Over a period of 45 years, I have met, learned from, and practiced under some truly extraordinary spiritual masters. I have studied with renowned Buddhist and Daoist teachers, listened to Sufic masters, and encountered adepts from numerous other traditions. Some were remarkable human beings as well as remarkable spiritual mentors. 

But I have also known and practiced under several highly developed individuals who exhibited what appeared to be many of the characteristics associated with sociopathic, psychopathic, or in less extreme cases, narcissistic personality disorders. Some gathered large numbers of students around themselves and controlled them in ways that could reasonably be described as cult-like. Others were more nomadic, moving from place to place and taking advantage wherever opportunity presented itself.

The easy way out would be to say that these people were frauds, and that their spiritual attainments were simply part of the deception. That does happen, but several demonstrated the higher siddhis or attainments known within their respective traditions. These include a direct knowledge of the nature of mind, mastery over internal energy flows, healing (or harming) through ritual or at a distance, and psychically impacting the inner experience of others. Some generated palpable fields of luminosity and spaciousness experienced simultaneously by numerous students and attendees, including those with no background in Eastern mysticism.

These adepts were not spiritual beginners, nor charlatans pretending to possess training they did not have. They had devoted decades to highly sophisticated contemplative disciplines and, by the standards of their traditions and communities, had achieved unusual levels of mastery. And yet something went terribly wrong. Although charismatic or impressive in their knowledge and spiritual level, they could manipulate, exploit, and deceive. In such cases, there was little remorse for the damage they caused. After all, the ability to perceive another person’s inner state can be both an instrument of compassion, but also a means of control. Clearly, spiritual development can occur, but without a parallel psychological and moral development.

The generic problem

Nor is this problem confined to extraordinary masters or unusual cases. I have also known Western practitioners who have devoted 30, 40, even 50 years to Buddhism and other spiritual disciplines. They have attended retreats, received teachings and initiations, practiced meditation daily, and in some cases accumulated an impressive knowledge of philosophy and contemplative practice. Yet, decades later, some of the same narcissistic, manipulative, or even sociopathic tendencies remain or have even been magnified. 

There is a much more mundane version of the same problem. Anyone who has spent enough time in spiritual communities has encountered longtime practitioners whose years of meditation have done little to soften hostility, arrogance, aggression, vindictiveness, or the need to be right. This is not necessarily psychopathology, but it clearly shows that spiritual practice has failed to transform character.

Today we do not need to enter a monastery or meditation center to observe the phenomenon. Browse social media and discussion groups associated with any major spiritual tradition. You will find folks who are part of a tradition founded on compassion, tolerance, non-harming, and altruistic concern displaying extraordinary contempt toward those with whom they disagree. Political affiliation, gender, ethnicity, free speech, and the ideological controversies of the moment seem to evoke disdain, prejudice, hostility, or outright hatred. 

Civil discourse has deteriorated throughout contemporary culture, and social media itself rewards outrage, polarization, and certainty. But it shows that years of spiritual practice do not necessarily dissolve the psychological patterns that generate anger, narcissism, tribalism, resentment and aggression. 

Indeed, we also know that, through spiritual bypassing, practice can simply provide those flaws with a new set of clothing. Arrogance becomes spiritual certainty, narcissism feels like special attainment, and dependency looks like devotion. Hostility becomes a righteous defense of the teachings. An individual’s worst psychological tendencies can take on the language, philosophy, and authority of a spiritual tradition without actually being touched by it at a depth that matters.

The two parallel lines

For many years I have made the statement: “Spirituality and psychology are two parallel, non-converging lines.” However, healthy spiritual development requires a dual movement. They need not move exactly in tandem, and a human being may climb high on one while remaining dismally low on the other. But they do need to interact and support each other. Moral and ethical training can profoundly influence both, yet progress along one line does not guarantee advancement along the other. What if intensive contemplative training is undertaken by someone whose neurological and psychological makeup has little capacity for empathy, guilt or remorse? And what if they genuinely develop those spiritual “muscles?” 

Spiritual principles and practice can produce authentic development within its own domain, without necessarily repairing a tangled psychological structure. But ethical training, relationship, corrective life experience, psychological work, and moral modeling belong to a different developmental stream. When psychopathology has a biological or neuro-developmental component, spiritual attainment is less likely to be able to erase it or even contact it.

A yogic practice may develop concentration to an extraordinary degree. Breath practices can alter physiological and energetic states. Visualization can train capacities of attention and imagery that most people have scarcely explored. Daoist internal alchemy may involve years of systematic training of internal sensation and energy. Buddhist contemplative practices may produce profound alterations in the experience of self, mind and phenomena. None of these accomplishments inherently addresses narcissism, attachment pathology, manipulativeness, absence of remorse, the need to dominate, or a lack of emotional empathy. 

Interestingly, it is a common trope in martial arts, mythical, fantasy, and sci-fi films that a top student “turns bad,” and turns into a Darth Vader who must be defeated by his ethical counterpart. This reflects a truth that is both ancient and prevalent.

What is a psychopath?

In psychopaths, there is substantial evidence for inherent brain malfunction of the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal circuitry. This alters the response to distress, punishment/reward patterns, and moral decision-making. Knowing another person’s feelings is not the same as feeling with them. And so a psychopathic person can have quite good cognitive empathy—understanding what another person thinks or feels—while having deficient affective/emotional empathy. Kevin Dutton’s online self-report survey of 5,400 people found priests seventh among 10 occupations showing the highest psychopathic trait scores. 

