America Looks Inward: to Self-Realization, to Reincarnation, to Inner Guides – Program 6

By: Sri Darwin Gross, Tal Brooke; ©1988

Or do they? Does Jesus offer something unique that no other religious path offers?

All Paths Lead to God

Introduction

Tonight, John Ankerberg will interview a man who claims to be a Living Master, that is, one who supposedly has reached the highest level of spiritual attainment. John’s guest is Sri Darwin Gross, the former leader of the religious group called Eckankar. At one time, three million people supposedly received wisdom through him from spirit beings called The Ascended Masters. He says his body is a unique vehicle which God’s essence uses. The man who is currently the Living Eck Master once said about Sri Darwin Gross:

Excerpt from previous program

Dr. John Ankerberg: Okay, what does it mean to be a living Eck Master?

Harold Klemp: He is the individual who, during contemplation the Eckists… we look to our inner, and many times we will see Sri Darwin Gross on the inner. And this is responsible for a number of healings….

Ankerberg: What does it mean to see him? How do you see him?

Klemp: Just as real as you’re sitting here, John, and myself and Debbie and Mike. We see him and we speak with him….

Ankerberg: Do you remember going out of your body and guiding and speaking to Harold Klemp inside of his inner space?

Sri Darwin Gross: The majority of the time, negative. I do not. I’d have to become like Krishna – a vegetable, have somebody take care of the body and feed it if I were to observe what I’m doing in other bodies constantly. I’m like no one else here in this audience.

Ankerberg: But actually God invades your body and works through you. Do you know that He’s working through you?

Gross: Oh yes.

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As a Living Master Darwin claims that he is in contact with and is guided by nine spirit beings, who call themselves the Ascended Masters.

Gross: When I was confronted by the nine silent ones and when Paul Twitchell confronted me with….

Ankerberg: The Ascended Masters?

Gross: The Masters, the Vairagi Masters. I could have said, “No,” but I chose to say “Yes.”

Ankerberg: You’ve got to counsel with them in the spirit world?

Gross: Yes. In Soul.

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John’s second guest is Tal Brooke, once part of the inner circle of India’s most powerful miracle-working guru, Sai Baba. One day Tal realized he was being deceived by Sai Baba and the evil spirit beings behind him. In desperation he cried out to Jesus Christ to rescue him, forgive him, and become his only savior and lord. In a tremendous demonstration of power – more overwhelming than anything he had ever experienced under Sai Baba – Jesus Christ immediately freed him. Tonight, are millions of Americans being deceived through mystical encounters with Living Masters? We invite you to join us for this week’s edition of John Ankerberg.

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Program 6

Ankerberg: We’re talking about, how can you know about the person that you place your trust in, because actually your life is at stake. And, Tal, we haven’t gotten you in on this conversation here. What do you think?

Brooke: If you go to sleep and supposedly have a dream and have an out-of-the-body experience and run into an Eck Master or another spirit being, and that’s the final proof of the pudding, here’s something to think about. Why haven’t people in India for thousands of years had the same experience, waking up, remembering whoever in the genealogy of six million years of Eckankar is the present master? Why do the reports only begin as of 1965? Okay? Why aren’t more people saying, “We’ve all beheld the same radiant face”? Why aren’t people all over the country, Darwin, waking up and saying, “Well, he’s still the Mahanta,” or “He still has the consciousness.”

Ankerberg: Well, let me answer for Darwin at that point, and I think it would be the same thing that you would have said a couple of years ago, and that is the fact is what Darwin says: “We don’t need that kind of evidence when I’ve got the spirit guide talking to me and giving me these fantastic experiences.” Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross was on our program, the world-famous psychiatrist. She said the most beautiful, wonderful experience of her life was when she saw the “Great White Light” and it was a physical healing, etc. And this agnostic, world-famous psychiatrist, changed her mind because of the experience. And I would say that you’ve got people all across the world in very high positions that are changing their worldview solely because of the experience. Now, what’s wrong with that?

