Happiness In Slavery
Following is a review posted at amazon.com of Alex Reichardt’s book All For the Love of God: Life with Mark Prophet, A Modern-Day Mystic:
Today it feels important to tell you that I bless the day we met, and will continue to do so until I’ve taken my last breath. Your endless gifts to me bespoke a generosity of spirit that I’d never before been confronted with, and will be surprised to encounter ever again. Quite simply, you are the kindest man I have ever known. As I review my life, our time together was a landmark event for me…life changing. I knew at the time, and I know it still. I will never be the same.
The above quote is not, as one would surmise, from All for the Love of God. It is written by an actual slave (to his master) and quoted from p. 141 of a book called "Slavecraft: Roadmaps for Erotic Servitude" by Guy Baldwin. I cite it here to demonstrate the close similarities between so-called ‘chelaship’ as recounted by Alex Reichardt, and masochistic submission as exemplified by people in the BDSM community who are involved in 24/7 consensual master/slave relationships. But BDSM participants are clear about their contract, and it is not maintained through intimidation, or threats of spiritual damnation. And that’s exactly what held Reichardt in thrall to Mark Prophet.
Reichardt, p.29
I saw his great love for people, his honesty and how down to earth he really was. There was nothing phony about Mark. He met each person where they were and treated everone like his best friend. A very generous-hearted person, he was humble before God and man, always willing to give the other person the benefit of the doubt…He was as joyful as a child. Before long we were like the best of friends, and I viewed him as the caring father I had always wanted.
The similarity of these two quotes is striking. Sadly, Reichardt’s feelings of friendship and loyalty toward my father were not reciprocated.
Consider the following. As a child of perhaps six or eight, I remember my father referring repeatedly to Alex Reichardt as an "idiot," and "nincompoop." My sister Becky remembers dad saying again and again, "Alex, you twerp!" At the time, I actually felt sorry for Alex. I listened to my father saying these things, and wondered what in the world Alex could have done to deserve such enduring scorn. Realize that this was a man who basically gave up his life for my parents. He waited on my dad hand and foot, rode around with him in the car, massaged his feet on a regular basis, (to help Mark Prophet carry "world karma" of course) and did whatever he was asked, at any hour of the day or night.
I remember specifically one incident when dad berated Alex behind his back because Alex hung his pants up crooked on a wire hanger. I never heard my dad remark even once how grateful he was to Alex for his service, only how clumsy he was. Another running joke with dad was how Alex had fallen asleep and forgot which of my dad’s feet he’d been rubbing. "Which one?" dad would tell the story, mimicking Alex and curling his lip derisively, then he would guffaw. He blamed Alex for leaning the wrong way and causing a motorcycle accident where dad had been driving. (p.131) Both of them got pretty banged up. I was there when they came home and saw their torn clothes and bloody knees. A caring master who had Alex’ best interests at heart would have humbly apologized.
Alex is a man who gave my dad total loyalty, even to the point of signing over his unemployment checks to help dad pay the bills when money was tight. Yet a short few years later when Alex forgot to pack my dad’s shoes for a trip, Alex had to replace them at a cost of $15. Monthly staff salaries were coincidentally also $15.
It didn’t end there. Alex was fined $45 (a whopping three month’s salary) for letting someone into a service with liquor on their breath, chastised for picking onions off a sandwich, and blamed for his "doubts" supposedly preventing my dad from lifting the fog on one occasion. (Yes, you heard that right–dad claimed to be able to control the weather.) Alex was fined the total cost of postage when he sent a mailing out first class instead of air mail. His crime? He had sent the mailing as per standard procedure and not asked beforehand. Alex was told he’d made a "week’s worth of karma" because he spoke louder than a whisper in the unoccupied chapel. He’d "disturbed the forcefield."
