HIP LIKE ME
YEARS IN THE LIFE OF A "PERSON OF HAIR"
I am an odd hybrid: Half intellectual, and half bar-fly.
Think Jeff Goldblum, but if instead of getting trapped in that teleportation device
with a common housefly, he had gotten stuck in there with a pint of honey-brown ale
and a copy of one of Steven Pinker's 600-page tomes on how the mind works
or the origins of human language....
Hip Like Me is the story of Geoffrey Falk's experiences over a decade
of being subjected to various forms of "hairism" and real discrimination for being
a long-haired, irreligious software developer and aspiring musician in a short-hair world.
Written in the diary-like structure of John Howard Griffin's classic Black Like Me,
it touches irreverently on a wide range of very controversial topics, from the nature
of racism to multiculturalism to immigration policy to affirmative action to the parodied
need for "Hippie Studies" faculties in our universities.
Get ready for a long, strange trip, with a good dose of laugh-out-loud humor and occasional
language worthy of South Park thrown in.
Sample chapters are posted at
www.hiplikeme.com.
Download the (free) PDF, or buy the paperback.
"NORMAN EINSTEIN"
THE DIS-INTEGRATION OF KEN WILBER
Ken Wilber is the "long-sought Einstein of consciousness research," having been generously regarded
as such since the late 1970s.
Ken Wilber is "a genius of our times."
Ken Wilber is "the world's most intriguing and foremost philosopher."
Ken Wilber's ideas have influenced Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jeb Bush, Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins,
and a host of other luminaries, spiritual and otherwise. Writer Michael Crichton, leadership guru
Warren Bennis, playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues), alternative medicine's Larry Dossey,
the Wachowski Brothers (directors of The Matrix), and a handful of rock stars have all lent
their voices in support of the "integral" community.
Yet Ken Wilber, his celebrated theories of consciousness, and the increasingly unquestioning population
of "second-tier" spiritual aspirants surrounding him and participating in his Integral Institute (I-I) and
Integral University, are not what they appear to be.
"Norman Einstein": The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber
will show you why the community around Wilber is
being increasingly called a "cult," even by former founding members of I-I who have seen it first-hand.
ROCK & HOLY ROLLERS
THE SPIRITUAL BELIEFS
OF CHART-TOPPING ROCK STARS,
IN THEIR LIVES AND LYRICS
What do George Harrison, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, Jon Anderson (of Yes),
Kerry Livgren (of Kansas), and Madonna have
in common?
They've all been convinced, at one time or another, that Paramahansa Yogananda's
Autobiography of a Yogi was a record of real events, which could beneficially be taken
seriously.
Rock & Holy Rollers. Read the one-third-completed book, if ya want, in
PDF (419 KB) or
HTML.
STRIPPING THE GURUS
SEX, VIOLENCE, ABUSE AND ENLIGHTENMENT *
Armed with wit, insight, and truly astonishing research, Geoffrey Falk utterly demolishes the
notion of the enlightened guru who can lead devotees to nirvana. This entertaining and yet
deadly serious book should be read by everyone pursuing or thinking of pursuing the path of
guru devotion.
—John Horgan, author of Rational Mysticism
Stripping the Gurus is superb—one of the best books of its kind I have ever read.
The research is meticulous, the writing engaging, and the overall thesis:
devastatingly true. A stellar book.
—Dr. David C. Lane, California State University
This gripping and disturbing book should be read by anyone who finds themself revering a
spiritual teacher.
—Susan Blackmore, author of The Meme Machine
Ramakrishna was a homoerotic pedophile.
His chief disciple, Vivekananda, visited brothels in India.
Krishnamurti carried on an affair for over twenty years with the wife of a
good friend. Chögyam Trungpa drank himself into an early grave. One of Adi Da's
nine "wives" is a former Playboy centerfold. Bhagwan Rajneesh
sniffed laughing gas to get high. Andrew Cohen, guru and publisher of
What Is Enlightenment? magazine, by his
own reported admission sometimes "feels like a god."
These are typical of the "wizened sages" to whom otherwise-sensible people give their
devotion and unquestioning obedience, surrendering their independence, willpower,
and life's savings in the hope of realizing for themselves the same "enlightenment"
as they ascribe to the "perfect, God-realized" guru.
Why?
Is it for being emotionally vulnerable and "brainwashed," as the "anti-cultists" assert?
Or for being "willingly psychologically seduced," as the apologists unsympathetically
counter, confident that they themselves are "too smart" to ever fall into the same trap?
Or have devotees simply walked, with naïvely open hearts and thirsty souls, into
inherent dynamics of power and obedience which have showed themselves
in classic psychological studies from Milgram to Zimbardo, and to which each one of
us is susceptible every day of our lives?
Like the proud "Rude Boy" Cohen allegedly said, with a laugh, in response to the
nervous breakdown of one of his devoted followers: "It could happen to any one of you."
Don't let it happen to you. Don't get suckered in. Be prepared. Be informed.
Find out what reportedly goes on behind the scenes in even the best of our
world's spiritual communities.
You can start by reading this book.
* The inclusion of any particular individual in Stripping the Gurus is not meant to
suggest or imply that he or she represents him- or herself as a guru, nor is it
meant to suggest or imply that he or she has indulged in sex, violence, the abuse
of others, or any other illegal or immoral activities.
THE SCIENCE OF THE SOUL
ON CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE STRUCTURE OF REALITY
I endorse whole-heartedly the road you have traveled. Light is a—perhaps
the—powerful entry point to Spirit, and you ring the changes on it well.
It's a book I would like to have on my shelves to refer to.
—Huston Smith, Ph.D.
author, The World's Religions
Combines...astutely some of the great wisdoms of the spiritual world with the
emerging understanding of the physical universe.
—Dr. James Fadiman
Board of Editors
The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology
As a heroic journey of the mind into the mysterious realm of consciousness and maya in a vehicle fitted with the wheels of modern science and powered by the engine of yoga, the book merits a close study.
—S. Srinivasachar
The Ramakrishna Institute
Numerous books have been published over the past few decades on the subject of the
apparent similarities between Eastern philosophy and the ideas of the
"New Physics." However, without exception, these writings have failed to
address the real meaning of "As above, so below": that the macrocosm of the
universe is mirrored in the microcosm of the human body, and that the archetypal
patterns of structure on the causal and astral levels of reality have their lower
reflections on the physical level of being.
In The Science of the Soul, Geoffrey D. Falk corrects this significant oversight.
Drawing equally from yogic, Buddhist, Christian and Taoist sources, Falk shows that it
is only by considering the detailed structure of the cosmos and the microcosmos that
we can understand both the unified message which the world's scriptures have tried to
convey, and their precise relation to the physicists' understanding of the physical
level of reality—in particular, the ideas of David Bohm and Itzhak Bentov.
PLEASE NOTE THAT I NO LONGER HAVE ANY CONFIDENCE THAT ANY OF THE IDEAS I'VE PRESENTED
IN THE SCIENCE OF THE SOUL HAVE ANY VALIDITY AT ALL—notwithstanding that they
still make much more sense than do Ken Wilber's "theories."
The Science of the Soul is available for download here:
The Science of the Soul: On Consciousness and the Structure of Reality
(PDF, 1.0 MB).
Bear in mind that I didn't actually know how to write until I got to the end of the editing
process for my second book, Stripping the Gurus.
So SOS is not an easy read, in terms of the disjointed style. Nevertheless, if you can look
past that, the ideas sparkle. Even if they may well all be wrong....
Copyright © February, 2010 by Geoff
All rights reserved
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