Brooke: What’s wrong with that is we’re back into the marketplace of different experiences, and there’s no one that sees any one master as being the one.

Ankerberg: Darwin, what do you think?

Gross: It’s not in a book.

Ankerberg: But you would say in the final analysis Eck is the only way?

Gross: No.

Ankerberg: There’s another way?

Gross: There are many paths to God. It is the only direct way.

Ankerberg: Is that logical? If I say, “Listen, take any road you want. All of them will lead to my house tonight”?

Gross: All roads lead to Rome in Italy.

Ankerberg: But they don’t lead to my house, though.

Gross: No, but you see, there are many paths to God and I believe – and it is not only my understanding and knowledge – that the person that is on a particular path should not be swayed to be pulled off, whether he looks to a rock or to Jesus. The experience is only limited to the lower worlds and the worlds of duality that Kal or the devil or Satan move.

Ankerberg: See, what I’m getting to is people across the country I feel are having these experiences. You’ve got your experiences, MacLaine’s got hers, and Kubler-Ross has got hers, and basically the same philosophy comes into play. You get there a different way – Jose Silva’s got a different technique. It takes a couple of days shorter to get into the altered state of consciousness.

Now, the problem is with these experiences, if I were to say to all of you that I’m having an experience of going home at night and I see a pink elephant in the backyard. And I bring all of you over and I say, “Well, there it is!” And you look, and you don’t see it. And I say, “Well, it’s right there!” And you go back to the window and you look again, and the fact is, you say, “Well, it’s not there, John.” And I simply say, “You guys can’t see it. I’m the only one that can see it.” You see? Well, they have two choices: (1) They can cart me off to the funny farm; or (2) they can simply say, “You’re living in a different realm and we’re using a different basis for evaluating data here. And the fact is that anybody could say anything about anybody and the fact is there is nothing in what we call the “real world” that’s going to determine anything one way or the other. It seems to be that if there is an elephant back there, I shouldn’t be the only one that ought to be able to see it. And the evidence ought to lead us all to the same conclusion.

Gross: Not necessarily. There’s visitations by entities – if I may get into flying saucers – that are entities that like to poke fun at people. Whether it’s a pink elephant or a flying saucer doesn’t matter.

Brooke: We have tremendous experiences in this particular ball park and I think there has to be a criterion for deciding which one is real. And do you want to toss a coin? Or do you want to look at something that can substantiate your experience.

Gross: But what’s real for John is not necessarily going to be real for you.

Brooke: Well, you see, the problem there, Darwin, is that all of life is based on the fact that there’s agreement among perception, whether it’s in a law court or you’re shooting a gun.

Gross: That’s different than his pink elephant, though.

Brooke: Well, you see, maybe you’re seeing the pink elephant. The point is that there has to be a standard of reality, otherwise they cart you off to the funny farm after a while.

Gross: That was John that saw the pink elephant.

Ankerberg: I guess where I was coming from, Darwin, on that was to say that evidence should lead us to the conclusion that there’s a pink elephant, there or not. And if you can’t verify it by looking at it, smelling at it, weighing it or something else, then the fact is we ought to decide it’s either there or it’s not there. For one person to say it’s there but nobody else can see it, then there should be a way of checking that. In terms of the New Testament, when it says that God is in flesh, you can point to a person. It’s not a descriptive definition, it’s a denotative definition: you can say, “There he is. Look at him. See him. Real history. Real people. Real death on the cross. Real resurrection.” That’s the world we’re talking in. Everybody can check out the evidence before you jump.

But to the person that would say, “I cannot put up with a system that is logically contradictory. I can’t just go with my heart because I’ve been fooled before. I also have a brain. And assuming there’s a God that’s there, He gave me that too to think with.” And if my brain says, “Don’t go with your heart,” what are you going to say to the person that says, “Look, the basic teachings are founded on plagiarism”? Some of the things that are happening inside the movement don’t look like God’s love, etc., so what can you say to me to help me out at that point with my head?

