Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That's Lost its Mind

by Jamie Wheal

Absolutist Claims of Attainment—In the spiritual, intellectual, sexual, entrepreneurial, or artistic realms—typically reserved for the founder, occasionally extended to their inner circle. Once infallibility is claimed, all dissonance in relation to the founder must be either signs of supplicants’ blind spots and projections or deliberate “crazy wisdom” being offered to liberate the subject—never signs of the founder’s fallibility or humanity. This often extends beyond the blamelessness of the founder to the completeness and totality of their worldview, which is presumed to be comprehensive and supersedes all other modes of knowing. Two of the most prevalent expressions (often appearing together) are the one-two punch of absolute Enlightenment (with the leader implicitly or explicitly claiming such status) and a dismissal of objective reality as illusory in favor of the power of the mind, visualization, or positive thinking.