The Bionic Woman Is A Krackhead

File under: Satscams and Gurus to the Stars

We just heard that Lindsay Wagner, a 70s icon with her role as TV's The Bionic Woman (and presently hawking the Sleep Number bed on TV), has turned to the dark side and become a full-blown Krack head. It seems she's been to that Krack den known as "Oneness University" in India a couple of times at least, according to a Guruphiliac discussion group member:

She's attended the Oneness University on a number of occasions, having been told of the organisation in 2002 at the Peace Summit in Geneva. She appears now to have dumped her own charity and is promoting the deeksha gig wherever she can.

Perhaps it's because she thinks she can make more money by selling deeksha:

Lindsay is offering private sessions. (Lindsay’s sessions 1 1/2 hours, $125)

Err... not at those rates she won't.

That's the surprisingly good deal (if you believe Lindsay has anything to offer besides her smile, a few stories about making TV in the 70s and some advice about bedroom furniture) available at the You! Go! Girl! gathering known as Camp Bombshell:

Camp Bombshell is a sanctuary, a safe place where healing occurs, a place where women can unplug and enjoy a community of other women who, just like you, are looking for a time-out, for honest conversation, soul-searching, laughter and bonding. "To be a Bombshell today, is more about being courageous than curvaceous, being Real rather than Ideal".

Too bad deeksha is about as real as Joan Rivers' face. But the money sure is real, just ask the little piggie Kalki "The Kracki" Bhagavan and his barnyard Amma back in India collecting it all.

Murders At Ammachi's Matt?

File under: Gurubusting, Amma All-Over-The-Planet and Ammachi's Imagegate

Our recent posts on Ammachi's Imagegate have turned up some pretty interesting information as of late. Like, did you know there was a hard-hitting biography written about Amma in 1985? It wasn't such a big deal until she went big-time. At that point, author Sreeni Pattathanam had to start worrying about protecting his own life from Ammabots. Especially given the fact that at least five deaths have occurred under mysterious circumstances at her ashram:

Some of deaths which the author alleges as murders at the matt are:

1. The suicide of Subhagan alias Sunilkumar, brother of Amrithananda Mayi. The author alleges that Subhagan was beaten to death for opposing the activities of his sister.

2. Vellappillil Narayanan Kutty of Kodungallur, an inmate of the Amrithanandamayi Ashram, died on April 4, 1990, due to internal hemorrhage as per postmortem report. He was an employee of Government Bureau of Economics and Statistics, Trichur, Kerala. (The New Indian Express, April 19, 1990, Kochi, Kerala, India and Janayugam a Malayalam daily April 22, 1990).

3. Pradeep Kumar, a relative of Amrithananda Mayi, died on August 16, 1994 under mysterious circumstances.

4. Rumdhur, a historian and inmate of the ashram, died on July 15, 2000 within the precincts of the ashram. The ashram authorities did not intimate his death to his friends or his relatives.

5. Ramanatha Iyer of Mumbai allegedly committed suicide by jumping from the 12th floor of Amrithanandamayi Math at Vallikkavu on September 5, 2001. (The New Indian Express, September 6, 2001, Kochi, Kerala)

Yo, cuzz! It seems some of them Ammabots mean serious bidness. And apparently, being related to the Mother of the Universe is quite a dangerous thing in her house.

We wonder what else will turn up as a result of Amma's recent money-grubbing moves to sell herself to the world. As always, all tips will remain strictly confidential.

A Brother-In-Arms Comes Online

File under: Gurubusting

Right before Ammachi's Imagegate broke out, we received an email from one Kevinanda Yogi heralding the arrival of his own guru gossip site: Chi-Ting Guru Gossip, which he uses to comment on visiting gurus in Tiruvannamalai, South India, home of Arunachala Mountain and Ramana Maharshi, and ostensibly the world captial of Advaita Vedanta.

Here is what Kevinanda has to say about a guru named Muz Murray:

Weird aging English hippy who looks like a stick end insect in orange, obviously took too much LSD in the 60’s and never recovered as he is still peddling his delusions 40 years later. Cuts a rather lonesome figure in high season, when he is totally ignored and often trampled underneath foot by the guru hunting crowds. After high season, he is sometimes seen with the gullible making strange insect noises which he calls mantras.

Kevinanda sounds like our kind of guy, and he comes recommended by the Grand Poobah of modern gurubusting, Sarlo of Sarlo's Guru Rating Service, so please give Kevinanda's site a spin when you get a chance.

