The Translucent Revolution: How People Just Like You Are Waking Up and Changing the World by
Arjuna Ardagh is not about Gurus as such, but about an emerging demographic of spiritually awakened people that Ardagh calls "Transluscents". In fact Ardagh methodological assumptions are somewhat problematic to begin with. He doesn't distinguish between degrees of gnosis, and doesn't even acknowledge there is such a thing as complete "Enlightenment", perhaps understandably in view of the incompetence of so-called "enlightened" teachers. Most of the people he describes are just ordinary people with some transpersonal awakening. However this book is very useful in describing a general range of experiences from just beyond normal consciousness to just porior to the Intermediate Zone, as well as explaining that most people who consider themselves gurus or spiritual teachers are actually only at this very basic level. In fact, after reading this book, I realised that those gurus who I had previously considered Intermediate Zone were only at the low or middle or at best high Transpersonal stage. So I need to revise the present coverage of gurus and the page on Intermediate Zone gurus accordingly! In short, despite its highly simplistic assumptions, this is a very useful book for exaplaining the mind set of most gurus, and allows one to see that their abusive behaviour comes about not because they are bad people, but because they simpluy should never have been gurus or spiritual teachers in the first place; they were nowhere ready! In fact, as far as I'm concerned, no-one short of Complete Realisationshould ever take on such responsibility
Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities
The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power
