"jomopinata" posted on the Fellowship of Friends Discussion blog, November 6, 2013:
(From an article by Jean Callahan, “Leaving the Ashram,” Common Boundary, July/August 1992, at pp. 36-37.)
“Jung called it enantiodromia, the tendency of a person who has held one point of view exclusively to swing to the opposite extreme. Those who have dedicated themselves to the spirit are particularly prone to it. Suddenly, seeing all that they have missed, some become just as cynical and materialistic as they had been devoted and transcendental. Having once worshiped the guru as God incarnate, they now feel the need to smash him as a false idol. This encounter with the shadow marks the experience of very nearly every former believer who has left an ashram. It happens almost automatically, as if a scale tipped too far to one side were now simply righting itself.
Thomas Easley knows about enantiodromia. In 1989, as part of the inner circle, he left the Fellowship of Friends, an obscure California-based group loosely based on the philosophical teachings of the Sufi mystics G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky. For years, Easley was hopelessly dependent upon the group’s leader, Robert Burton, who was for him the model of all spiritual growth and personal development. ‘He made all the decisions for me,’ says Easley, ‘from what tie to wear to what car to drive, from what to eat to how to go to the bathroom.’ As long as he remained with the Fellowship of Friends, Easley handed over all the money he made selling paintings–to galleries, museums and wealthy European families–to Burton. In return, he claims, Burton seduced him into a sexual relationship when he was in his early 20s. ‘I don’t trust anyone.’ Easley says now. ‘When you find out that the man who was supposed to be the second coming of Christ is actually a sexual abuser, whom do you trust after that?’ Easley was actually thrown out of the group for making his accusations. After spending some time in India, he returned to the United States, where he lived quietly for a year and a half before escaping to India again. He felt out of rhythm in the U.S., too naive to function in the New York art scene, where he was trying to establish credibility.
‘I’m like a man who’s been released from a prison camp,’ he says. ‘How can you relate to people when you can’t even tell them what you’ve been doing for the past 20 years?’”
