One of the very early and most serious critics of Ken Wilber was David Lane, who has an amazing collection of material on his Neural Surfer website. Back in 1996, he was one of the first to expose that systematic misinterpretation of other’s ideas was one of the main intellectual tactics in building that version of the integral theory. But David focused on the theory of evolution as one aspect, Jeff Meyerhoff has since shown that it is truly systematic.

I have then lost David Lane from sight, wasn’t even successfull in googling for his material for a long while. Recently rediscovering his amazing collection of resources, I came to a short piece that discusses one aspect of spiritual authoritarianism, i.e. our tendency to credit others for what is really the self-production of bliss.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Spiritual experiences are not unlike orgasms (even if that seems like a stretch). Why? Because both are SELF generated via our own body but we tend to IMPUTE the bliss of such to the OTHER person, even though it was our own neurology and peripheral nervous system doing the juicing. With gurus it gets even worse, since they tend to deceive the neophyte into believing that they are really the CAUSE of inner meditative experience, wherein they are at best just CATALYSTS for it. We tend to confuse the two and end up giving way too much credit to the elevated teacher. Perhaps we can call it psychic vampirism…. though there is nothing mystical about it.

That’s why websites like http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/god5.htm are so vitally important. They point out the absurdity of believing that some super luminal being actual does something. Yet, as I can attest from my own experiences, when it comes to yogis and gurus of India devotees tend to check their brains in at the ashram gate and give Spock a sleeping pill. If one could just think rationally and dispassionately about the subject, even for a few minutes, it would become readily apparent that these so-called god men actually do NOT do anything. And, yet, they are taking your hard earned neurological discharges to the bank, because you think they are performing miracles. No, our brains are doing that.”

Such material can be found in the following out of print book:

“EXPOSING CULTS: WHEN THE SKEPTICAL MIND CONFRONTS THE MYSTICAL (New York: Garland Reference Library Edition, 1994. Out of Print).

This website cites an abbreviated version of it here: and a pertinent excerpt is here .

David Lane is monitoring the cultic mind here, where you’ll find lots of info on various guru’s and movements.