Throwing Up Ammachi

File under: Gurus Clockin' Dollars and Amma All-Over-The-Planet


In celebration of Ammachi's decision to excise the interwebs of all images of herself, we are going to post one image a day that we find on the net until they are all gone in the hope that she unleashes her legal dogs on us.

Ammachi Gets Greedy

File under: Gurus Clockin' Dollars and Amma All-Over-The-Planet

This just in from a very concerned Ammachi devotee:

It seems that there is currently an Internet wide ban on photos of Mata Amritanandamayi, as the organization is claiming exclusive copyrights to every photo ever taken of her. Her organizations lawyers have witch-hunted a bunch of people (devotees of Amma actually) who posted some of her satsangs on Youtube, and I believe they were threatened with legal action if the videos were not taken down immediately. These were just devotees posting video for other devotees to watch. I have heard that there is a strict ban on anyone posting photos of devi bhava on the web, supposedly orders from Amma herself. One can imagine the elbow grease it might take to get every photo of ammachi removed from the internet. I have talked to several devotees who kept personal devotional websites and blogs and are pretty upset after being ordered to strip their sites completely of amma photos and having their sites stalked by this newly formed Amma-image gestapo.There is a website at ammaschildren.org where there is a message on this posted on the front page. Apparently this website works under the cover of MA center and is also working to ban every image of the guru from every other internet site. I don't know anything else. A lot of devotees are afraid to talk about this.

This is what we have to say about it all:


Bring it ON, Ammabots.

The Rapin' Tibetian Lama

File under: Gurus Doin' Time and Hands Where They Don't Belong

Today we got a tip about the crimes of a faux lama named Michael Lyons. It seems he was a very bad boy when he lived in the U.K:

There is a warrant out for the arrest in the UK of Tibetan Lama, Michael Lyons aka "Dr. Mohan", "Mo", "Mohan Singh", "Mohan Chandra" for rape, in 2003 he was tried for rape, but let go free in England. Now, in 2006 he is hiding in Miami.

Much to the chagin of our tipster, Book Two of "Dr. Mohan's" nefarious ways are being written in Miami:

When I met Michael Lyons in Miami in 2002, he introduced me to Abbot Khenpo Chime Tsering. They were business partners. Khenpo Chime Tsering started the now defunct Pema Tsal meditation center as a front for his illegal activities. Khenpo Chime Tsering ran two meditation centers in New York which were shut down... Khenpo Chime Tsering was extradited out of Nepal for a fake passport business and stole $50,000 from Nora Post and was prosecuted.

Book One includes the standard borderline personality behavior you'd expect from a pathological narcissist posing as a spiritual leader:

Michael Lyons has been sexually abusing women for 15 years. He has an inner circle of women who protect him. He has been known to kidnap women for days on end and rape them so that they are not credible witnesses. In 2003 he was brought up on a rape charge in England. He and his members harass women via phone, the women around him are like his slaves. He uses conditioned fear response, dehumanizing language and scare tactics to confuse his victims. A couple of women believed that before they were raped he drugged them, as he gives his victims something to drink before they are raped. Some women also reported that they were abducted for two or three days at a time so that they can’t make police reports, he slowly makes the victims mentally unstable through cult activity and uses the other members so that the victims are not credible. Michael Lyons tells women that all married women are whores and refers to people as "vampires", "demons" and "suckers". He will tell women who don't want to have sex with him, that they have big egos and so he rapes them. Mohan scares women into believing that his actions are normal... There is a hierarchy with the women around him, who often need to be deprogrammed and treated like cult victims. I have talked to many people about him and they say that they have been threatened with curses, death threats, etc... The idea of [being] a Dakini or "cloud angel" is what Mohan leads these women to believe that [is what] they are... Mohan has set up a bevy of "dakinis" who believe they are doing Buddha's work.

Curses, death threats and dakinis, oh my!

This Mohan makes Tilak look like a choir boy. Put these two together and you've got the makings of a nice little white slavery business.

But for those ladies who don't want to become sperm disposal units for psychotically grandiose maniupulators, steer far away and clear of these two people-eaters.