Dad mocked Alex by "knighting" him Sir Bernard, quipping that if he worked really hard he could become "Saint Bernard," implying that he was loyal to a fault, like a dog. (p.115)
Yet when things went wrong, Mark Prophet was quick to blame Alex. On p.143 Alex describes how he and Ruth Farnam were constantly singled out as examples of bad behavior. Alex excuses this public shaming as essential to the process of instilling humility. Again, humiliation is a staple of BDSM, and the more I read of this book, the more I realized how deeply this metaphor holds. And therein lies the problem.
It is important to understand that "All for the Love of God" is really two books. It is a book documenting the life of the author, and certain events which took place on staff of "The Summit Lighthouse" mostly in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s in Colorado Springs, Colorado. This section of the book is factual, and according to my recollection, highly accurate.
But there is a second book without which the first makes no sense. That second book involves flights of fancy so extreme and outlandish as to defy description. Only "in a world" of invisible (but real) masters, angels and past lives does the concept of spiritual training involving real-world humiliation make sense. Strangely, Alex recites his justifications without a trace of irony or acknowledgement of their absurdity (which is plainly apparent to anyone else).
The first and second books are thoroughly intertwined and inseparable. Alex describes past lives of the "messengers" and staff as if he were talking about well-established historical facts. He provides only self-referential evidence for any of the spiritual teachings. The book contains an appendix of "dispensations" of angels that he claims form some sort of spiritual "posse" around each person. To get an idea of just how ridiculous this is, on p.299, he tallies up the "posse:" "15 Seraphim, 4 Cherubim, 10 angel groups, 22 specific angels, 13 elementals, 1 Terton (whatever that is), 1 Ascended Master, plus your guardian angel." That’s substantially north of 100 angels per person.
I’m sorry, even by the standards of garden variety religious hyperbole, this is over-the-top. This level of disconnection from reality would normally get a person institutionalized. We’re expected to believe that these wild stories he presents are objective realities? It strains every fiber of credibility to the breaking point.
So how to analyze this book? It’s utterly incomprehensible without the spiritual component. Otherwise it reads like the narrative of a non-consensual slave, and comes off painful and pathetic. It’s surprising how similar "All for the Love of God" actually is to Mark Prophet: The Man and the Myth. Both recount nearly identical events. Peter Arnone rejects the supernatural component, and Alex embraces it. Peter’s account makes much more sense. I’m sorry to say that it portrays Mark Prophet as a very ordinary weak, self-centered and manipulative human being.
But Alex seemed determined to reframe Mark Prophet’s legacy in loftier terms. I only wish I could concur with him. But I cannot. In places, Reichardt even lets his exasperation show. But then he quickly self-justifies to let Mark Prophet off the hook and give him the benefit of the doubt–which is more than Alex ever got. Alex writes most credibly in this voice of the true and loyal slave.
Not satisfied with his own account, Reichardt bolstered it with no fewer than 16 co-authors. A lot of these people were my friends and mentors (or at least acquaintances). I grew up with many of them, and once looked up to many of them. These include Svend Andersen, Merle Bouma, Terry Canady, Timothy Connor, John Fox, Dorothy Lee Fulton, Donald Galvin, Alexandro Genis, Joseph Genito, Philip Hoag, Michael Kinchloe, Kenneth McNeel, Celeste Miller, Tom Miller, Paul Quintero, and Alex’ wife Margaret. Regardless of how I may feel personally about these people, arguments from popularity don’t really hold water. What’s important is to be objective, and that would involve at least the examination of this entire story in more human terms.
As people with first-hand knowledge arguing for a more realistic portrayal of Mark Prophet I can offer myself and my three sisters, Mark’s five children from his first family, Peter Arnone (author of Mark Prophet, the Man and the Myth), John Pietrangelo (author of Lambs to Slaughter), Randall King (my mother’s third husband, who knew Mark very well in the years before his death). There are no doubt others. But that’s beside the point.
Mark Prophet was neither a god nor a monster. He was a human being with typical desires and drives. He had the gift of gab, a thirst for personal power, and more than ordinary insecurities.
