[ SPOILER ALERT -- if you have not been following the ABC television series called "Lost," or have and have not seen the last episode of this season, or are even thinking of catching up to the series in the future, you might not want to read this. I will be revealing plot spoilers, and you probably don't want to know about them. Avoid the problem before it arises and click Next right now. :-) ]
I just finished watching my pirated copy of the last episode of the season of "Lost." And, having made a few posts today on the subject of whether the demonization of and suppression of doubt in a spiritual tradition is a good thing, I couldn't help but notice the parallels in "Lost." Ben, the leader of the "Others," is in Deep Shit. For years -- possibly decades -- he has been sys- tematically lying to the people he leads. He's been telling them that he is in communication with the mystical "man behind the curtain" on this whole Island Of Oz, "Jacob." Jacob has got Reality down cold; he knows What's What, Spiritually, and so when Jacob speaks -- through Ben, of course -- they should not only listen, and obey, but they should never, ever question what Ben says. Because to do so would be to question Jacob, and thus What's What, Spiritually. In the last few episodes, it has been revealed that Jacob might not exist. And that Ben, who *invented* the dogma of never questioning what he says, and of doing without question and without hesitation everything he says, has been doing some pretty shady stuff to those who discover that Jacob might not exist, or even to those who discover that Ben is fallible. Whenever one of his own people discovers the truth about him, Ben has them killed or excom- municates them or kills them himself. And now, in this last episode, he's been *proven* fallible. EVERY ONE of his followers knows that he's fallible. And several of them now know that he has been systematically lying to them all along, telling them things that he knew were not true. One of them, who now knows this for himself, has even been ordered by Ben to kill two of his fellow "Others," BECAUSE they have found out the truth about Ben, and can't be allowed to live and possibly tell others what they have found out. And Ben is freaking right out. He's on this mad dash across the island, trying to salvage his own repu- tation and trying to do something...anything...to regain the control he's had over the minds of his followers for decades. And natch, being the season closer, it's a cliffhanger. We in the audience are left not knowing whether he'll win out and reestablsh control or not. I'm not bothered overmuch by this. I have a sneakin' suspicion how it'll all turn out for Ben, and for his former followers, in the end. Whether it takes one more television season or ten to resolve every- thing, Ben's goin' down. He's toast. He's toast because of a spiritual truism, one that I think is as close to "truth" as anything I've ever heard on the planet. It was perhaps best expressed by Gandhi: "When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it...always." Ben's goin' down because he forsook the ways of truth and love. He started believing that the means are justified by the end, and forgot that the means ARE the end. How you act determines your karma, not the supposed intent behind it. If you lie, you create the karma of a liar -- EVEN IF you've convinced yourself that you're lying "for the right reasons." If you can only relate to other human beings if they believe every word you say, do exactly the things that you tell them to do, and never doubt you, even for a moment, then do you really love them? I'm not convinced you do. Love in my book involves offering the person you love the freedom to think for themselves. I am not convinced that the demonization of and attempted suppression of doubt EVER works. As Edg suggested yesterday, try to fight it and suppress it however you might, doubt wins. No spiritual tradition in history has ever been successful at suppressing doubt, because doubt is as fundamental and as natural a part of the spiritual process as is "the natural tendency of the mind." Seekers doubt. That's the force that keeps them evolving. To suppress doubt and the essential I-don't-know-everything-yet-ness of it is IMO to fight against evolution itself. But doubt only *really* "wins" if there is something there to justify the doubt. If a spiritual seeker doubts the wisdom or perfection of his spiritual seeker and looks into it and finds no foun- ation for the doubt, doubt has only *strengthened* the seeker's belief in the teacher. ONLY IF -- upon careful analysis of the doubt and looking at all the evidence, the seeker finds that the doubt is based on fact -- can his belief in the teacher be eroded or destroyed. Ben took the wrong path as a spiritual leader. He decided that he couldn't *risk* allowing his followers to have doubts. So he instituted dogma that tried to ensure that they never were able to have those doubts. This dogma had the convenient side effect of allowing him to stay in charge and run everything, but it also had the drawback of provoking a pretty strong negative reaction in his followers if they ever *did* have some doubts, and found that the doubts were justified. Ben's dogma is as follows, "It is not safe to doubt. Doubt is a poison. The 'correct' mode of behavior is to believe everything your spiritual leader says completely, and to act upon it without hesitation. Anyone who does not do this is a traitor to the teacher and to the group as a whole." Sound familiar? It's IMO the bottom line of the definition of a "proper" teacher-student relationship as promoted by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. As a definition, and as dogma, I don't think it's all that "proper," and I don't think that his reasons for promoting it are any different than Ben's in "Lost."