Update: Color us all Miss Cleo, as our tipster comes up with even more on the Mohan-Tilak connection:

Mohan's harem of ho's, scammers and shop-lifters stayed at Tilak's NYC house. The story in the New Yorker about him gettin' blowed in the back of a car comes courtesy of Mohan's girls who later attacked Tilak for being a energy sucking black magician. The actual reason seems to have been a turf war over a female foot-soldier, Victoria. Mohan wanted a bit of Tilak's action and sent his ho's to Tilak's house but one girl stayed on as "a maid". She found it safer in Tilak's house than out on the mean streets each day conning punters until late at night for Mohan. Mohan fought to get her back even phoning in death-threats to Tilak in the middle of the night ostensibly for psychically attacking him! Mohan's a real crook. Ask around Pune and McLeod Ganj, Dharamsala.

Space Daddy Madness... Explained!

File under: Gurubusting

Readers of this blog are familiar with the term space daddy, the role that gurus on the take find makes the sweetest honey with which to attract devotee bees (along with most of their money.) David "The Blade" contributed to our knowledge by developing a taxonomy of the varieties of space daddies and mommies. Now, smart research psychologists at various universities are discovering exactly why people are so willing to stuff their heads full of superstitious nonsense and believe what they do about their space daddies – it's hard-wired into their brains:

The brain seems to have networks that are specialized to produce an explicit, magical explanation in some circumstances, said Pascal Boyer, a professor of psychology and anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. In an e-mail message, he said such thinking was “only one domain where a relevant interpretation that connects all the dots, so to speak, is preferred to a rational one.”

And there it is, the expression of the reviled space daddy gene, responsible for more ridiculous ignorance about self-realization than all the brothels, temples and churches of the world combined, across all of human history.

Not surprisingly to us, a key issue uncovered as the cause of all this "magical thinking" is plain old, ordinary grandiosity:

“The question is why do people create this illusion of magical power?” said the lead author, Emily Pronin, an assistant professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “I think in part it’s because we are constantly exposed to our own thoughts, they are most salient to us” — and thus we are likely to overestimate their connection to outside events. [Italics ours.]

Read on about the biological roots of man's persistent spiritual downfall:

The brain, moreover, has evolved to make snap judgments about causation, and will leap to conclusions well before logic can be applied. In an experiment presented last fall at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, Ben Parris of the University of Exeter in England presented magnetic resonance imaging scans taken from the brains of people watching magic tricks. In one, the magician performed a simple sleight of hand: he placed a coin in his palm, closed his fingers over it, then opened his hand to reveal that the coin was gone.

Dr. Parris and his colleagues found spikes of activity in regions of the left hemisphere of the brain that usually become engaged when people form hypotheses in uncertain situations.

These activations occur so quickly, other researchers say, that they often link two events based on nothing more than coincidence: “I was just thinking about looking up my high school girlfriend when out of the blue she called me,” or, “The day after I began praying for a quick recovery, she emerged from the coma.”

Now we're ready to put ourselves in a coma... with a well-placed shot from a handgun.

That might result in something a little more permanent than what we were aiming for, but based on these findings, our goal of ridding the world of the scrounge of superstitious spirituality is even more remote than the mad Maharishi's dream of being emperor of the universe or the Kracki's wild delusions about ushering in the next Golden Age. We might as well be emptying the ocean with a teaspoon.

Oh well. One day (and one ridiculous notion) at a time, my friends.

Guru Saves India's Whale Sharks

File under: The Siddhi of PR

It's costing them tens of thousands of rupees, but the fisherman of Veraval in the Gujarat state of India are throwing back into the ocean the 30 to 40 foot whale sharks they catch. While it's now against the law to catch a whale shark in India, it took a popular local guru to bring the fishermen into line:

On the face of it, behind this change of heart is a ban on hunting whale sharks. But the fishermen couldn’t have cared less for the law if not for one man’s word of faith, Morari Bapu’s.

One day in 2003, the guru ventured into the sea off Dwarka and blessed a whale shark entangled in a net and said he wished the creature was left alone. The killings stopped almost immediately.

While the ban may not hold despite Morari Bapu's support, it's nice to finally hear about a guru who cares more for the environment than his own popularity.

The Babaster's Disaster

File under: Satscams, Backroom Gurudom and Hands Where They Don't Belong

Fresh off his being fellated by politicians looking for traction in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, Sai Baba made the tactical political blunder of voicing his opposition to the creation of a separate state for the people of the Telangana region:

Shouting slogans against him, dozens of students belonging to Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) barged into a Sai Baba temple near Osmania University here, pulled down the huge cut outs of Sai Baba and set them afire after trampling on them.

