The Failure of Thought Leaders and Spiritual Communities

The public is slowly waking up to the signs of global authoritarianism taking hold yet spiritual communities and centers of so-called non-conventional thinking are still asleep.

People Magazine

This essay is about my association with one such thought leader, Christopher Wallis, a scholar of Tantra, an acclaimed author and overall well-intending soul who has taught me a great deal about how the human mind works.

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Today is my 58th birthday. Though I have long since dropped any sentimentality around birthdays (especially my own), #58 holds a particular significance astrologically. The planet Saturn takes 29 years to complete its orbit around our sun. This means that the ringed planet is in the same location in its orbit as it was on the day of my birth. Birthday #58 marks the second “Saturn return”.

Astrologers tell us that this event offers the opportunity for deep introspection and a realignment with one’s true purpose. It marks a transition period, a threshold to enter a new phase of life. A person’s first return in their late twenties signals the movement from youth into adulthood, when priorities shift from developing one’s own chops to concern for others.

I was in medical school when I turned 29. My birthday fell in the weeks right before we students left the classroom and entered our clinical training. We put our books aside and learned how to place our hands on patients, how to listen to their heart beat and the stories that brought them to us.

Our mentors reminded us that 80% of diagnoses could be made through a diligent examination of the HPI, the History of Present Illness, the patient’s own account of the nature and progression of their symptoms. Lab tests and MRIs most often do little more than confirm what good clinicians can glean from attentively listening to what their patient had to say and filling in the blanks by asking the right questions. Listening goes a long way.

So, my attention shifted from myself to others, and I have since enjoyed a rewarding medical career. And now, say the astrologers of the second Saturn return, I am apparently moving into a mentorship role, offering pointers to those embarking on their life’s journey at their first transition.

But my training is in science, and astrology is pseudoscience, so all of this is obviously nonsense. However, I am not so naive to think that what is presently immeasurable could not exist. Doing so would be like a person hard of hearing being confident that they got the whole story because they are unaware of having missed anything…

The Failure of the Scientific Orthodoxy

“An Insult to Intuition” critiques media and scientific orthodoxy. That’s the short description I used when I launched this newsletter 22 months ago. It’s not so hard to point out the misdirection in media. There are many media outlets that offer varying commentary and different details. Very few, if any, can offer balanced and comprehensive coverage of events consistently.

Critiquing scientific orthodoxy is more challenging. Disagreeing with “experts” will put you on the outside of what is acceptable.

Long time subscribers know that I believe we have been led astray by scientific institutions around many things—the utility of mask mandates, the long term safety of mRNA injections (as well as their short term efficacy), the events of 9/11, the presence of Extraterrestrial influence upon our planet and even our understanding of consciousness and death. I have offered sufficient evidence and logic to support my position on all these topics, yet I do not expect anyone to believe me. That’s not the point. These are things you have to see for yourself. Demanding others to believe isn’t logical, productive or compassionate.

And yet…

I am gobsmacked at how many intelligent people are so certain of their position when ultimately their understanding is entirely founded in trust in third parties who are not infallible.

What is intelligence? There is no complete definition that can be universally accepted. To me, a primary aspect of intelligence, at the very least, is the ability to recognize the source of uncertainty in one’s position. And so my question is answered. Asserting certainty by trusting fallible third party sources isn’t intelligent.

The last four years have demonstrated that education and intelligence do not correlate nearly as directly as we once thought. Some go so far as to say that intelligence and education are inversely correlated, i.e. that formal education is the most insidious form of indoctrination because at the end of your studies you get to be a part of the club. Club members can claim that they have met the minimum requirements to join. They even give you a piece of paper with latin words on it.

The club vouches for you. Forever after you will be a legitimate voice—so long as you vouch for the club. Go astray and you will lose your tenure, your affiliation, your license to practice, your job. You become discredited. You lose your legitimacy.

This is how the system is set up. The system, with its inherent carrots and sticks obscures uncertainty by offering those who partake some knowledge while incentivizing conformity. This is how the educational system suppresses intelligence. It’s not easy to see this if you are part of the system.

For example, if you are an academic you may know quite a bit about your field of study and next to nothing about another. Nevertheless, how likely are you to challenge the orthodox position on other topics? In other words why would a professor of archeology at Harvard express any doubt about the University’s vaccine mandate?

