The Mostest, Specialest Person In Oz

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

CAUTION: You may feel a strong desire to wash your eyes right out of your head with Clorox and Drano after watching this:

We're not sure whether to thank him or put out a hit on our gurubusting colleague for scarring us with this pastiche of self-help un-helpfulness and ignorance-reinforcing, occluding concepts about nondual truth, all wrapped up in a pretty bow of "Look at how special my enlightenment has made me! Oh, and aren't I pretty hot for a sage?"

Hot? Yes! Sage? Definitely not!

The Bored Guru Does Not Do Stoplights

File under: Gurubusting

His blog is the coolest thing to hit the planet since they began putting toilet paper on a roll:

The drive to the airport was meant to be lasting about 45 minutes. We had already crossed four signals and all of them were free. I enquired, "are there any more signals ahead?". He promptly replied, "Yes, there is one more and then turned around and announced to the children and wife, you will see even that signal will be free". Now every body got ready and there was excitement filling up inside the mean german running machine.

He spotted the green signal well ahead and almost screamed " See I told you", and then turned to me and said "at least now will you believe this?". But even as the signal fever was burning bright and hot, the signal was changing to amber and was blinking. He suddenly appeared worked up and started accelerating the car real fast before it could turn red. It was a blind effort to prove his point rather than saving my face. The audi went crazy as it neared the signal and then, the signal turned red. Audi came to grinding halt as he had to jam the brakes. Suddenly there was a deafening silence invaded the car from nowhere, as the engine got ceased due to the sudden braking.

It appeared like eternity as the car awaited the green signal and I had to break the silence inside the car. I asked "so now all of you plan to throw me out of this car?." I said further,"the guru is not meant to clear your path but only show it and also prepare you to face the dangers lurking on the way". I continued further "the guru is not here to replace your sorrows with happiness and the perils with some protection". I thought it was such perfect timing to drive some sense in to them. I continued further, "I cant facilitate your life without obstacles but can only tell you how to face the obstacles and move ahead." The car moved as the signal turned green. That was the last signal before reaching the airport.

I thought it was all over, quite content about how things took shape, but not really. As we reached the airport without any exchange of words, I got off the car and they picked up my bag from boot space, came to face me at the entrance of the airport. I smiled and said "I am already delayed and should hurry up, because I dont control the air traffic signals on the airport runway". He quietly replied, "guruji, you taught us a great lesson today". I asked "what was the lesson?" as I prepared to enter the airport. He said,"you taught us that you may not grant us, whatever may we may want, by turning the signal to red, even when we wanted it to be green".

He simply blew my mind, I felt as if someone shoved a big ball of dirty cotton, deep into my throat and amidst all the crowds that were milling, I walked in to the airport like a zombie, dumb founded, utterly speechless, carrying the heavy load of divinity, just then dumped all over me.

If even a self-aware and consistent defender of Vedantic truth continues to get hosed by his devotees' superstitious notions about his magic powers after such a clear demonstration of their status as ridiculous fantasy, what of the big-time flimflammers who use those expectations to line their pockets with gold? It truly is the Kali Yuga, folks, and Ma is having a field day tossing us around in Her sea of ignorance, even those who rise above it like lighthouses built on mountains of truth.

Gurumayi Sticks Her Hand Out

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

She was the Queen of the shakti-infused peacock feather, one whose loyal subjects could always be counted on to turn their pockets inside-out to inch up to whatever next level of "consciousness" their org was putting on the end of the stick stuck in front of them that week.

Well, not any more:

Everybody on the mailing list just got a request for money to celebrate gurupurnima. The guru, Gurumayi, hasn't shown her face for 5 years! She is a total phony. Thousands of dollars were collected years ago to build a temple in Oakland which has never been built. Ashrams all over the world have closed. Siddha yoga has been dying for a long time.

Not as long as there's shopping to be done!

Dear Siddha Yogi,

On this auspicious holiday of Gurupurnima (July 17th), with great enthusiasm, I invite you to join me in celebrating the Guru's grace by making a special offering of dakshina. During Gurupurnima, I reflect on the transformation that the Siddha Yoga teachings, the Siddha Yoga path, and the grace of the Siddha Yoga Guru have brought in my life; for all this I experience profound gratitude.

Happy Gurupurnima.