An effigy of Sai Baba, who termed attempts to bifurcate the state 'mahapapam' (great sin), was also burnt.

Apparently, according to the TRS, "God" has his head up his ass. We couldn't agree more. It's about time someone in India did something about that boy-buggering flimflammer.

The Blade's 7 TM™ Chops

File under: Wackadoo Gurus

Guruphiliac comments treasure David "The Blade" breaks down how TM™ got broke down:

(1) The Maharishi is probably a sacro-mythical narcissist with a sociopathic edge, and with very strong skills in priestcraft.

(2) He was instrumental in bringing useful meditation technique (which is not his) to the West.

(3) He cultivated the (lie) that the technique was his.

(4) Many people benefited from the technique.

(5) Because of his personal shortcomings, he injected all sorts of pathologies into his organization, which was involved in all sorts of lies and deceptions and excesses, and his lack of care for people verges on the criminal. Many people received serious harm from involvement in his organization. Part of the problem is that they were completely unprepared by him for the difficulties of the spiritual path.

(6) He is so sacro-mythically inflated that for some time he has been seeing himself as the natural leader/ruler of the world according to 'Natural Law', and has been making efforts to establish himself as such, with no results.

(7) He is now in a permanent vacation in cuckoo-land.

That ain't no Guruphiliac hack job, either. The Blade's been there, done that and dismissed it from the inside, although it's not like it takes an expert to see that the Maharishi is little more than a Maha-nutbag anymore.

Lynch Snapped Like A Twig

File under: Deranged Devotees

Somebody in Seattle is fed up with David Lynch and his TM™-shilling "happy, happy, joy, joy" schtick:

Lynch's performance with the fans was more of his trademark golly gee willickers New Age hoakum where critical acumen is verboten and negative thoughts and reactions are ... negative? Isn't it kind of hypocritical to hate Hate? More so than the desire not to have any Desire? So instead of having open, honest reactions to all the negative, disturbing stuff life throws at you, just think happy thoughts and live a life of bullshit positive affirmation and feel-goodery. Thanks, Lynch. Your advice worked out and everything's great now...

Since Lynch apparently lives in some kind of "Genius" bubble, he should avoid stories that involve characters simulating actual human beings. He should stick to what he does best: his distinctive art direction, the meticulous lighting (that makes you realize how much you take light for granted) and all those textured, layered sound effects, and just leave the story telling to people who aren't repressed hippie morons who must not think bad thoughts.

A repressed hippie moron who is afraid of bad thoughts. We couldn't have said it better ourselves.

The Fairfield Flip-Flop

File under: The Siddhi of PR

Our new pal John Knapp forwards a pointer to his blog:

TM-Free Blog: Versions of the Age of Enlightenment Techniques

In our first major revelation at http://tmfree.blogspot.com, there is a LIVELY discussion taking place about the many versions the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught of the fabled Age of Enlightenment techniques. We're up to 5 and counting.

The Age of Enlightenment techniques were taught on the legendary 6-Month Courses of the Transcendental Meditation Orgs in the mid '70s.

Beside being a historical curiosity, the many versions taught point to a savage, even criminal, flaw in the Maharishi as a guru. He's just making this stuff up as he goes along. And in engaging in "impermissible experiments" on human subjects he may not only be immoral. He may be breaking the international law of the Geneva Conventions.

Read all 5 versions, plus essays and reader comments at http://tmfree.blogspot.com.

It sure looks like the old madman was just spitballing for most of the 70s, seeing if he could get anything to stick on the wall. It makes perfect sense that the Maharishi was reaching for whatever he could to get his grandiose dreams off the ground. But unfortunately for him, butts only bounce so high.

The Space-Daddy Bomber

File under: The Siddhi of PR

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Sometimes he shows up in your cockpit as your MiG is going down for good:

"In 1966 I was flying an MiG aircraft in the north-east of India. The controls failed. I had a vision of my guru Hari Baba. He appeared in the cockpit of the plane and helped me land safely. So I decided to start another life," he says.

That life is now known as Pilot Baba. He's currently working it at the Ardh Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, complete with machine gun-armed guards and displays of his prowess at the display of states of samadhi. In between performances, he receives visitors and offers his blessings as the bomber space-daddy:

Many of his followers say Pilot Baba has special healing powers.

The claim may be questionable, but in the few hours I have spent with him, there has been a constant stream of visitors who have come to seek his blessings, many of them from as far away as Japan, Europe and the US.

