by group hysteria in some cases.
Sal doesn't believe there is anything supernatural about his own "shakti" transmissions, or Bubba's, and certainly nothing spiritual about them. He thinks Bubba is a total fraud who manipulates people very skillfully, because of his natural abilities and because of his training in Scientology and mimickry of Muktananda, etc.
The fact that a fair number of people were saying the same things about Sal in 1976 as they said about Bubba (i.e. that he was spiritually powerful) is telling. It is a sign to me that people can completely delude themselves into feeling and perceiving all kinds of things, and attributing them to the supernatural influence of another. I say this because Sal isn't even remotely "spiritually developed" by any possible stretch of the imagination or any standard you could dream up. He is a lovable guy in some ways with a strong and charismatic personality, but in other ways was a total mess throughout the time I knew him. He didn't have his life together at all on a basic level. It is possible that in the past 5 years that has changed. I don't know.
In any case, once Bubba started to feel threatened by Sal's growing influence and "indoor summer" was ending, he threw him out. Sal had been in charge of the "red circle", which had all the business people and all of the money. Essentially, Bubba kicked Sal out because Sal was starting to do the same things Bubba did. He was getting off on the power and influence he held over others, and was taking advantage of it in small ways. Not even remotely as much as Bubba did, but it was enough to hang him for.
This was a horrible way for Bubba to treat his best friend Sal, who was the guy who put up much of the money to start the community to begin with. Bubba, whose teaching was all about relationship, totally abandoned his best friend because he felt threatened.
Bubba told him to become a barber, and to serve in the Catholic church, and totally blew him off. Sal remained loyal to Bubba, and still believed in him until 1982, when he "snapped", as he used to say. Within the span of a month or two, he woke up to the fact that years before he had been slowly seduced into believing Bubba's was enlightened. He began to understand that Bubba had totally taken advantage of people and abused his power over them. He came to feel a level of guilt for having contributed to the creation of a horrible cult. He would say "I have blood on my hands."
Sal told me that went Bubba kicked him out of the community, Bubba told Sal that "all Sal's spiritual experiences and his 'enlightenment' in Garbage and the Goddess were bullshit. Sal says he now agrees.