Connecting more Dots: "Lack of power was my dilemma."

It's a grind one hears over and over again in AA meetings.

I was shown by so many around me that one should be frustrated, resentful, angry and rageful when life didn't go the way the way they had been conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, socialized, habituated, normalized and neurally “hard-wired” to believe it should. I didn't get the toy or the Levis or the place on the team or the girl or the job or the car or the home or the respect from others I had been taught to believe I should get.

Others got righteous. They ranted and railed in their frustration, resentment and anger. They raged. Why shouldn't I?

So I did.

Others drank and used drugs and drove too fast and got in fights and wrecked relationships and lost jobs and got divorced and wound up on the streets or in the joint or psych hospital and became pariahs to their friends and families. They raged. Why shouldn't I?

So I did.

Others "caught" nasty cases of mania, depression and anxiety causing them to suffer with all kinds of physical aches and pains the pshrinques of a generation ago called "factitious," "psychosomatic" and "conversion" disorders. Why should't I?

And I did.

Others came down with Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from decades of battering their brains and bodies with the untreated results of having been trained to believe that reactive rage was the best way to deal with life's injustice. They got stuck in the "justice fallacy." Why shouldn't I?

And I did.

Others wound up with "issues" like sleep disorders, tinnitus, irritable bowel syndrome, gastric ulcers, peripheral neuropathy, vaginismus, prostate swelling and forms of cancer rarely seen until reactive self-stress began to be an epidemic about 75 years ago. Why shouldn't I?

And I did.

Others did the time for someone else's crimes. Why shouldn't I?

And I did.

For decades. Until I learned finally learned that "lack of power was my dilemma" and that righteous rage is a luxury I just can't afford anymore.

I hope it's not too late.

Resources (Just read the titles? Couldn't hurt.)

Agarwal, N.: fMRI Shows Trauma Affects Neural Circuitry, in Clinical Psychiatry News, Vol. 37, No. 3, March 2009.

Andersen, S.; Teicher, M.: Desperately Driven and No Brakes: Developmental Stress Exposure and Subsequent Risk for Substance Abuse, in Neuroscience of Behavior Review, Vol. 33, No. 4, April 2009.

Antoniak, S.: Inmates with PTSD have higher scores for mood, anxiety, somatoform, substance use, psychotic, eating, conduct, and adjustment disorders, in Clinical Psychiatry News, Vol. 38, No. 1, January 2010.

Arsenault, L.; et al: Being Bullied as an Environmentally Mediated Contributing Factor to Children’s Internalizing Problems…, in in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, Vol. 162, February, 2008.

Bandura, A.: Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1997.

Beck, A.: Prisoners Of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence, New York: Harper-Collins, 1999.

Benson, H.: The Relaxation Response, New York: Morrow, 1975.

Berger, P.; Luckman, T.: The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Doubleday, 1966.

Brach, T.: Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha, New York: Random House / Bantam, 2004.

Brown, B.: I Thought It Was Just Me: Telling the Truth About Perfectionism, Inadeqacy and Power, New York: Gotham Books, 2007.

Burgo, J.: Why Do I Do That?: Psychological Defense Mechanisms and the Hidden Ways they Shape our Lives, Chapel Hill, NC: New Rise Press, 2012.

Burrow, T.: The Social Basis of Consciousness, New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927.

Carter, S.: The Tell-Tale Signs of Burnout: Do You Have Them?, in Psychology Today online, November 2013.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The Effects of Childhood Stress Across the Lifespan, Atlanta, GA: CDC, 2008.

Chodron, P.: Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears, Boston: Shambala, 2010.

Courtois, C.: It's Not You: It's What Happened to You: Complex Trauma and Treatment, Dublin, OH: Telemachus Press, 2014.

Damasio, A.: The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, New York: Harcourt, 1999.

Deikman, A.: Personal Freedom: On Finding Your Way to the Real World, New York: Bantam, 1976.

Deikman, A.: The Observing Self: Mysticism and Psychotherapy, Boston: Beacon Press, 1982.

Dyer, W.: Your Erroneous Zones, New York: Avon Books, 1977, 1993.

Earley, J.: Self-Therapy: A Guide to Using IFS, 2nd. Ed., Larkspur, CA: Pattrern System Books, 2009.