We salute Pilot Baba for at least putting on a show with his space-daddying. It's a lot more than you'll get from a Kracki or a Sri Sri, who offer empty platitudes with no displays of yogic talents, although they do make good examples for aspiring criminal flimflammers.

Deeksha Breeds Greed

File under: Satscams

As the little piggy and his moo cow crow over the millions of dollars they collect from their duped deeksha victims (some of which gets laundered through their son's Hollywood movie production company), others have started to jump on the same flimflamming bandwagon. Case in point: Austin, Texas-based Lola Jones:

Those of you who have received Divine Openings from me know that it is a transfer of Divine Grace directly from Divine Source, enlightenment initiation combined with groundbreaking teachings and coaching. It is rapid change: profound, permanent, life altering..... Did I mention blissful? Endless seeking, healing, and processing is replaced by LIVING! Goodbye to suffering, working too hard, "working on yourself" (finally), and hello to expanding into who you really are .... To enjoying, creating, loving, being free, and making a huge difference for all those you touch, professionally or personally. It heals on all levels, including the physical. Sets relationships right and increases prosperity.

Step right up and buy the idea that you can cure all that ails anyone – mentally, physically, and of course, spiritually!

Jones is the modern version of an old-timey snake oil salesman, with the additional distinction of also being a snake oil salesman breeder. A chip off the old "rock" as it were, but one who is striking out on her own and seeks to steer her ex-master's ill-gotten gains and those of his main minion in town, Crazy William Cooper, into her own pocketbook:

If you need to, you can use a credit card, and you register by paying in full [$1750], or making a deposit of $520. I want to make it doable and also honor the tremendous value of what you will receive. It costs $8000 to go to India (tuition is $5500) and this is worth as much as that and more, as you receive a much more thorough system to teach, and you're not tied to any teacher, movement, limitations, or requirements.

Become your own flimflammer for less than $2000! That's over half off the regular fee!

Suddenly, the idea of catching a ride into town on the front bumper (and grill) of a speeding big-rig truck by jumping off the freeway overpass appeals greatly to us. The deeksha virus has broken free of its Oneness Movement cesspool and is adrift in the New Age™ marketplace, where any knucklehead with a white robe can be an enlightened master, one able to solve any problem in existence by laying-on hands and pretending that something is happening other than dummies being separated from their money.

We call that a sign of the end times. Heaven, please help us.

Coltrane Passes

File under: Mahasamadhis

Alice Coltrane, widow of jazz avatar John Coltrane and guru Swamini Turiyasangitananda to her chelas, went into mahasamadhi this past Monday, January 15, from respiratory failure. She left this Earth as an acolyte of the kid-diddling avatard, Sai Baba. We held that against her when we spoke of her a few months ago. We don't anymore.

We're going to chalk it off to a case of space-daddy madness. Our feeling is that Ms. Coltrane was sincere, if not in abject denial about the predilections of her hero. She just had a particularly strong space-daddy gene, and so was able to manifest much of her own spiritual experience against the backdrop of her faith in the Babaster. It proves our maxim, that a bad guru can be extremely good for a sincere devotee.

Despite her connection to that flimflamming pedophile, we find the world slightly less without Alice Coltrane around anymore.

Prem Patsy Pens Preening Bio

File under: Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

Prem Rawat, formerly the child guru Maharaji Ji and accumulator of a good-sized and vocal ex-devotee community, get a preening PR gift in the form of a professionally-written biography:

Andrea Cagan has written, edited, and collaborated on more than fifteen books, including biographies of Diana Ross, Grace Slick and Joan Lunden.

Prem's got to be quite pleased with himself to be in that company.

We imagine he'll celebrate by firing up the GS V and burning a few tons of fuel on the runway, because he's Prem Rawat and can do whatever he wants with the millions he collects for himself in the name of promoting peace.

Mad For Krishna

File under: Deranged Devotees

A Hare Krishna stormtrooper attempts to smash a reform movement within her religion at the 2006 Ratha Yatra in Detroit:

The Big Kahunot

File under: Gurubusting

A concerned citizen of the state of Hawaii forwards a warning:

There are some new people in our community who are part of an organization called Aloha International. I consider them a cult, because the leaders have many obsessed followers and they consider their leader a demi-god. Tax-wise they operate as a church (501(c)(3).

