Dr. Hugh Urban brings scholarly rigor to the study of Scientology and Osho, but what about consciousness?

photo by: Skeptiko

I have an interview coming up in a minute with the very excellent Dr Hugh Urban, Professor of Comparative Religions at Ohio State University and a guy nice enough to put up with my shenanigans. Here are some of the clips.
Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:13] The part that concerns me is we have reason to believe that MKULTRA / Men Who Stare At Goats stuff was going on. So I’m just not sure that we can bracket that back into, “Oh, you know, those Scientologists, they were kind of playing off of the cold war jitters that people have.”
Dr. Hugh Urban: [00:00:36] But I guess I would say that, I can’t know, as a historian of religion, whether there’s a reality to what they’re talking about, but I can say that they certainly believed there was and took it very seriously. 
(later)
Dr. Hugh Urban: You can also point to examples within Christianity where the leadership was incredibly corrupted. I mean, the Middle Ages are filled with bad popes, right? Bad popes and bad cardinals. That doesn’t mean that the entire Catholic Church from top to bottom is a corrupt organization.
Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:08] Wait, hold on, full stop. We don’t know that. I mean, that’s, I guess, the part that I want to say we’re not doing our job if we don’t ask that question.
(later)
Alex Tsakiris: Beyond the Eckhart [Tolle] / Oprah Winfrey / new age thing that most people get, what he’s saying about the science of consciousness, is much, much closer to what leading researchers are saying. So I guess returning to kind of this earlier point, if you can’t get consciousness right, if you’re playing  “consciousnesses and illusion” as your atheist  colleague no doubt believes, you’re not even in the game. 
Dr. Hugh Urban: [00:01:51] Yeah, that’s an interesting point. And I guess I would say that, well, there’s a couple of answers to that question. There is a movement in religious studies and other fields that is extremely interested in consciousness from different perspectives. But in my own work, I mean, I’m a historian, and so I look at what people do and the texts they leave behind and what we can sort of see.
(continued below)

 

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Click here for Dr. Hugh Urban’s Website  
Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:16] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host Alex Tsakiris and today we’re joined by Dr Hugh Urban from the Ohio State University.
I’m going to have to ask Hugh why so many people from Ohio State insist that you say The Ohio State, but I guess we’ll get to that maybe in a minute.
Anyways, he is a top-notch scholar in religious studies. He’s written some terrific books, including a couple we’re going to talk about today, one on Scientology, one on Osho, and maybe even talk a little bit about his work in tantra. He has developed quite a reputation within his field. The net net is we have a really smart guy with us today.