This became clear to me early in the pandemic. Rutgers University was the first to mandate the vaccine for students in the spring of 2021. I spoke at a rally protesting the mandate in May of that year. We knew far less about the dangers of the product then. We also didn’t know that the mRNA shots did not stop transmission and would demonstrate very little protection against Covid infection at scale. However we did know that there was no long term evidence of safety and that Covid posed almost no risk to the young and healthy.

I had a chance to speak to a few students who supported the vaccine mandate. They were standing in small groups at the periphery. They didn’t believe that their university would impose anything that might risk the health of the students. Protesting the vaccine mandates was frivolous and irresponsible in their view. And if that weren’t enough, they had no problem with the fact that the mandate applied only to them and not the faculty. The indoctrination begins very early.

This is why a popular astrophysicist and face of “the science” had no problem exhorting the public to get vaccinated. During a long-form discussion with Del BigTree last year, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, PhD, had to admit that he didn’t know enough about vaccines to answer some basic questions about them, but refused to believe that following consensus may not always be the most prudent thing to do. He makes a good point. However he had to admit that consensus isn’t consensus if certain opinions were not allowed at the table. Tyson was visibly stunned when BigTree pointed out that there were dissenting, qualified experts who were muzzled. Tyson was unaware of this fact. He was the partially deaf person who was sure he got the whole story.

It’s not so outrageous that highly educated experts failed us these last four years. When dissenting experts are excised from the conversation and treated as pariahs there is little hope that the system will continue to provide proper guidance.

But the scientific establishment isn’t completely non-functional. That’s obvious. We have amazing technology at our disposal. We certainly know much more about the physical world now than we did a century ago.

The “system” is quite good at self-correction when small mistakes are made on the path to a greater understanding. But when it comes to recognizing big mistakes, like realizing that its own foundational tenets are unsubstantiated or demonstrably false, the system fails miserably.

Moreover, the bigger the error and the longer it goes unrecognized the less likely it is that the system will ever self-correct. The system has a personality. It is the expert. It is the final authority. It could never be that wrong. And the individuals who comprise the system will eventually adopt the same personality traits: hubris, over-confidence and superciliousness.

Tony Fauci was an exemplary medical student at Cornell, but I hardly believe he imagined that he would ever utter such statements. That’s what happens when you face stern criticism after being rewarded by the system for five decades.

The most salient example of how the system overlooks its own massive failures is with regard to childhood vaccines. There isn’t a single vaccine on the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule that has been tested against a saline placebo in an extended double blinded trial (Reference). Although there is evidence that most of these vaccines offer protection against the target disease, we still have no idea whether the overall health of vaccinated children is better than unvaccinated children in the long run.

There are extremely concerning signs that the opposite is true. Chronic diseases in the pediatric population have exploded concomitantly with the expansion of the childhood vaccination schedule following the passage of the National Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which protects manufacturers from any liability from injuries that might result from their product.

How does the system respond to this? Correlation doesn’t equal Causation!! The system explains that the increased incidence of diseases is due to changing diagnostic criteria or the increased surveillance of diseases. The system refuses to dispel such concerns by never doing a large retrospective study on the issue, even though they have all the data to do such a study. The system attacks independent researchers who have shown that in smaller studies, the unvaccinated are in fact much healthier than vaccinated children. These studies do not get published in the literature. Anyone who brings light to these facts gets labeled with pejoratives like “anti-vax” or “anti-science”.

The evidence of a massive failure is staring the system in the face, yet it goes unacknowledged year after year. The heavily funded vaccine industry all the way down to the pediatricians who are renumerated largely based on ensuring their patients remain adherent to the CDC’s immunization schedule are on a runaway train. Hitting the brakes gets you thrown off at your own peril. And so our children now go to school with nut-free zones and inhalers and epipens in their backpacks after taking their am ADHD meds. There’s nothing to see here folks.

Where are the Philosophers?

The fact that the threat of Covid-19 was overblown to drive humanity into accepting the idea that censorship of certain opinions is necessary was not lost on many people. Children’s Health Defense and Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) are two organizations that have worked tirelessly to expose the duplicity and lack of transparency of our agencies of public health. Dr. Meryl Nass’s Door To Freedom takes on the W.H.O., the biosecurity agenda and the attack on Food and Farms.

Doctors and scientists around the world have been diligently pointing out the bias in peer-reviewed literature around Covid and the mRNA injections. Open letters to public health agencies have been written, court battles have been fought, counterfactuals have poured into social media only to be shadow banned or cancelled for violating community standards.