The ringleaders are Serge and Gloria King and Serge's assistant, Susan Floyd. Serge considers himself a kahuna, although he was not raised in the Hawaiian tradition, does not speak fluent Hawaiian, is not Hawaiian and didn't move to Hawaii until about the late 1980's.

He began teaching his huna classes in LA where he lived. It turned out to be quite lucrative for him so he moved to Kaua'i. From there he continued doing workshops. He charges enormous amounts of money for people to take classes from him.

He travels around the U.S. and the world touting his "knowledge". He has written several books on huna and shamanism. The books contain what he has read and heard about huna and Hawaiian traditions but he will tell you he had a Hawaiian uncle in LA who trained him. Turns out, the uncle was not a kahuna. He had only lived in Hawaii for the early part of his life. Serge calls himself "Kahili". Supposidely, this uncle from Hawaii hanai-ed him and thus gave him the name. (note: in the Hawaiian tradition, adults are not hanai-ed, only children!)

Needless to say, the Hawaiian community on Kaua'i was in an uproar against him. They came to terms with him by getting him to stop calling himself a kahuna and to stop telling people they were kahuna's after taking his training. He was never accepted by the Kaua'i Hawaiian community and many others on Kaua'i as a huna teacher. So, the two kept their distance from each other for the most part.

Some of the Hawaiians on Kaua'i looked into contacting the uncle who Serge said trained him. They could never locate such a person who had ever lived on Kaua'i and moved to the area that Serge mentioned. They strongly feel his story is false.

Aloha International preaches love and aloha on the surface, but there is much anger and money grabbing going on underneath their veneer. Other followers have moved over to Volcano as well. More are planning to follow. Also, many people will be coming this way for workshops. They come in the hundreds.

Kumu hula, Frank Hewitt is establishing a cultural center at his home in Mountain View where Aloha International will hold their workshops once the place is ready. Frank has told me he does not agree with Serge's teaching and Aloha International, but he wants the money they can bring in for his center. He told me this years ago, so I wonder if the money has been too good for him to pull out. This is a criticism from the Hawaiian community that Frank has heard many, many times.

Now, I have nothing against people making a living and being prosperous. It's when people make money using deceptive practices as does Aloha International.

I got involved in their cult innocently by thinking I was learning about my culture. But one early morning dawn, my Hawaiian grandmothers and my Hawaiian spiritual teacher, came to me in a dream and said I had to detach myself from Aloha International immediately and not to continue friendships with the group. When I got away from the group I was better able to see what was truly going on.

So now they've moved to Volcano! I feel there is a good chance that they will do things to get people in the community to join them as followers.

Whether or not Serge is actually qualified to claim the title Kahuna, he's registered the domain huna.org, which puts him at the very top of the Google rankings for the search term "huna". It seems to be yet another anglo's appropriation of Native American culture as a means to name, fame and financial gain. We pray the good folks on the Islands will always have the opportunity to experience a native expression of their indigenous spirituality rather than be fed their heritage back to them as white american cheese.

Birthday Cheer For The Maharishi

File under: Gurubusting

Today is the Maharishi's birthday, so his old nemesis and an O.G. gurubuster from way back, John Knapp of Trancenet fame, has given the senile old coot a gift in the form of the TM™-busting TM-Free Blog:

It features independent views of the various Transcendental Meditation organizations and its founder, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and discusses scandals, research, insider secrets, and more.

And we're proud to say it's written by some of the best-known names in TM criticism:

* Joe Kellet, former TM Teacher/Governor & author of the web site suggestibility.org

* Gina Catena, MS, NP, CNM, book author and who received childhood initiation in the Olson household in 1966 and is one of the few people on this planet with 40 years & 3 family generations' invovlement w/ TM Orgs.

* Sudarsha, former TM teacher/Governor and secretary to the Maharishi

* Susan Crittenden, former TM teacher/Governor who quit when she realized she would have sipped Jonestown Kool Aid if distributed by our dearly beloved Mahesh

* Joe Harley, former TM teacher/Governor who was one of the first, um, "flyers" and worked for a year at WPEC

* John M. Knapp, LMSW, former TM teacher/Governor, is a therapist who counsels TM victims and founded trancenet.org

We're happy to play clown off a gurubusting legend and his cohorts. Anything to shine a light on the colossal flimflam perped by the mad old man and his fame-whore attention-getters.

Stacking His Pride

File under: The Siddhi of PR

Oh, look! Sri Sri Ravi Shankar got another award:

Spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar has won the Sant Shri Dnyaneshwara World Peace Prize 2006 in recognition of his contribution in spreading world peace, the Art of Living said Thursday.

