Adyashanti Describes Extreme Memory Impairment on the Path he Teaches

Inconsistent adverse effects disclosure is status quo in "ego dissolution" teaching scene.

*Nothing here is meant to negate the reality of benefits people have gotten from his teachings. I also acknowledge that this teachings have evolved more recently since the time that I was learning from him, which some say have become more balanced.

Recently, I came across an Adyashanti quote about extreme memory impairment being commonplace on the ‘ego dissolution’ path that he teaches indiscriminately to the public. It caught my attention because in all the time I was eroding away my sense of self via his youtube meditations, talks, and books, I never once heard him offer a single disclosure about adverse effects of this path - (at least ones that didn’t include subtle pressure and judgment to be brave, or tired of suffering enough to take extreme risks for ‘freedom’ without hesitation.) I imagine that my younger self following him as a dissolution (which I found to be a double-edged sword) guide would really have appreciated hearing hear about something as concerning as executive functioning impairment being, in his description not a bug, but a feature of dissolution path he teaches.

“There is a "rewiring of the brain" that occurs, and a significant part of this process is memory loss.” -Adyashanti

He goes on to describe how it can get so extreme that people check themselves into the hospital to see if they have dementia.” This was discussed in his book The End of Your World, and also in this video.

Now, to be clear, I’m not singling him out as the only teacher who fails to consistently disclose the risks of their teachings. In the Neo-Advaita and self-negating nondual spirituality world, this kind of omission is commonplace. Teachers rarely, if ever, provide upfront warnings about known risks of pursuing a permanent dismantlement of one’s personal sense of self. Instead, these warnings are mentioned sporadically—if at all—and in ways that don’t give people a chance to evaluate the potential consequences before engaging with their self-shattering teachings and practices. (Sadly, it’s very common for teachers in this scene to discuss risks not a place of kindness or ethical accountability, but with judgment and pressure for people to be spiritual warriors who will ‘take the leap’ without hesitation to prove how far they’re willing to go for ‘liberation.’)

Now think about it: if a doctor were to promote a medication to a massive amount of people, but only disclosed serious side effects, let’s say periods of dementia-like memory impairment, once in a thousand cases, we’d call that profoundly unethical. Yet in the modern ‘non-dual’ ego-dissolution-based spiritual world, teachers promoting reality-shattering paths regulalry fail to provide even the most basic safety information at the start of their books, YouTube videos, or public talks. This lack of accountability is a huge problem that has been causing widespread, unexpected harm to a great number of people, including dissociation, de-personalization, de-realization, nihilism, anhedonia (total loss of motivation), isolation, inability to function in daily life suicidality, and more.

To give another example from Adyashanti: years after diving deep into his teachings, which at the time were absolutist, and heavily imbalanced towards emptiness and absence, I eventually found myself stuck in emptiness. It was only years later, after I’d move away from a dissolution path, that I stumbled across a quote where he acknowledged this as a common trap—a place where many people get stuck. He called it tragic. Another thing I surely would have appreciated hearing that up front, before falling into that very trap, and guidance on how to avoid such a trap.

Many spiritual seekers get "stuck" in emptiness, in the absolute, in transcendence. When the self-centered motivation for living disappears, many seekers become indifferent. They see the perfection of all existence and find no reason for doing anything, including caring for themselves or others. I call this "taking a false refuge." It is a very subtle egoic trap; it's a fixation in the absolute and all unconscious form of attachment that masquerades as liberation. It can be very difficult to wake someone up from this deceptive fixation because they literally have no motivation to let go of it.” -Adyashanti

What especially disappointed me was how he framed it. In the quote, he implied that students who get stuck in emptiness are simply misunderstanding the teachings/doing something wrong. He even went so far as to call them “crazy” for thinking the ego/self must die. This felt like a slap in the face - one quote that I’ve never forgotten from him is:

“Every moment of transcendence is a mortal blow to the ego.”

Another video of his is called “The Death Throes of the Ego.” One quote from this is “despair is the final death throes of the seeker.”

[‘Death throes’ definition: the process of dying or ending in a very painful or unpleasant way.]

“Moving beyond the separate self is the death of identity.”

“To find out that you are empty of emptiness is to die into an aware mystery, which is the source of all existence.”

I am aware that there are other times when he has said things like, the ego doesn’t actually need to die, but for example, should just become irrelevant, or what he describes as dying is not the word ego, but “the separate self,” or the personality, or the “me” or somebodyness, or identity(“Moving beyond the separate self is the death of identity.”-Adyashanti) but his messages across the board have included a lot of mixed messaging on this, and his teachings (again at least when I was learning from him) sent the strong message that the kind of awakening being taught spells doom for the individual, personal self.

Anyone who knows his teachings, knows they were, at least in the 2000’s, are also rife with emptiness-centrism (“the ego is an empty shell”), absolute, absence, nothing/nobodyness (“Stop pretending to be someone, or something! You are no one, you are no-thing!”-Adyashanti) and void-centrism. Dissolving into emptiness is exactly what I followed his many dissolution-into-emptiness teachings and meditations to repeatedly dissolve my sense of self/reality into.

“The Ego is an empty shell.” - Adyashanti

“When you rest in quietness and your image of yourself fades, and your ideas of others fade, what's left? A radiant emptiness that is simply what you are. - Adyashanti

“All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant emptiness of spirit…”

“Every time you come here, you are nothing. Radiantly nothing. Absolutely and eternally zero. Emptiness that is awake.” - Adyashanti

“Question your thoughts…question them all into utter emptiness, stillness…”

There’s no acknowledgment of the ways his very teachings contributed to people falling into the so-called emptiness traps he describes. No edits or additions to previous content from books or videos that wise discernment would notice are likely to promote an imbalance toward emptiness and deconstruction of self.

“Without emotional investment in the ego’s points of view, what's left of ego but a hollow shell with a little personality mixed in?”

There’s times when he might acknowledge the importance of balance, but again, it’s inconsistent and many people won’t hear it. Imagine how many people would have suffered less if he—and other teachers like him—took steps to acknowledge and disclosure clear warnings/took safety protocols starting with not indiscriminately promoting such risky teachings, for example implementing safety/ethical protocols such as is seen in psychedelic facilitation (of altered states involving ego dissolution) where set and setting is taken into account, including assessment and preparation discussions of what one should expect, how to best prepare, what can go wrong, and then integration support.

Adyashanti, in the past, has completely denied the very possibility of integration:

“Many people ask, “How do I integrate my spirituality into everyday life?” You don’t. You can’t. How could you integrate it? You can’t stuff the infinite into your limited life.” - Adyashanti

That said, I do get the sense that he has become at least slightly more balanced in his approach lately. I truly hope that he, or anyone aligned with his teachings, would appreciate the intention behind this post. At the end of the day, if we can’t count on adverse side effect disclosure from the teachers themselves, we can at least raise awareness among ourselves and support each other in making fully informed decisions about our spiritual paths.

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