With love,

Swami Ishwarananda
Siddha Yoga Meditation Teacher
SYDA Foundation

Sounds like Gurumayi is gunning for a run at some new couture. New York Fashion Week is coming up, people. Mama needs a new Prada handbag, so y'all better get cracking!

One Bored Guru Is Worth Ten Million Sri Sris

File under: Gurubusting

OMG!

We sit here in a stunned astonishment after reading the blog of the Bored Guru:

After a few regular 'intelligent' questions, the lady in focus appeared eager to say something. So I pointed at her and said "do you have anything to say or need clarification?" She was very graceful in her movement while she rose from the seat and then in a mild tone asked me "I have been seeing the intense glow you are emitting all around you. Can you explain that ?"

Most of the 'aura seeing' people are never interested to know about what they see, but only interested to know about their own ability to see such glowing stuff. I thought this lady probably was different. So i said, "I never emitted any glow around me at any point of time". She replied with perhaps a little increased tone "But I have been seeing it, why, even now I'm seeing it actually".

At this point, I knew I am in for one more disaster. Meanwhile, I did not fail to see how a few others too were trying to sharpen their eyes and 'look' at my direction intently through the tiny crack of their eyes. The hour long talk on collective consciousness has already been tossed up in to oblivion and now I suddenly felt like some glow worm.

I said "you probably have certain flaw in your eye sight and you should consult a good eye specialist". I did not allow her to say anything from her side but I continued "It could be cataract or myopia and when you see distant objects it may appear to glow, especially if the eyes are watering". My knowledge in ophthalmology is as good or as bad as my knowledge in Chinese kanji characters. But I just tried to dissuade her by using all those few technical terminologies in medical science. That's why I also mentioned to her that she must consult a eye specialist.

Her graceful face now suddenly had a certain scornful smile. She said "do you mean my eye sight is not OK?". I said "without any doubt". She turned around both ways as if she need some support to prove her point. I realized all that she needed was a single nod from me saying "yes, what you are seeing is true". This would have made her a clairvoyant and made me a glowing guru and made the rest of everyone in the congregation a plain dumb ass. She was some how pushing this idea 'gracefully' and I seem to have missed her point. I must have spoilt those moments of a divine conspiracy. Now her personal prestige was at stake.

Everyone reading this sentence, ask yourself this: Would Sri Sri Ravi Shankar have refuted the delusions of such a person at the expense of her opinion of him, as well as of those listening to the exchange?

Gurubuster Works It Out On The Stage

File under: Amma All-Over-The-Planet, Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

Sujit Saraf appears to be a kindred soul to any reasonable gurubuster:

Concurrently with Amma’s tour, I inaugurated my annual hand-wringing ceremony, asking myself as I do once every year: What am I to do about all these gurus? After all, one does not even have to be an atheist to recognize imposture, but merely possess a scientific temper, one that tries to explain physical and natural phenomena on the basis of generally accepted scientific principles and, in the absence of such an explanation, refuses to believe in them. Should I grin and bear it while Sathya Sai Baba produces gold chains from his sleeves? Do I make no comment on the Art of Living courses, Ammachi’s hugs, or the hundred other babas and matas who will touch you with their feet, hands, tongues, tongs, poles, prods and tridents? Perhaps I had best keep quiet, for everyone knows that our gurus count prime ministers and presidents among their followers. We have heard of physics professors dutifully following Sai Baba to the airport in October 2007, when he was about to manifest himself on the moon. We know of CEOs who skip board meetings when the “call” comes from Ammachi. And we know, of course, that so many powerful people cannot be fooled at the same time, even less than they can be induced to part with their money without getting good value in return...

Now, I know the question has risen in many minds, and the usual answer is: Why do anything at all? The gods who walk among us, offering ashes, bananas and hugs, are harmless snake-oil salesmen. If, while peddling a useless product, they untruthfully extol its virtues, they are merely practicing the art of marketing. Which businessman would not? And any liberal will tell you that people are free to worship whom they want in a free society: Ammachi or armadillos. Besides, you never have to hear of the hullabaloo in Castro Valley if you don’t want to, so the foolishness around you does not exist unless you look for it. Sure, our godmen induce a collect retreat into infantilism, and discourage the notion that self-fulfillment can be achieved without surrendering your intelligence and common sense to a fallible human being, but they do not plan to fly planes into buildings. So let them enthrall those who would be enthralled, and let us thank God (if we are not atheists) that we are not the suckers in line.

