Beyond the Place of Laughter and Tears in the Land of Devotion (David Spero)

An Unimpressive Avataric Text

[My three-star Amazon review, April 8, 2014, of “Beyond the Place of Laughter and Tears in the Land of Devotion” by David Spero.]

I first learned of David Spero a couple of years ago when I encountered his many videos at Youtube.com. I like his videos because Spero pushes what I push—Shaktipat Yoga—and does so compellingly. I finally got around to purchasing this text, seemingly his only one, and now that I’ve read it, I’m ready to review it.

The book is short, a 132 pages, and consists mainly of Satsang talks that Spero gave in 1999. The book has a several-page Introduction, by Reverend Thomas Ahlburn, a prominent Unitarian minister whom I remember as a huge fan of Adi Da Samraj some thirty years ago. Ahlburn knows Spero well—Spero, as a college student in Rhode Island, attended Ahlburn’s meditations, and the two stayed in contact after Spero finished school.

Ahlburn gushes about Spero’s profundity. He writes: “I think David’s views are are as brilliantly insightful as any that one is likely to encounter among living spiritual writers, including those of Ram Dass, Andrew Harvey, Ken Wilber, Bernadette Roberts, and the great spiritual genius Adi Da Samraj.” My response to this is: Apart from Adi Da Samraj, none of the writers mentioned by Ahlburn is brilliant, and comparing Spero to Adi Da is like comparing a Yugo to a Mercedes. Not only does Spero derive much of his Dharma from Da’s, but he conveniently fails to mention and credit Da; and what he derives from Da is just the tip of the iceberg of Da’s teachings. Moreover, whereas Da is a literary master, Spero is an unimpressive writer.

Ahlberg informs us that Spero is “the first openly gay realized being among us,” and glosses over David Spero’s audacious claim that he is an avatar. Ahlber writes: “So who is David Spero? What’s so special about him? Is he a realized being? Does he have the Divine Mother’s blessing? Is he an avatar? Frankly, I don’t think questions like this matter. They are merely preliminary concerns, or what the Buddha calls unavailing questions not conducive to liberation.”

Most tellingly, Ahlberg’s Introduction was written at Pema Cho-ling in Greensboro, Vermont. If Ahlberg considers Spero a great spiritual master, why was he hanging at a Tibetan Buddhist sanctuary rather than following Spero?

Why does Spero consider himself not merely a realized guru but an avatar? Here’s his explanation: “The avatar is not merely enlightened. His light is different from a Guru’s Light. He contains the whole spectrum of multidimensional lights of consciousness. Thes lights liberate, heal, and transform. The Glistening Fullness of the Avatar is ungraspable; it is beyond void-consciousness. Yet in his Presence, because of the vast realization that he is, everything becomes surrendered spontaneously.”

First off, Buddha and Jesus and the various self-proclaimed avatars I’ve read never described their spiritual status as unique because they contained the “whole spectrum of multidimensional lights of consciousness.” Second, these lights sound like the “rainbow body” in Tibetan Buddhism, but Spero doesn’t mention this. And though various Tibetan masters attained a rainbow body, they didn’t proclaim themselves as avatars.

As I read this book, I encountered numerous statements that I do not vibe with. Here are just some of them, with my comments in parentheses:

“Prana is everlasting wakefulness.” (No, it’s not. Prana is cosmic energy. Everlasting wakefulness pertains to the acosmic Divine.)

“It is not uncommon to attain cosmic consciousness (nirvana).” (First off, Nirvana is not cosmic consciousness, or saviklapa samadhi; it is unbroken Divine Consciousness, or sahaj samadhi. Secondly, it is exceedingly uncommon for individuals to achieve Nirvana.)

“Being is infinite, absolute, effulfence of Divine Light. It is second to nothing and beyond everything. Deep within the field of Being there is timeless light of pure awareness, the cognition of everlasting Life.” (This is a sample of Spero’s poor writing. If Being is just the “effulgence of the Divine Light, then the Divine Light is senior to Being. Then he posits a second light of pure awareness deep inside of Being. This is nonsense. Being (Sat) is Consciousness-Power (Siva-Shakti), or Awareness-Bliss/Light-Energy (Cit-Ananda)).

“To practice spiritual techniques without love will never yield liberation.” (Plenty of Zen masters and yogis achieved liberation sans the practice of love.)

“Paramatman, Supreme Self, is like a blank movie screen. It is just the light in back of the mind.” (This is a ridiculous, reductionist statement that doesn’t do the Self justice, but Spero likes to diss Self-realization and push devotion to the Divine Mother.)

“Dissolution in God is devotion merging into nothingness.” (First off, there is no such thing as nothingness.” Secondly, if the goal is dissolving in nothingness or emptiness, why bother with devotion when you can go directly to the void via Madhamika Buddhist practices?)

“Grace and grace alone, takes one beyond the fitful changes of spiritual evolution. Grace is a gift and cannot be earned or attained through any kind of spiritual practice.’ (Then why do sadhana? Why practice any kind of yoga, including the devotional yoga that Spero teaches? In direct contrast to Spero, I say that Grace can be earned, and I teach people how to earn it.)

“Right now there are many people entering into nirvana.” (This is pure poppycock.)

“Then there are a series of states of consciousness which go beyond nirvana and have to do with “divinizing” light on the physical plane... Multidimensional consciousness itself is many aspects higher than nirvana. Then beyond all of these is the state of the Divine Mother Herself, which swallows all the different states of consciousness.” (As the Buddha made clear, Nirvana is not state, and there is no state of consciousness that transcends it.)

“Only through the “surgical prowess” of an enlightened master can a person become free from being possessed by this same kind of selfishness that robbed him of his human integrity at such a young age.” (Intererestingly enough, Spero doesn’t mention having had an enlightened master who freed him.)

“Long after the Self has been realized, there’s this redundant tendency on transcending, on going beyond. How many times do we have to go beyond?” (Unbeknownst to Spero, once the Self is realized, one abides in natural, effortless sahaj Samadhi and does not redundantly “go beyond.”)

“There’s no greater truth than one’s Self, there is nothing higher than one’s Self.” (Then why do his teachings focus on the Mother?)

“What we experience in the Kundalini-Shakti is a doorway into infinite sexual potentiality.” (This is beyond ridiculous. Even if sexual potential is increased, it never gets close to becoming “infinite.”)

“Then it’s the union of of Shiva and Shakti-–the union of the absolute and the force of feeling.” (The union is not between the absolute and the force of feeling; it’s between Shiva (Consciousness) and Shakti (Energy), and this union unveils the Absolute.”)

In his Satsangs, Spero regularly begins his talks by referring to “Mother.” For example, he begins one of his talks thus: “Mother has asked me to talk about the Kundalini-Shakti aspect of this transmission this evening.” But Spero never makes clear what the Mother is. Is the Mother just Mother Shakti, or is She the Divine Being, which Christians call the Father? Spero also refers to the Heart (capitalized) frequently, but never elaborates on what it is. Another problem with this text is the haphazard capitalization of terms. In my estimation, this book needs a good editor. And I cannot understand why Spero has not written another more thorough and detailed text after this one, published in 2000.

Spero teaches “relational yoga” and reception of Shakti, and I wholeheartedly endorse this type of yoga as well as his Youtube.com videos, which I find better than this book. But despite his limitations as a writer, Spero makes many enlightening points in this text. But because this book is so poorly written, I do not feel it deserves more

than three stars.