Quelle surprise! Of course the news comes by way of his magical PR department. It's classic SSRS flack maneuvering, feeding promotional material to the Indian media to see it deployed as hard news.

Next stop for the joyous, good news? Sri Sri's online wall of fame, which puts on shameless display his seemingly unquenchable thirst to see his name elevated in the media. It's all you need to know to understand Sri Sri.

Dasa Spanks Gangaji

File under: Gurubusting

An excerpt from an excellent letter posted to an Eli Jaxon-Bear/Gangaji discussion list which outlines exactly why she and Jaxon-Bear are not what their (leftover) devotees make them out to be:

In Sanskrit one of the definitions for Guru is Heavy. They do not play therapist and ask patients to sit on the couch for a loving psychological dissection in front of an audience who sigh in appreciation for their willingness to share. Bona fide gurus cut thru the biggest stupid illusions like the one Gangaji propagates which implies that we can figure everything out for ourselves. Based on the veracity of Vedic wisdom they chop such foolish nonsense right out of the false ego with machete like dexterity to really prepare one for a genuine spiritual education based on the sound philosophical check and balance principal of Guru, Sastra, and Sadu. They don't make things up along the way, nor do they rely on the type of cheap voidist placeboes, pithy maxims and worn out clichés like Gangaji spews out to the glee and admiration of her equally superficial audience.

Oh. Snap!

We tip the turban to William Roberts, aka Mayesvara Dasa, for an excellent and quite thorough analysis of just how deficient the Gangaji and Jaxon-Bear approach to Vedanta really is.

[Ed.note: We'd really love to get a set of before/after pictures so we can all enjoy the results of Gangaji's recent plastic surgery. All tips are kept strictly confidential. Please forward any photos or information to tips@guruphiliac.org.]

The Association Of Transpersonal Patsies

File under: Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

What else are you going to call an organization who books Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as a keynote speaker (along with a slate composed mostly of New Age™ crystal-grippers)?

Guruphiliac operatives deep within the transpersonal psychology community report an upswing in chatter about Sri Sri among TP students in Northern California. We're not at all surprised. Take one self-aggrandizing space-daddy seeking to make himself famous in the States who has patiently cultivated his guru look and act, add a built-in network of cult recruiters in the form of space-daddy-worshiping TP students looking for an angle to help them acquire their own clientèle, and presto, Sri Sri gets hired to speak at a transpersonal psychology conference.

It's yet another demonstration of the brilliance of the Art of Living org's PR Department, who play the What The Bleep Do We Know? crowd like a fiddle with Sri Sri's supposed "advanced degree in physics."

It's just too bad he speaks in terms that would bore anyone with an IQ over 50.

Vedic Geeks Invade Iowa

File under: Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

Other parts of the U.S. may be pooping on him, but they still love them some Maharishi in Fairfield, Iowa. He's been spending boatloads of cash to rebuild buildings there to his own petty, obsessive-compulsive standards. And now he's sending over his Vedic geek squads from India in droves in an effort to jump-start his eponymous "Effect" and finally bring the peace he's been bragging about all these years. [Ed.note: Guess who's not going to be holding their breath waiting for the effect of the "Effect."]

The insane little man isn't all that crazy, though. He's scamming the U.S. government for low-income housing credits to provide shelter for the influx of Indians:

Should the low-income housing grants through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Iowa Finance Authority come through, dwellings ranging from one-bedroom to three-bedroom homes and apartments will be available for $450 to $550 a month, said Kent Boyum, director of economic development for Maharishi Vedic City.

We've got to tip our turban to the Maharishi's crumbling mind for having it together enough to flimflam a government subsidy for his crumbling dreams. No wonder he's been so successful. The man is obviously a master... conman, that is.

Cleveland Craps On The Maharishi

File under: Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

The Maharishi's psychotically grandiose dreams of a world united under his "wisdom" continue to fall in heaps all around him. The latest pile of "Age of Enlightenment" detritus gets pointed out by an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The Maharishi's company let both properties languish for years, racking up building code violations and back taxes. At the Avon Lake site, not only didn't the tenants prevent crimes, they often committed them. Ultimately, the properties were sold, but only after frustrated officials threatened to take both sites via eminent domain.

Read the whole article for a quick rundown of the running down of that mad old coot's dreams into the mess of failed real estate scams and the billion empty promises that they are today.