Thus ends, usually, my annual hand-wringing ceremony, but this happy conclusion is becoming harder to reach with each passing year. My days of blissful isolation — when I could pretend that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was the guy who tugs at sitar strings — have ended with the Internet. And mailing lists. And spam. And desktop publishing. And Facebook. And the “Aasthaa Channel” on television. The empires of our godmen have grown and are growing yet larger, harnessing the Internet to such effect that it has become impossible to escape their benevolence, bestowed on you through posters and postings wherever you are, whatever you may be doing. An innocent lunch at Bhavika’s in Sunnyvale is now an Amma experience: she beams at you from a dozen posters, hugging, force-feeding bliss. Now what is a person of scientific temper to do?

In this case, write a play. Mataji will be staged by Saraf's theater company, Naatak, in July and August around the San Francisco Bay Area. It's the story of a certain nice, round Indian lady who dispenses hugs, named Mataji. We see the gal behind the glory, the fog of self-induced hagiography lifted to reveal the ordinary going-ons of human interaction in a close-knit, authoritarian-led group.

This is nothing less than a grand-slam home run for clarity for the folks of the Bay Area. We've got our eye on Sujit now, and hope to see more of his contributions to a much-needed critical understanding of gurudom inside Hinduism-based spiritual culture in the West.

Sri Sri Ravi Hype-more

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

A few months back, we were interviewed by London's Financial Times about that boogieman of delusional, self-promotional personality cult-making, the personal fame-seeking and glory-hunting Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. We've included the highlights here:

[The Art of Living org] is also, however, given to hype. Its brochure celebrating the “One World Family” boasts of all kinds of programmes and workshops that the Art of Living runs around the world. There was a “workshop for Afghan women refugees” organised through the Afghan Coalition in Fremont, California, which left its participants feeling a “sense of great joy and peace”. Rona Popal, the executive director of the Afghan Coalition, says that the Art of Living ran a single demonstration of their Breath-Water-Sound workshop about three years ago, and nothing since. The brochure also features photographs and gushing quotes from prisoners in Ohio’s prisons, where the Art of Living ran a course. The Ohio prison service said that those courses have not been run for at least the past two years.

Jody Radzik, the creator of Guruphiliac, an American blog which keeps tabs on various gurus and mystics, is sceptical of the Sri Sri cult. “In public,” he says, “Sri Sri repudiates his divinity – he puts on the humble show. But in private, and in his organisation, there’s an assumption of his divinity and his ability to perform miracles.” Radzik says that the physiological experience of Sri Sri’s breathing technique is genuine, but no different from that of many others. What Sri Sri offers is a format for incorporating that experience into your life, via a cult built around his own personality.

Sat Bir Khalsa, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an expert on the health effects of yoga and breathing, says that the Art of Living technique “really is very similar to a lot of breathing techniques in Hatha yoga practice. There’s nothing super-remarkable about what they’re doing.” He adds that there is a growing, but still scarce, body of research into the link between the mind and body and the positive benefits of breathing. There was certainly nothing to justify the “evangelical” approach of the Art of Living. He had witnessed “obnoxious and aggressive” behaviour from members of the Art of Living organisation insisting their technique is the only one worth following. “But I’ve also seen these things wax and wane. There was transcendental meditation in the 1970s, then the Hare Krishnas, and for the past 10 years Vipassana meditation has been very strong because of the Buddhists.”

“It is soft power,” says Rengaraj Viswanathan, India’s ambassador to Argentina, after attending a meeting between Sri Sri and the mayor of Buenos Aires. In his view, Sri Sri is simply an excellent Indian export. “You see yoga centres on every street corner here. In the 1970s, this was a fad, a fashion. But now it has reached serious proportions. You see younger people, professionals, business people all looking to this.” What about the ambassador? Did he meditate or breathe in order to relax? “No,” he said, rocking back with laughter. “I salsa!”

We'll save our dance for the day it becomes clear to the world that Sri Sri is really only in it for his Me Me. Until then, we'll try to keep shoveling his bullshit out of the way of the nondual truth getting covered up in the promotional pollution of his Art of Living org.

Note: Thanks, Gregory!

