READER CAUTION IS ADVISED!!!
In Our Savage God: The Perverse Use of Eastern Thought (1974),
Spalding professor of comparative religion at Oxford, R. C. Zaehner,
discusses the monistic goals of Hinduism and Buddhism and how certain
persons have applied such philosophy to their own ends.1
For example, the notorious Satanist Aleister Crowley was influenced
by Eastern concepts and experienced an enlightenment undergirded by his
belief in the philosophical monism of the East:
Crowley has been condemned as the arch-Satanist, but this is
perhaps to do him less than justice, for he belonged to an age-old
tradition which saw the Eternal as the ultimate unity in which all the
opposites were reconciled, including good and evil. He had lived in
the East and was familiar with the scriptures of both the Hindus and
Buddhists for whom these ideas were commonplace, but whereas the early
Buddhists at least considered that training in good life was a
necessary prerequisite for the realization of the Eternal, there were
occult sects among both religions who disputed this and practiced what
they preached.2
Zaehner also discusses Crowley’s achievement of Buddhist
"enlightenment," the results of which were accordingly "revised" by his
spirit guide "Aiwass" who, having helped him go beyond the categories of
good and evil, now taught him not renunciation but, with the Tantrics,
indulgence:
It may be assumed that in which John Symonds calls his "Buddhist
phase," when, in what is now Vietnam, he attained to one of the higher
Buddhist trances ("Neroda-Sammapatti," more correctly spelt
nirodha-samapatti), which corresponds to what we would call the
annihilation of the ego, he was tempted to turn his back on the world
which, for the Buddhists, is not only full of sorrow and anxiety but
actually is sorrow and anxiety, thereby attaining to the unutterable
peace of Nirvana. This, however, was not the way of his "Holy Guardian
Angel," Aiwass, who taught him that absolute bliss could only be
attained by enjoying the good things of this world to the full—riches,
power, and above all sex, the earthly counterpart of the transcendent
union of the opposites.3
As a result, Crowley began the utilization of sexual rites for
ostensibly "spiritual" ends. His "Ordo Templi Orientalis" (Order of the
Oriental Temple or O.T.O.) became a branch of Western Tantra; indeed
Crowley seems to have been the principal agent responsible for
introducing the perversion of Eastern sexual magic to the West.
He developed elaborate rites of sexual "magick."... OTO... had
connections with the left-hand Tantra in India, the adepts of which
practiced sexual magic, their purpose being to attain to the Absolute
through the union of the opposites, that is, the male and female
principles allegedly inherent in the one true God.4
Yet strangely, Crowley’s first experience of this "union of
opposites" was an act of sodomy. "Be that as it may, the fact remains
that it was largely Crowley who was responsible for introducing Indian
sexual magic into the West."5
Zaehner proceeds to discuss how Charles Manson also carried Crowley’s
philosophy to its logical conclusion: "If God is one, what is bad?"6
Manson carried Crowley’s premises to their logical conclusions: if
God and the Devil, good and evil, life and death, can really be
transcended in an eternal Now, then sadism and sexual profligacy are
not enough: you must transcend life and death itself either by killing
or being killed. Charles Manson did not shrink from this ultimate
"truth."7
Manson, of course, was only convicted of nine murders—brutal and
sadistic as they were. He most certainly committed many more. In
Helter Shelter, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi cites a figure of 35
that even Manson boasted of 8—and
some suspect this number is probably too low.
"It was fun," said Tex Watson after the so-called Tate murders in
which five human beings were stabbed and gunned to death, including
the actress Sharon Tate, heavy with child and pleading for the new
life within her. What a hope! They left her to the last so that she
could see the butchery of her friends and then sliced her up in her
turn. "It was fun." Or, in the words of Susan Atkins, the most savage
as well as the most devoted of Charlie’s Family: "It felt so good, the
first time I stabbed her." "Charlie was happy."9
Nevertheless, a major justification for such vicious murders was
provided by Eastern philosophy and texts, a philosophy which is,
unfortunately, increasingly permeating Western society:
Charles Manson had claimed to be Jesus Christ, but he was also much
influenced by Indian ideas which filtered through to him through such
sects as OTO, "The Process," and "The Fountain of the World." From
these ultimately Indian sources he derived the theory of reincarnation
and karma.10
So spake the ancient Hindu text; and it spoke rightly, for in
eternity there can be no action, but in time each man seems to have
his own particular part to play: everyone has his own karma, as
Charlie knew, and, for better or for worse, "death was Charlie’s
trip."
This is a great mystery—and the eternal paradox with which the
Eastern religions perpetually wrestle. If the ultimate truth, or the
"perennial philosophy" as Aldous Huxley called it, is that "All is
One" and "One is All," and that in this One all the opposites,
including good and evil, are eternally reconciled, then have we any
right to blame Charles Manson? For seen from the point of view of the
eternal Now, he did nothing at all.11
By achieving an Eastern form of "enlightenment," Manson apparently
believed he had become free from all constraints.
Charles Manson had achieved what the Zen Buddhists call
enlightenment, the supreme lightning flash of which shatters the time
barrier, and through which one is reborn in eternity, where time does
not exist and death is an almost laughable impossibility. All things
are fused into one.... Lucidly he drew the obvious conclusion which
our modern Zen Buddhists do all they can to hush up. Where he had been
all things were One and there was "no diversity at all": he had passed
beyond good and evil. At last he was free!12
(to be continued)
Notes:
1
R. C. Zaehner, Our Savage
God: The Perverse Use of Eastern Thought (New York: Sheed and
Ward, 1974), pp. 57-58.
2
Ibid., p. 41.
3
Ibid., p. 42.
4
Ibid., pp. 42-43.
5
Ibid.
6
Interview, Rolling Stone,
June, 25, 1970.
7
Zaehner, Our Savage God,
p. 43.
8
Vincent Bugliosi, Helter
Skelter (New York: Bantam, 1969), p. 641.
9
Zaehner, Our Savage God,
p. 56.
10
Ibid., p. 59; cf. Larry
Kahaner, Cults That Kill: Probing the Underworld of Occult
Crime (New York: Warner, 1988), passim.
11
Zaehner, Our Savage God,
pp. 72-73.
12
Ibid., pp. 63, 65.
