The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power by Joel Kramer & Diana Alstad Book review by Earl Lee The psychology of religion is a broad and often difficult topic, and it's unusual to find a book that covers as much ground as this one does, and does it as well. The Guru Papers is easily the most important book on the psychology of religious belief since Edmund D. Cohen's The Mind of the Bible-Believer (Prometheus Books, 1986). Kramer & Alstad work from the broad premise that religion is essentially authoritarian in nature and that authoritarian religion is the foundation of an authoritarian society. The authors cover a wide range of topics, including religious cults, drug addiction and self-help programs, compulsive love relationships, Satanism, Fundamentalism, and the psychology of various religious theologies. Kramer & Alstad believe that our society has reached a crucial juncture in its development. The widely touted " breakdown" in society, attributed by fundamentalists to the moral decay caused by liberal abortion laws, lack of prayer in public schools, feminism, drug abuse, homosexual rights, etc. is instead attributed to the breakdown in authoritarian social structures. Religious conservatives and fundamentalists rightly see the collapse of traditional values as a threat to their power in society, but Kramer & Alstad believe that this breakdown is both good and necessary as a prelude to building a non-authoritarian society. The book begins with an examination of religious cults, both Western and Eastern, looking at how the cult fosters dependence on the cult leader or guru. In particular, cults demand total obedience and control over their members, with the cult members being constantly taught to distrust themselves and trust only the infallible guru. Even when the guru is seen taking advantage of others through emotional or even sexual abuse, the cult member is encouraged to believe that these practices are necessary for the spiritual health of the guru. This basic surrender and dominance psychology is essential to all cults. The cults also maintain a constant attack on reason and on the outside world, which they are taught to see as non-spiritual or even anti-spiritual in nature. Kramer & Alstad look at Eastern gurus, Western cults (including Jim Jones' People's Temple) and the New Age channeling. The basic problem of modern society is that people are divided, psychologically and spiritually. They are taught to distrust themselves, to rely instead on various political and religious leaders. Our religious and political leaders teach us that we cannot be trusted to make the right decisions for ourselves. This idea has its origin in the religious belief in a fallen and corrupt world divided between good and evil, spiritual and secular, right and wrong. Because people are divided between a good self and a bad self, a selfish self and a giving self, etc., people are at constant war with themselves and their bodies, leading to drug and alcohol addiction, emotional addictions, paranoias and other neuroses. Ideally, society needs to start fostering social structures that encourage people to be self-reliant and psychologically whole. This would, of course, mean a complete reorganization of society as we now know it and a movement away from bureaucratic, top-down organization and toward more power-sharing and cooperative social structures. The last part of the book looks at religions in general as authoritarian social structures. The clearest example of this authoritarian nature is modern Fundamentalist movements in both Christianity and Islam and the constant struggle by religious liberals to try to make religions less authoritarian. Efforts to liberalize a church usually end up eroding the church's power and eventually lead to weakening the church's hold over its members. The power structure of a church cannot easily survive the erosion of its dominance over its members without moving toward more fellowship and cooperation among its members. In fact, Kramer & Alstad show how various theological ideas, including monotheism, dualism, "oneness," etc. are reflected in social institutions so that the varieties of religious experience become in truth only different in the amount of authoritarian control that is exercised over the believer. Frog Ltd./North Atlantic Books, ©1993, paperback, 385 pp., $14.95 Earl Lee Axe Bldg, PSU Pittsburg, KS 66762 (316) 235-4885