A Man's Magazine
I feel it would be helpful to your readers to understand that the form of enlightenment you describe is a manifestation experienced mainly by men, which is why your magazine features articles about men who are sages, teachers and spiritual leaders. The popular and harmful misunderstanding is that men and women reach God in the same way, but that for some reason more men reach the ultimate union (enlightenment) than women. The truth is that women's path—more appropriately called "endarkenment"—is usually slightly different (not inferior), and is much less well understood, discussed or recognized in our culture. I'm sure there are many people who would appreciate clarification on the matter of women.
Caitlin Adair
Brattleboro, Vermont

Yep, it is a man's magazine but that can't be helped. Men have to intellectualize before they draw information into their heart and soul. The female brain still retains a nubbin of the love that spoke directly to the gods. This makes the task of setting aside the ego to allow the soul's intention to dominate much easier than for the male. As my Medicine Woman put it, "Sweat lodges are for the men. Women don't need it. Women don't need vision quests, either. It's easy for them to talk to Spirit." I am a woman who thinks like a man, as I operate out of a high level of male energy, so I've always been interested in the "how to" aspects of the spiritual. I understand the truths in all your interviews and articles. They are neither provocative nor revolutionary. They are OLD NEWS. They all come with the territory of enlightenment. Why sensationalize? The irony is that it is impossible to verbalize the woman's way because the act of intellectualizing transforms it into the man's way. The source of wisdom and its quality are, in the end, identical, but the approach to opening to that source is quite different. Women leap directly into the place of no words—where vocabulary is inadequate—and they leave the experience there, they don't bother to drag it back into the place of intellectual analysis. Woman is apt to say, "Here, let me show you," zap you into outer space, pull on the cord to reel you in when it's time to come back and say, "See? Now, next time you can do it by yourself." It doesn't translate well into a magazine article, now does it?
Eileen Novy Sidney
British Columbia

CONGRATULATIONS
You want to know what your readers think of What Is Enlightenment? Well, I've just finished reading your last issue and I feel excited, moved, stirred and inspired. And I felt the same way after reading the issues before that. Speaking as someone who has been seriously studying spirituality for some thirty years, I think you are doing a wonderful job, and a tremendously important one. Best wishes.
Gordon Benson
Swansea, Wales

I would like to take this opportunity to tell you how much I sincerely like What Is Enlightenment?. Frankly, it is the best spiritual magazine I have ever read. It deals in depth with the most important issues of our time—at least for those who have a sincere interest in spirituality. It manages to be both very serious and very pleasant to read. Your interview of Lee Lozowick ["Rock & Roll, Crazy Wisdom and Slavery to the Divine," Summer 1995], and your account of your visit with the authors of The Guru Papers ["The Kramer Papers," Spring/Summer 1996], are models of excellent journalistic writing on subtle subjects. I also particularly liked Georg Feuerstein's piece, "The Guru in the Postmodern World" [Spring/Summer 1996]. I should tell you that praise does not fall easily from my lips. A writer by profession, I have published about a dozen books and conducted many interviews with all sorts of people, so I have some fairly high standards. But your articles have really impressed me, and it is a great joy for me to be able to give unqualified praise. I'll stop before your ankles inflate, as we say in France, but I really wanted to share my deep appreciation of your work. Please continue nourishing us with such good food for thought.
Gilles Farcet
La Voulte, France

It keeps amazing me how What Is Enlightenment? improves with each issue, especially the last three. It shows what intelligence, dedication and hard work can do. Your magazine is making an absolutely unique contribution to the spiritual world, and I wish you continuing success.
Bill Eilers
Rishikesh, India

I dropped by a local bookstore and was impressed to see What Is Enlightenment? for sale. It was very SLICK. Somehow I'm not subscribed to it any more. I'll fix that when I get back from Tibet (lucky me).
Bob Bowman
Eugene, Oregon

SECULAR ENLIGHTENMENT
I just happened to stumble across a copy of What Is Enlightenment? for the very first time. What a remarkable publication you have there—a delicious discovery. A quick question: I'm wondering if you have devoted any coverage to secular thinkers—those who define spirituality in wholly nonreligious terms. The reason I ask? I'm currently involved in efforts to help elucidate a purely secular interpretation of what has generally been the remit of religious thinkers.
Nick Routledge
via e-mail

Editor's reply:
We are also interested in this fascinating subject. We hope to be able to devote an entire issue of What Is Enlightenment? to secular and scientific formulations of spiritual truths in the near future.

