Personal Accounts of Adverse Effects from Self-Negating "Non-duality" & Neo-Advaita
Hear it in their own words
*The intention is not to undermine the reality that people can be affected positively by these teachings, but to contribute to an understanding that the seriousness and prevalence of harmful affects warrants at the minimum, no longer disseminating them indiscriminately to the public, and a much more balanced portrayal/consistent disclosure of the risks as well as the rewards one might expect to experience, similar to the ethical protocols adopted within psychedelic facilitation that ushers people into similarly abrupt dramatic, and often similarly de-stabilizing shifts in one’s familiar sense of self and reality.
These are some of the messages I’ve received after doing this conversation on Buddha at the Gas Pump: The dangers of Neo-Advaita/Self-Negating “Non-duality” and how to recover.
They’re from people who have experienced disturbing effects from engaging with modernized forms of impersonalizing spiritual teachings that tend to refer to themselves blanketly as “non-duality” - much of which is promoted indiscriminately to the public as a sort of “instant enlightenment” offering promising, in a nutshell, freedom from suffering by following “pointers” to (typically instantly) & permanently deconstruct/undermine one’s individual sense of self/personal identity.
I share these with a sense of urgency, as millions of people are absorbing these teachings on public platforms like Youtube, and it’s become clear that a significant portion of them are getting hurt by them, including people who fully experience the intended impersonalizing shifts. Just as there is with adverse effects of meditation (which are now being rigorously studied), there’s a growing understanding that Eastern self-negating practices, methods and associated perceptual shifts have inherent dangers/risks that can affect anyone regardless of their background, and one of the most important ways to raise awareness about the need for caution in disseminating and engaging with them, is to reveal first-hand accounts describing the gravity of the disturbing effects that many people who engage with them are experiencing and the harmful toll they’ve taken on their health and wellbeing— including disassociation (including De-personalization and de-realization), to extreme alienation, social/relational impairment, memory impairment, loss of empathy, debilitating despondency and loss of motivation, overall dysfunction, job loss, family/caretaker role disruption, sleep and eating disturbances, mania, psychotic symptoms, and on the extreme, but significantly occurring end, suicidality and suicide.
I’m optimistic that sharing accounts like these widely will help many people avoid similar harm, as with a clearer understanding of the risks involved with these paths and the potential risk/reward ratio, more people will have the chance to make fully informed decisions about whether they want to embark on them. I also hope that it will encourage a greater shift, in modern society, away from de-humanizing, impersonalized spirituality, towards kinds that support humanistic values, are pro-social and life-affirming!
I also hope it will help support the case for “non-dual” self-deconstruction guides to be expected to implement similar ethical/safety protocols when facilitating these radical perceptual shifts, as psychedelic facilitators who guide people into similar shifts using drugs — namely, careful consideration of set & setting, including individual assessment, full disclosure of risks, preparation for and integration support in the aftermath of having one’s foundational sense of self and reality de-stabilized.
“After my experiences from non-dual inquiry I became reclusive, lost interest in everything. I could no longer relate to people in a conventionally spiritual sense, or a regular mundane sense. I also lost the motivation and intellectual capacity to continue in my profession.”
I was once an ambitious student going to one of the best schools in the country. Now I am in a constant stupor.
The "direct path" eventually led straight down into a psychological nightmare for myself and other community members.
I know of individuals who have died and lost their minds - and the latter, well isn't that exactly what is being taught?
I've been going through intense nihilism and severe depression from it.
It was disempowering. Led to apathy & dissociation, rather than lucid engagement.
I've become a lost soul with no compass.
Led to such a deep disconnect and split in my own psyche.
It's almost as if I was on heroin all the time.
Neo Advaita became the same experience as the fundamentalist Christianity that I grew up with.
These teachings completely destroyed my vitality and isolated me beyond comprehension.
I lost my ability to trust myself, my own perspective, my own insight.
The disconnection from myself, my family, my friends and my mind was so extreme. I was in a constant state of disorientation, and social isolation for a year, zombied out and distanced from reality."
Led to a total inability to handle every day life and relationships.
I was losing memories due to not having solid connection to my history.
I have been in a year-long recovery process from these dogmatic teachings and can say they completely destroyed my vitality and joy and isolated me beyond comprehension.