Indeed, the psychopath is not necessarily violent, criminal, insane, psychotic, visibly disturbed, or even socially dysfunctional. Many function successfully within ordinary society. Psychopathy is better understood as a constellation of interpersonal, emotional, and behavioral traits. This long list of psychological jargon includes superficial charm, grandiosity, manipulation, deceitfulness, shallow affect, diminished remorse and empathy, impulsivity, and exploitative behavior. Thus the psychopath may accurately recognize fear, longing, insecurity, admiration, and dependency. But understanding another person’s emotional world without emotional empathy can easily become an instrument of control. 

Note that this is different than the typical sociopathy, which seems to relate to early environment and development. Psychopathy is considered to have a strong biological cause, relating to one’s emotional processing systems. There is simply no scientific or observational data to show that this can be changed through spiritual work.

Meditation’s scope

There is respectable evidence for mindfulness-based approaches in areas including depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and substance misuse. But the popular leap from this evidence to “meditation heals psychological pathology” does not follow. The evidence simply isn’t adequate to show that meditation is effective for bipolar disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, psychopathy, and so on. Even personality-disorder research gives a mixed picture, with most evidence around borderline personality disorder and much less relating to antisocial conditions. 

A 2025 meta-analysis found only a weak association between narcissism and mindfulness. Furthermore, we know that meditation itself is not always beneficial. A systematic review has documented “adverse meditation-associated events,” while Anna Lutkajtis’s The Dark Side of Dharma specifically examines this neglected territory. Meditation is a technology of mental training, not a universal psychiatric treatment.

Spiritual attainment without conscience?

We assume that if someone has meditated for 40 years, can access higher states of consciousness, or has attained non-ordinary perceptual or energetic capacities, we can expect a kinder, more empathic, and more ethical persona. If they have been recognized as a spiritual master in their own tradition, or in the eyes of students and seekers, that considerably ups the ante. Surely spiritual attainment and moral development rise together? 

Yet a narcissistic person does not necessarily cease being narcissistic when entering a spiritual dimension like Buddhism, Shaivism, Daoism, and so on. Instead, narcissism can learn the vocabulary. A controlling person can learn to call control “skillful means.” One craving status can seek initiations, titles, closeness to teachers, a position in the lineage or claims of attainment. Someone intolerant of disagreement can interpret dissent as ignorance, ego, impure perception, broken samaya, lack of realization, or insufficient devotion. 

Spiritual practice may transform pathology. Or it may leave pathology untouched. Or pathology may appropriate spiritual practice. An intelligent psychopath with well-honed cognitive empathy could (potentially) learn the entire vocabulary of compassion without having the affective experience. One can learn what compassion looks like, what students expect an enlightened teacher to say, how vulnerability presents itself, and precisely which words evoke trust and surrender. In other words, a person can become more spiritually sophisticated without becoming more mentally well—and psychological pathology itself can become more sophisticated through spiritual training!

The psychopathic advantage

Research shows the obvious: psychopathic traits can facilitate success for CEOs, politicians, lawyers, media personalities, and others seeking positions of power and control. Fearlessness, detachment, stress tolerance, single-mindedness, charisma, risk-taking, relentless determination, and reduced need for social approval could also be advantageous in contemplative environments. 

Imagine an individual with enormous ambition, bravery, intelligence, powerful charisma, and little emotional empathy. Decades of obsessive training in concentration, visualization, breath control, subtle-energy practices, or altered states of consciousness can make extraordinary progress possible. But would such accomplishments repair a missing conscience? 

Eastern traditions themselves distinguish unusual capacities from liberation itself. The siddhis or ability to manipulate attention, breath, imagery, or physiological processes are not themselves equivalent to compassion or wisdom. Attainment is not integration. A person can acquire abilities without transforming the structure that employs those very abilities.

The abusive teacher

We are not concerned here with the false teacher who masquerades as an enlightened master. Nor is this about the issue of meditation causing mental pathology, nor about abusive spiritual teachers. Those subjects have received their due attention. They confirm that meditative ability, mental disorders, and ethical development can exist quite independently from each other. 

Our question is whether a teacher can possess genuine accomplishments, extraordinary capacities, and authentic experiences—and still be psychologically dangerous. There is the perfect setup here. The guru possesses authority; followers disclose their deepest fears and vulnerabilities; obedience can be reframed as surrender; criticism can be interpreted as ego; doubt can become spiritual failure; secrecy can be called samaya; charisma can be mistaken for realization. 

For an ethical teacher, these structures carry great responsibility. But for a manipulative person they provide special opportunities. Dutton’s finding that priests ranked among occupations with elevated self-reported psychopathic traits is notable here.                                                                                                        

The persistent problem

Does Buddhism cure psychopaths? Spiritual power and spiritual goodness are not the same achievement. Until our traditions learn to distinguish them, the brilliance of a teacher’s realization can blind us to something far more ordinary, and far more important—the presence of conscience. 

Why did so many sophisticated contemplative traditions insist on moral preparation before advanced practices? Patanjali puts yama and niyama before the higher limbs. Buddhism traditionally integrates sila, samadhi, and prajna rather than treating meditation alone as the path. Mahayana and Tibetan Buddhism continually harp on the necessity of bodhicitta (altruistic motivation) and dedicating the merit of one’s work towards others. Daoist traditions contain behavioral and ethical prescriptions alongside bioenergy cultivation. Sufism places great importance on adab, character and the purification of the nafs. 

It seems that the traditions themselves recognized that power and goodness are not identical. Spiritual realization, psychological health, moral character: they can reinforce one another. A complete path should presumably cultivate all three. But one is not proof of the others.

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Dr. Asa Hershoff
Asa Hershoff

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