Embracing Ambivalence: My Journey with Alan Watts and Sadhguru

Navigating the Complexities of Admiration and Skepticism in Spiritual Teachings

I have a crush. My crush is a British man, very charismatic, with a great voice and a wonderful way of talking about Zen. My crush's name is Alan Watts. He's dead, by the way. Well, you know, "dead" in Western terms. But that's not my difficulty, because if Watts were alive today he would be 105 years old. I was born a few months after he left, and I think the age difference would have made it difficult for us to realize our love.

If you are interested in Zen, you don't need me to tell you about him. You know his great lectures that you can listen to on YouTube or on the website that one of his sons set up in his honor. I assume you also have some of his books translated into Hebrew. Humor and lightness are among the qualities that characterize Watts' teaching style, and they are especially evident when listening to him. Sometimes he really laughs at himself out loud, and it's hard not to sit under his charm. When I hear him, I want to accept the message of Zen completely. I feel that he really understands those who are able to remind me that there is no door at all that closes us, and there is nothing that prevents us from simply getting out of our inner prison and into freedom.

Watts and I lived in our idyll for a while, until I made the mistake: instead of just reading him, I started reading about him on Google. That's how I found out that he was married three times and that he fathered seven children, which is a step that increases the chances that one of your descendants will combine all your work on one site, but also perhaps indicates a certain restlessness. That's how I also learned that Watts was a heavy smoker all his life and was also a heavy drinker, and that he died from complications of alcoholism.

This information clouded our relationship a bit. The heavy drinking to the point of self-harm revealed to me the fact that he probably didn't really practice much meditation. It's pretty clear that a bit like cooking and ballet, meditation and drinking are areas that compete for your attention, and it's hard for a human being to master both. Looking back on Watts' lectures, this should not have surprised me. Watts never approached meditation in the way that is accepted in the Zen community. His view, as it runs through his texts, is that it is possible to reach enlightenment by insight alone, without practice. In one of his lectures, he even referred to Zen practice with the words: "A cat sits until it gets tired of sitting, and then it gets up, stretches, and continues on its way."

The question I ask myself is - is this a problem? Is there a significant contradiction between the messages in Watts' lectures - the importance of the connection between humanity and nature and the environment, the importance of the connection between the ancient and the contemporary, between the East and the West, the illusion of the separate self - and his personal example (or lack thereof)? As D., my friend who is more versed in Zen than I, told me: "Jesus and Muhammad must have practiced much more meditation than Alan Watts, and think how much damage came in their wake compared to the minimal amount of damage that Watts caused." His answer put my mind at ease.

I'm still more drawn to meditation and less of a believer in the ability to achieve lasting personal transformation through insight alone, but I'm glad a cool guy like Watts is the one who symbolizes that possibility.

Which leads me to a more difficult question: Sadhguru's question. Sadhguru is the nickname of Jaggi Vasudev, an unusually charismatic Indian mystic who founded the "Isha" organization that offers yoga programs around the world. Its flagship program, "Inner Engineering," includes an introduction to meditation and spiritual development. I first came across Sadhguru's name while listening to a podcast with Gabor Maté. When Maté said that he starts every morning with a 50-minute practice of Isha Yoga, I decided that I should give it a try too. Since then, I have been listening attentively to Sadhguru's complete series of introductory lectures and trying to practice his meditation.

My immediate experience was overall excellent. My feeling is that Sadhguru has found a fantastic way to make the essentials of Buddhism accessible. His formulations are sharp, surprising, and poignant, and the whole package allows you to move forward on the path without fearing that at the end of the road you will be asked to shed all the vanity of this world and join a cult (actually, maybe this is exactly how the entrance to every cult is structured). At the end of Sadhguru's meditations, I felt great joy. In parts, I cried with excitement, something that had never happened to me before.

Only on the fringes of my mind was a slight humming that came from two sources: first, Sadhguru speaks with complete confidence on many subjects and presents many facts as having scientific validity. However, when these were subjects I understand a little about, I could see that many errors fell into his words. Second, Sadhguru has a tendency to joke about gender relations in a way that smacks of misogyny. Sometimes women are described as angry creatures who cause death to their partners, and sometimes it is a matter of misogyny that is completely unaware of itself, because it describes women as more delicate and sophisticated creatures than men. This is also, as we know, a very problematic position. And yet, these two things didn't bother me so much that I couldn't enjoy the rest of the content.

Then I made the same mistake I did with Alan Watts, and did a little research on Sadhguru on Google. A brief search led me to a very disturbing story about his late wife, Vijayakumari. According to Sadhguru's website, his wife was a person of the highest spiritual rank and met the strictest criteria of holiness. Her most dramatic miracle was the way she left her body. According to Sadhguru, his wife informed him in advance at what time she intended to leave her body, and then she did so voluntarily, without resorting to any violent means, that is, she did not commit suicide, nor did she make herself sick.

I don't know how you receive this story, but after ten days of restlessness, I went to Google and wrote in English: "Did Sadhguru kill his wife?" You are invited to try this query yourself and see that, unfortunately, this question leads to quite a few search results. This story is not over. I have no idea if he killed her, and of course, I much prefer the version according to which he was married to the only saint of the modern age. As an activist for the protection of the environment, I imagine that he has also made many enemies who are happy to slander him around the web. Still, the question bothers me: Can I take certain things from the spiritual meal that Sadhguru offers, even when the quality of some of the ingredients is questionable?

I have no answer to these questions. At a time when cancel culture dominates, it is not easy to deal with ambivalence. Watts and Sadhguru are people from whom I learn a lot, and I feel that they help me in my personal development as a person and as a therapist. When I bring their wisdom to my patients, I feel that we all benefit. But each of them has an indivisible remainder. With Watts to a lesser extent, because unlike Sadhguru, Watts may have understood more about whiskey than meditation, but he also didn't pretend to tell anyone how to live. In this sense, Sadhguru is a mirror image of him. But sometimes even this spiritual mirror darkens, and the question that remains open for me is what to do with it then.