Ellis, A.: Overcoming Destructive Beliefs, Feelings, and Behaviors: New Directions for Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, New York: Promethius Books, 2001.

Engel, B.: The Emotionally Abusive Relationship: How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2002.

Fink, P.; Luk, J. et al: Positive association between victimization by bullies and substance abuse, in Clinical Psychiatry News, Vol. 38, No. 6, Jun. 2010.

Freud, A.: The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense, London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1937.

Goffman, E.: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, New York: Doubleday-Anchor, 1959.

Goleman, D.: Emotional Intelligence, New York: Bantam, 1980. mindfulness

Goleman, D.: Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.

Herten, J.: An Uncommon Drunk: Revelations of a High-Functioning Alcoholic, New York: iUniverse Inc., 2006.

Herten, J.: The Sobering Truth: What You Don’t Know Can Kill You, San Luis Obispo, CA: Sobering Truth Press, 2010.

McEwen, B.; Seeman, T.: Protective and damaging effects of mediators of stress: Elaborating and testing the concepts of allostasis and allostatic load, in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 896, 1999.

McEwen, B: Mood Disorders and Allostatic Load, in Journal of Biological Psychiatry, Vol. 54, 2003.

McEwen, B.; Lasley, E. N.: The End of Stress as We Know It, Washington, DC: The Dana Press, 2003.

Sapolsky, R.: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases and Coping, 3rd Ed., New York: Holt, 2004.

Selye, H.: Stress Without Distress, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippencott, 1974.

Wilson, B.: Alcoholics Anonymous, New York, A. A. World Services, 1939, 1955, 1976, 2001.

Wilson, B.: Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, New York: A. A. World Services, 1951.

Wilson, B.: The Best of Bill: Reflections on Faith, Fear, Honesty, Humility and Love, New York: A. A. Grapevine, 1986.

Wolpe, J.: Psychotherapy by Reciprocal Inhibition, Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958.

Wolpe, J.; Wolpe, D.: Life Without Fear: Anxiety and Its Cure, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981, and Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 1987.

Workbooks Specifically on Anger Processing

Abramowitz, J.: the stress less workbook: Simple Strategies to Relieve Pressure, Manage Commitments and Minimize Conflicts; New York: The Guilford Press, 2012.

Block, S.; Block, C.: Mind-Body Workbook for Stress: Effective Tools for Lifelong Stress Reduction & Crisis Management, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2012.

Block, S.; Block, C.: Mind-Body Workbook for Anger: Effective Tools for Anger Management & Conflict Resolution, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2013.

Chapman, A.; Gratz, K.: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Anger, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2015.

Eifert, G.; McKay, M.; Forsyth, J.: ACT on life not anger: The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Guide to Problem Anger, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2006.

McKay, M.; Rogers, P.: The Anger Control Workbook: Simple, innovative techniques for managing anger and developing healthier ways of relating; Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2000.

McKay, M.; Rogers, P.; McKay, J.: When Anger Hurts: Quieting the Storm Within, 2nd Ed., Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2003.

McKay, M.; Fanning, P.; Ona, P. Z.: Mind and Emotions: A Universal Treatment for Emotional Disorders, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2011.

Simpkins, C. A.; Simpkins, A. M.: The Tao of Bipolar: Using Meditation & Mindfulness to Find Balance & Peace, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2013.

Stahl, B.; Goldstein, E.: A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, Oakland CA: New Harbinger, 2010.

Van Dijk, S.: The Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Workbook for Bipolar Disorder: Using DBT to Regain Control of Your Emotions and Your Life, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2009.

Van Dijk, S.: Calming the Emotional Storm, Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2012.

When the Memories & Affects Start to Break Through

While I do want to tread cautiously for those who are still "tender & triggerable," the memories of the traumatic event and the affects (roughly "sensations and emotions") attached thereto will start trying to "break through" into consciousness. Which is what tends to happen in the second of the five stages of therapeutic recovery after the various defense mechanisms like manic rat racing, repression or even dissociation begin to sort of "wear out" the autonomic nervous system through prolonged overuse of the Fight / Flight / Freeze / Faint / Feign (or Fawn) Responses.

If I had had a better understanding of all that and the exposure therapies -- as well as how to tolerate them -- back in the '90s when I was doing everything I could to "outrun" the memories and affects the best way I knew how, I'd have dived far more deeply into that sort of thing then and there. But a) I didn't at the time, and b) it was probably just as well, even if it was very costly.