Deepockets Off The Deep End

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

Deepak Chopra, hot off his cameo in the recent flop, The Love Guru, lets us into his wacky world in an extensive interview in Newsweek:

In a shopping mall in London, Chopra is explaining the connection between a journalist and his coffee cup. ""This is you,'' he says, pointing to the cup. ""You think it's a cup, but it isn't.'' Dressed in workout clothes, with no cell phone or watch, Chopra seems admirably at ease in the mall, so much so that he doesn't even check his placement at the bookstore. ""It's the conscious energy field that is manifesting as the cup and yourself. The same field.'' On the five-day ""silent'' retreats he takes every three months, sometimes with his wife, Rita, Chopra says he can actually see this field.

Another day, another guru feeding us absolute nonsense about nondual truth. Not that there isn't a shared source of being between a person and a cup, just that it's never been something anyone would be able to see, outside the projection of their own imaginings about it.

But that is the New Age™ way, and Deepockets is the most Indian New Age™ guru, so it makes perfect sense he'd spew a gaffe like this in Newsweek, despite our disappointment at finding out just how full of it he really is.

Cult Psych-Ops

File under: Gurubusting

Print this out and take it to the next Oneness Movement or Art of Living event you attend. See how many of the features described in this short essay match up with what you are seeing and hearing on stage:

Psycho-technology, simply put, is the combination of a cult's teachings, doctrine and recruiting/training procedures.

The goal of cult psycho-technology is the production of a series of peak experiences designed to make an impression on new recruits. For many cult members, these behaviorally and environmentally induced "spiritual experiences" lead from a healthy, open and questioning attitude to a complete regression into dependence and reliance on the cult group.

These experiences, occurring often as they do within the highly charged, tightly controlled atmosphere of the cult, are not subjected to the kind critical scrutiny that they ordinarily would be. Instead they are metabolized and socialized within the language and doctrine of the cult. They are the occasion for increased approval from the group. Phenomenologically speaking, they initiate the "divine history" of the individual, and they reinforce the history and mythology of the group. What is perceived as a flash of illumination and liberation becomes, in fact, the first step in a march toward moral slavery and psychological bondage.

Ammachi Gets Into The Apocalypse Biz

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

She's in Northern California right now, flooding the pool of Bay Area satsang junkies with her magical, infantilizing astral milk product. And apparently, according to one devotee, she's gone into the end-of-the-world, apocalypse prediction business:

[A] devotee came up to a group of long time devotees and reported that Amma had told a group of devotees in Seattle a few days before that... well here goes:

2010 - 2011 prediction... mass starvation and environmental destruction. World War III would be better, and, no child under the age of 5 would reach child bearing age. This was disturbing to me to say the least. I felt sad about it and asked for clarity. [The devotee] said the same thing over again. I asked if [Amma] said we could do anything about it. He said become a vegatarian and do spiritual practices, that we need to work fast for realization before it's too late. I thought it must be a trick to get lazy meditators motivated.

The suprising thing is [the devotee] has a child about that age and did not seem concerned, rather that he seemed excited to know what was happening next. It seems that this devotee has really acheived a level of detatcment that Amma herself would envy. I am in the prosess of confirming these statements. So far [the] L.A. satsang has denied it. All they said she said was there would be hard times ahead or something to that effect...

One last thing. I know for a fact that the MA center ashram has purcased a whopping $10,000 worth of rice to be stored for disaster. Ok, that's harmless except for the fact that hoarding food is one of the reasons for skyroceting food prices around the world, which is part of the reason for the predicted mass starvation.

Ammabots apparently believe she also predicted the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, although she was off by a year or so.

While these sort of vague predictions of disaster are often a big-time guru's stock in trade, we are disappointed to see Ammachi stooping to the same level as the rest of them. We might find her milk distribution plot to infantilize the world to be a disaster of monstrous magnitude, but we were trying to hold on to the assertion that she is the best of the big-time gurus. But with nonsense like this swirling around at her satsangs, Swami Ramdev is beginning to look better and better as the recipient of the weak endorsement we've been giving to Ammachi the last few years.

When The Stink Just Stunk

File under: Gurubusting, Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

Another former AoL teacher comes forward with some miracle-mongering that failed:

As an AoL teacher, I was told how [Sudarshan Kriya] can cure cancer. So, one time a participant with cancer came to take my course. I contacted the ashram and was given many instructions. That this participant should do SK seperately, not with the rest of the class. That fresh flowers and a bowl of water and SRISRI's picture (all this would absorb the cancer vibrations) should be placed near him while he's doing SK and the teacher (me) should not remain in the room after the SK cassette has been switched on (because the teacher could get the cancer). The ashram also told me that many patients had been cured of cancer. But my student died. When I questioned the ashram, they did not have a logical reply, saying it was the destiny of that man.

