Most Americans have heard of Billy Graham or seen him preaching the gospel on television. He has been the personal confidant of many former presidents, senators and other public figures. Recently, he has written an autobiography, which I scanned in a bookstore not long ago. His overall perspectives are, to my mind, based in half-truths and surprisingly biased viewpoints. Billy Graham does not understand esoteric knowledge, in fact, he is deathly afraid of it and feels it to be the work of the devil. Underneath his message of love is an agenda of control through fear. In this sense, he is not much different from the Catholic theologians whose dogmas I was forced to accept in my early catechism classes. The principles of the Cosmology of the Eight Fields of Living would suggest that Graham’s inadequacies are due to a spiritual nature that is best characterized as weak and manipulative.

The question now arises as to how a weak spiritual nature can result in an individual who, seemingly, has beneficially served humanity for most of his adult life? A weak spiritual nature does not necessarily imply lack of effort in the spiritual life; it implies an effort that is largely misguided and based in sattwic attachments. Sattwic attachments are those possessive tendencies that relate to higher things like truth, beauty, justice and religion. In Graham’s case these attachments are also tinted by good qualities such as bravery, industriousness and skill in oration and this makes it hard for people to evaluate the true inner worth of this man and his message.

I do not wish to denigrate this man or his work, but I feel the need to caution people with regard to his message. There is much good in Billy Graham, but also much bias, confusion and fundamental ignorance of the underlying principles that govern all of life. This leads him to preach a distorted doctrine that suggests that all "New Age teachings" are without merit and a threat to one’s salvation. As long as he continues to speak in this way, I will be required to warn people about the dangers within his supposedly totally Christian message.