Gross: For your head and heart, it’s not in the books.

Ankerberg: Start with the head, now.

Gross: What is written in the books is only to feed the mind or one’s ability to recall certain things.

Ankerberg: Can you see the fact of a person saying, “Listen, I have seen other people, and with my head I realize they have done things wrong, then why should I accept that?”

Gross: Yes, but you don’t want to judge your life by somebody else’s, other than….

Ankerberg: We’re judging on evidence here, because I have to commit my life. If a guy says, “Get into this airplane,” and a mechanic says, “There’s a 50% chance it’s going down,” I should listen to my head.

Gross: I wouldn’t get in it.

Ankerberg: Okay, but then why would you get in something that’s been plagiarized and has problems on the intellectual plane the other way?

Gross: You’re hung up on words. I’m not. It’s not written in a book.

Ankerberg: I guess it was evidence, the same kind of evidence as we had with an airplane.

Gross: You cannot bring God into a court of law.

Ankerberg: Why not?

Gross: And I’m not God.

Ankerberg: You see, that’s the wonderful thing in analytical philosophy. Antony Flew and John Wisdom had a parable against all this “God talk” that goes on, especially in the liberal thinking. And the parable was this: that there is a garden, and these two fellows went into the jungle, and the one fellow said, when they came to this little patch of green, “Hey, there’s a gardener that’s tending this place because look at this.” And the other guy said, “No way!” And he said, “Well, I believe there is. There’s the Supernatural Gardener that takes care of this place.” And he said, “Well, listen, we better find out if that’s true or not. How are we going to do it?” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. We’ll put up some bells and we’ll put up some barbed wire and somehow we’ll trap him. And maybe the first one was he was too tall or too small and so they lowered it and adjusted it, and then they thought, “Well, maybe it’s the invisible man,” so they had to put up flour all around so they could get his footprints. And after that, when he said, “Well, listen you can’t see…” and no evidence was shown the next night after they sacked out and had all these gadgets there.

They came to the conclusion; the one philosopher said, “Well, listen, if you can’t see him, and he can’t be felt, or smelt or anything else or weighed, then the fact is you should come to the conclusion there is no gardener.” And the other fellow said, “Well, listen, it’s just beyond those senses,” and the philosopher came back and said, “Well, listen, how does that supernatural gardener differ from no gardener at all?” And that’s the question. The biblical answer is that into the garden came the Creator. Into this world. And we could see Him, and we could touch Him and He did eat food, and He did talk and He was here, and He did die a real death, etc. So the proof is there. It’s a basis upon which to invest your life before you try out something.

Gross: John, I’d like to correct my statement in this respect, that I look to you as part of God. I’ve been all over this world, including India, and I didn’t have a culture shock. I was prepared because of my ability to see things from another viewpoint via Soul, not some entity or astral or mental body.

Ankerberg: Yeah. One of the things I noticed in talking to people that are having the mystical experience is the de-emphasis on intellectual content. For example, in one of the other groups they have a little slogan that goes, “You need to get to the treasure if you want to get to Soul.” And to have this God-consciousness, to really get into Soul, what you do is there’s a snake that’s guarding the treasure, and you have to kill the snake before you can get to the treasure. The problem is, you find out the snake is the mind. And that’s what I find happening is that we are knocking off the content via the mind and going and opening up to the experience, and if the Bible says that there’s a real, supernatural devil that’s a liar, a murderer from the beginning, [John 8:44] and he is out to damn our soul, he hates us, he doesn’t love us, the fact is, if that’s a possibility – and everybody I’ve had on the program has said, “Yes, there is a supernatural power that’s evil” – if that’s a possibility, then why is it so hard to take one more step and say, “Maybe that supernatural evil power is so evil he might even want to deceive me with good experiences”?

Gross: That’s very possible.

