An exploration of the shock tactics and radical teachings of "crazy-wise adepts, holy fools and rascal gurus" - the cult religious leaders who challenge our commonsense views of reality and norms of conduct. This book explores this universal dimension of spirituality in a blend of history, philosophy, theology and first-person accounts. Here are Fools for Christ, sitting naked on garbage heaps, eccentric Zen masters baffling their students with beatings and belly laughs and enigmatic spritual clowns like Gurdjieff and Aleister Crowley.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Russian spiritual teacher Georgei Gurdjieff force-fed vegetarians hefty meat dishes. Japanese Zen master Lin-chi thrashed his pupils. Indian guru Meher Baba remained silent for 43 years. All employed what Feuerstein, author of books on yoga and religion, calls "holy madness" or "crazy wisdom," using eccentric behavior or shock tactics to communicate an alternative vision. A former devotee of Da Free John (aka Da Love-Ananda, ne Franklin Jones), Feuerstein presents critical cameos of holy fools (Aleister Crowley, BhagwanRajneesh, etc.) as well as guidelines for choosing a wise, enlightened guru and avoiding the exploitative. Yet his gallery of spiritual eccentrics is so diverse--ranging from Christian mystics to Hindu holy men who live on garbage heaps--that it's hard to credit the author's generalizations about the value of holy folly as an authentic path to transcendence.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Music mogul Lissauer has compiled an alphabetical list of over 19,000 songs, covering standards and hits that include minstrel tunes, war songs, operetta pieces, jazz, instrumentals, blues, pop, rock, rhythm and blues, and country and western. Each entry includes writer and lyricist, date of popularity, and usually a sentence or two describing its context and the performer(s) who popularized it. A year-by-year listing follows, and the volume closes with an index of the writers (but not performers). This is a good tool for basic information, but those libraries already owning the 13-volume series Popular Music , edited by Bruce Pollock and Nat Shapiro (Gale, 1975-88), and not concerned with the gay Nineties will find Lissauer unnecessary.
- Robert Aken, Univ. of Kentucky Libs., Lex ington
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Robert Aken, Univ. of Kentucky Libs., Lex ington
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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More About the Author
Dr. Georg Feuerstein (born 1947) is a German-Canadian Indologist. Feuerstein has authored over 45 books on mysticism, Yoga, Tantra, and Hinduism and Buddhism.
Dr. Feuerstein offers distance-learning courses on Yoga philosophy and history through Traditional Yoga Studies at http://www.traditionalyogastudies.com
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Important issues & info; misleading spiritual viewpoint.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools, and Rascal Gurus (An Omega Book) (Hardcover)
This book talks about important issues but, to my mind, suffers from a terrible blindness to abuses both subtle and blatant. The author does recognize that many observers willcondemn the antinomian "shock tactics" he thinks are so valuable. He himself seems ambivalent about the more blatant abuses, but mostly he excuses them as necessary in the holy war against "concensus trance", which seems to mean any state of consciousness which opposes cosmic or "oneness" consciousness. Feuerstein's attitude seems to be that the avowed purpose of rascal gurus -- to bestow"enlightenment" on the lazy-minded -- is of such transcendant value that merely mundane ethical values are expendable. This is another version of the end justifying the means. Cult leaders are expert manipulators and "shock tactics" are useful weapons in their arsenal. One might well question the spiritual attainments of gurus who are oblivious to thepsychological reality of personal boundary violations. One might also question the motivation of self-appointed teachers who enjoy giving others "difficult lessons". Victor Frankl, the psychiatrist, learned some very difficult (and valuable) lessons from his enforced stay in the NAZI concentration camps. Are we to conclude, then, that his captors were his benefactors? It is useful to have a long recitation of the many abuses perpetrated by gurus over the years. Read them and weep, not least for the author's blindness. Let me give examples: One Zen Master gives his disciple a koan to solve. A koan is a verbal puzzle not soluable by rational thought. Its purpose in Zen ideology is to force the student to abandon reasoning, which is devalued by Zen, and snap into a state of awareness valued by Zen, namely "satori" or enlightenment. This particular koan was: "Stop the train from Tokyo." The disciple wrestled with the koan for weeks. Finally his frustration led to what I would guess was despair. In an ironic suicidal gesture, he obeyed literally the koan's injunction; he laid his body on the tracks and was killed by a train. Feuerstein's remarkable comment on this tragedy is the glimmer of hope that the poor fellow may have attained enlightenment in the seconds before the train smashed into him! No mention of the Zen Master's insensitivity to his disciple's state of mind, nor any thought that an overly brutal teaching method might be partly at fault. This is an example of valuing transcendance over worldliness, a cruel result of what Alice Miller has called "salvational ideology". It was particularly painful to read the account of a young husband whose wife was sexually seduced by the guru Adi Da, after the guru befuddled the husband by getting him drunk. The husband has a vague sense that he has been wronged, but is focused on the lesser issue of his sobriety being violated. He is still asleep to the greater violation because he is still deluded by the guru's claim to perfection and holiness. Surely the selfless guru is teaching his disciple a valuable lesson in giving up attachment [attachment to his wife, no less!] Surely that has to be the explanation, ....doesn't it? Since Feuerstein pooh-poohs the idea of mind control, he is blind to the power relationship operating here, a kind of confidence game that can lead to spiritual slavery. The guru mind-rapes the husband in order to sexually use the wife. I pray for this man's deliverance from domination by his guru, but I pity the pain and rage that will likely accompany the dawning of the truth. To his credit, Feuerstein is at least trying to grapple with the troubling manifestations of religion's incestuous and confusing love affair with obedience and authority. I believe his worldview suffers from the hidden dualism so well explained by Kramer and Alstad in "The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power", which I recommend highly as a useful antidote to the present book.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Penetrating and impeccable.,
By A Customer
This review is from: Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools and Rascal Gurus (Paperback)
This is a penetrating and impeccable book, and it's a shame that it's out of print. The author's comments above are a start at the necessary postscript addressing the controversies of the last ten years; it remains, however, a gift of rare integrity and objectivity from personal experience.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazt-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools and Rascal Gurus,
By Patricia - numerologist - "-" (Kentfield, CA 94904) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools and Rascal Gurus (Paperback)
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