In the great old sci-fi movie Forbidden Planet there was an ancient machine, buried deep in the planet, which perfectly read the psyche of anyone who landed on the planet. Phantoms and imaginary monsters would appear, formed out of mental energy, reflecting the deepest fears of the human invaders.

These were no ordinary phantoms -- these chimera had real power, amplified by the dynamos of the machine, and they could crush a man.

The machine buried deep in the Forbidden Planet is an image of the mechanism of Maya buried deep in the human psyche. And Frank ("Adi Da") is a sorcerer who has learned how to use that machine for his own ends.

All his power is drawn from the psyches of those whom he attracts, and who enter his "planet".

He holds them by reflecting their every unconscious archetype and mental projection, and he throws up phantoms and idols which dominate and crush the minds of all who are foolish enough to give him power over their thoughts.

THE CURSE OF A PSYCHIC VAMPIRE

"Adi Da's" agenda is simple, and ultimately life-denying -- he draws all value to himself, and he leaves his victims feeling utterly worthless and hollowed out. (To know this all you have to do is look at his long-time devotees, who lately have begun to physically resemble pale wraiths.)

To justify this vampirism, Frank accuses his followers of an interminable sin of "ego" -- a mysterious unhealing disease which he also finds afflicted Jesus, Gautama Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, and every other spiritual teacher since the beginning of time.

In other words, Frank finds all human lives, except his own, to be unredeemed, and utterly without value. ("The five billion slugs" he called us.) If you want to heal, if you want to be redeemed, all you have to do is fall down and worship "Adi Da", the embodiment of all value and all possible perfection.

Frank's Forbidden Planet has tossed up an Ultimate Archetype born in the archaic imagination of spiritual seekers, an idol which feeds on those who consider themselves worthless, until they are fulfilled as worthlessness itself.

The chimera created in the mindstuff of this "Forbidden Planet" is the image of a World Saviour, a messiah of cosmic proportions, a "Promised God-Man" who has come to reveal the final and ultimate path of Liberation. ...And what is this path?

It is only by means of devotionally Me-recognizing (and devotionally to-Me-responding) devotional meditation on Me and total psycho-physical reception of Me, that your madness is now escaped and your darkness is now en-Light-ened. Therefore be My true devotee, and by (formally and rightly and truly and fully devotionally) practicing the only-by-Me Revealed Way of Adidam (Which is the True and Complete Way of the True and Divine Heart), always Find Me, beyond your self-center, in every here and now. -- Adi Da

Translation: "Worship Me, become possessed of Me, and I will set you Free."

It is a terribly seductive message, to the weak-minded and to those who are given to project all value upon the expectation of a great messiah who will surely come to lead us out of this world of interminable suffering.

My thesis is that there can be no such messiah -- and any such saviour-figure demanding to be worshipped is a myth-creation of the psyche, reflected in the energy-field of the mind, and amplified by the ancient machine of Maya.

As the real sages -- from Buddha to Ramana Maharshi -- have said, that which is can only be realized -- not seen. When you cease to animate, by projection, the archetype of a Superbeing who stands before you, when the mindstuff ceases to take any necessary form at all -- then you have found truth and non-dual realization, the Da-ghosts of the psyche will quickly fade, and everything around you will begin to reflect the real Peace you have realized.

That is the moment at which the machine of Maya is neutralized, for it can only feed on your hopes and desires and your fears. Once the mind is stilled, the machine is broken. ...Or transformed -- for the Forbidden Planet held an even greater secret, which is that the machine was originally meant to be a creative tool of the artisans who built it, aeons before.

It was only in the age of unconsciousness that it fell under the control of the vain and incomplete men who learned how to use it as a means of exploitation, all the while parroting the language and symbols of the ancient way of Self-realization.

Elias