Where are the philosophers? What happened to the centers for non-conventional thinking and the spiritual communities? The Esalen Institute, the Omega Institute, Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, Blue Spirit all caved to the narrative. Granted that congregating in large groups was not just frowned upon but became illegal, but where were their voices of consternation against the tyranny veiled as public health guidance that was poorly thought out, largely unsubstantiated and detrimental to the spiritual and emotional health of society?

Why couldn’t they see what was really going on?

Popular thought leaders like Sam Harris, PhD, let us know in just a few minutes where the problem exists: in his opinion, the experts are always right and anyone who disagrees cannot be right because they disagree. He warns us to beware of the false prophets! They can be crafty but can still be easily identified because what they say runs counter to God’s word! Harris wasn’t preaching wisdom, he was preaching a doctrine. He wasn’t making sense—he was faking it.

"Faking Sense": The rise of Pseudo-Intellectualism in our society

Perhaps the most distorted view of reality was offered by the hosts of a podcast called “Conspirituality” that rapidly gained popularity thanks to the support of mainstream media. The hosts have no scientific training but had no problem equating skepticism of the Covid narrative with QAnon and vaccine hesitancy with flat-earth theory. Their entire thesis is based in false equivalence.

They wrote a book attacking people like RFK Jr. who has been warning the public of the lack of scientific evidence around the safety of vaccines without ever even examining the evidence he has laid out in two full-length books. What would be the point? Smart people shouldn’t doubt the experts. Interestingly all three authors admit to have been traumatized by cult leaders in spiritual communities but believe they have “woke” to reality without noticing that all the telltale signs of cultish strategy like charismatic leaders who shame the non-compliant, reward the obedient, assert that they are the authority while collecting loyalty and royalties apply to the Pharma/media complex on a much bigger scale.

"Conspirituality" podcast hosts now push globalist propaganda in their new book

Christopher Wallis and Tantra

Toward the end of 2019 I had been intently studying a most remarkable body of knowledge, called the Law of One. I was raised Hindu and was aware of the rich philosophy offered in that tradition. As a young adult I explored Buddhism and learned Vippassana meditation from Satya Narayan Goenka, a teacher in the Theravedic school of Buddhism whose lineage could be traced to the Buddha himself.

Unlike Hinduism and Buddhism with their rich traditions and written texts, The Law of One is a telepathically channelled body of work that was transcribed between 1981-1984.

Why would anyone consider reading such nonsense? All I can say is you need to read it before passing judgement.

The Law of One was received and transcribed by the trio of Carla Reukert, who, while in a trance state, acted as a two way channel of communication between Don Elkins, a pilot and physics professor and an entity called “Ra”, who claimed that they were speaking as a unified voice of an extraterrestrial civilization hundreds of millions of years ahead of us, spiritually. Jim McCarty, an advanced practitioner of meditation served as the “scribe”, recording a lengthy conversation between Elkins and Ra spanning over a hundred separate channelling sessions.

Ra claimed that in their understanding of reality there is only one axiom: the universe is conscious and singular. It is unity. It is ONE. The fact that we as individuals perceive reality as an innumerable number of separate things is a distortion which becomes evident through diligent observation and meditation over years and lifetimes. The universe is, in fact, experiencing itself through an infinite number of perspectives simultaneously, one of which is what you think of as you.

Have I lost you yet?

As crazy as it may sound to atheists or those raised in monotheistic traditions, this philosophy is not “alien” to humanity. This overarching perspective is called non-duality. There is no separation of creator and creation. Separation is an illusion if all is ONE.

Not only does Ra patiently answer Don’s questions on a multitude of subjects from human evolution, religion, famous personalities in our history to the proper number of dimensions required to correctly define space-time, Ra says that they and other highly advanced civilizations have been communicating this philosophy to humanity for thousands of years. The problem is, the knowledge and philosophy get distorted over the centuries.

Throughout the sessions, Ra never stops reminding Don Elkins that they are not omniscient, they are merely acting as teachers of what they have figured out so far. It is up to Don, Jim and Carla to decide what is true. Ra has made themselves available only to answer questions, and they have chosen to communicate to this trio because in their estimation these three have a low risk of distorting the information being transmitted.

In that spirit, the trio published the full content of all the sessions verbatim without any commentary. You can read or listen to this body of knowledge here.

The Law of One is not a complete explanation of everything. Neither does it include any suggestion that there is a reward for believing it nor any punishment for discarding it. In fact, Ra goes so far to suggest that any doctrine which includes such rewards or punishments is, by definition, distorted in some way. Ultimately existence is conscious and free. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either up to no good or is confused at some level.

