Aesthetic Realism is a cult

  Who they are, how they operate • Written by former members

“...one of the consultants took the tape cassette out of the recorder and... informed me that there would be no further consultations until I changed and incorporated AR more radically into my life.”

written by a former AR student, May 2, 2005

When I read Eli Siegel's book, Self and World I was deeply impressed. Even now that I have long believed that Aesthetic Realism is too cultish for me, I still think Self and World is one of the great books of the human race. What made it impossible for me to fully participate in the activities of AR's adherents was the dogmatism about Siegel being #1 in all of history, and other similar rigid dogmatisms of the AR people.

I admired that for a quite modest price, I could have three people sit around a table and dialogue very insightfully with me about my life. But I still recall the last consultation I had -- at the time I did not know it was to be the last.

“It was very difficult for me to surrender to AR in the total fashion they seemed to want.”

Toward the end of the consultation, to my slight shock, one of the consultants took the tape cassette out of the recorder and, instead of giving it to me as had been the practice with prior consultations with me, put it into his bag and informed me that there would be no further consultations until I changed and incorporated AE more radically into my life.

I didn't have a problem with the fact that they were terminating the consultations. It was true that I had always resisted and questioned the kind of total commitment they evinced, in part because I had been exposed to many other teachings and had my own spiritual experiences as touchstones, and I didn't believe that any one doctrine could ever exhaustively or perfectly explain the evolving human condition. So it was very difficult for me to surrender to AR in the total fashion they seemed to want. I was merely looking for the best current doctrines and practices I could find, not the one doctrine, and AR had looked like it could be very important and helpful.

What bothered me was not that they had suddenly ended the consultations, but that they had at the end of the last consultation taken into their possession a tape cassette on which I had bared my soul very intimately, and they had done so without any prior warning that this was to happen. I felt a

“I felt a bit raped psychologically.... if you are thinking of getting into the AR consultation process, realize that they could end it all suddenly, and that you could find your most intimate thoughts on tape in someone else's possession.”

bit raped psychologically, and I suspected that they were holding the tape as a kind of security for themselves -- should I criticize AE publicly, they could air my dirty laundry publicly. Sort of a form of unspoken blackmail. As I say, I was never told in advance that any of the tapes made of my consultations would not be given into my possession -- all of them before had been given to me, until the very last consultation -- when the rug was pulled out from under me and I suddenly found there were to be no more consultations.

So if you are thinking of getting into the AR consultation process, realize that they could end it all suddenly, and that you could find your most intimate thoughts on tape in someone else's possession.

I could never swallow how dogmatically AR consultants would say Self and World was THE greatest book of all time, and that Siegel was THE greatest man, etc. It would be one thing if they had proposed such ideas of Siegel's preeminence hypothetically, as a possibility, about which they did not pretend to dogmatize, and if they had remained open to his perhaps having a lesser status in the scheme of things. That would have been a more ordinary intellectual/spiritual exercise or game -- the modest effort to rank an apparently outstanding man among history's greats. And it would be one thing if they offered a tentative open-ended judgement that he was somewhere in the top tier of human beings, and that his teaching was one of a number of very great teachings given in history. But they weren't humble, and they did pretend to dogmatize about Siegel being #1.

To me, that was weirdly arrogant. How could such a brilliant and wise teaching be associated with such arrogance? Though it might seem naive of me, I felt a lot of cognitive dissonance about this combination of arrogance

“How could such a brilliant and wise teaching be associated with such arrogance?”

and wisdom. But, at least for the young and inexperienced, such cognitive dissonances seem to be an eventual response to almost any great teaching. One can indeed find almost supernatural gifts and wisdom in a number of great teachings, but then somewhere oddly mixed in with them, one seems inevitably to find also things that seem to be error and darkness, though hopefully not so much as to completely taint the high wisdom one had seen at first, nor confuse one terminally. But since the wisdom of any teaching is mediated through humans, who are growing and evolving and therefore imperfect, at least some flaws and darknesses seem to be inevitably and paradoxically mixed in with the divine inspiration encoded in great teachings. One's responsibility seems to be to try as best one can in one's imperfect way to sift the wheat from the chaff, no matter how great the teacher or teaching is.