As a young man, he felt he had been unrecognized for his spiritual gifts, and had limited material success for the first 40 years of his life. But then he had hit upon a winning formula: by becoming a "messenger" he could express his spiritual beliefs and be materially rewarded at the same time. He finally managed to put together the support base and recognition he had been looking for. He left his first wife and five children and married my mom, who was twenty years younger. In essence, he did what anyone in his position would have done: he went all-out.
As his supporters grew and contributed more money, he began to feel beyond reproach. He began to believe his own press. He eventually became almost completely disconnected from what composed his real power base–the loyal members and staff. He could abuse them, he could treat them like slaves and damn if they didn’t come back for more!
The more cruel and insensitive he and Elizabeth became over the years, the more the staff worshiped them. What human beings could handle that kind of positive feedback without becoming corrupted?
This book fails to address that question. As a historical record, I’m glad Reichardt wrote it. He has an excellent memory, and these events need to be documented. I’m glad to have it for my family history if nothing else. So I give it four stars. But that’s where my praise ends. The flamboyantly fictional embellishments of supernatural fantasy take this book into another realm–that of a Paul-Bunyanesque spiritual tall tale which nonetheless reeks of abuse and dupery. The coup de’grace in that department was the account on p.178 where Alex was serving my dad breakfast in his bedroom. Dad thought that Alex looked a little nervous, so he threw the tray of food at him, saying "Forget about yourself and just serve!"
Any man who wasn’t wearing an imaginary dog-collar would have quit on the spot. Alex justified the act as something he needed for his growth. This is the mentality of a slave.
I’m all for consensual slavery if that’s what someone really wants. I’ve known several people in that situation. Some people thrive on surrender and self-effacement. They find a form of freedom there. I do think that under the right conditions with the right master, it’s a viable container for psychological growth, but it’s fraught with perils: In order for the slave to consent, s/he needs to first have full self-awareness and the absolute strongest grounding in objective reality.
As for the master: upon acceptance of the slave’s submission, he becomes fully responsible for the slave’s well-being. If he is a benign master, he will only give the slave tasks and correction designed to help him, rather than further debase him. It has to be a relationship based on true love and humility, not self-interest. The master should treat their slave as they would their own child–lifting the slave up, to add to the slaves esteem, rather than break it down. It’s a rare human being who has the developed psyche to pull that off, which is why healthy submission remains so rare. In my view, my father was either not up to the task, or for some sadistic reason singled out Alex for his very special and extreme mockery and mistreatment. It takes a lot to shock me these days, but reading this book I was repeatedly shocked by Reichardt’s justifications of my dad’s bad behavior. Even if he’s cool with it, I’m ashamed.
Because of his preoccupation with the (imaginary) spiritual pantheon of the Summit Lighthouse, in my view Reichardt lacked the self-awareness to evaluate his position. His narrative proceeds with one foot in the spirit world and he sees everything through that lens. No matter how bad it got, he held Mark Prophet as an unimpeachable guru in the spiritual "tradition of the eastern adepts." But unless you’re a true believer and share that view (placing Mark Prophet in the company of the Dalai Lama), his story comes off as a caricature. I’m sorry, but you’d never see the Dalai Lama throwing a tray of food at one of his monks, nor making a fool of himself by engaging in any other of my dad’s far-from-humble shenanigans. Epic fail in guruland!
It’s a pity, because Alex is a man who really could use a dose of good news after the merciless pummeling he received from both my parents for most of his adult life. Instead, he compounded the error by writing a book turning it around. He recasts the humiliation as a badge of honor. This unfortunately leaves the entire episode glorified and therefore more likely to be repeated by other would-be gurus in the future.
To Alex: I know you’re a good man and I know you have the best of intentions. Anytime you want to talk to me about what really happened, I’m there for you, and I’m truly sorry for the way my parents treated you. As Peter Arnone said, I know you are capable of figuring this out if you are so inclined.