The Eternal Presence (Of Wee-Wees)

File under: Satscams and Hands Where They Don't Belong

He's now more famous for being a child molester than anything else, but that's not stopping Sai Baba from continuing to pimp himself out to the world as an avatard. And just in time to do the job is a new whitewash film documentary entitled The Eternal Presence.

We believe the "presence" sought by the Babaster is an eternally preteen wee-wee to play with, perhaps as many as can be mustered by star-struck parents looking for face time with the kid-diddling 'fro-head. He just tried to get a bus load of them shipped over from the U.K., but folks there freaked when they learned where their kids were headed.

We suggest checking out the BBC exposé Secret Swami, the original Sai Baba doc and a much more honest portrayal of the man many folks believe to be God, which makes God out to be not much more than a common conman pederast.

Deepak Chopra: The Profffft

File under: The Siddhi of PR

Deepak Chopra, a former Maharishi minion and capitalistic guru in the image of his own guru, is flogging a new book, Life After Death. We like to tell folks we have no need for life after death. Everything we are is right here, right now.

Anyhow, one person on Amazon didn't like Chopra's book so much:

What's perhaps most obvious, and most indigestible, in this book is Deepak Chopra's ego. Before you can even get to the text you have to wade through *thirteen pages* of embarrassing encomiums, wherein hosannas declare Chopra the best thing since sliced bread. A person with a normal-sized ego would never let those pages go to press.

But along with that mammoth ego is a mammoth bank account that must be fed. No wonder Chopra said this on Comedy Central's Colbert Report:

Early in the interview, Colbert asked Chopra if he is a prophet, and Chopra replied, "yes, if you spell that "p-r-o-f-i-t" ...!!

Cha Ching!

For the likes of Chopra and the Maharishi, all the wisdom in the universe is contained in that sound.

David Lynch: TM™ Hustler

File under: Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

David Lynch, the famous auteur of oblique feature films, is still hooking hard for the Maharishi and TM™. He's just about the most visible rep the ass-bouncers have outside of their failed presidential candidate, John Hagelin:

And now, the low-key auteur is emerging as the most visible, even fiery, proponent of the resurgent practice, which is being used increasingly in schools and in the workplace, as well as by a new generation of stars, including Heather Graham, Laura Dern and the record executive Rick Rubin.

In July 2005, Mr. Lynch began the David Lynch Foundation, which finances Transcendental Meditation scholarships for students in middle schools and high schools to study the practice.

And we all know how that turned out, at least at Terra Linda High School in Marin, California.

But that flop hasn't stopped Lynch from flogging TM™ as the cure for all personal and social ills, provided you've got at least $2500 to learn the simple technique the Maharishi cribbed from an exceedingly common meditation practice known for centuries all over India.

Selling sand at the beach to clams and crabs. It's made the Maharishi billions. Lynch's push to do the same may be sincerely motivated, but that doesn't forgive him for participating in his guru's flimflam. But who knows? Maybe Lynch is motivated by the possibility that he will eventually succeed the mad little man once he finally pushes off this Earth.

That's just what the world needs right now, the director of Eraserhead as one of its leading lights.

The Rev. Sun-Yung Cohen?

File under: Gurubusting

We love it when a tipster does all the work for us:

Details will apparently be forthcoming, but this current student's blog reveals that the Rev. Sun-Yung [Andrew] Cohen has orchestrated and officiated at a group marriage ceremony for four couples this New Year's Eve. What isn't [revealed] in the meaning "relationship in an evolutionary context" is that in the past Cohen has always had final approval of who gets to have a sexual relationship with whom, and often pairs people up himself.

The other irony to all this is that Cohen used to have quite a penchant for breaking up married couples who became formal students. This was the case for years... now he's marrying them... I guess either way, it's all about who's controlling the marriage... and when it comes to his students it's got to be him.

[It] also could be interesting to remind everyone that this is all happening at Foxhollow, the ashram he bilked $2 million from Jane O'Neil to acquire.

Cohen's own mother explains it all, speaking to Cohen himself:

Everyone lives in terror. Of you. The people nearest you are all spies. For you. They're also sycophants, telling you only what you want to hear, because they're afraid to tell you the truth. So you get no feedback. There is nothing at all to modify your behavior. Nothing.

Playing with people's lives like he owns them. It's much more within the purview of character disorder than anything that could be called true wisdom.