I’m 26, I was living on my own and extremely motivated and happy and then came across this stuff and basically got ripped apart. For a while, I was scared shitless of everything. I could barely shower just out of sheer terror of sensory input. (Yes I still showered haha).
These teachings kicked off my descent into the most horrifically lonely experience and I have been progressively climbing out of of it. This was the worst thing I have ever experienced, something beyond what I thought was possible.
For me, it feels like Neo-Advaita truly has become a bit of a plague in todays' spiritual world - there are people who kill themselves because they fall into this trap and I completely understand why. After reading Jed Mckenna for the first time, I became depressed. Life went from blooming and interesting to dull and meaningless - It took a lot of personal experiences and a really deep dive into different non-dual traditions/epistemology to get out of this dark night of the soul.
One of the detriments of extreme non-duality on my psyche was the loss of my ability to trust myself, my own perspective, my own insights. The recovery has not been easy, but it’s happening.
I felt so out-there for a while “spaced out," and it's taken more than a year to feel grounded and embodied again.
My friend committed suicide after not being able to see his children and partner as anything more than mental projections destroyed his family.
I stumbled across you today after falling into an ego disillusioned hell for the past year and a half. It’s completely tore my life apart. The notions and teachings that I have came across have just completely shattered me. A year ago I was happy, healthier than ever, engaged and motivated. I’ve always been interested in deeper meaning and I came across these teachings and thought “Wow! How cool! This isn’t a religion, it’s about the mind! Right up my alley” little did I know how much of a detrimental effect it would have on me as I dove into more and more. It really pinned me in a corner and although I haven’t had any big shifts (I think), this lingering feeling of “this is going to happen to me/I don’t exist/nothing is real” has really just fucked me up, for lack of better words. It sent me into a massive derealization and has honestly just been a massive struggle to function. God forbid enjoy anything. I hope I will soon be able to get back to my life and enjoy it as I was a year ago. I didn’t sign up for this shit! Let me eat my sandwich without questioning the nature of reality god damnit! Anyway, like I said, I look forward to hopefully soon being able to get back to my life. I have these small glimpses of it but sometimes I just feel so disconnected it is hard. Some of the teachings are so radical and disturbing that it causes me to question the validity of if other people are having their own subjective experience independent of mine.
Heck, even my family would chime in and give their take on how they've seen it effect me. There were days when I would be driving to work and I would call my mom bawling my eyes out and come home and cry more. Not just cry, but weep heavily like a close friend died or something. I remember one time when I pulled over into a parking lot to call my mom and I was crying and basically screaming at how angry I was at these people for putting this shit in my head." Overall it is just hurtful to me personally and created a lot of fear and disorientation and disconnection to how I was before. Feels like I am a different person to be honest. I moved back in with my family because of all of this and it’s helpful to be around them, but also shows the damaging effect this has had on me. Frankly, it feels like I have been “mind raped”, if that makes any sense. To me, it’s very frustrating the way the teachings are taught. There are MANY spiritual teachers that will directly tell you “nothing is real, you don’t exist” and shit like that. I remember one video a guy named Gary Weber was sitting in front of a small crowd of spiritual seekers and word for word told them “none of you are real”. What the fuck Gary? It’s very harmful to just rip the ground from underneath people you are “teaching” and I genuinely do not see how these ‘gurus’ do not see that.
I was always happy in serving others, now when I see my friends and family I think that they're not real..this is depressing. When I do something, I think why I'm doing something. I think why are others working hard for their good life when in reality there is no life?" I lost interest in everything......I feel like I’m stuck in some darkness... I want to come out and live blissfully but I'm not able to come out... It’s suffocating.......Whenever I try to come out from this, scholars words come in my mind - "You do not exist, you do not exist! And if you're living in Duality and celebrating relationship then you are less intelligent and In illusion ...... It's really suffocating. I was always good in studies and others activities like singing, dancing, drawing. But after studying all the above I stopped everything... I don't feel motivated to do anything...Please help me to overcome this!
I used to be so full of love, joy, happiness, connection, etc., until I stumbled across these newer non dual teachings. They have seemingly taken everything from me and ruined my life. I struggled for so long and I couldn't understand why I seemed to be the only one who had become nihilistic and completely mind fucked.