It's the fail-safe clause of all miracle-mongering: when it works, it was "Guruji's" grace; when it fails, it was destiny, or the patient's sins. Over here we call that The Secret, the primary engine of ignorance that keeps so many New Age™ gurus' coffers full. Ignorance dressed up as spiritual truth is the only product that we can see produced at AoL.

We Are About To Stink Up The Place

File under: Gurubusting, Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

This is a bit like America writing Osama Bin Laden a thank you note for 9/11, but here we go:

Some time back an Art of Living devotee came to me with his astounding healing experience, which I wish to share with you all.

Sri. P.Subramaniam aged 28 years, working in a small-scale engineering Unit. He earns a measly income just sufficient for him and his parents to make ends meet. The nature of the industry in which he is working is unpredictable and there are times when he has to strain himself for long hours to earn adequately to survive, thus resulting in the wear and tear of his health.

About a year and half ago he had persistent fever, body pain and had difficulty in eating and was diagnosed for Testicular Embryonal Carcinoma, a malignant germ cell tumor that occurs mostly in the testes. This type of tumor (cancerous) grows rapidly and spreads to the lungs and liver. He underwent Orchidectomy; an operation to remove the testicle and this was done to slow down the growth and spreading of prostate cancer. After the treatment, he somehow managed to carry on. After about a year, that is during April, 2004, he developed similar symptoms of fever, chest discomfort, multiple swelling in the neck and sleeplessness. He was admitted in a local hospital and on diagnosis it was found to be Testicular Tumor and Lymph Node Metastasis a type of cancer spreading through the blood. He was given chemotherapy first on 20.4.2004 and second on 7.5.2004 and third on 31.5.2004.

For the fourth chemotherapy he did not have sufficient money and therefore he approached Sri. M.Sendhilkumar, an Industrialist and a very devoted volunteer of AOL Coimbatore. Sri.Sendhilkumar not only helped him but also put him in the AOL Part I Course.

He joined the course on 14.6.2004 and on 17th after the first Sudarshan Kriya he experienced shocks and acute pain in the body and was disinclined to go to the course on the subsequent day, but with divine grace prevailing, he did the second Sudarshan Kriya which made him feel relaxed, energized and joyful. As he felt free from all the fears that were tormenting him, he wanted to shout and proclaim his happiness. It was a kind of rebirth for him and after so many months that night he slept very well. With Gurudev’s blessings he experienced deep rest.

Within a week after completion of the course, he took a haemogram test and the results were encouraging. The Doctor asked him to come back after a month and he had another haemogram test on 19.7.2004, which showed vast improvement, and he had become normal. This was further confirmed with another haemogram test on 21.09.2004 and finally he was back to his work with an added smile on his face.

Normally the side effects of chemotherapy are frightening as it leads to loss of hair in the scalp and in other parts of the body. It creates anemia and the patient gets tired easily, there could be difficulty in breathing and overall pain in the body. In the case of Sri.Subramaniam, he was indeed fortunate that his doing the sadhanas regularly two times a day eliminated the side effects. He does not feel tired at all and works with full enthusiasm and last but not the least the hair in his scalp is growing very fast and this is certainly a sign of his returning back to normalcy. He is confident that only because of the AOL Course he has been able to overcome the dreaded disease called cancer and is willing for any scientific study on his amazing healing experience.

While I was listening to the miracle I could feel tears rolling out of my eyes. Gurudev has saved the life of the sole breadwinner of a family. Along with Sri. Subramaniam and his family I am also grateful to my Divine Master for strengthening my confidence in Him.

We call that miracle-mongering, one of the high crimes of gurudom. Lance Armstrong survived metastasized testicular cancer and went on to win seven Tour de France bicycle races, but nobody is blaming a flimflamming guru for that.

And by the way, this was apparently published in an Art of Living newsletter, for those who seek to deny the truth that Sri Sri is playing the godman card every chance he thinks he can get away with.

What Has Made Sri Sri A "Saint?"

File under: Gurubusting and Satscams

Nothing more than his incessantly blowing his own horn.

The Day Every Pot Called All Kettles Black

File under: Gurubusting and The Siddhi of PR

If hypocrisy were an extreme sport, this would be its greatest performance:

Art of Living guru Sri Sri Ravi Sankar has called for stringent action against pseudo-spiritual leaders.

