Golden means
Compared to traditional religions, today's spiritual cultivation movement most emphasizes the development of personal life force and improvement of interpersonal relations, so that the "me" can find happiness and fulfillment. It does not address remote questions of what came before or what is to come, the pursuit of eternal life or transcendence.
In general, Western scholars categorize these spiritual cultivation groups, clothed in a thin veneer of religion, as psychocults. In Taiwan, in order to minimize the hostility and mistrust many people feel toward new religions, many of these groups have established themselves under different facades: trading companies, health food companies, foundations, or psychological counseling services.
Take for example Avatar, recently the focus of a media clamor. Avatar instructors in Taiwan all say that it is a personal growth course, not a religion. The educational psychologist Harry Palmer, who created the Avatar course and has registered the Avatar name as a trademark, emphasizes in his writings that the goal of Avatar is not to acquire worshippers or followers, but is a system of accumulated wisdom that can be converted into money and success. Thus, the leaders in every area who receive a certification to teach the system must pay a copyright fee to the headquarters.
Can one purchase unsurpassed wisdom with money? This really marks a difference from the ideas of compassion and charity of most religions. For example, the three-stage Avatar leadership course costs roughly NT$75,000 for about ten days. A more advanced offering charges NT$260,000, and includes the stipulation that the course content cannot be revealed to outsiders. This degree of profit orientation is one reason many people have suspicions about the Avatar group.
Chuang Hui-chiu, director of planning at PsyGarden, says: "Spiritual cultivation groups that target the elite and have a large commercial and financial component give participants a sense of superior class consciousness, of being better than others, which distorts the basic charitable outlook." Knowledge that is helpful in life should be available to everyone.
Nonetheless, for participants who find these things useful, any amount of money is worth being able to transform how you think and feel in a short time. Wu Mei-ling, who is in Avatar global leadership position number 5946, argues: "I don't think it's expensive at all. I've taken management seminars which cost NT$50,000 to 60,000 for just a couple of days!"
Wu, who has just returned from Miami where she went through her second refresher course, is the general manager of an international consulting company. She feels that the Avatar course makes collective consciousness and trans-sensory contact simple; it teaches people how to verbalize concepts and create the reality that they desire. After a nine-day course in which she was emotionally wrenched to extremes of both laughter to tears, she felt like a new person.
In the "rediscovering life" class, when reading along with the leader, after only a paragraph or two Wu felt that the text completely fit her own situation. The frisson she felt was exactly like the moving sensation she had when she visited Putuo Mountain, a scenic location near Beijing with many monasteries. "It turns out that enlightenment is just so simple," says Wu, who adds that such a valuable experience is worth any amount of money.
"I've always believed I could be even better; even when I was a child I felt this way. I have attended countless management growth seminars. I used to be a very stubborn person, and my outgoing and happy attitude was mostly a put-on. I was incapable of going a whole day by myself, and I often felt pain or got rashes for no apparent reason," says Wu. Today, people who know her approvingly say how warm and upbeat she has become, and join her classes. Moreover, after taking the Avatar courses, Wu discovered that, once she could more effectively manage her emotions and construct her thinking more logically, her sales results have multiplied many times over.
"I attended many management courses before. I don't know if those count as spiritual cultivation, but they all strongly emphasized facing yourself, and especially that side of yourself you don't dare to face. A lot of people in my business have also attended these spiritual growth classes, hoping to break through their personal difficulties, have more harmonious personal relationships, and progress to a higher level at work," says Chen Tsu-yin. Chen recently entered the insurance business, and this year, despite her great terror about meeting people, won the annual best individual achievement prize given by her company's customer service department.
Liuh Shiuh-ya points out that many office workers have attended spiritual cultivation courses in hopes of being able to move faster and work harder in everyday life, or make more money. There's nothing wrong with that, but it is all part of the mundane world, and it would be difficult to really come to understand what it means to feel compassion and love for all things.
Pros? Or con men?
