Gurus Gone Wild

by Jeani DiCarlo

I just finished reading a book called “Being in Balance” by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. It was a lovely book with lovely thoughts reworked from the great healers such as James Allen. Actually it was lovely up until page 63 where Dr. Dyer stepped into his moral duty as a modern age guru feeling compelled to equate the US and its citizens with terrorists.

This was a sad use of his power and even sadder for the many who will read his words and become angrier at the US. Will his words put people in balance or will his opinions make them more fearful of the US, perhaps, creating even more hatred towards his own country?

He did the very thing he told his readers not to do, so Dr. Dyer negated his own philosophy. I suggest the Dr. read James Allen again and refresh his memory. What the world needs is healers who sooth, not incite.

The point here is not whether his opinion is valid or not, after all, we have been having pro and anti war arguments for many years. The point is whether expressing such a radical thought will keep anyone in balance. It certainly threw me out of balance and if Dr. doesn’t care about keeping everyone in balance, but only those who agree with his political views, than he is not a healer but another citizen using his fame to impose his political opinion. Then what’s the difference between him and leftist Hollywood stars, who, by the way, also throw me out of balance?
And if he is not who he claims to be, than who is he?

Dr. Dyer’s book was an early release on QVC, the all-American shopping network, as a “toady’s’ special”, thus, selling in the thousands. Why would any of their buyers allow a book like this that blatantly equates Americans with terrorists to become their darling? To my knowledge, there are not any QVC shoppers who blow up weddings and behead contractors, unless, Dr. Dyer knows of some.

As someone involved with the healing arts and metaphysics, I am constantly dealing with the world of new age gurus that fell so out of balance that they incite hatred around the world. Imagine if they had said something good about the millions helped by the US, thus, soothing many fears and helping to bring an end to the war.

I am convinced that well-meaning men such as Dr. Dyer and the peace movement have caused more war than they realize. I am sure when they leave this planet, they will see how they also played a part in this death dance.

My dear friend is a Muslim woman who has fled from the bonds of slavery; I hear the tears of the torment she has suffered since birth. I hear her cries of gratitude to the US. Why do I hear it and the Dyers of the world do not? Do they choose to turn a deaf ear?

Dr. Dyer, you carefully put the word terrorist in parenthesis as if they are a fabrication of America’s imagination. Dr. Dyer, I am a witness of 9/11. I will not go into detail, but I will tell you that the planes hitting the towers were not flown by people in parenthesis, they were flown by terrorists. The sound of death was not in parenthesis either; the men and women jumping out of the towers were not falling on parenthesis but on a New York City street.

This story is one of great sadness and I do not expect men and women of ‘peace” living in affluence to understand this.
What I ask is men and women of peace to pray and not to incite. Did we not learn that this never works? Why not even one guru ever condemned the acts of the terrorists? Why when Dr. Dyer writes about terrorists he puts the word in parenthesis but he so courageous in attacking his own countrymen? But then again what is any American (including QVC shoppers) going to do to him?

Dr Dyer, you are saying that it is the so-called Law of Attraction that causes our problems. You claim that it is our fault that the Muslim terrorists attack us. Then why don’t you explain how that law functioned when the Muslims began to exterminate Christian populations about 800 years prior to the conception of America?

Mr. Dryer, America did not start a war; this war has been going on
for 1400 years. A base statement that you made in your book shows not only your own hatred unveiled but also your ignorance of world religion and politics. I pray that you put away your hate and trade it in for love, than you will, perhaps, be able to rise to the healer you claim to be. Let’s hope it is in this lifetime, so you don’t have to do this again.

God Is Not Great...or at least not as great as Christopher Hitchens

by Yervand Kochar

In his recent book “God is not Great” Christopher Hitchens writes very graphically about things he cannot see. This work is of great value if one considers reading an appendix of errors and omissions more than the actual book.
Those who think that reading heavy books contributes to global warming can always spare the planet by not reading it. The essence of the book is expressed in its title “God is not Great” and that’s what it is all about.

Back in Armenia years ago, I had a great teacher who said that those who say there is no God think they are God themselves. My teacher was a drama critic. His life was turned into hell by the communist regime for nonconformist approach to …mediaeval Armenian theatre.
The communists also believed that God was not great, that the Party was greater than God.

Christopher Hitchens, though, has a definite advantage before God. God never spoke with a refined British accent as Mr. Hitchens does. (Although for some reason in all Biblical movies Jews, Egyptians and Romans do speak exclusively in the Queen’s English.)
Hitchens may not be saying anything new but he sells it with a British accent and that’s all that matters. This reminds me of another man who speaks with an accent. Hungarian accent. He once said, “Because of the raise of fundamentalism in all religions, now, our old friends, atheists get popular again. But unfortunately they cannot say anything helpful or new. Well, because atheists cannot say anything new”. This man is a bishop of a Gnostic Church in Hollywood. (Not a Gnostic from another ‘God is not Great’ book “The DaVinci’s Code”, but a Gnostic in a sense of knowing God is great since 3rd century AD.)
The bishop escaped Hungary in 1940’s after his father, a count, was shot in the head in front of his eyes by the occupying Communists, who now moved to spread the gospel of God is not great into the Eastern Europe.

So on one side of my equation we have an eloquent, wealthy and famous Englishman spreading the gospel of non-God in a country that relies on God and on the other side we have two foreigners who were persecuted in their countries that rejected God. This is like one of those mediaeval puzzles such as if Cod is omnipotent can He create a stone that He cannot move. Looks like some original thinkers thought that God was probably not that great even in the mediaeval times. This midlevel stuff is really weird!

The problem with Hitchens and people like him is that they are not really atheists or so-called militant atheists. The prove is again in the title of his book. Atheists do not think that God is not great; they think that there is no God. And as the bishop said, atheists cannot say anything new because they adhere to a closed argument. There is no God. Period. What else?
But once you say that God is not great you acknowledge God, you believe in God. You just do not trust God. You think, as my teacher said, that you are better and greater than God.
I will not go into lengths to prove my teacher's idea, but I urge you to do it yourself, in a scientific, empirical approach (an approach one wishes Charles Darwin and Al Gore would employ in their religious quest).
Observe people who claim that God is not great and you will notice a common characteristic that manifests throughout all of them. They are proud, superfluous and they think they are better than anyone else.

What these people do not understand about religion is the fact that true religion liberates one from the very concept of God and desperate attempts in trying to figure it out. True religion makes one to be an organic and important part of a whole creation. In its very essence religion is irreligious. By submitting to something that you think is greater than you are, you see yourself in perspective and realize how great you are after all.
When you deny God you inevitably place yourself into a position where you have to be like God, you have to worry like God and you have to be tortured with the idea of God and God’s role in society. Like the communists, you get into a paranoid frenzy and believe that someone’s opinion about mediaeval theatre can be threatening to the well being of society.
You need not to have God as unconsciously as the fundamentalist need to have Him. You depend on God for His not being. You become ardently religious and fundamentally annoyed by yourself and your and others religions which now seem to be the cause of all the confusion in your self-centered universe

Of course, again, it all can be far less torturous and could even pass as an original thought when the center of the universe thinks and sells it with the British accent. Yet, once you find yourself in a prison cell and the accent evaporates in the morning like alcohol in Paris Hilton’s brain, just like Miss Hilton the first book you kind of want to open, even if the urge is instinctive and temporary, is the one that says that God is still great… or at least greater than Christopher Hitchens.