The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain by Carney Scott

Author:Carney, Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Foxtopus Ink
Published: 2017-07-30T00:00:00+00:00

10 Twelve Years, Fifteen Feet

I did not marry Geshe Michael because I was in love with him. And he did not marry me because he was in love with me. That was not the nature of our relationship. He was my lama. And for him I was an emanation of a divine being.

—Christie McNally

There is no way to know for sure how many vows Christie McNally and Michael Roach exchanged on their wedding day. Habituated to accepting monk and layperson commitments, tantric vows, and monastic mandates by the hundreds, the couple believed that the more rules they followed, the more perfect they would become. One vow was inescapably public and not found anywhere in Buddhist literature: From their marriage onward, the monk and his wife promised to never be more than fifteen feet apart from each other. McNally followed in Roach’s footsteps wherever he went. On airplanes, when one would go to the bathroom, the other would have to wait outside the door so they would not break their spiritual bond. Every private meeting, dark night of the soul, and public speech was a test of their commitment. They hoped to forge a single being out of two people. It was a perfect love that defied the rational limits of human relationships. Both Roach and McNally believed in the possibility of perfection, and the crucible of constant contact inspired audiences around the world.

From an objective standpoint, it was a success. When they were side by side, attendance at events and lectures was never higher. They taught together, and their mutual confidence and earnestness seemed like an open door to the divine realm. The message was that enlightenment didn’t have to be an isolating mission; you could take a spiritual partner along for the ride. Couples joined and worked on meditating together. Sex was a spiritual practice.

Roach and McNally became members of the jet set almost immediately after they left the first Great Retreat. Patrons flew them from Arizona to New York, and everywhere they went—from Germany and Russia to Singapore and Mexico—massive crowds turned out to meet them. McNally dressed in long, white flowing robes, and they gave teachings together on elevated thrones in rented churches, in corporate boardrooms, and at Asian Classics Institute properties around the world. They offered relationship advice based on the law of karma. They cowrote books and cultivated ties with wealthy donors who sought any spiritual validation that outrageous profits were a sign of good karma.

When in Manhattan, the small Three Jewels bookstore didn’t fit the image they were trying to project anymore. No longer aiming at the hippie crowd that delighted in shabby-chic coffee tables and cast-off furniture, they instead booked lecture spaces in upscale spas and tasteful yoga studios that marketed to stressed-out Wall Street power brokers. On one trip east, they took a cab up to Columbia University, where the Tibetan scholar Robert Thurman held court. As an officiant at the first Tibetan Freedom Concert, the best-known translator of The Tibetan Book

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