Tal Brooke
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Tal Brooke (born as Robert Taliaferro Brooke) is the chairperson of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, a Christian countercult and apologetics organization. He is the author of several books concerning the phenomena of Indian gurus, New Age spirituality, and the occult. He is a former follower of the Indian guru Sathya Sai Baba.
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[edit] Biography
Brooke is the son of American diplomat Edgar Duffield Brooke. He lived part of his childhood in Europe and the Middle East, and in the mid 1960s was enrolled as a student at the University of Virginia from which he graduated. In the 1980s he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary.
In his spiritual autobiography, Lord of the Air, Brooke recounts that he was attracted to the American counterculture of the 1960s with its emphasis on altered states of consciousness, alternate lifestyles and exploration of eastern religions. He experimented with the drug LSD and began reading books concerning various Hindu gurus such as Sri Ramakrishna, Ramana Maharshi, Sri Aurobindo, Paramahansa Yogananda and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. He then traveled to India in 1969 and in January 1970 encountered Sathya Sai Baba.
Brooke recounts his experiences with Sai Baba, noting his personal charisma, his apparent ability to materialize objects, his teachings, and the practice of meditation. Brooke was so impressed with Sai Baba that he became a disciple along with several other western-born devotees. He began to compose a work in praise of Sai Baba which he called The Amazing Advent. However the completed manuscript was never published.
Brooke became disenchanted with Sai Baba and describes his misgivings. Part of those misgivings relate to private encounters that certain devotees, including Brooke, had with Sai Baba that allegedly involved sexual acts. Brooke talked about some of his misgivings with some other devotees, and his disenchantment with Sai Baba set in. These devotees also told him that Sathya Sai Baba could change into a woman instantaneously and that a man had sexual intercourse with Sathya Sai Baba as if Sai Baba were a woman. He had spent approximately two years as a devotee. Shortly after this Brooke converted to Christianity through the assistance of missionaries in India.
He subsequently joined the Christian missionary organization Operation Mobilisation, and then studied theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. In the late 1980s he became the president of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project in Berkeley, California. He maintains an active career at the Spiritual Counterfeits Project as a speaker and writer, and as the editor of the ministry's journal and newsletter.
[edit] Writings
An abbreviated account of Brooke's spiritual conversion was published in England in 1976 as Lord of the Air. An expanded version was then released in India as Sai Baba, Lord of the Air. A revised edition of Lord of the Air was later released in 1990, and then another expanded edition was released in 1999 as Avatar of Night. According to an article by Brooke (A Message in a Bottle: A Visit with Jane Campion), aspects of his story became a source of inspiration for the novel (and then motion picture) Holy Smoke! by Anna and Jane Campion [1].
Since his conversion to Christianity, Brooke has written several apologetics based books. The Other Side of Death was a critical evangelical response to the early writings of Raymond Moody on near-death experiences. His book Riders of the Cosmic Circuit involved a critical examination of Sai Baba, Swami Muktananda and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He has also been highly critical of New Age spirituality in various articles published in the SCP Journal and SCP Newsletter (both publications of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project), and in his book When The World Will Be As One.
[edit] Controversies
Brooke has been a controversial figure in his writings that oppose New Age spirituality. Part of his interpretation of New Age is framed around a conspiracy theory. He regards New Age as a Satanic conspiracy through which people are spiritually seduced and they may even be controlled by demons. He also interprets New Age as part of the human impulse for self-worship, and tries to chart those impulses in the context of late Twentieth century western culture. However, his advocacy of a conspiratorial interpretation of New Age differs from the standpoint that was taken by the staff of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project prior to his presidency such as in the SCP Newsletter (January-February 1984) and in the SCP book The New Age Rage (published in 1987).
Brooke's controversial stance on conspiracy theory formed part of a brief news report by Robert Digitale in Christianity Today magazine in January 1990. Digitale speculated on the apparent shift in perspective at the Spiritual Counterfeits Project under Brooke's presidency and with changes in the personnel of the ministry's board of directors.
Other evangelical countercult apologists, such as Elliot Miller (Christian Research Institute) and Douglas Groothuis, have rejected the conspiracy interpretation of New Age as proferred by other apologists such as Dave Hunt and Constance Cumbey. Although Miller's and Groothuis' books were published prior to Brooke's When The World Will Be As One, many of the points Miller and Groothuis cite in objecting to conspiracy theories generally seem to apply to Brooke's argument.
[edit] Bibliography
- Lord of the Air (Herts: Lion Publishing, 1976).
- The Other Side of Death (Wheaton: Tyndale, 1979).
- Sai Baba, Lord of the Air (New Delhi: Vikas, 1979).
- "Pied Piper of Poona," Eternity (September 1981), pp. 14 & 18.
- Riders of the Cosmic Circuit (Tring: Lion/Sutherland: Albatross Books, 1986).
- and Chuck Smith, Harvest (Old Tappan: Chosen Books, 1987).
- When The World Will Be As One (Eugene: Harvest, 1989).
- Lord of the Air: Tales of a Modern Antichrist (Eugene: Harvest, 1990). ISBN 0-89081-834-7
- ed., Virtual Gods (Eugene: Harvest, 1997).
- ed., The Conspiracy to Silence the Son of God (Eugene: Harvest, 1998).
- Avatar of Night (Berkeley: End Run Publishing, 1999).
- One World (Berkeley: End Run Publishing, 2000)
[edit] Other Sources
- Brooks Alexander, "The Final Threat: Apocalypse, Conspiracy, and Biblical Faith," SCP Newsletter, 10/1 (January-February 1984), pp 1, 6-8, 11-12.
- Gregory S. Camp, Selling Fear; Conspiracy Theories and end-times paranoia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1997).
- Paul Coughlin, Secrets, Plots and Hidden Agendas (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999).
- Robert Digitale, "Major Shift at Spiritual Counterfeits Project?" Christianity Today, (January 15, 1990), pp. 53-54.
- Douglas R. Groothuis, Unmasking the New Age (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986).
- Massimo Introvigne, "Deprogramming Kate Winslet: A Review of Holy Smoke by Anna and Jane Campion," [2]
- Elliot Miller, A Crash Course on the New Age Movement (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1989). ISBN 0-8010-6248-9
- SCP Staff, "The Final Threat: Cosmic Conspiracy and End Times Speculation," in The New Age Rage, Karen Hoyt and J. Isamu Yamamoto, eds. (Old Tappan: Fleming Revell, 1987), pp. 185-201. ISBN 0-8007-5257-0
[edit] External links
- Home page of Spiritual Counterfeits Projects
- Tal Brooke on the SCP homepage
- Home Page of Tal Brooke's publishing company
- Short book review from the Christian Research Institute of Riders of the Cosmic Circuit
[edit] See also
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