Brooke: Let me throw something in. There is a very simple answer, and that is if you are going to the marketplace and you’re going to buy something, and we’re talking about does the physical world count? Do these other things count? Do you want to buy a car from Joe Isuzu whose word you can’t trust? What about the fellow who’s selling a bill of goods that you cannot check out? And the truth is, you will not buy a car from somebody who’s got a massive criminal record; who’s stolen 20 cars and it’s down there at the courthouse on record; you’re not sure about this car; you’re not sure about the history of this car. We use impeccable logic sometimes when we’re going to spend money for something. Not always, but we do. We check out our sources. We’re very careful with things we buy. I’m always amazed that nowadays people in the spiritual “marketplace” don’t apply the same kind of criterion.

Gross: An individual must determine for themselves and not be swayed emotionally or mentally without that person really going to that temple within as Jesus spoke of and every great saint and savior down through history. Checking and challenging and knowing for himself. With a good balance in this world.

Ankerberg: In terms of that verse – it comes up quite a bit in these things and I’m surprised it hasn’t come up this far – where the King James translated Luke 17:21: “The kingdom of God is within you,” and they did it wrong. It’s a very simple case for anybody to find out. If Christ had meant to say that the kingdom of God was inside each Pharisee, He would have used the Greek word eso meaning literally “inside.” But He used entos which means “in your midst,” and that’s exactly the way the New American Standard Bible has translated it. And it also makes sense since Jesus was at odds with the Pharisees, they were not a part of the kingdom, and so He wouldn’t be saying that it was in them. It would be just the opposite.

Answering the question a little further that was brought up just a moment ago, see if this makes sense between the two systems. I see two radically different systems here that people have to choose. It’s not a small choice, we’re talking gigantic. We’re talking about [1] the biblical view is that God is beyond the universe. [2] In pantheism you’re saying God is the universe. In biblical theology you’re saying God is distinct from the universe. Eckankar would say God is the same as the universe. Biblical Christianity says “God made the universe out of nothing.” All the Eastern views say that God made the universe out of Himself. Biblical Christianity says God created all that is. The Eastern view is God is all that is. The universe had a beginning, under Biblical Christianity. In the Eastern view the universe is eternal. You want scientific laws? Take the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It’s a problem to that view. Under biblical Christianity man is like God. God says He made man in His own image. Pantheism says that man is God. Theism or biblical Christianity says, “God is to the universe as a painter is to a painting.” God is to the universe as a painter is to a painting.

Gross: Meaning….

Ankerberg: Pantheism would say God is to the universe as ocean is to water drops in it.

Gross: John, if I interpret your statement properly, that you….

Ankerberg: You didn’t see a problem with that? Come on back here. Ask the question so the people at home can understand. I think this is good. Then I want to get your words there, Darwin.

Audience: Well, I don’t know why this concept of everything being connected, interrelated, interdependent is against what you believe. I don’t feel like it is.

Ankerberg: Alright, let me do something. Because if it’s all interrelated, then there would be no right or wrong, because it would be “just what happens.”

Audience: I don’t have a problem with that.

Ankerberg: So the fact is that you don’t have a problem with Hitler killing three million Jews?

Audience: I have a problem with that. Yes.

Ankerberg: Oh! But then you’re saying there is something that’s wrong. It’s not just interconnected. It’s not just what happens at the other spot….

Audience: One is life-affirming and one is destructive of life.

Ankerberg: But what would be wrong with that, because it’s all one thing?

Audience: Well….

Gross: Yes, but that’s his opinion, and if you look down through history many wars and battles have been fought over religious thought – one against the other – in the name of God or Allah.

Ankerberg: Let me give you another illustration. If I’ve got a tea kettle in the back and I took the hot water, got it up to the boiling point, and I came and I was about ready to pour it over this young man’s head and said, “Everything is interconnected. It really doesn’t make any difference.”

Gross: I would shout out and ask you to stop it.

Ankerberg: That young man, I think, would have an opinion about that….