I was becoming convinced “I” had to die and when I couldn’t instigate that as metaphorical death, I was at times feeling like a total death would put an end to the merry go round of madness. A deal with the non dual devil was a great way to put it.
A good friend of mine described feeling like he wanted to end his life because he couldn't fulfill his role as a parent.
I could have these deep no self, no doer, pure awareness type experiences where I’d even let go of the one that wants to say “yes I’ve got it” but every time it was like “Robert” had to come back eventually to be able to relate to my family. I just couldn’t stay as the pure spacious awareness without somehow being detached from my families struggles or pain. It felt like there was this choice to stay with my family emotionally and physically or leave them permanently (like many of these “enlightened” folk seem to do). All the teachings said it was possible to stay physically but not keep being so affected by all the drama of family life. But for me this just seemed impossible. I just couldn’t have the empathy my family needed and keep the person "Russell” at arms length. It was like I could feel the moment “Russell” grabbed the reigns again. So again I’d practice, take it on the chin as another lesson and aspire to let go of him. And hopefully one day forever. It was like permanently being at war with a non existent person who just feels so real. It was exhausting.
It became the source of most of my suffering in the end. On top of the usual suffering of normal life. I couldn’t stop being me and also be a Dad, a husband, a son etc. I am both and, not either or. Wow what a subtle but profound shift. So so simple and nothing much changed but at the same time everything changed. It seems all in the interpretation.
Looking back, I can see the toxic nature of the teachings that were informing me. It has taken a life time to undo. Grateful for all the other survivors coming forward more recently. I was trying to be one with everything and to disappear into the cosmos before I had any positive ego strength.
This definition of enlightenment that I had learned cast shadow of “second-best” on my “non-enlightened” existence and was a constant subtle wedge between myself and my wife. Her passing a year ago brought into my awareness the stark reality of my foolishness and what I missed out on as a result.
Neo Advaita became the same experience as the fundamentalist Christianity that I grew up with, causing such a deep disconnect and split in my own psyche which took many many many many years to unravel.
"Due to my sense of superiority and detachment (and confusion!) I have lost several valued friends, as well as my sense of meaning and purpose."
The guys I was listening to were sending out this critical, hateful perspective, and influenced this drive toward nothingness, being nothing and neglecting being fully human. "Kill your ego." This was pure poison.
I have been following a lot of these Neo Advaita teachings for a while. Mostly has just created more suffering and basically ruined my life. I have asked many teachers about this and they all have told me to just let the process happen. That my deep lack of motivation to do anything is really just the personal egoic motivation calming down and it will be replaced by something deeper if I keep going. I also have on and off depression out of nowhere and have been told by a lot of teachers that my depressive episodes are simply suppressed emotions coming up to be felt and I need to not resist them and just let them out. "The cure to the pain is the pain itself" I have no clue what is real at this point when it comes to these teachings. All of it is so confusing.
This was my addiction. I marinated in the “no thingness” and I would experience the end of noise, activity, suffering, pleasure seeking, striving, problems etc. Then at some point in relationship to others something would seep back into the emptiness and off I would go “chasing the dragon”. More podcasts needed as the tolerance built up to the words that were becoming familiar so not giving the same effect. More books, deeper meditations, etc.
Everyday I feel more human again. Non-duality in the way it gets taught by so many feels like insanity now. I was in a state of hypnosis it feels like now, and I needed someone to guide me out of it.
After the "bliss phase", shit really hit the fan and it became a "living nightmare". Totally disconnected from life, love, lost any kind of interest about anything all. No motivation to do anything at all anymore. It was absolutely horrible. But hey, no problem, it's not real, right? It's all in your mind. Just do nothing. I was really told this by famous teachers I know personally. This kind of advice can literally kill you. Out of that I started to research and dig deep. What I found was mind-blowing and frightening in the same moment. I found more and more stories from people who weren't able to live or function anymore. Even killed themselves.
The non-dual philosophy I was into was disempowering and led to apathy and dissociation, rather than lucid engagement with what appears to be so we can choose what meanings we will assign, consciously wielding our own wills like the incarnations of the godhead that we all are.