After all, he is an accomplished expert in pseudo-spirituality.

Dham Of The Damned To Be Diddled

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

The story of a person who comes to the light from out of the shadow of a fallen guru:

It all started when devotees of JKP-Barsana Dham were gathered together for a meeting and told that the main guru on the path, who was in the middle of his second “world tour,” had been arrested in Trinidad one week ago on May 18th. The word we were told was “assault.” We were told very few details. And we were told not to talk about the event or go on the Internet to learn more.

Although, according to them, to be a good devotee and attain God realization you have to follow the leaders every instruction without question, this time I decided I had to know more. I just knew there was a lot they were not telling us and, clearly, did not want us to know. After the meeting I went straight to my computer and Googled “Kripalu Maharaj” and “arrest.” The first thing that popped up was an article stating that he’d been arrested for “rape.” Can you imagine the shock?

If it quacks like a duck, it is a duck, not an anti-Hindu conspiracy. Any victims of either Kreepalu or PSBoomBoom willing to speak up are invited to do so by the author of My Life in a Cult in the comments there.

Sri Sri: A List Of Wrong

File under: Gurubusting and Satscams

Recent commenters have suggested we lack proof to support our critique of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and AoL. But since it's his claims of divinity we're critiquing, the proof is right there in front of us as the culture of guru worship as it exists in AoL.

But then came Yunis, author of the new and excellent Answering AoL blog, who's put together a little list of some of the sins of Sri Sri:

* Saying that the effect of SK has been scientifically proven while it is not (or at least not the effects they mention).

* Not mentioning his guru (Maharishi) and evading questions about him until he is death.

* Writing a book about Islam as a Hindu spiritual figure that is full of mistakes and thus doing something very dangerous in a country like India where tensions are high enough about these topics (and admitting that this book "was written in a hurry" only goes to show how not enlightened he is, 'cause anyone who is the least bit enlightened would never ever write a book about that topic 'in a hurry' when it is to be published in India.)

* Organising NGO summits about that turn out to be complete scams.

* Claiming that "his organisation is working in poor rural communities to promote sustainable growth, and has reached more than 30,000 villages." Although this leads to the hopelessly absurd and impossible fact that in 11 years (or 4015 days) the Association for Human Values would have "reached out" (by which is meant: teaching and promoting organic farming, irrigation techniques, water harvesting development programs, drainage system development, etc.) to an average of more than 7 villages every day.

* A complete lack of transparency in financial dealings although millions of dollars are concerned. (Certainly if they should be able to "reach out" to 7 villages a day.)

* Saying that all the money goes to development courses although a taxfile of 2005 reports total revenues of $3.2M coming from giving courses while none of the money went towards international developmental or humanitarian programs, disaster relief, scientific/medical research or charitable activity. (So apparently they don't need the money of the richest part of the world to "reach out" to the poorest part.)

* Claiming to be in the tradition of Gandhi while his acts and words are (provably) far from it.

Yunis is like us, only researchier.

Also, a word to the TM™ faithful: we predict Sri Sri is coming to take as many devotees from his former mentor as he can muster.

Kreepalu Protegé Out On Bail

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

Just like his naughty guru, Kreepalu, Prakashanand Saraswati got out on bail after being indicted for sex crimes. And just as we predicted, the Kool-Aid Brigade is trying to cast it as a case of Western anti-Hindu sentiment run amok:

In the past too, some Indian spiritual and religious gurus preaching in the West, like Swami Rama, have been accused of sexual misconduct with their devotees. The response of their organisations usually is that the allegations stem from an attempt by vested interests to malign the gurus and Hinduism in general.

Accuse the accuser, the oldest defense in the book. It's worked for the JKP the last two times a guru of theirs got busted for being a pervert. Here's hoping they don't get to make it three for three.

Rushkoff On Gurudom

File under: Gurubusting and Notable Quotes

One of the ways the Mother has blessed us is to put us into orbit with some exceptional bodies of influence. Doug Rushkoff is one of these. He's the cultural critic we've always wanted to be, if we'd written over 10 well-received books and lectured all over the world about them. A few years ago he offered his comments about gurus in Arthur, worth repeating today:

The path of devotion offered by gurus is also a natural fit for those of us who are fed up with the relativistic haze of a world where there are no discernible rules, yet equally disillusioned by institutional religions that appear to have sold out to American consumerism. The guru offers absolutism. Certainty. A point of focus.