And surely what the AR people do sometimes amounts to extreme arrogance. After all, how can one know dogmatically who is the greatest human being (as the AR people claim to know), unless one's judgement is in a way equal to that human being (whoever it may be)? If I pretended to be an infallible judge of greatness, wouldn't that mean I in a sense placed myself at the pinnacle of greatness? How else could I know with certainty that I have made the correct judgement about greatness, unless I pretended to be a perfect expert in greatness? This sort of unconscious arrogance is typical of the cult member. The healthy human being, I think, must in life always be seeking to learn better to distinguish in him or herself metaphysical arrogance from genuine spiritual confidence that incorporates openness and humility.

For me, one of the biggest questions I've always had about AR is, to what extent did the cultish aspect come from Siegel himself, and to what extent did it com from a warping of the teaching by his followers? Because to my mind, if one simply added humility to the way AR is taught, it would indeed

“To what extent did the cultish aspect come from Siegel himself, and to what extent did it come from a warping of the teaching by his followers?”

be one of the great cultural creations of humankind, and one of the deepest interpretations of our human situation. Siegel's books, so far as I have read them, do not seem at all megalomaniacal. Just his students' presentations of the them and of Siegel.

But one clue as to the extent to which Siegel himself was responsible for the cultish aspect, comes from William Carlos Williams. Although WCW found Siegel a truly great writer, WCW, on seeing Siegel with Siegel's students, at one point seems to criticize Siegel and says something about how one must avoid being 'submerged' or something to that effect. This brief interchange is recorded in one of the books sold by the AR people themselves. The remark by WCW, as I understand it, seems to suggest that WCW had come to the conclusion that Siegel had somehow lost the distinction between himself and the ALL, in which Siegel had been 'submerged', and that Siegel had in effect confused himself with that ALL, i.e., with God. And that Siegel had at the same time lost all sense of his own imperfection and humble humanity and equality with other mere mortals. In my view, one can indeed sometimes legitimately claim oneness with God, but only provided one does so in a paradoxical manner, wherein one also fully recognizes one's simultaneous mortality and limits and full equality with other mere mortals. The cult leader gets the God part, but forgets the humble fallible mortal part. I suspect that forgetting is more or less what WCW was alluding to rather elliptically and perhaps timidly in his rather gnomic remark criticizing Siegel about submergence.

 

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Former members describe Aesthetic Realism

• The ULTIMATE statement by a former member. Wow. A former Aesthetic Realism member who was involved for over ten years and into the 1990's sent us this incredibly detailed account of what life inside AR is like. This puts to rest once and for all any lingering question about whether AR is a cult - it is. The AR people will not be able to "counter" this on their Countering the Lies website because this account is from one of their own, and because it's so exhaustively detailed.
• A tale of getting sucked in. Another former member shares his experiences. This story is unique because he describes exactly how he initially got drawn in, and how he then kept getting more and more involved.
• Aesthetic Realism ruined his marriage. "[It] introduced a level of stress in my marriage that had not previously existed....I consider my 'study' of Aesthetic Realism to be one of the factors that led to the eventual breakup of my marriage, to my eternal sorrow." This former member also wrote about AR on Steve Hassan's Freedom of Mind.
• On having all the answers. A former member explains how AR members think they have all the answers, and feel qualified to lecture others about how they should view personal tragedy.
• Kicked out for remaining gay. A former student describes how he was kicked out of AR because he couldn't change from homosexuality. Powerful stuff.
• "If I disappointed them, then I now consider that a badge of honor." A former member tells how AR try to change him from being gay, and convinced him not to spend Christmas with his family.
• "This is merely one example of the way people were controlled and humiliated if they stepped out of line...". The experiences shared with us by a member from 1974-80, now a Fortune 100 executive.
• "I want Ellen Reiss questioned!" A former member tells her story, and wonders why there hasn't been a class-action lawsuit against the foundation yet.
• They took his consultation tape. A former student describes how AR people kept his consultation tape with his most intimate thoughts on it, and told him he couldn't study any more unless he incorporated AR more radically into his life.
• "I personally know at least half of the contributors to AR's Countering the Lies website and know them to either be fibbing or having a long-term memory problem.". A former member from 1971-80, confirms that AR students don't see their families, are discouraged from attending college, and shun other members. He also offers that he was mistaken when he was involved about thinking that AR had changed him from homosexuality.
• Michael Bluejay's description. This whole website is my statement about Aesthetic Realism. But in this article I describe my family's involvement in more detail.
• Members interviewed in Jewish Times. This lengthy article in Jewish Times quotes former students of Aesthetic Realism extensively.
• NY Post article. A series of articles in the NY Post quotes many former members who are now critical of the group.
• Aesthetic Realism debunked. A former student explains the cult aspects of AR. Posted on Steve Hassan's Freedom of Mind website.

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