An odd an interesting book. Masson's father was a searcher, looking for higher powers and pathways to enlightenment, and got in contact with Paul Brunton, aka PB, a writer about mystical things. He travelled to India and meditated with him (he was a gem merchant so he travelled a lot anyway) and became one of PB's disciples. Back in Los Angeles, PB came to live with the family, who considered it a great privilege to be able to learn from him. They followed his teachings about vegetarianism and celibacy, even in marriage. Jeffrey was fascinated and in awe of this man who said he had come from Venus to help the Earth reach enlightenment.

He answered difficult questions with silence, which the Massons accepted as proof of his higher level of enlightenment. But as Jeffrey got older, he started to see that many of PB's claims to a doctorate, to wisdom, to the rest, didn't hold up. Was PB a con man? He allowed himself to do things, like marry, that he forbade his disciples. His students readily paid for his expenses. Did he believe his own bullshit? It's hard to know, and Masson doesn't really try to prove anything.

There's a little bit of the "Oh, I always hated Woody Allen even before the scandal broke" in some of his descriptions of moments of doubt, but overall it's a great narrative of trust and belief and how those can be lost. ( )

bookshelves: hardback, philosophy, paper-read, one-penny-wonder, nonfiction, biography, cults-societies-brotherhoods, autumn-2013, published-1993, autobiography-memoir
Recommended to ☯Bettie☯ by: Lilo
Read from October 15 to 31, 2013



I dedicate this book to my father
Jaques Victor Masson

Opening: "PB, why is it that you don't drive a car?" I asked Paul Brunton, my father's guru.

He smiled, somewhat mysteriously, and waited for rather a long time before answering. The smile conveyed to me that he was remembering times long past, that there were things he could not yet tell me, that I was naïve yet endearing, that there was a bond between us. Children invest a lot of time in certain adults. I was perhaps ten, he was about fifty.

"Jeffrey, on Venus, there are no cars."

A short history of the Paul Brunton way of living in Indian spirituality by the son of the family PB tutored. Of course I am up for a dissing of this snowflake; I am up for dissing the whole snow field of theosophists, scientologists, questers, path followers, mystics, followers of 'The Work' etc etc They are dangerous to the gullible. So within the framework of Aristotle's "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it”, I read these too:

3* A Search in Secret Egypt
3* The Quest of the Overself
2* The Secret Path

From the introduction we glean that PB was intensely private, not wanting to be seen, and wishing his previous life buried. At this juncture I cannot but help think of that plumber from Devon who set himself up as religious personage: (wiki sourced)

Lobsang Rampa is the pen name of an author who wrote books with paranormal and occult themes. His best known work is The Third Eye, which was published in Britain in 1956.

Following the publication of the book, newspapers reported that Rampa was Cyril Henry Hoskin (8 April 1910 – 25 January 1981), a plumber from Plympton in Devon who claimed that his body hosted the spirit of a Tibetan lama going by the name of Tuesday Lobsang Rampa, who is purported to have authored the books. The name Tuesday relates to a claim in The Third Eye that Tibetans are named after the day of the week on which they were born.

Moving onto the main bulk of the book it is very easy to see that this was a susceptible family, ripe for any shade of mumbo jumbo enlightenment.

A quick read at 174 pages and for the most an interesting one. That once the charlatan was exposed and the father just said 'PB wasn't the right guide' and kept on with his search for another guru was all rather sad really.

Yes, I feel sad for Jeffrey Masson's wasted childhood and I have a curiosity to have a peek at The Assault on Truth: Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory

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