The post-millennial advances in both the techniques of exposure and the techniques of preparing patients to tolerate the temporary increases in anxiety that can occur in exposure therapy since then are considerable. Of the therapies listed in section 7c of this earlier Reddit post (skip all the borderline personality disorder stuff unless it seems relevant), DBT was the first to formalize such preparation (via "grounding" more or less this way) by using the methods developed in the therapies listed in section 7b of that same earlier post. Since then, SEPt and SP4T (for my money, the best deal out there because it is the most firmly rooted in autonomic physiology, but "results may vary," of course) have come along, and EMDR has added a pre-exposure grounding protocol.

One can be assisted by adroit use of the therapies in sections 7a and 7b to get firmly into the third of those five stages. From which, of course, stage four is then pretty much fully accessible. The end of section seven, btw, gets into how to locate therapists who are familiar with the people listed in the very first paragraph of that same earlier post, which, IMO, is really a necessity for trauma survivors.

For a sort of "review" of all this, see A Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma and How Self-Awareness Works to "Digest" Emotional Pain.

Additionally useful, from a personal body of experience: The 10 StEPs + SP4T.

References & Resources (see the continuously updated list in A CPTSD Library)

Will the Addict Ever Stop Using Something if He or She remains Depressed, Anxious & Belief-Bound?

"Alcohol and drugs can modify troubled feelings without influencing their cause, augment confidence by blurring reality and reducing sensitivity, and silence the inner voice of self-contempt, or at least make it nearly inaudible." -- Sharon Eklberry 

I've been at this for a while. C&S since 1984, I went back to school again and again to dig into the title question. (Ten years worth, actually.) A modified point of view is always a possibility, of course. But at this point, my answer is, "It doesn't look that way." And here's why:

Exogenous neurostimulants and neurodepressants elevate limbic emotion regulation system dopamine levels in different ways that effect cascades of other chemical flow and interaction -- and vice-versa -- causing either atypically (like "un-usual-ly") intense relaxation, intense analgesia, intense dissociation, intense euphoria and/or intense motivation, all of which are experienced as "rewarding." (See Edward Khantzian below.)

So. When those who are depressed, anxious and/or belief-bound seem to remain stuck in their unprocessed, undigested and undischarged neuroemotional energy needing some way to get off the not-so-merry-go-round the pros call the cycle of addiction. Take away drugs. Take away alcohol. Take away food (or lack thereof). Take away risk. Take away sex & romance. Take away codependent relationship. Take away workaholism. Take away excessive exercise. Take away almost everything that can be used to temporarily masque off the icky sensations of Learned Helplessness, Dread & the Victim Identity, and one has just that: Untreated Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity. (If interested, look up Martin Seligman, Edward Khantzian (and his self-medication hypothesis), George Koob, Harold Shaffer and Gabor Mate on how LH & VI drive addiction; or see the References below.)

A regular in AA and NA since 1983... and at least a semi-regular in Al-anon and Nar-anon since 1986, in CoDA and ACA since 1990, in SLAA since 1991, in EA since 2006, et al, et al, et al, as well as from a perch in several treatment facilities, I have been able to observe thousands of addicts in the long as well as short term. Along with the people named above, as well as those named or referred to below, I am fully convinced that addiction of one sort or another -- even if it is to "righteous victimhood" in the manner described by Richard Schwartz's "obsessive protector" (see the Internal Family Systems Model) -- remains the number one go-to for those who haven't digested and discharged something 80 percent of their reactive rage, existential fear, shame, guilt, worry, remorse, regret, morbid reflection. (Bill Wilson's articles in the AA Grapevine in the 1960s -- including those reprinted in the little book, The Best of Bill -- seem to me, at least, to strongly support this assertion.)

The millennial-era study of the neurobiology, neurochemistry and neurophysiology of depression and anxiety utilizing computer-aided tomography (CAT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and small-particle (SPECT) imaging have conclusively demonstrated that a) depression and anxiety have clearly identifiable "images" in the brain's limbic (emotion processing) system, as well as the HPA Axis and its connections to the body's autonomic nervous system. Anyone who understands all that and the operation of the Fight / Flight / Freeze / Faint / Feign (or Fawn) Responses that can lead to Fry and then Freak, can see the relevance to addictive "defenses" in a hot second.