BLACKER VS. KRAMER
In his introduction to your last issue, Hal Blacker writes, "While the failures of so many modern spiritual teachers have undoubtedly contributed to the current mood of cynicism about purity and spiritual authority, we feel that the real root of this cynicism lies deeper in the human soul." This statement indicates a perhaps unconscious acquiescence to what antiauthoritarians such as Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad are saying. In many cases, these so-called "failures" are being judged as such by people like Kramer and Alstad who do not believe in the possibility of perfect enlightenment to begin with. The result is the application of scientific materialism to the actions of spiritual teachers. These "failures," if they exist, are only in the samsaric, physical-world activities of a handful of teachers, and have nothing to do with whether the teachers are successful in advancing their students on the spiritual path. In fact, some of the teachers being attacked are among those most successful in advancing their students. Briefly, I find the view expressed by the authors of The Guru Papers—that the ideal of selflessness is responsible for the mess the world is in today—astounding and fascinating. As soon as I read that "survival" was the basis of their morality, I knew that their premise was based on emotionality, with a veneer of intellectuality pasted on top. For example, Watergate and Contragate would both be sanctioned, not condemned, by the morality of "survival." However, I don't blame Mr. Blacker for not being able to counter every irrational concept on the spot, since I myself am not particularly fast at discerning the holes in these kinds of arguments. But someone like Shankara would have made quick mincemeat of their point of view. Despite their claims of "oneness experiences," I don't think that Kramer and Alstad have had many of these, and they certainly don't understand the implications thereof, or the real philosophy behind, for example, Advaita Vedanta.

As for Andrew Harvey, there is some credibility in opposing something and then changing your mind, but there is no credibility in thinking someone was the savior of the world and then changing your mind, since in the second case one could just as easily have been fooled when one changed one's mind.
Ken Stuart
via e-mail

In reference to your "interview" with Joel Kramer—the basis of your differences is as old as time. Go get a copy of Henry Adams's great book Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres and read the chapter entitled "Abelard." Read the entire book, for that matter. You will find that era to have a lot in common with our own. Namasté (a "Realist" greeting).
Victoria Adamson
Santa Teresa, New Mexico

Editor's note:
Henry Adams's Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres is a classic study of medieval history and thought. The chapter mentioned recounts a famous debate between the Scholastic philosophers Abelard (whose tragic love affair with Heloise has been immortalized) and William of Champeaux over whether universals such as "oneness" actually exist or are only concepts—a debate that was, at points, uncannily similar to the wranglings of Joel Kramer and Hal Blacker in "The Kramer Papers." As her salutation indicates, the view that such universals are real, known in this context as "Realism," is apparently shared by Ms. Adamson.

I haven't read The Guru Papers but I do see that the authors are right. Look, you have a very bad tooth. It hurts every time it is touched. That tooth is the "intellectual" understanding of "oneness." You have been giving yourself novocaine by associating with like-minded people who also have this "intellectual" understanding. Question: Is Hal Blacker trying to "save" Joel Kramer? In brotherhood, a fellow novocaine addict.
John Leaman
Napa, California

I want to acknowledge your exposé, in the latest edition of What Is Enlightenment?, of Joel Kramer's severe confusion and its cynical effect on the cultivation of genuine spiritual understanding in our culture. I found your article courageous on two counts: 1) your honesty about your own vulnerability during the encounter with Kramer, and 2) your willingness to share your perceptions of the emotional imbalance around his point of view rather than just treating his ideas in an intellectual way. Yours is a much more whole treatment of the conflict than rendering it just as an argument of ideas. Are you aware of Ken Wilber's treatment of this topic of selfishness and selflessness, including a biting critique of Kramer's work, in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality? Thank you again for your good work.
Eric A. Hornak
via e-mail

Editor's note:
In language idiomatic to the model of evolution outlined in his book Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Ken Wilber writes: "The Guru Papers . . . is a quite typical example of a purely Descended approach claiming to have the Whole story. The authors mistake their ignorance of the Ascending current for a critique of all Ascending endeavors, and then interpret any challenge to their own divine egoism as being "authoritarian." Their effort is admirable when confined to the half of reality they admit, but it is an effort that remains, in its partialness, steeped in the violence and authoritarian dominance of Descent. Although [their approach] utterly lack[s] any depth, they make up for that in a type of fearless shallowness that confers great confidence on their reductive pronouncements and makes happy the hand of Thanatos that they so freely wave. The real lack of any Ascending current, any genuinely transformative interior disclosures, allows the bearers of [this] worldview to go on about their business fundamentally unchallenged in their divine egoism. There is no consciousness higher or deeper than their present state, only a different monological worldview that others should accept. So much for self-transformation. Their salvation is not a matter of transcendence in their own case, but in altering the views of others. Hence the dominance inherent in Descent; hence the authoritarian stance claiming to combat authoritarianism; . . . hence the divine egoism coming to us as our glorious saviors, themselves already saved."