It has always been difficult to regulate and define religions and spiritual growth groups. The new "Psychology Practitioners Law," passed just last November, stipulates one must have at least a master's degree in a relevant field, as well as two years of practical experience, to go into professional practice. It also stipulates that therapists must respect professional ethics, such as prohibitions against discussing a patient's case with any third party or against getting romantically involved with a patient while the patient is still in treatment.
Despite such rules, it is very easy for a person to be accredited as a teacher or leader by such groups as Osho, Avatar, and The Art of Living, and Taiwan lacks any system for certifying legitimate groups. Anyone who wants to can establish their own center and recruit students. Given that none of the new religions or spiritual growth groups have traditional regulations or doctrines to fall back on, the results can be disturbing.
The recent case of former city councilor Chu Mei-feng, who was secretly filmed having sex, with the resulting VCD being sold publicly, is a case in point. One of those implicated, Kuo Yu-ling, who has an Avatar leadership certificate, allegedly took advantage of the trust put in her by her student (i.e. Chu) to install the hidden cameras, after which she copied and sold the video. Such appalling behavior cannot help raise grave doubts about the value of such spiritual training.
The Osho community emphasizes sexual freedom, with sex rooted in love, not necessarily in marriage. No wonder it has been called "a paradise for men." There have been several cases in Taiwan of directors of meditation centers putting too much emphasis on their personal charisma, of equating love with sex, and having affairs with their female acolytes.
Because spiritual growth courses are soul-baring experiences, people can in a very short time build very deep emotional attachments. "When deep emotional attachments go wrong, toward worldly love and hate, obsession and vengeance, naturally the actions taken will be more vicious," suggests Liuh Shiuh-ya. Overseas as well, spiritual cultivation groups appear and disappear all the time, with their fate often connected to scandals over sex and money.
"You have to remember that the teachers in the spiritual cultivation groups are also people, and though they may have started the search for enlightenment earlier than yourself, they also have their human weaknesses," points out Chuang Hui-chiu. Especially in spiritual cultivation groups that emphasize equality and no distinctions of status, teachers and followers closely interact, so it is even more likely that they will end up dragging each other into their secular concerns.
Getting in tune
Liuh Shiuh-ya, who has a PhD in integrated East-West psychology from the US, made a surprising discovery when she visited the Temple of Heaven in Beijing while in the mainland attending an academic conference: near the Temple of Heaven is a Temple of the Moon. "Just think of worshipping the moon in the dead of night. . . people have been pursuing that kind of spirituality since ancient times."
To modern people, divorced from sacred experience and cut off from traditional rituals, Liuh suggests that you can reconstruct your own personal altar, a corner where you can find peace and quiet, undisturbed, where you can listen to your own spirit and connect with the universe, a place where you belong and can always return on your journey through life.
Hou Chun-ming, who no longer participates in spiritual growth groups, rises each day at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. First he does a half hour of "free writing," in which he writes down all his thoughts as they come to him, unedited, in order to bring out his inner self. After breakfast he drops his wife off at her teaching job, and then, equipped with self-awareness, drives up to his studio in the mountains of Sanyi. In the mountain forests he gets in tune with the natural sounds to harmonize the natural vibrations of his body, and then goes into his studio to begin creating.
"For me, creating has always been a spiritual exploration, coming face to face with your deepest desires and darkest side." Hou, whose work has been shown at the Venice International Biennial Exhibition of the Arts, was in the past always ready to attack and turn things on their heads.
Over the past two or three years, he has continued to make Osho mediation a part of his life. Every day he paints a mandala and sometimes isolates himself or fasts. These days his works are not so critical, angry, and chaotic. Like a cleansing ritual, the process of creating is like a budding desire, and his whole person enters a sacred state.
Life is itself a form of practice. Spend money, go to class, learn from a teacher, and if you afterwards really integrate the practices you have learned into your everyday life, the realm of joy, contentment, and awakening will certainly one day be yours.