As a result, addiction professionals at such renowned, "Class A" clinics as Hazelden, Betty Ford, The Meadows and Sierra Tucson began to move recovering substance and behavior abusers into examining the causes of their addictions about 25 years ago. And began to bring on board people like those listed in the first paragraph of this Reddit post. (Skip all the borderline personality disorder stuff unless it seems relevant, which, btw, it is for many substance and behavior abusers).

Make no mistake: AA, NA, MA and all those other A's are still viable. In fact, the vast majority of addiction treatment professionals see them as crucial to recovery because they help to keep the as-yet-unfinished product of the complete recovery process away from the worst of his or her temporary, but ultimately worse than merely ineffective, emotional fixes.

But, in 2019, it looks like the limbic->-HPA axis->-autonomic "gas bag" has to be punctured and emptied to put the nails in addiction's coffin. To that end -- and for those who remain interested after all this admittedly challenging edification -- may I offer sections 7a, 7b and 7c of that same Reddit post? Because section seven rolls out a list of the most widely used and accepted methods to puncture that gas bag, including Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing.

My Personal Experience 

Clean & dry from 1984 to 1997. But without my "medications" (see Khantsian's "self-medication hypothesis" below), and as the direct result of addiction switching to sex, romance and other forms of distracting over-stimulation -- and not dealing with the causes of my need to use -- my PTSD symptoms became intolerable, went to SUDS level 9 24/7, and I ate the medicine cabinet in 1997.

I thought Alcoholics and Narcotics Anonymous would be sufficient to get the job done on that until I did it again in 2002. Never drank. Never used a drug to get high. Did take a bunch of them (mostly stolen benzos and pain killers) one night to try to get OUT of relentless anxiety hell. Permanently. Woke up two days later (like the first time) in an ICU. Feh.

Returned to psych school in 2004. Found several versions of The Grail and haven't really looked back since 2009.

Added 01-10-2020: Hadn't yet seen this journal article or this medical media piece about it when I drafted this tirade a few weeks ago. But they do seem to lend credence to it, don't they?

Added 08-21-2020: Further "testimony." 

References

Afuseh, E.; Pike, C.; Oruche, U.: Individualized approach to primary prevention of substance use disorder: age-related risks, in Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy, Vol. 15, No. 1, August 2020. DOI: 10.1186/s13011-020-00300-7

Bozarth, M.: Drug addiction as a psychobiological process, in Warburton, D. (ed.): Addiction Controversies, London: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1990.

Bozarth, M.: Pleasure systems in the brain, in Warburton, D. (ed.), Pleasure: The politics and the reality, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994.

DiClemente, C.; Addiction & Change: How Addictions Develop and Addicted People Recover, New York: Guilford Press, 2006.

Dodes, L.: The Heart of Addiction: A New Approach to Understanding and Managing Alcoholism and Other Addictive Behaviors, New York: Harper & Rowe, 2002.

Dorison, C.; Wang, K.; et al: Sadness, but not all negatiuve emotions, heightens addictive substance use, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nov. 2019, DOI: 10.1073/PNAS.1909888116.

Ekleberry, S.: Seminar on Substance Abuse and Axis II Personality Disorders, San Francisco: Arcturus (online), 2000. 

Ekleberry, S.: Integrated Treatment of Co-Occurring Disorders: Personality Disorders and Addiction, London: Routledge, 2009. 

Hamilton, L.; Timmons, C. R.: Principles of Behavioral Pharmacology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1990. 

Kannon, J.; et al: Narcotics Anonymous, North Hollywood, CA: Narcotics Anonymous World Services, 1983.

Khantzian, E. J., Mack, J.F.; Schatzberg, A.F.: Heroin use as an attempt to cope: Clinical observations, in American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 131, 1974.

Khantzian, E. J.: The self-medication hypothesis of addictive disorders: Focus on heroin and cocaine dependence, in American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 142, 1985.

Khantzian, E.J.: The self medication hypothesis of substance use disorders: a reconsideration and recent applications, in Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Vol. 4, No. 5, Jan-Feb 1997.

Koob, G.; Le Moal, M.: Drug addiction, dysregulation of reward, and allostasis, in Neuropsychopharmacology, Vol. 24, 2001.

