by Tang Huyen

The herd instinct is fuelled by energy, it is ordered by energy — with people of high energy being leaders and people of less energy being followers. The content of what they advocate is purely adventitious.

Energy can be the alpha and omega for some people.
They don't look to anything beyond it, but groove on
it and it's their only objective in their so-called
spiritual pursuit. More specifically, when, say, a
Hinduist teacher spreads his energy out to his adoring
students through thin air, the students get an electric
charge that feels like electricity passing through them,
without physical contact, and that's bliss to them.
Brahman, God, concentration, meditation, etc. count
for diddly squat in front of it, and they are deadly
afraid that their teacher will abandon them, thereby
depriving them of their ultimate experience.

Some people have energy by birth, some have to
develop it, some have it but don't know how they get
it, some get it and lose it and don't know how they
lose it. But whatever its origin, it gives them an
expansive feeling, an ecstatic feeling, a euphoria that
can be addictive and infectious. It makes them feel
that they are leaders, for the simple reason that others
automatically come to them unasked, drawn to them
by their energy, energised by them vicariously, even
on a newsgroup. It can even give them the feeling
that they are messengers of God or vessels of their
religion, whatever it is. The feeling of euphoria needs
some dressing up for respectability — thus the
religious garbs, which are purely adventitious.

The herd instinct is fuelled by energy, it is ordered
by energy, with people of high energy being leaders
and people of less energy being followers. The leaders
of mass movements — like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Rev.
Jim Jones, David Koresh, etc. — are all high in energy.
The content of what they advocate, in politics or
religion, is fungible: what is important is that they
draw people to them with their energy, that they
energise their followers with their energy, and this
can be done en masse, much bigger mass than with
the average Hinduist teacher.

Energy has to be cultivated and nurtured. Some
states — like harmony — foster it, whereas other
states — like dysharmony — dissipate it. Some people
want to feel in conflict or strife; it makes them feel
good, and with their energy adding to the fire, they
really feel good blowing up all over, hugely,
frequently. It gives them a high: momentarily it
makes them look like the bull leading the herd. But
in the long run it depletes their energy, and in
addition wrecks their whole mental-psychic structure.
They lose their energy, with it their claim to herd
leadership, and they can lose a lot more — practically
all of their mental faculty, including their (perhaps
sophisticated) social skills. When they had high
energy, their problems were masked by the euphoria
(high tide lifts all boats), but were never resolved;
and when their high energy is gone, their problems
resurface with a vengeance. Their wholesale
raggedness shows in every post of theirs.

If people act as equals — which is hardly possible
on the herd instinct alone, as the herd instinct works
on hierarchy — their collective energy can act in
synergy to offer more power than the individual
energies simply added together. Such sharing and
mutual enhancement are for adults who command
peace and harmony each within himself or herself
and collectively with each other. But as you know,
adulthood is so hard.

Colophon

Posted to talk.religion.buddhism on July 12, 2004, in reply to "kamerm," who had offered a Taoist observation on expansion and contraction, and on how affiliative energies can be tapped for group cohesion. Author: Tang Huyen. Message-ID: <[email protected]>.

This piece extends Tang Huyen's long-running analysis of the teacher-student relationship into a broader account of spiritual community dynamics. Where "Teachers and Students" focused on the empirical test for a genuine teacher, this post focuses on the role of energy — what is actually being sought and transmitted in many spiritual communities, regardless of doctrinal content. The key observation is that doctrine is fungible: what makes a teacher magnetic and a community cohesive is not the content of the teaching but the energetic field. The post closes with a warning about the self-defeating character of conflict-seeking: the high of blowing up others depletes the very structure that generates the high, leaving behind "wholesale raggedness."

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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