For more than 7 months, I've been trying to recover from my harmful experience with "non-duality" or Neo-Advaita?? I was part of the satsang movement for 7 years, visited different teachers, watched thousands of videos, read hundreds of books etc. I was deeply looking for "enlightenment" and thought this could free me from my suffering. I came home from a retreat one day and things started getting really weird. I got panic attacks daily but still thought I have to somehow "get it," really understand that there is no "self," and then all of this suffering will disappear. I spiraled down into a deep hole of obsessive thinking. At first I had just a few moments of depersonalization but it's been a constant condition for 7 months. It's as if I'm living all their teachings, I feel like "I" disappeared and everything that's left of me is just this body, which isn't "mine" anymore, just a random bunch of flesh moving around doing things, but without a "doer" inside. I feel like a biological machine, programmed to talk, walk, eat and do stuff, but it all happens "without me". So, if no-self is bliss, like they told me - I must feel very happy and liberated right now, but i don't. My life has been completely ruined for the last 7 months. I would do anything to get out of this condition, it feels so terribly wrong. I'm not getting better and I think it's because I still somehow believe that their teachings are "the truth," and that I now realized it. I try to find arguments against these kind of teachings but nothing makes enough sense to really convince me. I hope that someone can convince me that there is no ultimate truth out there and that we are not just biological robots running around.
"I was really into these "gurus" and would even listen to them every night before going to bed. I found their voices calming and enjoyed cutting myself off from the world and attaining ‘no thought’ states of being. Anyone trying to get you to not think is someone to be very cautious of. I went into a hermit like existence, not wanting to socialize with others. I was ‘zombied’ out and distanced from reality.
Much of what I learned was “I am not a body” that my body was made to be an attack on God, that my ego made this body in an illusionary world. As I realized something wasn’t right I went through weeks of “unanswerable fear.” I found myself nervous and feeling like I was going a little crazy. ACIM was a huge reason for this, at first there was a warm fuzzy feeling that seemed to be inviting, but as I went through the practice with a well known group I started to realize everyone was wiped, there was no personality.
I feel fortunate to have had enough sense to ask, what is love? Because if this is love something is very wrong. There was so much rich teaching and experience in many of the non-duality circles, but most of it lead to the deadening of the mind and erasing of any personality. I looked for answers and everywhere I looked I was told “this is normal” you’re experiencing an “ego death.” After a while I couldn’t get behind it anymore, something in me said, leave.
The real spiritual journey I’m coming to accept is the “both and” unity and wholeness. I feel personality, relationships, interests, desires are all part of the whole. How can these things be “ego” how can living void of such things be “Reality?” I was suffering trying not to suffer. There are days I still experience sadness, but I feel like through stillness and videos like yours, my joy is coming back.
Has my engagement with Neo-Advaita and certain forms of Buddhism been harmful? Yes, in many ways. Primarily by not providing a foundation on which to build, leaving me in a constant state of euphoria, confusion, and fear. The experience is complex, nuanced, and disorienting. Your videos have given me encouragement to help me realign and refocus myself. Since discovering your work, I have started to regain my sense of self, which I never intended to lose in the first place."
I can see the “cult-like” tendencies. I suppose the biggest issue that triggers me is the “spiritual gaslighting.” ACIM holds almost a dogmatic approach to “Spiritual awakening.” I no longer consider ACIM to be a spiritual text, rather a more of a psycho-philosophical text. It may have helpful ideas that points to non-duality, but it’s filled with very manipulative and destructive ideas.
I entered the world of Neo- Advaita teachings, satsangs and teachers, a world in which no one has inherent rights to decent treatment. There is no such thing as unique personal identity, other persons have no claim on us to behave honestly, conventional distinctions between truth/untruth, good/bad, right wrong just/unjust are meaningless, none of us has a claim to inherent personal dignity or basic human rights. This feels like "liberation" but for some of the bullying narcissistic "awakened" gurus, it seems like liberation to be a blissful psychopath.
"I was in a "non-duality" group that essentially was a cult for 6.5 years. When I left there were so many issues I had to face: "the world not being 'real'" according to their teachings, losing memories due to not having solid connection to my history at that point, dealing with "bliss" junkie issues like being numb to everything around me in a supposed world that "didn't exist", and basically left to try to create my life from this disaster."