Koob, G.: Allostatic view of motivation: implications for psychopathology, in Motivational Factors in the Etiology of Drug Abuse, at the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, Vol. 50, edited by Bevins, R.; Bardo, M.; Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Koob, G., Le Moal, M.: Plasticity of reward neurocircuitry and the ‘dark side’ of drug addiction, in National Neuroscientist, Vol. 8, 2005, doi:10.1038/nn1105-1442.

Koob, G.: A Role for Brain Stress Systems in Addiction, in Neuron, Vol. 59, No. 1, July 2008.

Koob, G.: Neurobiology of Addiction, in Focus, Vol. 9, December 2011. 

Mate, G.: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 2010.

Seligman, M.: Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, New York: Knopf, 1990. 

Shaffer, H.; LaPlante, D., La Brie, R.; et al: Toward a Syndrome Model of Addiction: Multiple Expressions, Common Etiology; in Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Vol. 12, 2004.

Wilson, B.: The Best of Bill, New York: AA Grapevine, 1955. 

The Human Potential Movement Gone Awry

The Human Potential Movement Gone Awry

Outside the limits of the human imagination.

By WIN MCCORMACK, in The New Republic, April 12, 2018

https://newrepublic.com/article/147853/human-potential-movement-gone-awry

The original text appears in black. My comments appear in dark red.

Mix some disconnected revelations and "peak experiences" with some desperately sought camaraderie and self-serving conditioning, in-doctrine-ation, instruction, socialization, habituation and normalization. Wear the patient and hopeful down to imprint the latter.

 

Who gives a flying ---- if the suckers got anything useful. We're here to make a buck and turn 10% of the fools into compulsive proselytes.

“It’s an amazing phenomenon,” says Sarah T. (a pseudonym), a former disciple of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. She is referring to the movement she left a few years ago when she became exhausted and ill from overwork. 

“And I think people still don’t get that what’s happening up there [at Rajneeshpuram] is very, very powerful—more so than they’re giving it credit for being, even at this point. Because every person who’s a sannyasin, every person who’s up there in Oregon -- particularly now -- is a very different kind of human being than you meet out here [in the secular world].

“They have extraordinary gifts as people. They have extraordinary personal power. They have extraordinary capabilities and abilities, because they’ve learned to go beyond all limits.”

Sarah, a therapist whose professional discipline falls generally under the rubrics of the closely connected humanistic psychology and human potential movements, first became interested in Rajneesh when she read a book of his collected discourses called The Book of Secrets. In those discourses, originally delivered in Bombay in the early seventies, before the establishment of the ashram in Pune (Poona), India, Rajneesh drew parallels between the theories of the humanistic psychology and human potential movements and his interpretation of the Eastern sexual philosophy and practice of Tantra, which all share the theme of liberation from the emotional and sexual repressiveness of society. 

Sarah says that after reading the book she was “gone -- right away I started having mystical experiences.”

“I had the feeling,” she remembers, “that this is what I had been looking for my whole life. And that I had come to the end of my journey. That this was it. Reading the book was like having somebody express my innermost feelings.”

The academic humanistic psychology movement, launched in 1961 by, among others, psychologist Abraham Maslow, sought to forge an alternative to the two dominant trends in contemporary psychology: Freudian psychoanalysis and behaviorism. Maslow believed that too much attention had been devoted in traditional psychology to pathological behavior, and not enough to healthy individuals who were able to “actualize themselves” and to attain and live from what he called “peak experiences.”

In 1962, the Esalen Institute was established in Big Sur, California, to offer experiential workshops designed to help people realize their “human potential” (the phrase comes originally from Aldous Huxley, an early ally and inspirer of Esalen). Human potential theorists, seeking ways to counteract what they saw as people’s harsh psychological and social conditioning, found parallels among the emotional opening up process of Western cathartic psychotherapies, the peak experiences described and advocated by Maslow, and the altered states of consciousness produced by Eastern methods of meditation (and also by psychedelic drugs). 

The union of Western psychology and Eastern religion became one of the human potential movement’s goals.

Rajneesh, in the words of one observer -- social worker and cult expert Hilly Zeitlin -- “picked up all the pieces of the human potential movement.” Rajneesh’s juxtaposition of avant-garde Western therapies, such as primal, gestalt, and encounter, with such classic Eastern meditations as kundalini yoga and zazen lured hundreds of thousands of Western disciples to his ashram in Pune in the 1970s. 

