Most of us have a spiteful vindictive undeveloped immature part of ourselves, a part that is maliciously resentful at every wrong and imagined wrong done to us, that delights in getting back at others. In most of us, this part of ourselves is appropriately shackled. But just imagine. Suppose you were surrounded by people who idolized you. Suppose in their eyes you could fundamentally do no wrong. Suppose if you were pissed off at someone, you could have your minions go out in the morning and slice their car tires so they couldn't go to work, and everyone, even the person you'd abused, would take it as a given that you were doing whatever you were doing because you cared for their spiritual salvation and for the good of the whole so much. Suppose everyone agreed that such actions were not evidence of what a miserable petty vindictive small minded person you were, but rather showed how courageous you were that you would go to such outrageous creative lengths to save that person's soul? And suppose it wasn't just everyone outside of you who agreed. Suppose you had perfected a technique for never doubting your intention, for always outrunning your conscience. What would you do? What would that horrible spiteful thing that is in almost all of us do if it were set free?
Andrew once gave a talk on what he called the "liberated ego," where he said unless enlightenment was complete and there was no shadow left behind, it wasn't just the individual who was liberated, to some degree the ego was liberated as well. Of course this was meant to explain other corrupt teachers, but as so often seemed to happen, he described himself. Andrew's more outrageous behavior made more sense to me when I began to consider this. Why did Andrew do such-and-such to so-and-so? Maybe he did it simply because he was pissed off at so-and-so. Maybe he did it because he could.
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