Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools and Rascal Gurus [Paperback]

George Feuerstein (Author), Roger Walsh (Foreword)

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140193707
• ISBN-13: 978-0140193701
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #838,739 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Important issues & info; misleading spiritual viewpoint., February 6, 1999

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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Penetrating and impeccable., May 7, 1999

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.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not very Objective, November 8, 2007

By	Zulu Warrior "71RoadRunner" (Antelope, OR) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holy Madness: The Shock Tactics and Radical Teachings of Crazy-Wise Adepts, Holy Fools and Rascal Gurus (Paperback)

I respect Feuerstein as an expert in his field. His analysis of Bhagwan is rather astute, and he tries to be objective. But I question his TRUE motif. He writes the book the same year as Bhagwan's death, so it seems to me that he is just part of the cumulative bandwagon that jumped off. Bhagwan writes himself it is much easier to follow dead people, because they are no longer alive and no longer controversial/dangerous. To me, it seems Feuerstein is comfortable knowing that Bhagwan is gone and couldn't confront him. Rather cowardly. In honesty, maybe he feared Bhagwan's followers. I don't know. But what disappoints me most about the analysis is that Feuerstein does not mention Bhagwan's talent for literature. The fact that he had/has authored over 600+ books (many Darshan diaries). Bhagwan covers everything from Jesus, Hasidm, Zen, Bhudda, Sufism, Nietszche, Taoism, the works with expert skill, sometimes comedic, sometimes perhaps controversailly wrong. To me Feuerstein is a subjective conformist and has an agenda. He is not authentic.