After reading The Book of Secrets, Sarah’s next step was to attend a “Let-Go” weekend at a local Rajneesh center. The workshop involved participation in massages, therapy games, encounter groups, and meditations from 5:00 am until midnight. The effect of the Let-Go weekend on Sarah was even more profound than her reaction to Rajneesh’s written words had be

“I stopped thinking,” she says. “I was driving back home and there were all these twinkly little white lights on the windshield. I was seeing things. I don’t know even now what was going on.” Not long afterward, Sarah was on a plane to Pune.

[Thought stopping is one of manipulative, unethical, phony, cultic meditation's major attractions and supposed benefits. Any long-experienced, practitioner of insight meditation knows there is no such thing, but the lingering state of dissociation induced by the misuse of  meditation seems to be thought stopping to the naive and unsuspecting who don't know that. See Abuse of Narrow Focus Meditation and Why Thought Stopping Doesn't Work.] 

Rajneesh and his group leaders in Pune took the various cathartic therapy and meditation techniques associated with the human potential movement far beyond their usual limits of duration and intensity. Groups in which participants did deep, strenuous, yoga-style breathing exercises -- exercises that [hyperventilate and] can overoxygenate the brain and cause dizziness and nausea -- would last for hours a day over several days [just as was the case for those who did the hugely popular est trainings of the 1970s]. 

The ashram’s therapy groups became notorious for episodes of emotional, physical, and sexual violence. Sarah reports that she suffered physical injuries, including two cracked ribs and a concussion, in an encounter-type group in Pune.

“You see,” reflects Sarah in retrospect, “some people like to be on the edge. It’s much more exciting than the monotony of everyday life. It’s like a drug. It’s a high. And you think that you’re moving forward. These people really believe that this is Jesus Christ up there, OK? That is the beginning. And he’s providing them with experiences, with situations that are taking them past anything they’ve experienced in their lives previously. There’s a rush to that, that I’ve never found anything to equal. It’s like playing a game of death -- your death.”

One of the criticisms of the human potential movement has been about its tendency to overemphasize the human potential for good and to underplay the evil, or dark side, of human nature. The word evil has also been used by observers to express their feelings about the motivations of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

In her 1983 book, Miles from Nowhere, A Round-the-World Bicycle Adventure, writer Barbara Savage describes her experience of visiting Rajneesh’s ashram in Pune and hearing him denounce Mother Theresa, who had just been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her charitable ministrations to the poor of Calcutta. Rajneesh called her a “sexual pervert who gets her sexual satisfaction from touching lepers.” 

Savage says that she stood up in the audience to protest Rajneesh’s tirade against Mother Theresa, but that “one of Neesh’s strongmen grabbed me and literally threw me back down on the floor. After that,” she writes, “I was too frightened to move.

“I sat there and watched and listened to the man rave on,” Savage continues, “and I was suddenly overwhelmed by a great sense of evil. I mean that. I truly felt as if I was surrounded by this massive evil force. I tell you, Rajneesh was emanating evil. I was terrified beyond words. When the meeting was over, I fled.”

Nathaniel Branden, a well-known humanistic psychologist in Los Angeles [for whom I worked briefly in the 1970s, and who jolted me out of at least some of my own cultic conditioning], had a similar reaction to some of Rajneesh’s published discourses, particularly certain passages in The Mustard Seed.

In an October 2, 1978, letter to a friend at Rajneesh’s ashram, Branden wrote that Rajneesh “explains and justifies the slaughter of millions of Jews throughout history on the grounds that the Jews killed Jesus.” 

“Since I first began listening to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh’s cassette tapes, and reading his books,” Branden told his sannyasin friend, “I have been fascinated. Among all the Indian thinkers I have read, he strikes me as clearly the most brilliant. At the same time, almost from the beginning, I have had the growing feeling that this is a man who is deeply, deeply, deeply evil -- evil on a scale that is almost outside the limits of the human imagination. “The greater a man’s brilliance, the greater number of truths he has insight to,” Branden concluded, “the more dangerously destructive that man has the power to be -- if his core is evil.”

[The terms “malignant narcissist” and “sociopath” had been invented but were not in widespread usage at the time this article was written.]

n    Originally published in Oregon Magazine, August 1985, this article was adapted from The Rajneesh Chronicles, published by Tin House Books.