As one slick guru, chronicled on Guruphiliac explains on his website: “When you meet a master, you have two choices. Transform or walk away. You cannot be in his presence and remain the same.” Uh, yeah. In other words, conform to his reality or scram.

The guru is the starting place from which all other decisions are to be made. You start with the guru as the one perfect point in the universe, and from there everything else can fall into place. If the guru has instructed you to eat a certain food or do a certain practice, then – according to the logic of gurudom - everything else you have to do for this to happen is part of the perfection. Slowly but surely, surrender to the guru requires you to reject pretty much everything that doesn’t fit whatever model of the world he’s offering you.

But, honestly, that’s what the devotee was after in the first place. An excuse to do or not do all that other confusing stuff in life like encounter people with different ideas, wrestle with the questions of existence, and accept that nobody really knows what happens when we die.

Most of us who have had gurus eventually see something awful – like sexual exploitation, financial abuse, or faked magic – that turns us off. (If we see the guru as perfect, then those blowjobs and false claims get justified: perhaps the guru is testing us, or breaking our hang-ups, At least for a while.) Or we decide that this guy is just too much of an asshole to really be enlightened. Or we simply tire of the idea that “enlightenment” is around the corner, and decide that life is just fine without enlightenment. And getting to that point is a beautiful thing in itself. If an experience with a guru really teaches one the futility of aspirational spiritual quests, then it can even be worth the time, money, and humiliation.

The biggest spiritual victim in the equation is the guru, himself. He’s just a person, after all, who probably had a profound spiritual or psychedelic experience and began to speak or write about it romantically. Charismatically. And this invites admirers and would-be devotees. The guru-in-waiting may not even mean to attract this sort of attention – at least not at the beginning. It’s just the kind of positive reinforcement that naturally comes to a person who speaks passionately about something.

Thus is described the beginning of the end for almost every big-time guru who has ever seen his/her sense of self inflated to the size of a football field. It's that constant supply of positive reinforcement – being blindingly mirrored by hapless devotees convinced you are God – that hooks you to the buzz like it was the purest heroin. Big-time gurus are addicted to your adulation, making you as complicit in their addiction as they are in yours.

Kreepalu's Protegé Busted!

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

Guru Kreepalu with his protegé, Prakashanand Saraswati

Remember "Jagadguru" Kripalu Ji Maharaj, aka Kreepalu, the gopi-grabbing Krishna impersonator who skated rape charges in Trinidad/Tobago last year? His main man at his Texas temple, Prakashanand Saraswati, just got busted for the same sort of thing, but this time with underage girls:

A Hays County grand jury indicted Saraswati, also known as Shree Swamiji, on 20 counts of indecency with a child/sexual contact earlier this month. The investigation began last August.

According to the Associated Press, Saraswati is accused of groping two girls were under 17 on several occasions between 1993 and 1996.

Get ready for another barrage by the Kreepalu Kool-Aid Brigade, a sizable force of shallow-minded followers who are sure to flood the net shouting about an imagined anti-Hindu conspiracy, the better to distract you from the possibility that these rather creepy-looking old men may have been raping and molesting in the name of Krishna for years.

Shadow of the Guru Coming Soon!

File under: Gurubusting, Hands Where They Don't Belong, Satscams and The Siddhi of PR

Joan Radha Bridges, a prominent ex-SYDA devotee who was diddled by Baba Muktananada, has just released a trailer for her film, Shadow of the Guru:



As welcome as we might find this material personally, we're not sure many folks other than the anti-cult histrionics set is going to pay for it. Hopefully Ms. Bridges will see the importance of getting this work out to as many individuals as possible without having the same profit motive as some of the folks she's examining.

The New Moon Rises

File under: Gurubusting, The Siddhi of PR and Wackadoo Gurus

All hail the prince of America, the Reverend Hyung Jin Moon, who has risen to take his place as the new messiah, seeing as his dad just doesn't have what it takes, despite the fact millions actually believe he does – first and foremost – his loony-tunes self:

"I hope everyone helps him so that he may fulfil his duty as the successor of the True Parents," the 88-year-old founder said at an inauguration ceremony in Gapyeong, 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of Seoul, the FFWPU website said. The True Parents refer to the founder and his wife.

Yep, still crazy as an arctic loon in Tijuana.