It’s up to the reader to decide for themselves. All I can say is that Ra’s responses to Don’s questions are unlike anything I have ever read. If Ra is real, it is obvious that they possesses a vast intelligence that is clearly being confined to the constraints of our language.

Please understand that I am not proselytizing. I am merely informing you that such a body of knowledge exists, and for the curious it offers a tantalizing perspective on a great many things.

Back to the story…

At the same time I was immersing myself in this body of knowledge, my wife alerted me to the work of Christopher Hareesh Wallis, a Sanskrit scholar and authority on the philosophy of non-dual saiva Tantra, a practice that originated in India fifteen centuries ago.

From hareesh.org

I have read two of his books on Tantra, Tantra Illuminated and The Recognition Sutras. Both are exquisitely written and clearly demonstrate Wallis’ scholarship on the material. Wallis has an extraordinary gift of putting the ineffable into words. I highly recommend these books to all.

I was stunned to realize that foundationally, Tantra and the Law of One have too much in common to not consider the possibility that they are of the same origin. During a community discussion with Wallis I asked him about the origins of Tantra. He admitted that it was unclear, and that some say that it was divinely transmitted.

That was enough for me. I became his student. I even went so far as to loan Wallis a significant sum of money to start a retreat center in Portugal where aspirants could come and learn about this fascinating philosophy and associated practices. I was excited to serve on the Board of Directors of his newly founded Tantrika Institute hoping to get to know him better and perhaps eventually collaborating on some kind of project researching the parallels between these two philosophies.

And then, Covid…

Travel restrictions were put into place. It was the absolute worst time for a newly formed retreat center in another country. Strategy had to change. Teachings would have to happen remotely. Websites would need to be redesigned, and who, during a global pandemic, would be interested in studying the esoteric?

The BOD met regularly, trying to find strategies to keep the project afloat, not knowing how long the world would remain shut down.

Then, in the summer of 2020, something happened. Wallis, on his public facing on-line presence, began to attack the pandemic narrative skeptics. When our authorities began to hint that a vaccine was in the works, he began to tout its benefits and safety, long before any proof was available.

I finally voiced my concern around such positions on his public page. There were too many unknowns. The mRNA platform was new and had never been tested at scale. There was no way anyone could do long-term safety studies in a few short months. Operation Warp speed was warped.

To my shock and dismay, rather than considering my position respectfully, Wallis fell into herd mentality, mocking my concerns as shockingly absurd and “anti-science”. Could he, a philosopher and Sanskrit scholar really be dismissing my opinion as a doctor? I might have been wrong, but if I were, how would he possibly know? Imagine the degree of blind faith one must have to shame a professional publicly on matters you know nothing about, never mind the fact that this professional was your own benefactor and advisor…

It was a strange time. In all my years I have never experienced anything like what I saw in 2020. Physicians didn’t always agree on things. We would discuss our differences. Laypersons would stay out of it. After all, getting second opinions was part of medicine. All of a sudden, disagreeing with “the narrative” resulted in insults and threats. My opinion about PCR testing and pathogenic priming, said the expert on Indian Classical Religions, didn’t mean much because I was not an immunologist.

After a large number of unsavory exchanges on social media I was finally able to have a phone conversation with Wallis after a BOD meeting. I asked him if he knew that vaccine manufacturers are protected from any liability resulting from their product. He was aware of it. Why then, I asked him, would these manufacturers have demanded liability protection if their products were safe to begin with?

“If the public knew they could sue manufacturers they might think that vaccines weren’t safe”

Hunh.

I asked him if he would watch the movie Vaxxed, which gave voice to the parents of children whose health was permanently devastated by vaccines. He said he wouldn’t because,

“I am afraid that I might end up changing my mind.”

My jaw dropped. This was from a philosopher and a teacher of a system of practice that seeks to define reality at the deepest level?? Imagine how confused one must be to say something like that and really mean it. I felt sorry for the guy. But what was behind such a statement? In this case, changing his mind on this matter means that he is admitting that he was wrong about something big. Club members can’t do that.

I soon after resigned my position as a Board Member and we went our separate ways.