Brooke: He would too. That’s the secret to that one.

Gross: That’s right.

Audience: I would be the only one feeling the pain.

Brooke: You’d do a little shouting yourself.

Ankerberg: The question is, “Should you count?”

Audience: Oh, absolutely.

Ankerberg: See, but as soon as you “count,” then it’s not all interconnected. That’s the problem. The other problem is….

Brooke: Charlie Manson used that philosophy, John. He used that philosophy when they hacked up Sharon Tate. They went into her house and they butchered her and they said, “Well, it’s all one. It doesn’t matter. Because Manson is Christ and the devil at the same time.” Hindu Tantra, especially the Kali cult in Bengal, uses that saying, “There is no good or evil” logic to basically do anything. And in the end, anything goes. Someone gets burned in the process.

Ankerberg: Well, the other logical point is that if we’re all on our own spiritual path – that’s what we’re on, right, Darwin?

Gross: That’s correct.

Ankerberg: Every person is on their path alone and really you can’t help me. I’ve got to make my own decisions, right?

Gross: If you ask me to help, I will.

Ankerberg: You can tell me, but I still have to make the decision.

Gross: If I see you doing something dumb and stupid, I’m going to say something to you.

Ankerberg: Yeah, but I’d still have to make the decision.

Gross: That’s right.

Ankerberg: Okay. Then does it really matter? What is the motivation to help somebody else if everybody has to make their own decision? How would you motivate the people in India?

Gross: Compassion.

Ankerberg: Compassion, in what terms?

Gross: For life. Life is precious. I don’t care if it’s a tree, an animal, you or me, or the bee.

Ankerberg: Okay, but then what you’ve said is, “Why aren’t the Masters concerned about what happens?”

Gross: They’re concerned only for the spiritual welfare of individuals.

Ankerberg: But why not the rest? See, I see the God of the Bible is interested in both.

Gross: Well, sure.

Ankerberg: But that’s the difference. That’s a big difference.

Gross: Yes, but you see, the Vairagi Masters, which I am one and part of that whole chain, are not God – they’re God-men, just as any other man who takes, as Jesus put it: “Once you put your hands to the plowshare don’t look back.” [Luke 9:62]

Ankerberg: That’s an assumption, and I’ve got one in the historical….

Gross: That’s not assumption, that’s a reality for me.

Ankerberg: It’s for you. But the fact is that you brought two contradictory entities. One is, I’ve got to take your experience.

Gross: That’s the way of the lower worlds. It’s contradictory. Everything. Including….

Ankerberg: And we all start there, and that’s what I’m saying. But the fact is when you have real solid evidence, I don’t understand why you didn’t take that into account when you will the mystical experience which you have no proof for.

Gross: There is solid evidence; and I’m not here to prove anything.

Ankerberg: I don’t hear the proof. That’s what I’m saying.

Gross: Yeah, I don’t have to prove it, because I know it for myself. And there’s many people, worldwide – I wouldn’t say millions but I’d say a goodly number – who know for themselves. That’s not the problem. The problem is communication and understanding the parallels.

Ankerberg: I really appreciate you fellows being here tonight. From the Christian point of view we still have to deal with the Spirit Himself. You were talking about Soul. The Bible says, “The Holy Spirit clearly says that in latter times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” [1 Tim. 4:1] And the Christians see that as a real terrible possibility, that people can be deceived. And for those of you that are watching tonight, I hope that you will at least investigate the evidence. And, yes, these mystical experiences may be fun; they may be wonderful; they may be exciting; they may be new; they might even work. But if there is an evil power in the world, if you do see evil, could it be so evil that he would give those experiences to damn you forever? But, gentlemen, both of you are coming from different positions, and I want to say thank you to Tal for you coming tonight and sharing, and also for Sri Darwin Gross. I’m so glad that you would come and be with us. And I appreciate your telling us what is on your heart as well. Good night. Thank you for being with us.

Gross: Thank you, John. Divine love.