I had an amazing "spiritual experience" 5 years though it ended in panic and a feeling of depersonalization. Since then I thought I did something wrong because it ended and I need to do something to get back there. So I quickly came to the believe: My Ego is bad, it needs to be transcended. And that is what I thought for years till I got to Non-duality. Then everything became worse. Now I'm more disconnected, depressed, nihilistic than ever. Now I saw people on Youtube who describe their "Non-dual Realization" as permanent and they all say "there is no ME, there is no SELF, there is just this, there is no choice." I really see, how this makes me feel terrible and how dangerous this is, but there are always these thoughts: "My ego just doesn't want to hear this, having an Ego or a Self is false" and I just can not let go of it all because I always just see those "non-dual" people talking about that state and how that's the only real thing. So I'm in a loop of thinking that as long as I'm doing things out of ME and as long as I don't get that Realization, everything is wrong.
Once in this "blissed out state" it was extremely hard to get out of it. It's a very seductive place and the mind wants to be in it all the time. It's almost as if I was on heroin all the time. That's what a lot of these "teachers" are doing, it's like giving out heroin to everyone. When one is on heroin they stop caring about all the small dramas that make life what it is. I feel like now that I've tapped into this realm it is impossible to go back to how I was. Do people ever get over this seductive mind trap state? I was once an ambitious student going to one of the best schools in the country. Now I am in a constant stupor.
Therapists Speak
“A number of persons who had come to experience their “enlightenment” as problematically disembodied contacted me for help. While initially finding their free-floating, infinitely empty, de-personalised perception as profound, they had eventually come to find it gnawingly devoid, numbly disconnected, and generally alienating. They longed, instead, to come into their bodies, become personal and real, to feel and live, as concrete fleshly be-ings. The experiences that these persons shared confirmed my observation: that the “radical transformation” induced by neo-advaita amounts to total disembodiment.
Certainly, there is something quite amazing about such an accomplishment, yet on the other hand, it is a form of craziness. And for me, and for those who contacted me, it was a source of severe suffering. It was also extremely persistent. The maxims of neo-advita having become so built into the fabric of the persons’ minds: whenever someone started to come back into themselves, one or other precept (as a voice in their head) would kick in scupper the whole process. Gradually, however, people began to get their embodiment back. Or rather: they began to be bodies for the first time in their lives: being rather than “having” a body; living rather than “having” a life."
- Guy Smith
This is very interesting. I didn't read through all of the quotes here, but I read a bunch, and one important piece of the puzzle I'm seeing here is that a lot of these seem to focus around experiences and perceptions and not *understanding*. It seems the issue is that these practices lead to an *experience* or *perception* of ego dissolution while still maintaining the fundamental mechanisms of desire for control and self-assertion that underlie the background assumptions and views that form the self. When that happens, what you'd have is an understanding that still clings to the existence of a self while not being able to find one in experience like we normally do. That would be quite painful and disturbing.
Even if the self is illusory and non-existent, when we create the illusion that something *is* our self, we give that self view something to attach to, which creates a sort of pleasant experience, and then we get attached to that pleasant experience, reifying the self because it feels good to have one. This sounds like it's removing self *experience* while maintaining self *view*, which would leave the mind wildly raving about looking for that pleasurable experience to grab onto and then constantly being averse to everything it can find because nothing "looks" or feels right. Traditional not-self practice, on the other hand, would start at the level of view or understanding and non-identification with any feeling, good or bad, rendering the actual experience of not-self completely irrelevant. In that context, self is not an object of experience, and it can't be removed on the level of perception or experience, but only on the level of deeper relation *to* the experience.
From some minimal research (read: skimming through Wikipedia), it seems the main criticism of Neo-Advaita is that the "insight" it leads to is superficial, and I'm in full agreement with that criticism based on what I'm reading here. This seems like playing with superficial mental states to provoke unique experiences, not working with understanding to change the relation to them. Someone who truly uprooted the self or ego wouldn't be disturbed by any of these events.
Very interesting and thought provoking — will definitely read through more of your writing.
brutal. I can see it from both sides because I had a very difficult spiritual emergency which led to several years of DP, then it was cured by... an experience of non-duality! But I agree that treating these teachings similarly to psychedelics is probably part of the answer.