Recently, Wallis published another interesting book, “Near Enemies of The Truth”. In it he unpacks common new-age adages and how they can be useful up to a point, but can ultimately lead to confusion and impediments to one’s spiritual progress, i.e. near enemies of the truth For example:

• “Follow your Bliss”

• “Speak Your Truth”

• “Be in the Moment”

• “Listen to your Heart”

• “You create your own reality”

There are others, and he offers interesting insights that I haven’t found elsewhere. However when it comes to the matter at hand: how can one know the truth about matters outside your own knowledge base? his advice is predictable:

Ask trusted friends for their opinion. If that doesn’t work, trust the experts. Wonderful. But which ones?? Answer:

The ones who are the most trusted, the majority, the consensus. Trust the club.

The irony here is that Tantra was a radical philosophy when it emerged. It upended the status quo. It destroyed the patriarchal and caste systems of the time by accepting all comers. Tantra was very anti-establishment.

Wallis, of all people, should know that the club isn’t always right. That doesn’t mean he should have joined me and others in our crusade to hold our health authorities accountable and demand transparency and the honest examination of the hundreds of thousands of reported vaccine injuries in our country alone. He should have known that there is uncertainty around the topic, especially for the layperson like him. If there is room for the other side to be correct, there can be no room for insults and contemptuous mockery.

Coincidentally, it was at that same time that I published my own book on the matter. In “Woke. An Anesthesiologist’s View” I offered the reader my own take on “enemies of truth”. The first is an irrational need for certainty where none exists. The rest are specific situations that lead to bias. How can one know if they are biased? It’s not easy, but one way to know that you may be biased is that you end up not sincerely listening to counter arguments. Isn’t that the biggest problem we are having right now?

Christopher, if you are reading this know that I mean you no ill-will and that I am very aware that we both seek the same things for humanity. The fact that we both think the other is “profoundly confused” as you put it recently is not lost on me. However we are NOT mirror images of each other. You belittle those who disagree with you. I do not. You are unwilling to fully consider the logic behind my position because as you have said numerous times, “it’s not worth the effort”, while I consider yours every time. Your persona as a calm and collected teacher of Tantric studies stands in stark contrast to your impatient, mercurial attitude on social media whereas I have nothing to reconcile on my end. We disagree on topics where I have done the research myself while you are relying on third parties. I acknowledge the uncertainty in my position while you are certain that you are right. Are you really sure that I am the confused party here?

In full transparency, I admit that I have lost too much sleep over my exchanges with you, Christopher. I am not bothered by your tone or contempt. I have faced a lot more derision from other people. Speaking up against the club is not for the thin-skinned. You see, I regard you as an important test case. You are an intelligent person. More importantly you are a philosopher, which means you understand epistemology. If I fail to get through to you, what does that mean for the rest?

Conclusion

Pluto is another powerful planet in astrology and is associated with transformation, power, intensity, and rebirth. Pluto is in now in the sign of Aquarius. The last time that happened was in the final decades of the eighteenth century when a fledgeling democracy emerged after two millennia of authoritarian rule on the planet. It also saw the emergence of the first vaccine—a remarkable technology with the potential to both aid and damage our health. As the oldest democracy on the planet chooses its next set of leaders it seems that both vaccines and democracy are up for a reassessment.

In my opinion the biggest “near enemy of the truth” is the idea that some opinions should not see the light of day. As RFK Jr. reminds us,

“There has never been a time in human history that we look back and say that the people who were censoring speech were the good guys.”

It’s pretty clear that the fabric of society is starting to rip apart. The corruption in government, media and institutionalized science and academia is getting exposed everyday and yet so many continue to look to them for guidance. If there ever were a greater need for deep thinkers, true seers and epistemologists it is right now. This is your moment to shine, Chris. As we anesthesiologists say so often, it’s time to wake up.

Final note: Authority’s raison d’etre is to accumulate more authority and never cede it to the individual. Authority seeks greater and greater compliance of its subjects. It’s much easier to rule over a compliant population. For that reason, teachers of true wisdom practices are authority’s biggest adversaries. A deeper understanding of our true nature reveals that we are complete, that we can know for ourselves, that we are ultimately free because our essence is indestructible. With true wisdom comes fearlessness, and a fearless population is very difficult to control. This fact has not been lost on every thought leader.

With regard to the Law of One, I highly recommend the work of Aaron Abke. I am also grateful for my association with Paul Chek, a lifelong student and highly acclaimed teacher of true wisdom. Please check out his offerings at myspiritgym.com.

Paul and I recently recorded a long form discussion on a better way to identify misinformation by using the events of 9/11 as a catalyst for awakening: