Luna Tarlo spent over three years living with her guru Andrew Cohen (founder of What is Enlightenment? magazine now called EnlightenNext) in India and the United States. After she experienced extreme forms of public condemnation and humiliation she broke from him and wrote a book depicting Cohen as an “arrogant, power-hungry, dangerous figure who practices mind control over adherents.” She is, however, different than the hundreds of other disciples who followed him. Luna Tarlo is Andrew Cohen’s mother. In an interview with the Boston Globe in 1998 she stated, Cohen “requires total surrender to him. You have to obey everything he says and trust him 100 percent, and anybody who disagrees is subject to derision and verbal abuse.” In tragic fashion she ended what had previously been a healthy and loving relationship, “I know my life with him is over, and it’s very sad. I love him a lot.”
Twelve years after Tarlo’s “The Mother of God” (1997) was published, William Yenner a follower of Cohen’s for over 13 years and insider of his Foxhollow ashram has released a scathing book which chronicles the abuse that Cohen’s mother spoke of. “American Guru: A Story of Love, Betrayal and Healing – former students of Andrew Cohen speak out” (2009) is an insider’s look at how this self-proclaimed “rude boy” manipulated, abused, pressured and controlled his followers. The accounts given (an excerpt from the book is below) are very disturbing. After reading them I feel saddened, shocked and angry. And as I note below Cohen’s contemporaries have an ethical responsibility to speak out. Yenner was certainly in a position to know about these abuses as he was a central player in Cohen’s operation. He explains his role, “I was a member of the “inner circle” of Cohen’s students; in fact, I lived in his personal residence for several years, was a member of the EnlightenNext Board of Directors, and was the real estate scout who located and helped arrange the purchase of the 220 acre, nearly three-million-dollar, EnlightenNext “World Headquarters” at Foxhollow, as well as the EnlightenNext Centre in London.” And like many others in the group Yenner had “donated” a very large amount of money ($80,000) to Cohen. These large sums of money were part of Cohen’s plan. Yenner writes,
Andrew let it be understood that his good favor could also be had for a price, establishing a practice that was morally reprehensible, legally questionable and indicative of a degree of corruption that had warped his ideals and would eventually stain the fabric of his entire organization. It is a testament to the faith that so many of us had in Andrew that, despite the questionable nature of these new financial arrangements, we complied – some of us taking on enormous and ill-advised debt. Though it may be difficult for outsiders to comprehend, our desire to please our guru was so great that we were prepared to mortgage our futures in order to do so.
Survivors of Jonestown speak similarly about how once they gave their money, assets and signed over their homes to Jim Jones and the “church” it was the final step in the loss of their identities. I don't mean to suggest that Cohen is comparable to Jim Jones or that his followers are about to commit mass suicide. But rather I am merely highlighting the similarity in these actions to illustrate how the giving over of yourself includes money, property and belongings. And furthermore this loss of property is directly linked to the increasing loss of the ability to remain an autonomous agent within the group.
For years after his departure in 2001 Yenner remained silent. Like the others he was pressured under “extreme psychological distress and in an emotionally crushed state of mind” into giving his $80,000 and a few years after he finally broke with Cohen he wanted it back. Cohen agreed but made Yenner sign a five-year non-judicial but binding gag order to not speak about his experiences at Foxhollow or with Cohen. This enforced silence was, Yenner states, but yet another reminder to him that Cohen wasn’t ready to let him go. But the gag order expired in 2008 and now Yenner’s book is published.
Luna Tarlo and William Yenner’s books are not the only criticisms of Cohen to surface. Prior to the release of Yenner’s book some of Cohen’s former followers had set up a website, What Enlightenment?, in 2004 that chronicled his abusive and controlling methods with advice on cult recovery. Yenner’s book also contains the passages from other former Foxhollow members. In 2003 former What Is Enlightenment? editor Andre van der Braak published “Enlightenment Blues: My Years with an American Guru”. An eleven year disciple of Cohen’s, van der Braak chronicled the abuse and manipulation he witnessed and experienced as part of the Foxhollow community. He reports that one of the more mild but still disturbing elements of daily life in the community consisted of 600 daily prostrations while repeating the required mantra, “To know nothing, to have nothing, to be no one.” And Geoffry Falk in his Stripping the Guru’s: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment dedicates an entire chapter ‘Sometimes I feel Like God’ to Cohen. It places Cohen in context of his guru Poonjaji and provides a short history of his life. (This is an excellent and important book with startling revelations about everyone from Krishnamurti and Osho to Trungpa, Sai Baba and Yogi Amrit Desai just to name a few. My endorsement of this book is not about its level of scholarship as I must humbly admit I am in no position to evaluate this. Rather I appreciate the book because it draws attention to the phenomenon of cults, gurus and spiritual abuse. The whole book is available free online. Here is a link to the chapter on Cohen).
What did Cohen do? This is an excerpt from American Guru.
Some years ago at Foxhollow, a student named Jeff, a very good writer, was having a great deal of trouble with a writing project he had been assigned to do. He was supposed to write an introduction to a book Andrew was publishing, but he was having no success. Feeling terrible guilt about this, he wrote in a desperate letter to Andrew, “If I don’t come through, I will cut my finger off.” Andrew seemed to like this idea. When Jeff still did not succeed at his writing, Andrew called for Mikaela, [who was a] physician, to come see him…. Andrew told Mikaela to go to see Jeff, and to bring her medical kit. She was instructed to tell Jeff that Andrew was taking him up on his offer to sacrifice a finger. She should take out her scalpel, her mask, her gloves, a sponge – everything she would need for such an operation – and lay them all out. She was told to carry through the charade up to the very last minute, and then stop. When Mikaela visited Jeff, he had barely slept in about a week. He was in a desperate state…. Mikaela [later] confirmed…that she had followed Andrew’s instructions precisely. Jeff was severely and obviously shaken by the incident. He left Andrew and Foxhollow a few weeks later.
Face slapping and name-calling, while they were uncalled for and may have been damaging, were mild in comparison to other questionable manifestations of “crazy wisdom” that occurred at Foxhollow. One such incident involved a student (Mikaela) who was responsible for the marketing of Andrew’s publications and who had fallen out of favor by reminding him that something he had criticized her for doing had been his idea in the first place. He decried her as evil and ordered that the walls, floor and ceiling of her office (which had been relocated to an unfinished basement room) be painted red to signify the spilled blood of her guru. She was ordered to spend hours there contemplating the implications of her transgression, with the additional aid of a large cartoon on the wall depicting her as a vampire and the word “traitor” written in large letters next to it.
Andrew often employed red paint in this fashion to create environments designed to induce shame and guilt in students that he felt had questioned his judgment or disobeyed him. Another female student who had displeased Andrew and, after leaving the community, had returned to help out on a weekend painting project, was summoned to another basement room. There she was met by four female students who, having guided her onto a plastic sheet on the floor, each poured a bucket of paint over her head as a “message of gratitude” from Andrew. She left the property traumatized and fell ill in subsequent days (during which she was harassed by phone calls from another student who, at Cohen’s instigation, repeatedly called her a “coward”) and never again returned to Foxhollow. “Crazy wisdom” is the most charitable possible explanation for these often traumatic and disturbing incidents, many of which have already been related on the whatenlightenment.net blog.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
My Experience in a 'Christian' Cult
I am a normal young guy, or so I thought. This past year, I, like many other young adults, attended college and was focused on my future. And as a young adult, like Diane Benscoter, I was, and still am at times, naive to my surroundings.
I would soon be involved with something that would change my life and the way I think. Some would say my brain was rewired.
I have always been an activist. I love using creative and effective ways to change policies and culture to better the world. As a result of being a whistle blower of my college allocating tax payer money to fund a conference that was bullying conservatives and Christians I gained media attention, both locally and nationally.
In April of this year I was on an Iowa state-wide radio show. Before my segment, Bradlee Dean, a controversial preacher was on the same show; his sidekick heard me after and gave me a call. This led to me becoming employed on a street evangelism team with Minnesota-based You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International.
There are many reasons why I agreed to employment. I observed and believed the ministry to be family-oriented. After all, everyone who was married had their wife as a part of the ministry as well as their children. I believed the ministry to be Christian and authentic. I was beyond mistaken.
As soon as I moved to Minnesota I began traveled with the street team nationwide for evangelism.
Over the course of the next seven weeks that I worked for the ministry they began to control every aspect of my life. These are just some examples of things I was told or taught: It is normal for your family to stop talking to you as you develop a deeper relationship with Christ. I have nothing left back at home. Do not watch television as we are not to pay attention to media.
Because I worked on the street evangelism team I often worked long days, over twelve hours on average. They made us work long hours to keep us busy enough that we would not have time to think about how we were being brainwashed.
One day my mother called to check in; she realized I was no longer myself. She sent me a text that day, "You are being brainwashed, and you need to leave." I remember being inflamed and thought, "How dare she tell me such." I was told by my co-workers that she did not love me and Satan was using her to distract me from my purpose of being a Christian evangelist that God called me to be.
On June 29, 2013, I traveled with the street evangelism team through Tennessee. At 3 a.m. we made a gas stop in Pulawski, Tenn. Supposedly, it was my turn to pay for gas. I made the team leader aware that I did not have money for gas as I had bills to pay. I was then given an ultimatum, pay for gas or get out of the vehicle.
I had only money to pay my bills, grabbed my bags and got out of the vehicle. They then drove off to who knows where. I was stranded in a foreign place that had no airport, car rental place, taxi service, or any form of transportation.
Though it took some time, I began to realize I was a part of a cult. I sent out an email to my friends and political contacts to make them aware of the situation and to ask them to not socialize themselves with what I now realized to be a cult. Someone leaked the email, the cult then sent out an email to my contacts. They made accusations about me. This resulted in me losing what I believed to be friends overnight.
As a result of my relationship with the cult, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, I now have a hard time trusting other people and ministries who say they are Christian. I can tell it's not me. I have always had a deep connection with Christ to what I would call a love story. Today, when looking at a Bible, hearing someone say the name "Jesus, Christ, God," etc. my mind will go back to the thoughts of control and manipulation I received from my associations with the cult.
My hope is that anyone who finds themselves being told to cease their normal, nondestructive lives are able to seek help. We all have dreams and aspirations, and we often will do anything to achieve those dreams. Because I was not willing to listen to those with more wisdom I fell into a trap that has changed my life forever.
I would soon be involved with something that would change my life and the way I think. Some would say my brain was rewired.
I have always been an activist. I love using creative and effective ways to change policies and culture to better the world. As a result of being a whistle blower of my college allocating tax payer money to fund a conference that was bullying conservatives and Christians I gained media attention, both locally and nationally.
In April of this year I was on an Iowa state-wide radio show. Before my segment, Bradlee Dean, a controversial preacher was on the same show; his sidekick heard me after and gave me a call. This led to me becoming employed on a street evangelism team with Minnesota-based You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International.
There are many reasons why I agreed to employment. I observed and believed the ministry to be family-oriented. After all, everyone who was married had their wife as a part of the ministry as well as their children. I believed the ministry to be Christian and authentic. I was beyond mistaken.
As soon as I moved to Minnesota I began traveled with the street team nationwide for evangelism.
Over the course of the next seven weeks that I worked for the ministry they began to control every aspect of my life. These are just some examples of things I was told or taught: It is normal for your family to stop talking to you as you develop a deeper relationship with Christ. I have nothing left back at home. Do not watch television as we are not to pay attention to media.
Because I worked on the street evangelism team I often worked long days, over twelve hours on average. They made us work long hours to keep us busy enough that we would not have time to think about how we were being brainwashed.
One day my mother called to check in; she realized I was no longer myself. She sent me a text that day, "You are being brainwashed, and you need to leave." I remember being inflamed and thought, "How dare she tell me such." I was told by my co-workers that she did not love me and Satan was using her to distract me from my purpose of being a Christian evangelist that God called me to be.
On June 29, 2013, I traveled with the street evangelism team through Tennessee. At 3 a.m. we made a gas stop in Pulawski, Tenn. Supposedly, it was my turn to pay for gas. I made the team leader aware that I did not have money for gas as I had bills to pay. I was then given an ultimatum, pay for gas or get out of the vehicle.
I had only money to pay my bills, grabbed my bags and got out of the vehicle. They then drove off to who knows where. I was stranded in a foreign place that had no airport, car rental place, taxi service, or any form of transportation.
Though it took some time, I began to realize I was a part of a cult. I sent out an email to my friends and political contacts to make them aware of the situation and to ask them to not socialize themselves with what I now realized to be a cult. Someone leaked the email, the cult then sent out an email to my contacts. They made accusations about me. This resulted in me losing what I believed to be friends overnight.
As a result of my relationship with the cult, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International, I now have a hard time trusting other people and ministries who say they are Christian. I can tell it's not me. I have always had a deep connection with Christ to what I would call a love story. Today, when looking at a Bible, hearing someone say the name "Jesus, Christ, God," etc. my mind will go back to the thoughts of control and manipulation I received from my associations with the cult.
My hope is that anyone who finds themselves being told to cease their normal, nondestructive lives are able to seek help. We all have dreams and aspirations, and we often will do anything to achieve those dreams. Because I was not willing to listen to those with more wisdom I fell into a trap that has changed my life forever.
Monday, May 5, 2014
The Dahn Yoga Cult
How a Korean guru has created a fanatical following on college campuses that is part Moonies, part New Age boot camp and pure profit
If you looked at it from a certain perspective, the exercises Amy Shipley did in Dahn Yoga were perfectly normal. Take what she was doing right now. It was near midnight. Amy and seven other devotees of Dahn Yoga — nearly all in their 20s, clad in blue tracksuits and barely functioning on three hours of sleep — were standing in a waist-deep fountain in the desert of Sedona, Arizona. On command from their Korean trainer, all eight would plunge their heads underwater and hold their breath until their lungs strained, finally rocketing to the surface gasping and shouting a devotional song to their Grand Master — a middle-aged Korean man called Ilchi Lee — and weeping to prove their sincerity. Then they'd be ordered to do it again, and properly this time. In this way, Amy and the others were saving their souls and rescuing the world from annihilation.
See? Totally normal.
Amy loved tests. She'd always been Type-A like that, an overachiever, first in line for any challenge. And Dahn Yoga gave her endless tests to pass, especially here at its isolated Arizona retreat where, round the clock, members performed all kinds of mysterious rituals. Certain exercises had taken some getting used to, of course. Like the one where they'd turn off the lights and everyone would dance and scream for hours, until they collapsed in a sobbing heap. Or just earlier today, when Amy had been ordered to mash her face in the dirt as a lesson in humility. A 24-year-old blond Midwesterner who had been a homecoming princess of her Indiana high school, Amy was now a pro at such practices: At a previous workshop that lasted for 10 days, she and a dozen others had begun each morning by punching themselves in the stomach while hollering things like "I am stupid!" For that privilege, Amy had paid $8,500.
Two years earlier, Amy and her boyfriend, Ricardo Barba, had been ordinary juniors at the University of Illinois when they visited a campus fitness club that taught a meld of yoga and tai chi. Now, by spring 2008, they were sleep-deprived, celibate soul warriors who considered Ilchi Lee their "spiritual father." In pursuit of the enlightenment Lee promised, they and thousands of other young American disciples dedicated 80-hour workweeks and astonishing amounts of money to Dahn Yoga. Amy was $47,000 in debt for her training, having maxed out credit cards and student loans at the urging of her masters. Again, totally normal: Many who progressed in Dahn had mountains of debt, especially those lucky older members with homes to mortgage — an asset that came in handy when paying for Dahn's holiest seminar, which cost $100,000.
Amy broke through the water's surface again and launched into song, careful to keep a smile on her face as tears rolled down her cheeks. Suddenly, she was struck with a rare moment of clarity. She didn't understand how this exercise was promoting world peace. She felt ridiculous. She was exhausted. She missed Ricardo, who was back in Chicago cleaning yoga-studio toilets and doing penance for his inability to "create" money. What the hell am I doing? Amy wondered. But no sooner did the thought enter her mind than she squelched it the way her masters had taught her: When in doubt, commit yourself even harder. She slammed her face into the chilly water until her reservations dissipated. At the end of this week's training, Amy herself would be crowned a Dahn master and awarded her heavenly assignment: to recruit 20 new members and raise $20,000 for Dahn Yoga each month.
"I was a good little cult member," Amy says today. "I would have drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide if they told me to. I would have chopped off my right arm. I would have done anything."
Given the devotion many Americans feel for yoga, it was just a matter of time before someone hatched the idea for a yoga cult. But at Dahn Yoga, a 25-year-old Korean organization, there are no downward-dog poses, no sun salutations. At the group's 127 fitness centers nationwide, practitioners engage in a head-shaking meditation known as "brain wave vibration" that is best performed while holding palm-size rubber vibrating brains ($80 per pair) and, after class, discuss their feelings in a "sharing circle." In fact, Dahn's calling itself "yoga" is just a marketing ploy to enhance its appeal to Americans, who make up some 10,000 of the 500,000 members the group claims worldwide. Many are supermotivated kids, like Amy Shipley and Ricardo Barba, who are recruited from college campuses, along with a healthy dose of older rich folks whom the group privately calls "VIPs." Last year, Dahn Yoga pulled in an estimated $30 million in the United States alone — and that's only a fraction of its 1,000 franchises across nine countries.
But critics say this lucrative fitness craze has a dark side. "Dahn is a destructive mind-control cult, very similar to the Moonies," says Steven Hassan, author of Combatting Cult Mind Control, who has counseled many ex-Dahn members. A federal lawsuit filed last year by 27 former members, including Shipley and Barba, goes a step further, claiming that Dahn is not only a cult, but that the profits generated by its brainwashed masses fund the rock-star lifestyle of Seung Heun "Ilchi" Lee, a paunchy, white-haired 57-year-old who travels the globe via private jet and is orbited by a worshipful entourage of personal assistants. Lee's disciples, meanwhile, live in communal housing, go deep into debt to meet financial quotas and say they are driven to exercise to an extreme degree. (In 2008, Dahn settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum when a college professor named Julia Siverls died of dehydration while hiking a Sedona mountain, allegedly lugging 25 pounds of rocks in her backpack.) The current lawsuit also accuses Lee of breaking wage and immigration laws, evading taxes and sexually abusing female disciples, who are assured they're being singled out for a sacred honor.
If you looked at it from a certain perspective, the exercises Amy Shipley did in Dahn Yoga were perfectly normal. Take what she was doing right now. It was near midnight. Amy and seven other devotees of Dahn Yoga — nearly all in their 20s, clad in blue tracksuits and barely functioning on three hours of sleep — were standing in a waist-deep fountain in the desert of Sedona, Arizona. On command from their Korean trainer, all eight would plunge their heads underwater and hold their breath until their lungs strained, finally rocketing to the surface gasping and shouting a devotional song to their Grand Master — a middle-aged Korean man called Ilchi Lee — and weeping to prove their sincerity. Then they'd be ordered to do it again, and properly this time. In this way, Amy and the others were saving their souls and rescuing the world from annihilation.
See? Totally normal.
Amy loved tests. She'd always been Type-A like that, an overachiever, first in line for any challenge. And Dahn Yoga gave her endless tests to pass, especially here at its isolated Arizona retreat where, round the clock, members performed all kinds of mysterious rituals. Certain exercises had taken some getting used to, of course. Like the one where they'd turn off the lights and everyone would dance and scream for hours, until they collapsed in a sobbing heap. Or just earlier today, when Amy had been ordered to mash her face in the dirt as a lesson in humility. A 24-year-old blond Midwesterner who had been a homecoming princess of her Indiana high school, Amy was now a pro at such practices: At a previous workshop that lasted for 10 days, she and a dozen others had begun each morning by punching themselves in the stomach while hollering things like "I am stupid!" For that privilege, Amy had paid $8,500.
Two years earlier, Amy and her boyfriend, Ricardo Barba, had been ordinary juniors at the University of Illinois when they visited a campus fitness club that taught a meld of yoga and tai chi. Now, by spring 2008, they were sleep-deprived, celibate soul warriors who considered Ilchi Lee their "spiritual father." In pursuit of the enlightenment Lee promised, they and thousands of other young American disciples dedicated 80-hour workweeks and astonishing amounts of money to Dahn Yoga. Amy was $47,000 in debt for her training, having maxed out credit cards and student loans at the urging of her masters. Again, totally normal: Many who progressed in Dahn had mountains of debt, especially those lucky older members with homes to mortgage — an asset that came in handy when paying for Dahn's holiest seminar, which cost $100,000.
Amy broke through the water's surface again and launched into song, careful to keep a smile on her face as tears rolled down her cheeks. Suddenly, she was struck with a rare moment of clarity. She didn't understand how this exercise was promoting world peace. She felt ridiculous. She was exhausted. She missed Ricardo, who was back in Chicago cleaning yoga-studio toilets and doing penance for his inability to "create" money. What the hell am I doing? Amy wondered. But no sooner did the thought enter her mind than she squelched it the way her masters had taught her: When in doubt, commit yourself even harder. She slammed her face into the chilly water until her reservations dissipated. At the end of this week's training, Amy herself would be crowned a Dahn master and awarded her heavenly assignment: to recruit 20 new members and raise $20,000 for Dahn Yoga each month.
"I was a good little cult member," Amy says today. "I would have drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide if they told me to. I would have chopped off my right arm. I would have done anything."
Given the devotion many Americans feel for yoga, it was just a matter of time before someone hatched the idea for a yoga cult. But at Dahn Yoga, a 25-year-old Korean organization, there are no downward-dog poses, no sun salutations. At the group's 127 fitness centers nationwide, practitioners engage in a head-shaking meditation known as "brain wave vibration" that is best performed while holding palm-size rubber vibrating brains ($80 per pair) and, after class, discuss their feelings in a "sharing circle." In fact, Dahn's calling itself "yoga" is just a marketing ploy to enhance its appeal to Americans, who make up some 10,000 of the 500,000 members the group claims worldwide. Many are supermotivated kids, like Amy Shipley and Ricardo Barba, who are recruited from college campuses, along with a healthy dose of older rich folks whom the group privately calls "VIPs." Last year, Dahn Yoga pulled in an estimated $30 million in the United States alone — and that's only a fraction of its 1,000 franchises across nine countries.
But critics say this lucrative fitness craze has a dark side. "Dahn is a destructive mind-control cult, very similar to the Moonies," says Steven Hassan, author of Combatting Cult Mind Control, who has counseled many ex-Dahn members. A federal lawsuit filed last year by 27 former members, including Shipley and Barba, goes a step further, claiming that Dahn is not only a cult, but that the profits generated by its brainwashed masses fund the rock-star lifestyle of Seung Heun "Ilchi" Lee, a paunchy, white-haired 57-year-old who travels the globe via private jet and is orbited by a worshipful entourage of personal assistants. Lee's disciples, meanwhile, live in communal housing, go deep into debt to meet financial quotas and say they are driven to exercise to an extreme degree. (In 2008, Dahn settled a lawsuit for an undisclosed sum when a college professor named Julia Siverls died of dehydration while hiking a Sedona mountain, allegedly lugging 25 pounds of rocks in her backpack.) The current lawsuit also accuses Lee of breaking wage and immigration laws, evading taxes and sexually abusing female disciples, who are assured they're being singled out for a sacred honor.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
"Swami Vivekananda Saraswati" AKA Narcis Tarcau a Romanian man is the
founder of Agama Yoga and would be thrown in Jail if he were running
his "retreat" in any developed country. A little searching on google
can bring up many reports of people who have been coerced into having
sex with him at his so called tantric retreats.
Each participant is "strongly encouraged" (bullied) to have unprotected sex with at least 5 others. As you can imagine the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases is incredibly high here.
"Swami" has his first choice of women and the remaining men and women then choose their partners. Like many brainwashing groups Agama has a lot of beneficial practices however the harmful practices far outweigh any of the benefits. Similarly, "Swami" speaks a good game and perhaps 80% of what he says sounds good and right however the remaining 20% is manipulative, cunning and exploitative.
Steer clear of Agama Yoga.
Each participant is "strongly encouraged" (bullied) to have unprotected sex with at least 5 others. As you can imagine the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases is incredibly high here.
"Swami" has his first choice of women and the remaining men and women then choose their partners. Like many brainwashing groups Agama has a lot of beneficial practices however the harmful practices far outweigh any of the benefits. Similarly, "Swami" speaks a good game and perhaps 80% of what he says sounds good and right however the remaining 20% is manipulative, cunning and exploitative.
Steer clear of Agama Yoga.
Monday, April 28, 2014
Letter From a Former Swami
I’d like to add this letter, if possible, as an appendix to the article on Muktananda by William Rodarmor. It is a statement of my thoughts and opinions of Muktananda after two years of deep deliberation following my discovery of his ‘secret life’.
When I left Muktananda’s service, I did so because I had just learned of the threatening action he had taken against some of his long-time devotees who had recently left his service. He had sent two of his body-guards to deliver threats to two young married women who had been speaking to other women who had been speaking to others of Muktananda’s sexual liaisons with a number of young girls in his ashram. It was immediately clear to me that I could not represent a guru who was not only taking sexual advantage of his female devotees but was threatening with bodily harm those who revealed the truth about him. However, after I had left Muktananda and had make the reasons for my departure known to others still in his service, another issue came to light for me, teaching me something not only about Muktananda’s, but about the nature of the organization and all other such organizations in which the leader is regarded as infallible by his followers, and is therefore obeyed implicitly.
When Chandra and Michael Dinga and later myself realized the truth about Muktananda and his secret sex life, there was absolutely no means available to present the evidence for a fair hearing or judgment. There was no recourse but to leave, for the guru was the sole appeal, and he was as accustomed to lying as he was to breathing. Yet his word was regarded by followers as so absolutely final that when each of us left and were branded "demons" by him, not a single soul among those who had been our brother and sister devotees for ten years questioned or objected, but unamimouly rejected us outright as the demented infidels he said we were. One has only to observe the way each of us who discovered the guru’s secret life were treated by our former comrades to understand the power for evil inherent in any relationship based on the infallibility of the leader and the unquestioned obedience of the subjects...
It is clear to me that not only had the girls with whom Muktananda practiced his sexual diversions committed acts to which they had given no moral or rational consent, but so had the men who were ordered to threaten them with violence, and so had I myself when I had followed Muktananda’s orders to express to others opinions which I did not sincerely hold. It is a sad but perennial phenomenon: Out of a love for truth and for those who teach it and appear to embody it, we unwittingly set ourselves up for exploitation and betrayal. Our mistake is to deify another being and attribute perfection to him. From that point on everything is admissible.
I think the lesson to be learned is that we simply cannot afford to relinquish our individual sovereignty - whether it be in a socio-political setting or in a religious congregation. Those who willingly put aside their own autonomy, their own moral judgment, to obey even a Christ, a Buddha, or a Krishna, do so at risk of losing a great deal more than they can hope to gain.
About Muktananda himself I have thought a great deal. There is no doubt in my mind that he was an extraordinarily enlightened, learned, and articulate man who possessed a singular power, a dynamic personal radiance and charisma that drew people to him and inspired them to lay their lives at his feet. Surely such a power is divine; yet there is no way to justify the way in which he used this power. If God himself were to behave in this way, we would have to find him guilty of flagrant disregard for the law of love.
Some may say, ‘He did no worse than any of us have done, or would do if we could.’ And I would answer, ‘No; he did worse than any of use have done or would have done in his place. For, though he was only human like the rest of us, he staged a deliberate campaign of deceit to convince gentle souls that he had transcended the limitations of mankind, that through realizing the eternal Self, he had attained holy "perfection." He planted and nourished false, impossible dreams in the hears of innocent, faithful souls and sacrificed them to his sport. With malicious glee, he cunningly stole from hundreds of trusting souls their hearts and wills, their self-trust, their very sanity, their very lives. No ordinary, good person could do this, no matter how he tried; his heart and conscience would not allow it.
Like all of us, Muktananda was only human. And, like all men who worship power, he was inevitably corrupted and destroyed by it. His power could not save him form the weakness of the flesh, nor from the wickedness and depravity that servitude to it brings. He ended as a feeble-minded sadistic tyrant, luring devout little girls to his bed every night with promises of grace and self-realization.
Muktananda’s claim of "perfection" (Siddha-hood) was based on the notion that a person who has become enlightened has thereby also become "perfect" and absolutely free of human weakness. This is nonsense; it is a myth perpetrated by dishonest men who wish to receive the reverence and adoration due God alone. There is no absolute assurance that enlightenment necessitates the moral virtue of a person. There is no guarantee against the weakness of anger, lust, and greed in the human soul. The enlightened are on an equal footing with the ignorant in the struggle against their own evil - the only difference being that the enlightened person knows the truth, and has no excuse for betraying it.
Throughout history there have been many enlightened souls who have been thought great, who, in the pride of their perfection and freedom, have imagined themselves to be beyond the constraints of God’s laws, and who have thus fallen from love and lost the glory the once had. Those glorious Babes and Bhagwans, thinking to build their kingdom here on earth upon the ruins of the young souls devoted to them, often succeed for a time in fooling many and in gathering a large and festive following, but their deeds also follow them and proclaim their truth long after the paeans of praise have been sung and wafted away on the air. "God is not mocked"; there is no freedom, no liberation, from His law of love, nor from His inescapable justice. It is indeed often those very persons who have thought themselves most perfect, most free and ungoverned, who have fallen most grievously; and their piteous fall is an occasion for great sadness, and should serve as a clear reminder of caution to us all.
by Stan Trout
When I left Muktananda’s service, I did so because I had just learned of the threatening action he had taken against some of his long-time devotees who had recently left his service. He had sent two of his body-guards to deliver threats to two young married women who had been speaking to other women who had been speaking to others of Muktananda’s sexual liaisons with a number of young girls in his ashram. It was immediately clear to me that I could not represent a guru who was not only taking sexual advantage of his female devotees but was threatening with bodily harm those who revealed the truth about him. However, after I had left Muktananda and had make the reasons for my departure known to others still in his service, another issue came to light for me, teaching me something not only about Muktananda’s, but about the nature of the organization and all other such organizations in which the leader is regarded as infallible by his followers, and is therefore obeyed implicitly.
When Chandra and Michael Dinga and later myself realized the truth about Muktananda and his secret sex life, there was absolutely no means available to present the evidence for a fair hearing or judgment. There was no recourse but to leave, for the guru was the sole appeal, and he was as accustomed to lying as he was to breathing. Yet his word was regarded by followers as so absolutely final that when each of us left and were branded "demons" by him, not a single soul among those who had been our brother and sister devotees for ten years questioned or objected, but unamimouly rejected us outright as the demented infidels he said we were. One has only to observe the way each of us who discovered the guru’s secret life were treated by our former comrades to understand the power for evil inherent in any relationship based on the infallibility of the leader and the unquestioned obedience of the subjects...
It is clear to me that not only had the girls with whom Muktananda practiced his sexual diversions committed acts to which they had given no moral or rational consent, but so had the men who were ordered to threaten them with violence, and so had I myself when I had followed Muktananda’s orders to express to others opinions which I did not sincerely hold. It is a sad but perennial phenomenon: Out of a love for truth and for those who teach it and appear to embody it, we unwittingly set ourselves up for exploitation and betrayal. Our mistake is to deify another being and attribute perfection to him. From that point on everything is admissible.
I think the lesson to be learned is that we simply cannot afford to relinquish our individual sovereignty - whether it be in a socio-political setting or in a religious congregation. Those who willingly put aside their own autonomy, their own moral judgment, to obey even a Christ, a Buddha, or a Krishna, do so at risk of losing a great deal more than they can hope to gain.
About Muktananda himself I have thought a great deal. There is no doubt in my mind that he was an extraordinarily enlightened, learned, and articulate man who possessed a singular power, a dynamic personal radiance and charisma that drew people to him and inspired them to lay their lives at his feet. Surely such a power is divine; yet there is no way to justify the way in which he used this power. If God himself were to behave in this way, we would have to find him guilty of flagrant disregard for the law of love.
Some may say, ‘He did no worse than any of us have done, or would do if we could.’ And I would answer, ‘No; he did worse than any of use have done or would have done in his place. For, though he was only human like the rest of us, he staged a deliberate campaign of deceit to convince gentle souls that he had transcended the limitations of mankind, that through realizing the eternal Self, he had attained holy "perfection." He planted and nourished false, impossible dreams in the hears of innocent, faithful souls and sacrificed them to his sport. With malicious glee, he cunningly stole from hundreds of trusting souls their hearts and wills, their self-trust, their very sanity, their very lives. No ordinary, good person could do this, no matter how he tried; his heart and conscience would not allow it.
Like all of us, Muktananda was only human. And, like all men who worship power, he was inevitably corrupted and destroyed by it. His power could not save him form the weakness of the flesh, nor from the wickedness and depravity that servitude to it brings. He ended as a feeble-minded sadistic tyrant, luring devout little girls to his bed every night with promises of grace and self-realization.
Muktananda’s claim of "perfection" (Siddha-hood) was based on the notion that a person who has become enlightened has thereby also become "perfect" and absolutely free of human weakness. This is nonsense; it is a myth perpetrated by dishonest men who wish to receive the reverence and adoration due God alone. There is no absolute assurance that enlightenment necessitates the moral virtue of a person. There is no guarantee against the weakness of anger, lust, and greed in the human soul. The enlightened are on an equal footing with the ignorant in the struggle against their own evil - the only difference being that the enlightened person knows the truth, and has no excuse for betraying it.
Throughout history there have been many enlightened souls who have been thought great, who, in the pride of their perfection and freedom, have imagined themselves to be beyond the constraints of God’s laws, and who have thus fallen from love and lost the glory the once had. Those glorious Babes and Bhagwans, thinking to build their kingdom here on earth upon the ruins of the young souls devoted to them, often succeed for a time in fooling many and in gathering a large and festive following, but their deeds also follow them and proclaim their truth long after the paeans of praise have been sung and wafted away on the air. "God is not mocked"; there is no freedom, no liberation, from His law of love, nor from His inescapable justice. It is indeed often those very persons who have thought themselves most perfect, most free and ungoverned, who have fallen most grievously; and their piteous fall is an occasion for great sadness, and should serve as a clear reminder of caution to us all.
by Stan Trout
Friday, April 4, 2014
Ajarn Toh (Herman) Qigong Scammer in Chiang Mai
Ajarn Toh (Herman), is a doctor of Chinese Medicine however his
ethics and that of his wife are non-existent. He is greedy and a
sociopath, a very deceptive man who knows how to manipulate his clients however if you observe
carefully you can see that he is actually a man only interested in
money. He seeks out certain types of people and personalities that he
knows will be susceptible to what he has to sell.
Several women including myself have been sexually harassed by him in the past but he was able to bribe his way out of the situation and it seems that he is a lot more careful now. Others in the group witnessed this but chose to either pretend it did not happen or they also left the group.
He said to one female student that she needed her "root chakra" and "ming men" activated and that he could only do this for her through sexual intercourse. She left. She said, "this was disgusting enough but I felt just as betrayed that other students who knew of this pretended that it didn't happen. I was not the first. Everyone wanted to play along that he was some sort of master but masters don't act so immorally. Another man and woman did leave with me though and were very supportive. It's hard to leave a group like this when everyone is in it together. After leaving the people who stay ostracize you from the group and won't even talk to you. That's what feels like such a betrayal, that I'd thought these people friends for several years and they knew. They knew. From what I hear he is a lot more careful now. His main interest is becoming rich and famous so he has to avoid any scandal."
"In China he would be considered a below average Chinese Medicine Doctor however here in Chiang Mai he can get away with calling himself a high level doctor. He is actually quite low level. He would not even be considered a qigong teacher in China let alone a master. He is far from a master and does not understand even the fundamentals of real qigong. I will admit that he has a rudimentary level of Chinese Medicine and acupuncture howeverI cannot recommend him at all because of his lack of ethics alone. He is all about money and expanding his group to make more money for himself. This should be clear to anyone who observes him objectively. His actions speak louder than words. Most real Chinese doctors and Qigong masters just avoid him completely."
"There are other teachers in Chiang Mai and indeed the world who are both far better in skill and who have good ethics. If you meet this man keep away from him. You will be better for it."
If you need decent Chinese Medicine go to any other place in Chiang Mai except for him:
Some examples are:
Mungkala
Rajavej Clinic
McCormick Hospital
Dr. Sheng Zhong Wang at Wororat Market Herbal Shop
For qigong there are a few authentic and skilled teachers in Chiang Mai but they do not advertise. You will need to find them through word of mouth as I have been asked to keep their details private.
As you can see I am not affiliated with any clinics or teachers. I simply wish to caution others against scams and fraudsters in Chiang Mai.
Several women including myself have been sexually harassed by him in the past but he was able to bribe his way out of the situation and it seems that he is a lot more careful now. Others in the group witnessed this but chose to either pretend it did not happen or they also left the group.
He said to one female student that she needed her "root chakra" and "ming men" activated and that he could only do this for her through sexual intercourse. She left. She said, "this was disgusting enough but I felt just as betrayed that other students who knew of this pretended that it didn't happen. I was not the first. Everyone wanted to play along that he was some sort of master but masters don't act so immorally. Another man and woman did leave with me though and were very supportive. It's hard to leave a group like this when everyone is in it together. After leaving the people who stay ostracize you from the group and won't even talk to you. That's what feels like such a betrayal, that I'd thought these people friends for several years and they knew. They knew. From what I hear he is a lot more careful now. His main interest is becoming rich and famous so he has to avoid any scandal."
"In China he would be considered a below average Chinese Medicine Doctor however here in Chiang Mai he can get away with calling himself a high level doctor. He is actually quite low level. He would not even be considered a qigong teacher in China let alone a master. He is far from a master and does not understand even the fundamentals of real qigong. I will admit that he has a rudimentary level of Chinese Medicine and acupuncture howeverI cannot recommend him at all because of his lack of ethics alone. He is all about money and expanding his group to make more money for himself. This should be clear to anyone who observes him objectively. His actions speak louder than words. Most real Chinese doctors and Qigong masters just avoid him completely."
"There are other teachers in Chiang Mai and indeed the world who are both far better in skill and who have good ethics. If you meet this man keep away from him. You will be better for it."
If you need decent Chinese Medicine go to any other place in Chiang Mai except for him:
Some examples are:
Mungkala
Rajavej Clinic
McCormick Hospital
Dr. Sheng Zhong Wang at Wororat Market Herbal Shop
For qigong there are a few authentic and skilled teachers in Chiang Mai but they do not advertise. You will need to find them through word of mouth as I have been asked to keep their details private.
As you can see I am not affiliated with any clinics or teachers. I simply wish to caution others against scams and fraudsters in Chiang Mai.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The Secret Life of Swami Muktananda
"There is no deity superior to the Guru, no gain better than the Guru's grace ... no state higher than meditation on the Guru." -Muktananda
ON THE American consciousness circuit, Baba Muktananda was known as the "guru’s guru," one of the most respected meditation masters ever to come out of India. Respected, that is, until now.
When Baba Ram Dass introduced him to the U.S. in 1970. Muktananda was still largely unknown. Thanks to Muktananda's spiritual power, his Siddha meditation movement quickly took root in the fertile soil of the American growth movement. By the time he died of heart failure in October 1982, Muktananda's followers had built him 31 ashrams, or meditation centers, around the world. When crowds saw Muktananda step from a black limousine to a waiting Lear jet, it was clear that the diminutive, orange-robed Indian was an American-style success.
At various times, Jerry Brown, Werner Erhard, John Denver, Marsha Mason; James Taylor, Carry Simon, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and Meg Christian have all been interested in Muktananda's movement. The media coordinator at the large Oakland, California, ashram is former Black Panther leader Erika Huggins.
Baba Muktananda said he was a Siddha, the representative of a centuries-old Hindu lineage. According to his official biography, he wandered across India as a young man, going from teacher to teacher, living the chaste, austere life of a monk. In Ganeshpuri, near Bombay, he became the disciple of Nityananda, a Siddha guru of awesome yogic powers. After years of meditation, Muktananda experienced enlightenment. When Nityananda died in 1960, Muktananda said the guru passed the Siddha mantle to him on his deathbed, though some of Nityananda's followers in India dispute the claim. When Muktananda himself died, a sympathetic press still saw him as a spiritual Mr. Clean, and his two successors, a brother-sister team of swamis, continue to draw thousands of people searching for higher consciousness.
To most of his followers, Muktananda was a great master. But to others, he was a man unable to live up to the high principles of his own teachings. "When we first approach a Guru," Muktananda wrote, "we should carefully examine his qualities and his actions. He should have conquered desire and anger and banished infatuation from his heart." For many, that was a warning that was understood too late.
Some of Muktananda's most important former followers now charge that the guru repeatedly violated his vow of chastity, made millions of dollars from his followers' labors: and allowed guns and violence in his ashrams. The accusations have been denied by the swamis who took over his movement after the master died.
In the course of preparing this story, I talked with 25 present and former devotees; most of the interviews are on tape. Some people would only talk to me if promised anonymity, and some are bitter at what they feel was Muktananda's betrayal of their trust. All agree that Muktananda was a man of unusual power. They differ over the ways he used it.
"I don't have sex for the same reason you do: because it feels so good." -Muktananda
IN HIS teachings Muktananda put a lot of emphasis on sex - most of it negative. Curbing the sex drive released the kundalini energy that led to enlightenment, he said. The swami himself claimed to be completely celibate.
Members of the guru's inner circle, however, say Muktananda regularly had sex with his female devotees. Michael Dinga, an Oakland contractor who was head of construction for the ashram and a trustee of the foundation, said the guru's sexual exploits were common knowledge in the ashram. "It was supposed to be Muktananda's big secret," said Dinga, "but since many of the girls were in their early to middle teens, it was hard to keep it secret."
A young woman I am calling "Mary" said the guru seduced her at the main American ashram at South Fallsburg, New York, in 1981. Mary was in her early twenties at the time. Muktananda was 73.
At South Fallsburg, Muktananda used to stand behind a curtain in the evening, watching the girls coming back to the dormitory. He asked Mary to come to his bedroom several times, and gave her gifts of money and jewelry. Finally, she did. When he then told her to undress, she was shocked, but she obeyed.
"He had a special area which I assume he used for his sexual affairs. It was similar to a gynecologist's table, but without the stirrups." (To his later chagrin, Michael Dinga realized he had built the table himself.) "He didn't have an erection," Mary said, "but he inserted about as much as he could. He was standing up, and his eyes were rolled up to the ceiling. He looked as if he was in some sort of ecstasy." When the session was over, Muktananda ordered the girl to come back the next day, and added, "Don't wear underwear."
On the first night, Muktananda had tried to convince Mary she was being initiated into tantric yoga - the yoga of sex. The next night, he didn't bother. "It was like ‘Okay, you're here, take off your clothes. get on the table and let's do it.' Just very straight, hard, cold sex."
Mary told two people about what had happened to her. Neither was exactly surprised.
Michael's wife Chandra was disturbed. Chandra was probably the most important American in the movement. As head of food services, she saw Muktananda daily, and knew what was going on. "Whoever was in his kitchen was in some way molested," she said. A girl I’ll call "Nina" used to work for Chandra. One day, the guru remarked to her in Hindi, "Sex with Nina is very good." Nina's mother was later made a swami.
Chandra said she had rationalized the guru's having sex in the past, but was dismayed to learn it had happened to her young friend Mary. Aware of Muktananda's power over people who were devoted to him, she saw it as a form of rape.
The other person Mary confided in was Malti, Muktananda's longtime translator.
Mary said Malti wasn't surprised when she told her about being seduced by the aged guru. "She told me people had been coming to her with this for years and years," Mary said. "She was caught in the middle." Malti and her brother, who have taken the names Chidvilasananda and Nityananda, are the movement's new leaders.
Another of Muktananda's victims was a woman I'll call "Jennifer." She says Muktananda raped her at the main Indian ashram at Ganeshpuri in the spring of 1978. He ordered Jennifer to come to his bedroom late one night, and told her to take her clothes off. "I was in shock," she said, "but over the years, I had learned you never say no to anything that he asked you to do...."
Muktananda had intercourse with Jennifer for an hour, she said, and was quite proud of the fact. "He kept saying, ‘Sixty minutes,’" she said. "He claimed he was using the real Indian positions, not the westernized ones used in America." While he had sex, the guru felt like conversing, but Jennifer found she couldn't say a word. "The main thing he wanted to know was how old I was when I first got my period. I answered something, and he said, ‘That’s good, you're a pure girl.’" Devastated by the event, Jennifer made plans to leave the ashram as soon as possible, but Muktananda continued to be interested in her. "He used to watch me getting undressed through the keyhole," she said. She would open the door and see the guru outside "I became rather scared of him, because he kept coming to my room at night."
Both women said the Ganeshpuri ashram was arranged to suit Muktananda's convenience.
"He had a secret passageway from his house to the young girls' dormitory," Mary said. "Whoever he was carrying on with, he had switched to that dorm." The guru often visited the girls' dormitory while they were undressing. "He would come up anytime he wanted to" Jennifer said, "and we would just giggle. In the early days, I never thought of him as having sexual desires. He was the guru..." Mary knew otherwise: she talked with at least eight other young girls who had sex with Muktananda. "I knew that he had girls marching in and out of his bedroom all night long," she said.
While his followers were renovating a Miami hotel in 1979, Muktananda slept on the women's floor, and ordered that the youngest be put in the rooms closest to his, and the older ones down the hall.
"You always knew who he was carrying on with," said Chandra. "They came down the next day with a new gold bracelet or a new pair of earrings." Around the ashram, said Mary, people knew that "anyone who had jewelry was going to his room a lot."
For a time, Muktananda's followers found ways to rationalize his behavior. He wasn't really penetrating his victims, they said. Or he wasn't ejaculating - an important distinction to some, since retaining the semen was supposed to be a way of conserving the kundalini energy.
Ultimately, Chandra felt it didn't make any difference. "If you're going to be celibate, and you're going to preach celibacy, you don't put it in halfway, and then pull it out. You live what you preach..."
After years of repressing their growing doubts about Muktananda, Michael and Chandra finally drew the line when they learned he was molesting a 13-year-old girl. She had been entrusted to the ashram by her parents, and was being cared for by Muktananda's laundress and chauffeur. The laundress "told me Baba was doing things to her," said Chandra. "I think he was probing around in her." The laundress suggested it was only "Baba's way of loving her," but Chandra was appalled.
Charges of sex against Muktananda continued. In 1981, one of Muktananda's swamis, Stan Trout, wrote an open letter accusing his guru of molesting Little girls on the pretext of checking their virginity. The letter caused a stir, but word didn't go beyond the ashram. In a "Memo from Baba," Muktananda merely answered that "devotees should know the truth by their own experience, not by the letters that they receive... You should be happy that I'm still alive and healthy and that they haven't tried to hang me."
"Wretched is he who cannot observe discipline and restraint even in an ashram." -Muktananda
I N THE first of his eight years with Muktananda, Yale dropout Richard Grimes said he was "in a funny kind of grace period, where you're so involved with the beginning of inner Life that you don't really notice what is going on." But then he started seeing things that didn't jibe with his idea of a meditation retreat.
"Muktananda had a ferocious temper," said Grimes, "and would scream or yell at someone for no seeming reason." He saw the guru beating people on many occasions. "In India, if peasants were caught stealing a coconut from his ashram, Muktananda would often beat them," Grimes said. The people in the ashram thought it was a great honor to be beaten by the guru. No one asked the peasants' opinion.
Muktananda's ubiquitous valet, Noni Patel, was a regular target of his master's wrath. While on tour in Denver, Noni came down to the kitchen to be treated for a strange wound in his side. "At first, he wouldn't say how he had gotten it," Grimes' wife Lotte recalled. "Later it came out that Baba had stabbed him with a fork."
When ex-devotees talked about strong-arm tactics against devotees, the names of two people close to Muktananda kept coming up. One was David Lynn, known as Sripati, an ex-Marine Vietnam vet. The other was Joe Don Looney, an ex-football player with a reputation for troublemaking on the five NFL teams he played for, and a criminal record. They were known as the "enforcers"; Muktananda used them to keep people in line.
On the guru's orders, Sripati once picked a public fight with then-swami Stan Trout at the South Fallsburg ashram. He came down from Boston, where Muktananda was staying, and punched Trout to the ground without provocation. Long-time devotee Abed Simli saw the attack, but figured Sripati had just flipped out. Michael Dinga knew otherwise. Muktananda had phoned him the morning before the beating, and told him Trout’s ego was getting too big, and that he was sending Sripati to set him straight. Dinga, a big man, was instructed not to interfere.
In India, Dinga and a man called Peter Polivka witnessed Muktananda’s valet Noni Patel give a particularly brutal beating to a young follower: A German boy in his twenties, whom Dinga described as "obviously in a disturbed state" had started flailing around during a meditation intensive. The German was hauled outside, put under a cold shower, stripped naked, and laid out on a concrete slab behind the ashram. Dinga said the German just sat in a full lotus position, and tried to steel himself against what happened next.
Noni Patel took a rubber hose, a foot-and-a-half long, and beat and questioned the boy for thirty minutes while a large black man called Hanuman held him. "They were full-strength blows," said Dinga, "and they raised horrible welts on the boy's body."
There exists a long tradition in the East of masters beating their students. Tibetan and Zen Buddhist stories are full of sharp blows that stop the students rational minds long enough for them to become enlightened. Couldn't that have been what Muktananda was doing?
"It could be seen that way," said Richard Grimes. "For years we thought that every discrepancy was because he lived outside the laws of morality He could do anything he wanted. That in itself is the biggest danger of having a perfect master lead any kind of group - there's no safeguard."
Chandra Dinga said that as Muktananda's power grew, he ignored normal standards of behavior. "He felt he was above and beyond the law," she said. "It went from roughing people up who didn't do what he wanted, to eventually, at the end, having firearms."
Though the ashrams were meditation centers, a surprising number of people in them had guns. Chandra saw Noni's gun, Muktananda's successor Subash's gun, and the shotgun Muktananda kept in his bedroom. Others saw guns in the hands of "enforcer" Sripati and ashram manager Yogi Ram. The manager of the Indian ashram showed Richard Grimes a pistol that had been smuggled into India for his use. One devotee opened a paper bag in an ashram vehicle in Santa Monica, and found ammunition in it.
A woman who ran the ashram bakery for many years said she knew some people had guns, but that it never bothered her. The Santa Monica ashram, for example, was in a very rough neighborhood, she said, and the guns were strictly for protection.
"In an ashram, one should not fritter one's precious time in a precious place on eating and drinking, sleeping, gossiping and talking idly." -Muktananda
BY ALL accounts, devotees in the ashrams worked hard under trying conditions. In India, they were isolated from their culture. Even in the American ashrams, close friendships were frowned on, and Muktananda strongly discouraged devotees from visiting their families. A woman I'm calling "Sally" used to get up for work at 3:30 a.m. She said her day was spent in work, chanting, meditation, and silence. "Some days, you couldn't talk to anyone all day long. I would get very lonely." Recorded chants were often played over loudspeakers. Even a woman who is still close to the movement admitted that "the long hours were a drag."
Though he was Muktananda's right-hand man for construction, Michael Dinga worked "under incredible schedules with ridiculous budgets," putting in the same hours as his crew. In the six-and-a-half years he was with the ashram, he said he had a total of two weeks off.
As time went on, Dinga came to be bothered by what he saw as exploitation: "I saw the way people were manipulated, how they would work in all sincerity and all devotion [with] no idea that they were being laughed at and taken advantage of."
"Even a penny coming as a gift should be regarded as belonging to God and religion." -Muktananda
MUKTANANDA'S movement was both a spiritual and a financial success. Once Siddha meditation caught on, said Chandra Dinga, "money poured into the ashram." Particularly lucrative were the two-day "meditation intensives" given by Muktananda, and now by his successors. Today, an intensive led by the two new gurus costs $200. (Money orders or cashier's checks only, please. No credit cards or personal checks.) An intensive given in Oakland in May 1983 drew 1200 participants, and people had to be turned away. At $200 a head, Chidvilasananda and Nityananda’s labors earned the ashram nearly a quarter of a million dollars in a single weekend.
There was always a lot of secrecy around ashram affairs, Lotte Grimes remarked. During Muktananda's lifetime, that secrecy applied to money matters with a vengeance.
The number of people who came to intensives, for example, was a secret even from the devotees. Simple multiplication would tell anyone how much money was coming in. And when Richard Grimes set up a restaurant at the Oakland ashram, he said Muktananda "had a fit" when he found out that Grimes had been keeping his own records of the take.
Food services head Chandra Dinga said the restaurants in the various ashrams were always big money-makers, where devotees worked long hours for free. On tour during the summer, she said, they would feed over a thousand people, and bring in three thousand dollars in cash a day. Sally said that a breakfast that sold for two dollars actually cost the ashram about three cents.
Donations further fattened the coffers. if somebody important was coming to the ashram, Chandra’s job was to try and get them to give a feast and to make a large donation. $1500 to $3000 was considered appropriate. "There was just a constant flow of money into his pockets," said Chandra, "it let him get whatever he wanted to get, and let him buy people."
Muktananda himself was said to have been very attached to money. "For years, he catered only to those who were wealthy," said Richard Grimes. "He spent all the time outside of his public performances seeing privately anyone who had a lot of money."
A parade of Mercedes-Benzes used to drive up to the Ganeshpuri ashram with rich visitors, said Grimes. In Oakland, Lotte Grimes saw Malti order a list drawn up of everybody in the ashram who had money, to arrange private interviews with Muktananda, by his orders.
Devotees, on the other hand, had to get by on small stipends, if they got anything. Chandra Dinga, despite her status as head of food services, never got more than $100 a month. Devotees with less prestige were completely dependent on the guru's generosity. Sally once cried for two days when she broke her glasses, knowing she would have to beg Muktananda for another pair.
How much money did Muktananda amass from his efforts? Even the officers of the foundation that ostensibly ran Muktananda's affairs never knew for sure.
Michael Dinga was a foundation trustee, and used to cosign for deposits to the ashram’s Swiss bank accounts, but the amounts on the papers were always left blank. In 1977, however, he got a hint. Ron Friedland, the president of the foundation, told Dinga that Muktananda had 1.3 million dollars in Switzerland. Three years later, Muktananda told Chandra it was more like five million. "And then he laughed, and said, ‘There’s more than that.’"
A woman called Amma, who was Muktananda's companion for more than twenty years, told the Dingas that all the accounts were in the names of Muktananda’s eventual successors, Chidvilasananda and Nityananda.
Michael and Chandra Dinga finally quit the ashram in December 1980. They had served Muktananda for a combined total of sixteen-and-a-half years, and had risen to positions of real importance. Both knew exactly how the ashram operated.
Together, they went to Muktananda to tell him why they wanted to leave. The guru wasn't pleased. To get the Dingas to stay, Muktananda called on everything he thought would stir them. He offered them a car, a house, and money. When that failed, he started to weep. "You're my blood, my family," he said. Then Muktananda abruptly changed tack. "You've come on an inauspicious day," he said. "I can't give you my blessing." Next morning, he called Chandra on the public intercom and said she could leave immediately.
After they left, the Dingas say they were denounced by the guru, and their lives threatened.
"Muktananda claimed he had thrown us out because Chandra was a whore" said Dinga, "that she was having sex with the young boys who worked in the restaurant. Later he said I had a harem. In other words, he was accusing us of all the things he was doing himself." Muktananda also claimed that none of the buildings Michael had built were any good. When one of Michael's crew stood up for him, he was threatened physically.
Leaving all their friends behind in the ashram, the Dingas moved to the San Francisco area, but Muktananda's enmity followed them. Their doorbell and telephone started ringing at odd hours, and Michael saw the "enforcers" running away from their door one night. A cruel hoax was played on Chandra. Someone followed her when she took her cat to the vet, then phoned the vet's office with a message that her husband had been in a bad accident. Chandra waited frantically at Berkeley's Alta Bates Hospital for three quarters of an hour, only to learn that Michael was at work, unhurt.
Death threats started to reach the Dingas toward the end of April 1981, six months after they had left the ashram. On May 7, Sripati and Joe Don Looney visited Lotte Grimes at her job in Emeryville with a frightening piece of information: "Tell Chandra this is a message from Baba: Chandra only has two months to live." Another ex-follower said he got a similar message: If the Dingas didn't keep quiet, acid would be thrown in Chandra's face; Michael would be castrated.
The Grimeses and the Dingas reported the threats to the police. The Dingas hired a lawyer.
The threats stopped soon after Berkeley police officer Clarick Brown called on the Oakland ashram, but Chandra was badly frightened. Some ex-followers still are.
Michael and Chandra's departure sparked a small exodus from the ashram. Some of the ex-followers began to meet and compare notes on their experiences in the ashram. "We were amazed and rejuvenated," said Richard Grimes. "We got more energy from learning he was a con man than we ever did thinking he was a real person."
Just the same, the devotees who left the ashram are still dealing with the damage done to their lives. Michael and Chandra's marriage broke up, as did Sally's. Michael is only now coming out of a period of depression and emptiness. Richard and Lotte Grimes are bitter at having wasted years of their lives in the ashram. Stan Trout still considers Muktananda a great yogi, but a tragically flawed man.
Chandra Dinga has taken years to come to terms with her experience with Muktananda; "Your whole frame of reference becomes askew," she said. "What you would normally think to be right or wrong no longer has any place. The underlying premise is that everything the guru does is for your own good. The guru does no wrong. When I finally realized that everything he did was not for our own good, I had to leave."
Muktananda’s two successors were at the Oakland ashram in May end I asked Swami Chidvilasananda about the accusations against her guru.
To her knowledge, did Muktananda have sex with women in the ashram? "Not as far as I saw," she said carefully. What about the charge that Muktananda had sex with young girls? "Those girls never came to us," Chidvilasananda said. "And we never saw it, we only heard it when Chandra talked to everybody else."
Chidvilasananda also denied that there was a bank account in Switzerland. When asked about the ashram's finances, she said that all income was put back into facilities. "We are a break-even proposition," the new leader said.
As for the alleged beatings, she said that Americans had their own ways of doing things. She said, "You can't blame the guru, because the guru doesn't teach that."
Why then, I asked, do the other ex-devotees I talked with support the Dingas in their charges?
Chidvilasananda replied, "I'm very glad they gave you a very nice story to cover themselves up and I want to tell you I don't want to get into this story because I know their story, too, and I do not want to say anything about it." When I said, "You have a chance to tell us whether or not you think these are accurate charges, falsehoods, or delusions," Malti's answer was: "I’m not going to probe into people's minds and try to find out what the truth is."
Two swamis and a number of present followers also said the charges were not true. Others say they simply don't believe them.
On the subject of money, foundation chief Ed Oliver conceded in an October 1, l983, interview with the Los Angeles Times that there is a Swiss account with 1.5 million dollars in it. And when I repeated Swami Chidvilasananda's denials about women complaining to her, Mary, the woman who says the guru seduced her in South Fallsburg, said, "Well, that's an out-and-out lie."
"The sins committed at any other place are destroyed at a holy centre, but those committed at a holy centre stick tenaciously - it is difficult to wash them away." -Muktananda
THIS IS a story of serious accusations made against a spiritual leader who is still prayed to and revered by thousands. Even his detractors say Muktananda gave them a great deal in the beginning. "He put out a force field around him," said Michael Dinga. "You could palpably feel the force coming off him. It gave me the feeling I had latched onto something that would answer my questions." Former devotees say Muktananda's eyes had a kind of light; when they first met the guru, he radiated love and benevolence. He also had a way of making his devotees feel special.
"I think he liked me so much because I wasn't taken by all the visions and the sounds," said Chandra, "that I understood that having an experience of God was something much more substantial and more ordinary." Chandra still feels that spirituality is the most important thing in her life. She says the gradual unfolding of the dark side of her guru's personality chipped away at her love and respect. "When you have a loved one you never dream that he might hurt you. At the end, I was devastated." Yet despite the unsavory conclusion to her ten years with the swami, Chandra still notes, "if I had it to do over again, I still wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world."
In a way, the sex, the violence, and the corruption aren't the real point. Muktananda's personal shortcomings were bad enough, explained Michael Dinga, but "the worst of it was that he wasn't who he said he was."
A person can make spiritual progress under a corrupt master, just as placebos can actually make you feel better. But how far can a person really grow spiritually under a master who doesn't himself live the truth? There was a tremendous split between what Muktananda preached and what he did, and his hypocrisy only made it worse. His successors are now in a dilemma: If they admit their guru's sins, Chidvilasananda and Nityananda lose their god-figure, and weaken their claim to a lineage of perfect masters. But if they don't, people who come to them looking for truth are courting disappointment.
Stan Trout, formerly Swami Abhayananda, served Muktananda for ten years as a teacher and ashram director. He left in 1981. "My summary withdrawal from Muktananda’s organization was also a withdrawal from what I had considered my fraternal family, my friends, and able all, my life’s work," he wrote us. He sent this open letter after reading a draft of "The Secret Life of Swami Muktananda," in which he is quoted. - Art Kleiner
by William Rodarmor
ON THE American consciousness circuit, Baba Muktananda was known as the "guru’s guru," one of the most respected meditation masters ever to come out of India. Respected, that is, until now.
When Baba Ram Dass introduced him to the U.S. in 1970. Muktananda was still largely unknown. Thanks to Muktananda's spiritual power, his Siddha meditation movement quickly took root in the fertile soil of the American growth movement. By the time he died of heart failure in October 1982, Muktananda's followers had built him 31 ashrams, or meditation centers, around the world. When crowds saw Muktananda step from a black limousine to a waiting Lear jet, it was clear that the diminutive, orange-robed Indian was an American-style success.
At various times, Jerry Brown, Werner Erhard, John Denver, Marsha Mason; James Taylor, Carry Simon, astronaut Edgar Mitchell, and Meg Christian have all been interested in Muktananda's movement. The media coordinator at the large Oakland, California, ashram is former Black Panther leader Erika Huggins.
Baba Muktananda said he was a Siddha, the representative of a centuries-old Hindu lineage. According to his official biography, he wandered across India as a young man, going from teacher to teacher, living the chaste, austere life of a monk. In Ganeshpuri, near Bombay, he became the disciple of Nityananda, a Siddha guru of awesome yogic powers. After years of meditation, Muktananda experienced enlightenment. When Nityananda died in 1960, Muktananda said the guru passed the Siddha mantle to him on his deathbed, though some of Nityananda's followers in India dispute the claim. When Muktananda himself died, a sympathetic press still saw him as a spiritual Mr. Clean, and his two successors, a brother-sister team of swamis, continue to draw thousands of people searching for higher consciousness.
To most of his followers, Muktananda was a great master. But to others, he was a man unable to live up to the high principles of his own teachings. "When we first approach a Guru," Muktananda wrote, "we should carefully examine his qualities and his actions. He should have conquered desire and anger and banished infatuation from his heart." For many, that was a warning that was understood too late.
Some of Muktananda's most important former followers now charge that the guru repeatedly violated his vow of chastity, made millions of dollars from his followers' labors: and allowed guns and violence in his ashrams. The accusations have been denied by the swamis who took over his movement after the master died.
In the course of preparing this story, I talked with 25 present and former devotees; most of the interviews are on tape. Some people would only talk to me if promised anonymity, and some are bitter at what they feel was Muktananda's betrayal of their trust. All agree that Muktananda was a man of unusual power. They differ over the ways he used it.
"I don't have sex for the same reason you do: because it feels so good." -Muktananda
IN HIS teachings Muktananda put a lot of emphasis on sex - most of it negative. Curbing the sex drive released the kundalini energy that led to enlightenment, he said. The swami himself claimed to be completely celibate.
Members of the guru's inner circle, however, say Muktananda regularly had sex with his female devotees. Michael Dinga, an Oakland contractor who was head of construction for the ashram and a trustee of the foundation, said the guru's sexual exploits were common knowledge in the ashram. "It was supposed to be Muktananda's big secret," said Dinga, "but since many of the girls were in their early to middle teens, it was hard to keep it secret."
A young woman I am calling "Mary" said the guru seduced her at the main American ashram at South Fallsburg, New York, in 1981. Mary was in her early twenties at the time. Muktananda was 73.
At South Fallsburg, Muktananda used to stand behind a curtain in the evening, watching the girls coming back to the dormitory. He asked Mary to come to his bedroom several times, and gave her gifts of money and jewelry. Finally, she did. When he then told her to undress, she was shocked, but she obeyed.
"He had a special area which I assume he used for his sexual affairs. It was similar to a gynecologist's table, but without the stirrups." (To his later chagrin, Michael Dinga realized he had built the table himself.) "He didn't have an erection," Mary said, "but he inserted about as much as he could. He was standing up, and his eyes were rolled up to the ceiling. He looked as if he was in some sort of ecstasy." When the session was over, Muktananda ordered the girl to come back the next day, and added, "Don't wear underwear."
On the first night, Muktananda had tried to convince Mary she was being initiated into tantric yoga - the yoga of sex. The next night, he didn't bother. "It was like ‘Okay, you're here, take off your clothes. get on the table and let's do it.' Just very straight, hard, cold sex."
Mary told two people about what had happened to her. Neither was exactly surprised.
Michael's wife Chandra was disturbed. Chandra was probably the most important American in the movement. As head of food services, she saw Muktananda daily, and knew what was going on. "Whoever was in his kitchen was in some way molested," she said. A girl I’ll call "Nina" used to work for Chandra. One day, the guru remarked to her in Hindi, "Sex with Nina is very good." Nina's mother was later made a swami.
Chandra said she had rationalized the guru's having sex in the past, but was dismayed to learn it had happened to her young friend Mary. Aware of Muktananda's power over people who were devoted to him, she saw it as a form of rape.
The other person Mary confided in was Malti, Muktananda's longtime translator.
Mary said Malti wasn't surprised when she told her about being seduced by the aged guru. "She told me people had been coming to her with this for years and years," Mary said. "She was caught in the middle." Malti and her brother, who have taken the names Chidvilasananda and Nityananda, are the movement's new leaders.
Another of Muktananda's victims was a woman I'll call "Jennifer." She says Muktananda raped her at the main Indian ashram at Ganeshpuri in the spring of 1978. He ordered Jennifer to come to his bedroom late one night, and told her to take her clothes off. "I was in shock," she said, "but over the years, I had learned you never say no to anything that he asked you to do...."
Muktananda had intercourse with Jennifer for an hour, she said, and was quite proud of the fact. "He kept saying, ‘Sixty minutes,’" she said. "He claimed he was using the real Indian positions, not the westernized ones used in America." While he had sex, the guru felt like conversing, but Jennifer found she couldn't say a word. "The main thing he wanted to know was how old I was when I first got my period. I answered something, and he said, ‘That’s good, you're a pure girl.’" Devastated by the event, Jennifer made plans to leave the ashram as soon as possible, but Muktananda continued to be interested in her. "He used to watch me getting undressed through the keyhole," she said. She would open the door and see the guru outside "I became rather scared of him, because he kept coming to my room at night."
Both women said the Ganeshpuri ashram was arranged to suit Muktananda's convenience.
"He had a secret passageway from his house to the young girls' dormitory," Mary said. "Whoever he was carrying on with, he had switched to that dorm." The guru often visited the girls' dormitory while they were undressing. "He would come up anytime he wanted to" Jennifer said, "and we would just giggle. In the early days, I never thought of him as having sexual desires. He was the guru..." Mary knew otherwise: she talked with at least eight other young girls who had sex with Muktananda. "I knew that he had girls marching in and out of his bedroom all night long," she said.
While his followers were renovating a Miami hotel in 1979, Muktananda slept on the women's floor, and ordered that the youngest be put in the rooms closest to his, and the older ones down the hall.
"You always knew who he was carrying on with," said Chandra. "They came down the next day with a new gold bracelet or a new pair of earrings." Around the ashram, said Mary, people knew that "anyone who had jewelry was going to his room a lot."
For a time, Muktananda's followers found ways to rationalize his behavior. He wasn't really penetrating his victims, they said. Or he wasn't ejaculating - an important distinction to some, since retaining the semen was supposed to be a way of conserving the kundalini energy.
Ultimately, Chandra felt it didn't make any difference. "If you're going to be celibate, and you're going to preach celibacy, you don't put it in halfway, and then pull it out. You live what you preach..."
After years of repressing their growing doubts about Muktananda, Michael and Chandra finally drew the line when they learned he was molesting a 13-year-old girl. She had been entrusted to the ashram by her parents, and was being cared for by Muktananda's laundress and chauffeur. The laundress "told me Baba was doing things to her," said Chandra. "I think he was probing around in her." The laundress suggested it was only "Baba's way of loving her," but Chandra was appalled.
Charges of sex against Muktananda continued. In 1981, one of Muktananda's swamis, Stan Trout, wrote an open letter accusing his guru of molesting Little girls on the pretext of checking their virginity. The letter caused a stir, but word didn't go beyond the ashram. In a "Memo from Baba," Muktananda merely answered that "devotees should know the truth by their own experience, not by the letters that they receive... You should be happy that I'm still alive and healthy and that they haven't tried to hang me."
"Wretched is he who cannot observe discipline and restraint even in an ashram." -Muktananda
I N THE first of his eight years with Muktananda, Yale dropout Richard Grimes said he was "in a funny kind of grace period, where you're so involved with the beginning of inner Life that you don't really notice what is going on." But then he started seeing things that didn't jibe with his idea of a meditation retreat.
"Muktananda had a ferocious temper," said Grimes, "and would scream or yell at someone for no seeming reason." He saw the guru beating people on many occasions. "In India, if peasants were caught stealing a coconut from his ashram, Muktananda would often beat them," Grimes said. The people in the ashram thought it was a great honor to be beaten by the guru. No one asked the peasants' opinion.
Muktananda's ubiquitous valet, Noni Patel, was a regular target of his master's wrath. While on tour in Denver, Noni came down to the kitchen to be treated for a strange wound in his side. "At first, he wouldn't say how he had gotten it," Grimes' wife Lotte recalled. "Later it came out that Baba had stabbed him with a fork."
When ex-devotees talked about strong-arm tactics against devotees, the names of two people close to Muktananda kept coming up. One was David Lynn, known as Sripati, an ex-Marine Vietnam vet. The other was Joe Don Looney, an ex-football player with a reputation for troublemaking on the five NFL teams he played for, and a criminal record. They were known as the "enforcers"; Muktananda used them to keep people in line.
On the guru's orders, Sripati once picked a public fight with then-swami Stan Trout at the South Fallsburg ashram. He came down from Boston, where Muktananda was staying, and punched Trout to the ground without provocation. Long-time devotee Abed Simli saw the attack, but figured Sripati had just flipped out. Michael Dinga knew otherwise. Muktananda had phoned him the morning before the beating, and told him Trout’s ego was getting too big, and that he was sending Sripati to set him straight. Dinga, a big man, was instructed not to interfere.
In India, Dinga and a man called Peter Polivka witnessed Muktananda’s valet Noni Patel give a particularly brutal beating to a young follower: A German boy in his twenties, whom Dinga described as "obviously in a disturbed state" had started flailing around during a meditation intensive. The German was hauled outside, put under a cold shower, stripped naked, and laid out on a concrete slab behind the ashram. Dinga said the German just sat in a full lotus position, and tried to steel himself against what happened next.
Noni Patel took a rubber hose, a foot-and-a-half long, and beat and questioned the boy for thirty minutes while a large black man called Hanuman held him. "They were full-strength blows," said Dinga, "and they raised horrible welts on the boy's body."
There exists a long tradition in the East of masters beating their students. Tibetan and Zen Buddhist stories are full of sharp blows that stop the students rational minds long enough for them to become enlightened. Couldn't that have been what Muktananda was doing?
"It could be seen that way," said Richard Grimes. "For years we thought that every discrepancy was because he lived outside the laws of morality He could do anything he wanted. That in itself is the biggest danger of having a perfect master lead any kind of group - there's no safeguard."
Chandra Dinga said that as Muktananda's power grew, he ignored normal standards of behavior. "He felt he was above and beyond the law," she said. "It went from roughing people up who didn't do what he wanted, to eventually, at the end, having firearms."
Though the ashrams were meditation centers, a surprising number of people in them had guns. Chandra saw Noni's gun, Muktananda's successor Subash's gun, and the shotgun Muktananda kept in his bedroom. Others saw guns in the hands of "enforcer" Sripati and ashram manager Yogi Ram. The manager of the Indian ashram showed Richard Grimes a pistol that had been smuggled into India for his use. One devotee opened a paper bag in an ashram vehicle in Santa Monica, and found ammunition in it.
A woman who ran the ashram bakery for many years said she knew some people had guns, but that it never bothered her. The Santa Monica ashram, for example, was in a very rough neighborhood, she said, and the guns were strictly for protection.
"In an ashram, one should not fritter one's precious time in a precious place on eating and drinking, sleeping, gossiping and talking idly." -Muktananda
BY ALL accounts, devotees in the ashrams worked hard under trying conditions. In India, they were isolated from their culture. Even in the American ashrams, close friendships were frowned on, and Muktananda strongly discouraged devotees from visiting their families. A woman I'm calling "Sally" used to get up for work at 3:30 a.m. She said her day was spent in work, chanting, meditation, and silence. "Some days, you couldn't talk to anyone all day long. I would get very lonely." Recorded chants were often played over loudspeakers. Even a woman who is still close to the movement admitted that "the long hours were a drag."
Though he was Muktananda's right-hand man for construction, Michael Dinga worked "under incredible schedules with ridiculous budgets," putting in the same hours as his crew. In the six-and-a-half years he was with the ashram, he said he had a total of two weeks off.
As time went on, Dinga came to be bothered by what he saw as exploitation: "I saw the way people were manipulated, how they would work in all sincerity and all devotion [with] no idea that they were being laughed at and taken advantage of."
"Even a penny coming as a gift should be regarded as belonging to God and religion." -Muktananda
MUKTANANDA'S movement was both a spiritual and a financial success. Once Siddha meditation caught on, said Chandra Dinga, "money poured into the ashram." Particularly lucrative were the two-day "meditation intensives" given by Muktananda, and now by his successors. Today, an intensive led by the two new gurus costs $200. (Money orders or cashier's checks only, please. No credit cards or personal checks.) An intensive given in Oakland in May 1983 drew 1200 participants, and people had to be turned away. At $200 a head, Chidvilasananda and Nityananda’s labors earned the ashram nearly a quarter of a million dollars in a single weekend.
There was always a lot of secrecy around ashram affairs, Lotte Grimes remarked. During Muktananda's lifetime, that secrecy applied to money matters with a vengeance.
The number of people who came to intensives, for example, was a secret even from the devotees. Simple multiplication would tell anyone how much money was coming in. And when Richard Grimes set up a restaurant at the Oakland ashram, he said Muktananda "had a fit" when he found out that Grimes had been keeping his own records of the take.
Food services head Chandra Dinga said the restaurants in the various ashrams were always big money-makers, where devotees worked long hours for free. On tour during the summer, she said, they would feed over a thousand people, and bring in three thousand dollars in cash a day. Sally said that a breakfast that sold for two dollars actually cost the ashram about three cents.
Donations further fattened the coffers. if somebody important was coming to the ashram, Chandra’s job was to try and get them to give a feast and to make a large donation. $1500 to $3000 was considered appropriate. "There was just a constant flow of money into his pockets," said Chandra, "it let him get whatever he wanted to get, and let him buy people."
Muktananda himself was said to have been very attached to money. "For years, he catered only to those who were wealthy," said Richard Grimes. "He spent all the time outside of his public performances seeing privately anyone who had a lot of money."
A parade of Mercedes-Benzes used to drive up to the Ganeshpuri ashram with rich visitors, said Grimes. In Oakland, Lotte Grimes saw Malti order a list drawn up of everybody in the ashram who had money, to arrange private interviews with Muktananda, by his orders.
Devotees, on the other hand, had to get by on small stipends, if they got anything. Chandra Dinga, despite her status as head of food services, never got more than $100 a month. Devotees with less prestige were completely dependent on the guru's generosity. Sally once cried for two days when she broke her glasses, knowing she would have to beg Muktananda for another pair.
How much money did Muktananda amass from his efforts? Even the officers of the foundation that ostensibly ran Muktananda's affairs never knew for sure.
Michael Dinga was a foundation trustee, and used to cosign for deposits to the ashram’s Swiss bank accounts, but the amounts on the papers were always left blank. In 1977, however, he got a hint. Ron Friedland, the president of the foundation, told Dinga that Muktananda had 1.3 million dollars in Switzerland. Three years later, Muktananda told Chandra it was more like five million. "And then he laughed, and said, ‘There’s more than that.’"
A woman called Amma, who was Muktananda's companion for more than twenty years, told the Dingas that all the accounts were in the names of Muktananda’s eventual successors, Chidvilasananda and Nityananda.
Michael and Chandra Dinga finally quit the ashram in December 1980. They had served Muktananda for a combined total of sixteen-and-a-half years, and had risen to positions of real importance. Both knew exactly how the ashram operated.
Together, they went to Muktananda to tell him why they wanted to leave. The guru wasn't pleased. To get the Dingas to stay, Muktananda called on everything he thought would stir them. He offered them a car, a house, and money. When that failed, he started to weep. "You're my blood, my family," he said. Then Muktananda abruptly changed tack. "You've come on an inauspicious day," he said. "I can't give you my blessing." Next morning, he called Chandra on the public intercom and said she could leave immediately.
After they left, the Dingas say they were denounced by the guru, and their lives threatened.
"Muktananda claimed he had thrown us out because Chandra was a whore" said Dinga, "that she was having sex with the young boys who worked in the restaurant. Later he said I had a harem. In other words, he was accusing us of all the things he was doing himself." Muktananda also claimed that none of the buildings Michael had built were any good. When one of Michael's crew stood up for him, he was threatened physically.
Leaving all their friends behind in the ashram, the Dingas moved to the San Francisco area, but Muktananda's enmity followed them. Their doorbell and telephone started ringing at odd hours, and Michael saw the "enforcers" running away from their door one night. A cruel hoax was played on Chandra. Someone followed her when she took her cat to the vet, then phoned the vet's office with a message that her husband had been in a bad accident. Chandra waited frantically at Berkeley's Alta Bates Hospital for three quarters of an hour, only to learn that Michael was at work, unhurt.
Death threats started to reach the Dingas toward the end of April 1981, six months after they had left the ashram. On May 7, Sripati and Joe Don Looney visited Lotte Grimes at her job in Emeryville with a frightening piece of information: "Tell Chandra this is a message from Baba: Chandra only has two months to live." Another ex-follower said he got a similar message: If the Dingas didn't keep quiet, acid would be thrown in Chandra's face; Michael would be castrated.
The Grimeses and the Dingas reported the threats to the police. The Dingas hired a lawyer.
The threats stopped soon after Berkeley police officer Clarick Brown called on the Oakland ashram, but Chandra was badly frightened. Some ex-followers still are.
Michael and Chandra's departure sparked a small exodus from the ashram. Some of the ex-followers began to meet and compare notes on their experiences in the ashram. "We were amazed and rejuvenated," said Richard Grimes. "We got more energy from learning he was a con man than we ever did thinking he was a real person."
Just the same, the devotees who left the ashram are still dealing with the damage done to their lives. Michael and Chandra's marriage broke up, as did Sally's. Michael is only now coming out of a period of depression and emptiness. Richard and Lotte Grimes are bitter at having wasted years of their lives in the ashram. Stan Trout still considers Muktananda a great yogi, but a tragically flawed man.
Chandra Dinga has taken years to come to terms with her experience with Muktananda; "Your whole frame of reference becomes askew," she said. "What you would normally think to be right or wrong no longer has any place. The underlying premise is that everything the guru does is for your own good. The guru does no wrong. When I finally realized that everything he did was not for our own good, I had to leave."
Muktananda’s two successors were at the Oakland ashram in May end I asked Swami Chidvilasananda about the accusations against her guru.
To her knowledge, did Muktananda have sex with women in the ashram? "Not as far as I saw," she said carefully. What about the charge that Muktananda had sex with young girls? "Those girls never came to us," Chidvilasananda said. "And we never saw it, we only heard it when Chandra talked to everybody else."
Chidvilasananda also denied that there was a bank account in Switzerland. When asked about the ashram's finances, she said that all income was put back into facilities. "We are a break-even proposition," the new leader said.
As for the alleged beatings, she said that Americans had their own ways of doing things. She said, "You can't blame the guru, because the guru doesn't teach that."
Why then, I asked, do the other ex-devotees I talked with support the Dingas in their charges?
Chidvilasananda replied, "I'm very glad they gave you a very nice story to cover themselves up and I want to tell you I don't want to get into this story because I know their story, too, and I do not want to say anything about it." When I said, "You have a chance to tell us whether or not you think these are accurate charges, falsehoods, or delusions," Malti's answer was: "I’m not going to probe into people's minds and try to find out what the truth is."
Two swamis and a number of present followers also said the charges were not true. Others say they simply don't believe them.
On the subject of money, foundation chief Ed Oliver conceded in an October 1, l983, interview with the Los Angeles Times that there is a Swiss account with 1.5 million dollars in it. And when I repeated Swami Chidvilasananda's denials about women complaining to her, Mary, the woman who says the guru seduced her in South Fallsburg, said, "Well, that's an out-and-out lie."
"The sins committed at any other place are destroyed at a holy centre, but those committed at a holy centre stick tenaciously - it is difficult to wash them away." -Muktananda
THIS IS a story of serious accusations made against a spiritual leader who is still prayed to and revered by thousands. Even his detractors say Muktananda gave them a great deal in the beginning. "He put out a force field around him," said Michael Dinga. "You could palpably feel the force coming off him. It gave me the feeling I had latched onto something that would answer my questions." Former devotees say Muktananda's eyes had a kind of light; when they first met the guru, he radiated love and benevolence. He also had a way of making his devotees feel special.
"I think he liked me so much because I wasn't taken by all the visions and the sounds," said Chandra, "that I understood that having an experience of God was something much more substantial and more ordinary." Chandra still feels that spirituality is the most important thing in her life. She says the gradual unfolding of the dark side of her guru's personality chipped away at her love and respect. "When you have a loved one you never dream that he might hurt you. At the end, I was devastated." Yet despite the unsavory conclusion to her ten years with the swami, Chandra still notes, "if I had it to do over again, I still wouldn't trade the experience for anything in the world."
In a way, the sex, the violence, and the corruption aren't the real point. Muktananda's personal shortcomings were bad enough, explained Michael Dinga, but "the worst of it was that he wasn't who he said he was."
A person can make spiritual progress under a corrupt master, just as placebos can actually make you feel better. But how far can a person really grow spiritually under a master who doesn't himself live the truth? There was a tremendous split between what Muktananda preached and what he did, and his hypocrisy only made it worse. His successors are now in a dilemma: If they admit their guru's sins, Chidvilasananda and Nityananda lose their god-figure, and weaken their claim to a lineage of perfect masters. But if they don't, people who come to them looking for truth are courting disappointment.
Stan Trout, formerly Swami Abhayananda, served Muktananda for ten years as a teacher and ashram director. He left in 1981. "My summary withdrawal from Muktananda’s organization was also a withdrawal from what I had considered my fraternal family, my friends, and able all, my life’s work," he wrote us. He sent this open letter after reading a draft of "The Secret Life of Swami Muktananda," in which he is quoted. - Art Kleiner
by William Rodarmor
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Diana Manilova - Russian Shaman Scam
A well known "Russian Shaman" in Chiang Mai named Diana Manilova
charges 5000 baht an hour while she yells at people about how bad their
energy is. Enough said. Avoid like the plague. Google is littered
with bad experiences that people have had with her. Infamously, she
told one lady that her daughter would be dead soon! Luckily this Shaman
was completely wrong.
If you want real Shamanism seek it outside of Chiang Mai city where the fraudsters prey on the tourists. The real Shamans live in the hill tribe areas.
If you want real Shamanism seek it outside of Chiang Mai city where the fraudsters prey on the tourists. The real Shamans live in the hill tribe areas.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Fake monks in Thailand
Be aware of the fake monks in Thailand asking for money. Theravadan
monks are not allowed to ask for money and strictly speaking should not
be handling money themselves. The local Thais know this scam well but
most tourists do not so be careful.
Any monk or nun wandering around and asking you directly for money is a fraud. Real monks and nuns go on alms rounds in the mornings and are well looked after by the communities.
Any monk or nun wandering around and asking you directly for money is a fraud. Real monks and nuns go on alms rounds in the mornings and are well looked after by the communities.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Has the yoga community enabled predators?
The ‘G’ word has long become obsolete in the yoga world. We’re much too smart to fall for ‘gurus’ and their connotations of sex cults, brainless devotees and robes so fugly they need a whole new colour wheel to describe. Besides, we don’t need gurus when we now have ‘super teachers’, ‘head of lineages’, and ‘founder of X-style yoga’.
The terms may have changed, yet the game remains very much the same. Match a charismatic teacher with eager and often vulnerable students, add a touch of human ego and just enough mysticism that students won’t question any dodgy practices too closely. Wait a few years, then watch the whole thing end up in court cases and recriminations.
The latest ‘don’t call them gurus’ to end up in hot water are Bikram Choudhury, head of Bikram yoga, and John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, one of the fastest growing styles of yoga in the west. Last year five separate cases were filed against Bikram by former teachers, accusing him of rape, harassment, assault, discrimination and false imprisonment. In the Anusara case, John Friend has been accused of mismanaging company finances, using tantric sexual practices to order to ‘heal’ a student with whom he was having a relationship, and misusing his power in creating a Wiccan coven (which he named ‘Blazing Solar Flames’) with three female employees. The coven’s practices involved ‘sexually charged rituals’ which were meant to serve as a ‘battery’ powering up the Anusara enterprise. “It was certainly never the way that I had experienced Wicca,” former coven member ‘Melissa’ told Daily Beast.
There’s something depressingly same-same about the cases. Bikram and Friend’s communities implicitly gave them messiah-like status, accepting behaviour they would no doubt otherwise deem inappropriate (during Bikram’s nine-week intensive teacher training it was considered a high honour to be asked back to his room to massage him, wash his feet and brush his hair). Teachers in both the Bikram and Anusara lineages have been quick to minimise the charges of abuse of trust. “We could focus on the shadow or we could focus on the good John has done for the world. People have been redeemed for doing a lot worse,” said one Anusara teacher. In the Bikram cases, complainants were all encouraged by members of Bikram’s inner circle to ‘focus on the good he’s done’ and ‘know that that’s just Bikram being Bikram’.
Reading over details of the cases, it’s alarming to see how much power was given to the perpetrators. The complainants in the Bikram cases were deeply invested in the community both spiritually and financially, and it’s not difficult to imagine the hurt and confusion the women involved must have felt in coming forward. But abuse can flourish when a community unquestioningly hand power over to a teacher. In the Anusara case, the women involved all consensually took part in the rituals, and yet their unquestioning faith in their teacher made them doubt that anything untoward could be happening. One of the original coven members said that ‘she was initially open to the experience, in part because of her intimate relationship with Friend and because of her confidence in him as a leader and teacher. “A teacher’s voice is so deeply engrained in your brain, and you implicitly trust them because that’s what helps you do great things in your practice.”’[Daily Beast]
But where does responsibility lie with the students? ‘Tim’ a senior teacher in the Anusara lineage, trained with John Friend and teaches in Melbourne, told me that there are circumstances that allow it to happen from both parties. “While it’s up to the teacher to recognise the power differential – if a student is vulnerable, if there’s a lack of self-worth, that can be played upon – but students can be very quick to hand their power over to someone else,” he says. “Students need to recognise that all teachers are human, and not be too quick to attach a god-like status. People put John Friend on a pedestal, but in his defence although he didn't discourage it, he never claimed to be a guru. He always reminded us that the guru was inside us. His ‘fall from grace’ really showed his humanness and that when the ego buys into the adoration it can quickly corrupt the higher vibrations.”
What seems to be missing in all of this is healthy discernment. In a lot of ways it’s much easier to hand complete authority to someone else – it makes the messiness and pain out of figuring stuff out for ourselves. And this can be rewarded – from my own experience in the yoga community, I have seen how spiritual advancement can become intertwined with unquestioning acquiescence. I have felt incredibly uncomfortable to be in rooms full of people unquestioningly handing authority to a teacher on the stage, where it feels impertinent to challenge even the most outlandish statements. The teachers know their stuff – no question – but they’ll often claim to be teaching ‘true yoga’, not ‘this fake stuff everyone else is peddling.’ One they’ve created doubt in the minds of the students, it’s like there’s this mass agreement that red is green – no one wants to be the dummy who isn’t part of ‘real yoga’. The magic ingredient is always yoga’s long and ancient tradition, which has just enough haziness for ‘lineage holders’ to potentially exploit.
But we need to remember that concepts like devotion and surrender are not mutually exclusive to discernment and self-trust. Yoga, after all, is just a series of practices designed to free you from physical and mental entanglements. It can be tough going, and so a good teacher is gold – you hang onto them, go out of your way to spend time with them. But a good teacher will guide you to see the strengths in yourself, rather than, as Tim says, ‘having to rely on them to get your power.’ And speaking from a teacher’s perspective, it’s helpful to remember that when students have a good class, they’re the ones who did the work – the realisations, breakthroughs are theirs, and as, at best we’re guides who hold space for it to happen. But it’s up to students to walk the fine line between devotion and discernment, surrender and susceptibility.
The terms may have changed, yet the game remains very much the same. Match a charismatic teacher with eager and often vulnerable students, add a touch of human ego and just enough mysticism that students won’t question any dodgy practices too closely. Wait a few years, then watch the whole thing end up in court cases and recriminations.
The latest ‘don’t call them gurus’ to end up in hot water are Bikram Choudhury, head of Bikram yoga, and John Friend, the founder of Anusara yoga, one of the fastest growing styles of yoga in the west. Last year five separate cases were filed against Bikram by former teachers, accusing him of rape, harassment, assault, discrimination and false imprisonment. In the Anusara case, John Friend has been accused of mismanaging company finances, using tantric sexual practices to order to ‘heal’ a student with whom he was having a relationship, and misusing his power in creating a Wiccan coven (which he named ‘Blazing Solar Flames’) with three female employees. The coven’s practices involved ‘sexually charged rituals’ which were meant to serve as a ‘battery’ powering up the Anusara enterprise. “It was certainly never the way that I had experienced Wicca,” former coven member ‘Melissa’ told Daily Beast.
There’s something depressingly same-same about the cases. Bikram and Friend’s communities implicitly gave them messiah-like status, accepting behaviour they would no doubt otherwise deem inappropriate (during Bikram’s nine-week intensive teacher training it was considered a high honour to be asked back to his room to massage him, wash his feet and brush his hair). Teachers in both the Bikram and Anusara lineages have been quick to minimise the charges of abuse of trust. “We could focus on the shadow or we could focus on the good John has done for the world. People have been redeemed for doing a lot worse,” said one Anusara teacher. In the Bikram cases, complainants were all encouraged by members of Bikram’s inner circle to ‘focus on the good he’s done’ and ‘know that that’s just Bikram being Bikram’.
Reading over details of the cases, it’s alarming to see how much power was given to the perpetrators. The complainants in the Bikram cases were deeply invested in the community both spiritually and financially, and it’s not difficult to imagine the hurt and confusion the women involved must have felt in coming forward. But abuse can flourish when a community unquestioningly hand power over to a teacher. In the Anusara case, the women involved all consensually took part in the rituals, and yet their unquestioning faith in their teacher made them doubt that anything untoward could be happening. One of the original coven members said that ‘she was initially open to the experience, in part because of her intimate relationship with Friend and because of her confidence in him as a leader and teacher. “A teacher’s voice is so deeply engrained in your brain, and you implicitly trust them because that’s what helps you do great things in your practice.”’[Daily Beast]
But where does responsibility lie with the students? ‘Tim’ a senior teacher in the Anusara lineage, trained with John Friend and teaches in Melbourne, told me that there are circumstances that allow it to happen from both parties. “While it’s up to the teacher to recognise the power differential – if a student is vulnerable, if there’s a lack of self-worth, that can be played upon – but students can be very quick to hand their power over to someone else,” he says. “Students need to recognise that all teachers are human, and not be too quick to attach a god-like status. People put John Friend on a pedestal, but in his defence although he didn't discourage it, he never claimed to be a guru. He always reminded us that the guru was inside us. His ‘fall from grace’ really showed his humanness and that when the ego buys into the adoration it can quickly corrupt the higher vibrations.”
What seems to be missing in all of this is healthy discernment. In a lot of ways it’s much easier to hand complete authority to someone else – it makes the messiness and pain out of figuring stuff out for ourselves. And this can be rewarded – from my own experience in the yoga community, I have seen how spiritual advancement can become intertwined with unquestioning acquiescence. I have felt incredibly uncomfortable to be in rooms full of people unquestioningly handing authority to a teacher on the stage, where it feels impertinent to challenge even the most outlandish statements. The teachers know their stuff – no question – but they’ll often claim to be teaching ‘true yoga’, not ‘this fake stuff everyone else is peddling.’ One they’ve created doubt in the minds of the students, it’s like there’s this mass agreement that red is green – no one wants to be the dummy who isn’t part of ‘real yoga’. The magic ingredient is always yoga’s long and ancient tradition, which has just enough haziness for ‘lineage holders’ to potentially exploit.
But we need to remember that concepts like devotion and surrender are not mutually exclusive to discernment and self-trust. Yoga, after all, is just a series of practices designed to free you from physical and mental entanglements. It can be tough going, and so a good teacher is gold – you hang onto them, go out of your way to spend time with them. But a good teacher will guide you to see the strengths in yourself, rather than, as Tim says, ‘having to rely on them to get your power.’ And speaking from a teacher’s perspective, it’s helpful to remember that when students have a good class, they’re the ones who did the work – the realisations, breakthroughs are theirs, and as, at best we’re guides who hold space for it to happen. But it’s up to students to walk the fine line between devotion and discernment, surrender and susceptibility.
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
The NZ Bikram Yoga Community Responds to the Bikram Sex Scandal
In the last year five women have filed lawsuits against Choudhury, with charges ranging from rape to sexual harassment.
The allegations are serious, and according to an in-depth Vanity Fair article about Bikram and the charges, the plaintiffs all tell a similar story.
A young woman is singled out for attention, Bikram tells her how wonderful and special she is, using spirituality to imply there’s a unique connection – like shared past lives. The attention becomes progressively more sexual, and any rejection is met with anger and threats.
Bikram doesn’t operate in a vacuum though – he’s got people around him all the time. He’s famous for not liking to be alone. Similar to the Anusara Scandal involving John Friend, it’s alleged that Bikram’s inner circle knew of his behaviour and enabled it – or at least, turned a blind eye.
Bikram is a powerful yoga teacher who has trained and taught thousands and thousands of students, many of whom have gone on to open their own studios. There is no doubt at all that his sequence of postures are powerful and healing. Many people have had transformative experiences from regular practice of Bikram Yoga.
However, what happens when the head of the organisation abuses his trust and power? Then what?
How does that affect the wider Bikram community – the Bikram Yoga Studios and teachers whose very livelihoods depend upon Bikram Yoga? Because, lawsuits aside, Bikram does have a long history with yoga.
He began studying at age four with the renowned guru Bishnu Ghosh – the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote The Autobiography of a Yogi.
In his teens, Bikram won asana competitions and then at age 17, blew out his knee weightlifting. The doctors apparently told him he wouldn’t walk again. Devastated, Bikram went back to his teacher, Gnosh, and asked for help. As Bikram tells it, with daily yoga, he was as good as new again in six months.
It’s worth noting that Gnosh’s teaching were focused primarily on health and fitness. He wasn’t teaching yoga in the real sense of the word – that is, as a state of being where the fluctuations of the mind cease and one simply is. No, his focus was on the body – building it up, controlling it, working with it.
It’s pure speculation on my part, but if this is how Bikram Choudhury learned his yoga – as a total focus on the body and asana with scant energy or awareness given to the other limbs of yoga (especially the yamas and niyamas), it’s no surprise his behaviour was abusive.
Yoga isn’t just about the body nor is it just about asana (postures). Yoga is a path to liberation or enlightenment.
That path involves first knowing oneself – shadow side and all, and then realising that there is no Self.
If asana is only practiced as a physical pursuit, and no effort is made to know oneself, instead of the bonds of the ego lessening over time, they can strengthen and entrap.
What was it like for those closest to Bikram? What did they see and why did no one else point out that the Emperor had no clothes? Or were they expressing concern over his behaviour and was Bikram discounting their feedback?
Benjamin Lorr details why this might have been in this article. He investigated the Bikram World for his book Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.
Just to get to a place where you are face-to-face with a guru like Bikram Choudhury means you have devoted countless hours practicing his style of yoga, paid thousands of dollars to him personally, hope to make a living teaching his classes, and have embraced a larger community of studio owners and senior teachers who have made even greater investments of time, money, and passion in the same direction.
In Bikram’s case, he assisted this process by creating a sliding continuum around his behavior, from his ribald jokes and frequent hip-thrusts in Speedo, to his leveraging of cultural differences in requests for massages and brushing his hair, to his invitations to select students up to his private suite to watch Bollywood movies late into the night. Blurry lines and passionate devotion gives everyone involved—from targets to observers to guru himself—plenty of opportunities to substitute excuses for accountability.
In other words, like frogs placed in cold water a-top a hot element, the Bikram faithful were encultured to accept Bikram as he was – somewhat off colour and mad, but teaching a powerful sequence they believed in.
Speaking up would mean no longer being part of the Bikram World – and plenty of Bikram teacher have spoken up and left the fold over the years, like Mark Drost and Tony Sanchez.
One of the plantiffs from the recent civil cases, Larissa Anderson, tells her story in this article. It’s harrowing to read. She was a young woman who’d experienced sexual abuse as a teenager and credits Bikram Yoga with getting her life back on track. Eventually, she invested more than $200,000 in yoga teacher training and opening a Bikram Yoga Studio – despite being raped and later assaulted by Bikram. She managed by doing what everyone else advised:
Separating the man from the yoga practice.
According to this article;
Anderson’s allegations appear to be consistent with rumours that many community members had been hearing for years. People interviewed for this story allege that Choudhury has sexually assaulted them, harassed them, broken up relationships, and generally abused his power. “If there was a CEO in this country that acted like Bikram,” says Elizabeth Winfield, who went through teacher training in 2011, and is well connected in the community, “he’d be run out of the country.”
However, over here in New Zealand, we’re a long way from the epi-center of Bikram World. I wanted to know, how is the Bikram community coping here?
So I spoke to a few of the owners of Bikram Studios. All of the teachers I spoke to echoed a common theme – you have to separate out the man from the yoga.
As Anika Speedy, owner of Bikram Yoga Wellington says:
"I and my teachers believe in the integrity of the Bikram sequence. It comes down to my belief that Bikram’s 90 minute Beginning Yoga series is incredibly powerful on so many levels. We have seen it change many people’s lives. We are all certified to teach Bikram’s 90 Minute Beginning yoga series and that is what we teach. We teach it with integrity and passion and a belief in it’s therapeutic benefits. Like we have seen with John Friend/Anusara Yoga and Kuasthub you have to separate the ‘guru’ from the yoga. One of the benefits of being in New Zealand is that we can focus on teaching Bikram the yoga and not get caught up in the media drama surrounding Bikram the man."
While none of the teachers said they knew anything about the charges that were being laid, several said they weren’t surprised, given the nature of the culture and organisation that surrounds Bikram, headquarters and teacher training.
Bikram has ruled for a long time using fear and control – however, it’s a culture that didn’t transplant to New Zealand studios.
Nikki Harris, who was the first person to open a Bikram Studio in New Zealand (in Mt. Maunganui) and now runs EastWest Studios in Auckland says:
"Our biggest responsibility in the studios right now is to keep the focus on each individual students personal yoga practice, which for most is really a relationship between themselves, their mat, and their direct community they practice in daily."
Keeping the yoga student-focussed can be difficult under Bikram. He makes very specific demands on Bikram Studios, such as no other styles of yoga, or modifications of Bikram Yoga including 60 minutes or 75 minutes classes, are allowed to be taught.
All good and well if Bikram Yoga is working for the student – but what about the student that needs to balance their practice with Yin Yoga or Restorative? There’s no room in a Bikram Studio for responding to the needs of the student, beyond offering them Bikram.
As Anika and some of the other teachers pointed out, the scandal is not just indicative of issues within the Bikram community, but the yoga community at large. Many teachers have fallen recently.
Despite the issues and uncertainty around Bikram, there’s still students who want to train as Bikram teachers. The sequence speaks for itself, and current teachers are making sure that future teachers know what’s going on and can make their own decisions about the wisdom in pursuing a Bikram Teacher Training at the present time.
As for the yoga students that continue to pour through the doors at Bikram Studios up and down the country, Kristina Anderson of Napier Bikram Studio makes the interesting point that 95% of students don’t even know that Bikram is a person.
"I am the representative of Bikram yoga – me, the studio owner, and my teachers. How we conduct ourselves, how we teach and what relationships we form with our students and the community we are continually building, are what matters to the students (and me)."
When they are in Camel and opening up their heart and throat chakra to the universe, believe me, they do not have Bikram Choudhury in the forefront of their mind. ever. Students come back into the hot room because of the myriad of physical, emotional and spiritual connections and benefits they experience as a result of the powerful process of connecting with breath, stillness and therefore themselves. This beautiful unfolding occurs, their life changes and that’s what brings them back into the room.
Like some of the other studios, Kristina says Bikram Napier will be exploring different options like the possibility of becoming an integrative hot yoga studio.
Despite his transgressions, many of the teachers expressed gratitude to Bikram and all he’s taught them over the years.
Donna Wikio, who owns Dunedin’s Bikram Yoga studio called him a damn good teacher, and she said that mostly she feels disappointed.
"I’m annoyed and upset. It’s another negative to put on top of the yoga when the yoga itself is so awesome. It’s painting a certain image of something that people already have certain images -it’s another little thing for people to clutch on to and denigrate the yoga. It’s a disappointing and it bums me out. We’re at ground level sweating our arses off getting this yoga out because it works, and we’ve taken another knock because of his behaviour."
Peggy Preston, who owns Queenstown Bikram concurs:
"The whole thing is a mess to be honest. It’s definitely sad but he chose his path and will pay the dues. I’ll always appreciate Bikram for what he taught me. I was disappointed, but we’re a long way away over here and we just don’t talk about it."
It was both illuminating and humbling to speak to so many of the Bikram Studio owners up and down New Zealand.
They’ve all invested serious money and time in teacher training in California, and in setting up studios here in New Zealand.
They do what they do because they believe in the yoga itself – the 26 posture sequence that Bikram created with help and support from his guru Bishnu Ghosh. It’s transformed their lives, and they’ve seen it transform the lives of hundreds of other students.
The allegations are serious, and according to an in-depth Vanity Fair article about Bikram and the charges, the plaintiffs all tell a similar story.
A young woman is singled out for attention, Bikram tells her how wonderful and special she is, using spirituality to imply there’s a unique connection – like shared past lives. The attention becomes progressively more sexual, and any rejection is met with anger and threats.
Bikram doesn’t operate in a vacuum though – he’s got people around him all the time. He’s famous for not liking to be alone. Similar to the Anusara Scandal involving John Friend, it’s alleged that Bikram’s inner circle knew of his behaviour and enabled it – or at least, turned a blind eye.
Bikram is a powerful yoga teacher who has trained and taught thousands and thousands of students, many of whom have gone on to open their own studios. There is no doubt at all that his sequence of postures are powerful and healing. Many people have had transformative experiences from regular practice of Bikram Yoga.
However, what happens when the head of the organisation abuses his trust and power? Then what?
How does that affect the wider Bikram community – the Bikram Yoga Studios and teachers whose very livelihoods depend upon Bikram Yoga? Because, lawsuits aside, Bikram does have a long history with yoga.
He began studying at age four with the renowned guru Bishnu Ghosh – the younger brother of Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote The Autobiography of a Yogi.
In his teens, Bikram won asana competitions and then at age 17, blew out his knee weightlifting. The doctors apparently told him he wouldn’t walk again. Devastated, Bikram went back to his teacher, Gnosh, and asked for help. As Bikram tells it, with daily yoga, he was as good as new again in six months.
It’s worth noting that Gnosh’s teaching were focused primarily on health and fitness. He wasn’t teaching yoga in the real sense of the word – that is, as a state of being where the fluctuations of the mind cease and one simply is. No, his focus was on the body – building it up, controlling it, working with it.
It’s pure speculation on my part, but if this is how Bikram Choudhury learned his yoga – as a total focus on the body and asana with scant energy or awareness given to the other limbs of yoga (especially the yamas and niyamas), it’s no surprise his behaviour was abusive.
Yoga isn’t just about the body nor is it just about asana (postures). Yoga is a path to liberation or enlightenment.
That path involves first knowing oneself – shadow side and all, and then realising that there is no Self.
If asana is only practiced as a physical pursuit, and no effort is made to know oneself, instead of the bonds of the ego lessening over time, they can strengthen and entrap.
What was it like for those closest to Bikram? What did they see and why did no one else point out that the Emperor had no clothes? Or were they expressing concern over his behaviour and was Bikram discounting their feedback?
Benjamin Lorr details why this might have been in this article. He investigated the Bikram World for his book Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga.
Just to get to a place where you are face-to-face with a guru like Bikram Choudhury means you have devoted countless hours practicing his style of yoga, paid thousands of dollars to him personally, hope to make a living teaching his classes, and have embraced a larger community of studio owners and senior teachers who have made even greater investments of time, money, and passion in the same direction.
In Bikram’s case, he assisted this process by creating a sliding continuum around his behavior, from his ribald jokes and frequent hip-thrusts in Speedo, to his leveraging of cultural differences in requests for massages and brushing his hair, to his invitations to select students up to his private suite to watch Bollywood movies late into the night. Blurry lines and passionate devotion gives everyone involved—from targets to observers to guru himself—plenty of opportunities to substitute excuses for accountability.
In other words, like frogs placed in cold water a-top a hot element, the Bikram faithful were encultured to accept Bikram as he was – somewhat off colour and mad, but teaching a powerful sequence they believed in.
Speaking up would mean no longer being part of the Bikram World – and plenty of Bikram teacher have spoken up and left the fold over the years, like Mark Drost and Tony Sanchez.
One of the plantiffs from the recent civil cases, Larissa Anderson, tells her story in this article. It’s harrowing to read. She was a young woman who’d experienced sexual abuse as a teenager and credits Bikram Yoga with getting her life back on track. Eventually, she invested more than $200,000 in yoga teacher training and opening a Bikram Yoga Studio – despite being raped and later assaulted by Bikram. She managed by doing what everyone else advised:
Separating the man from the yoga practice.
According to this article;
Anderson’s allegations appear to be consistent with rumours that many community members had been hearing for years. People interviewed for this story allege that Choudhury has sexually assaulted them, harassed them, broken up relationships, and generally abused his power. “If there was a CEO in this country that acted like Bikram,” says Elizabeth Winfield, who went through teacher training in 2011, and is well connected in the community, “he’d be run out of the country.”
However, over here in New Zealand, we’re a long way from the epi-center of Bikram World. I wanted to know, how is the Bikram community coping here?
So I spoke to a few of the owners of Bikram Studios. All of the teachers I spoke to echoed a common theme – you have to separate out the man from the yoga.
As Anika Speedy, owner of Bikram Yoga Wellington says:
"I and my teachers believe in the integrity of the Bikram sequence. It comes down to my belief that Bikram’s 90 minute Beginning Yoga series is incredibly powerful on so many levels. We have seen it change many people’s lives. We are all certified to teach Bikram’s 90 Minute Beginning yoga series and that is what we teach. We teach it with integrity and passion and a belief in it’s therapeutic benefits. Like we have seen with John Friend/Anusara Yoga and Kuasthub you have to separate the ‘guru’ from the yoga. One of the benefits of being in New Zealand is that we can focus on teaching Bikram the yoga and not get caught up in the media drama surrounding Bikram the man."
While none of the teachers said they knew anything about the charges that were being laid, several said they weren’t surprised, given the nature of the culture and organisation that surrounds Bikram, headquarters and teacher training.
Bikram has ruled for a long time using fear and control – however, it’s a culture that didn’t transplant to New Zealand studios.
Nikki Harris, who was the first person to open a Bikram Studio in New Zealand (in Mt. Maunganui) and now runs EastWest Studios in Auckland says:
"Our biggest responsibility in the studios right now is to keep the focus on each individual students personal yoga practice, which for most is really a relationship between themselves, their mat, and their direct community they practice in daily."
Keeping the yoga student-focussed can be difficult under Bikram. He makes very specific demands on Bikram Studios, such as no other styles of yoga, or modifications of Bikram Yoga including 60 minutes or 75 minutes classes, are allowed to be taught.
All good and well if Bikram Yoga is working for the student – but what about the student that needs to balance their practice with Yin Yoga or Restorative? There’s no room in a Bikram Studio for responding to the needs of the student, beyond offering them Bikram.
As Anika and some of the other teachers pointed out, the scandal is not just indicative of issues within the Bikram community, but the yoga community at large. Many teachers have fallen recently.
Despite the issues and uncertainty around Bikram, there’s still students who want to train as Bikram teachers. The sequence speaks for itself, and current teachers are making sure that future teachers know what’s going on and can make their own decisions about the wisdom in pursuing a Bikram Teacher Training at the present time.
As for the yoga students that continue to pour through the doors at Bikram Studios up and down the country, Kristina Anderson of Napier Bikram Studio makes the interesting point that 95% of students don’t even know that Bikram is a person.
"I am the representative of Bikram yoga – me, the studio owner, and my teachers. How we conduct ourselves, how we teach and what relationships we form with our students and the community we are continually building, are what matters to the students (and me)."
When they are in Camel and opening up their heart and throat chakra to the universe, believe me, they do not have Bikram Choudhury in the forefront of their mind. ever. Students come back into the hot room because of the myriad of physical, emotional and spiritual connections and benefits they experience as a result of the powerful process of connecting with breath, stillness and therefore themselves. This beautiful unfolding occurs, their life changes and that’s what brings them back into the room.
Like some of the other studios, Kristina says Bikram Napier will be exploring different options like the possibility of becoming an integrative hot yoga studio.
Despite his transgressions, many of the teachers expressed gratitude to Bikram and all he’s taught them over the years.
Donna Wikio, who owns Dunedin’s Bikram Yoga studio called him a damn good teacher, and she said that mostly she feels disappointed.
"I’m annoyed and upset. It’s another negative to put on top of the yoga when the yoga itself is so awesome. It’s painting a certain image of something that people already have certain images -it’s another little thing for people to clutch on to and denigrate the yoga. It’s a disappointing and it bums me out. We’re at ground level sweating our arses off getting this yoga out because it works, and we’ve taken another knock because of his behaviour."
Peggy Preston, who owns Queenstown Bikram concurs:
"The whole thing is a mess to be honest. It’s definitely sad but he chose his path and will pay the dues. I’ll always appreciate Bikram for what he taught me. I was disappointed, but we’re a long way away over here and we just don’t talk about it."
It was both illuminating and humbling to speak to so many of the Bikram Studio owners up and down New Zealand.
They’ve all invested serious money and time in teacher training in California, and in setting up studios here in New Zealand.
They do what they do because they believe in the yoga itself – the 26 posture sequence that Bikram created with help and support from his guru Bishnu Ghosh. It’s transformed their lives, and they’ve seen it transform the lives of hundreds of other students.
Friday, January 17, 2014
Marc Gafni, Founder of iEvolve and Sexual Predator
Another controversial spiritual teacher who is part of the Integral inner circle, supported and defended by Wilber, Cohen, Patten and Craig Hamilton, Sally Kempton and Diane Musho Hamilton among many of the other figureheads of the movement. Gafni also works closely with Wilber at the Integral Institute. Gafni fled his position as head of the Bayit Chadash in Israel after several members of his community accused him of sexual misconduct. These were only the latest in a string of sexual accusations that has plagued Gafni. He was also stripped of his ordination as a Rabbi. While he apologized for his relationships with these women at Bayit Chadash he claims they were “loving and mutual,” (a claim which they strongly dispute). But if it gives any perspective he also says that his relationship with a 13 year old girl when he was 19 and 20 was “loving and mutual.” This is the testimony of the young girl who he claims he was in a mutual and loving relationship with.
The abuse went on through the year I was in 9th grade. The school year was almost over, I remember it was warm out. He called me on the phone one day to tell me that he would no longer be coming over. He realized that what he really needed was to get married soon, and he explained that this would give him a proper outlet for his sexuality. Its hard to describe how I felt at that moment, because it is complex. My molester finally decided to stop abusing me, to leave me alone, to move on. You would imagine I would feel great relief, but actually the full weight of the abuse I had endured in silence came crashing down on me. Here I was, left with this horrible experience, still with no one to talk to about it, and no language for it anyway. And he wasn't retreating because I had some how managed to make him stop, but because he decided it just wasn't worth the risk any more. He was terrified that he would do more and make me pregnant- then there would be no way to keep his secret. Until then, his abuse included exposing my body against my will, forcibly touching my breast, grabbing my hand and forcing me to touch his penis, and forced digital vaginal penetration. All were the most horrifying, degrading and painful experiences for me. All this only a year or so after my bat mitzvah...
Unfortunately, I knew Mordechai very well. He told me a lot about himself, and I knew him as a sexually compulsive, sexually violent man. After talking with counselors, lawyers, and professionals who advise and counsel sexual perpetrators, I learned that in 99% of cases, people who compulsively sexually abuse girls or women, especially those who were abused themselves as children, don't stop. These are dangerous people. The more we are silent about them, the more they have the freedom to act out their sexual compulsions. Further first hand accounts show that Mordechai continued to molest young women after he was married. Unfortunately, marriage did not solve his problems. There is no reason for me to assume he is not still victimizing girls and women. Back when I knew him, he was a refined manipulator, "groomer", "brain-washer", and he used those skills in order to victimize girls and young women. I have no doubt that, years later, he has honed his skills as a predator.
His defenders repeatedly claim that “he as done nothing illegal,” and ask us to believe that Ganfi is the victim of a widespread attack up on him. All of the women (over ten) exaggerated, distorted and lied about what really happened.
At least five female students and staff members have come forward to accuse Rabbi Mordechai Gafni of luring them into sexual relationships through intimidation, psychological manipulation and deception. Late last week, Gafni, an Orthodox-trained rabbi who has become a star of the New Age-style Jewish Renewal movement, was dismissed from his position as the head of Bayit Chadash, a center on the Sea of Galilee that he co-founded six years ago.
Gafni subsequently issued a public apology for having “hurt people I love,” and said that he would seek in-patient treatment for what he called “a sickness.”
…He was originally ordained as an Orthodox rabbi and moved to Israel more than a decade ago, after leaving posts in New York and in Boca Raton, Fla., amid rumors of sexual misconduct. He assumed an Israeli name and transitioned into the world of Jewish Renewal….
Rosenblatt said he had interviewed about 50 supporters and critics, including two prominent Orthodox leaders – Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual mentor at Yeshiva University, and Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Efrat – who had known Gafni since the 1980s. Blau and Riskin, who both criticized Gafni, told Rosenblatt that over the years they had spoken with a number of women who had complaints about the rabbi.
Rosenblatt interviewed several alleged victims. One was a woman named Judy, who first accused Gafni of molesting her in 1986, when she was a 16-year-old member of a youth group he directed. Shortly thereafter, Gafni left New York for a pulpit job in Florida. Another woman, Susan, who was an adviser for the group at the time, said that Gafni had threatened her when she tried to intervene on the girl’s behalf.
When asked about the allegations, Gafni told Rosenblatt that Judy was a troubled, unstable teenager who fabricated the story after he rebuffed her advances.
But he admitted to having had a sexual relationship with another girl, when she was 13 and 14 and he was 19 and 20, studying to become a rabbi.
“I was a stupid kid and we were in love,” Gafni was quoted as saying in The Jewish Week. “She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her.”
The woman told Rosenblatt that Gafni had “repeatedly sexually assaulted her” when he stayed at her house for the Sabbath. The rabbi also told her that she would be “shamed in the community” if she told anyone.
As Frank Visser says, “Integral confirms integral confirms integral.” I have heard people defend Marc Gafni by stating that Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber support him. But it actually is a silly game they all play because they all defend and support each other. It goes something like this. Patten, Hamilton, Gafni and Wilber support Cohen. Cohen, Wilber, Hamilton and Patten support Gafni. Cohen, Gafni, Hamilton and Patten support Wilber. Wilber and Cohen support Patten and Hamilton. Wilber and Patten support Adi Da….etc. And they all appear on each others integral programs, websites, conferences, book chapters, magazines and platforms. Among the various offerings is Integral Life Practice, Integral Naked, Integral Institute, Integral Spiritual Center, Integral Enlightenment, EnlightenNext magazine…etc. And as Yenner notes above, they seem to employ the same tactic: surrounding themselves with other luminaries, celebrities, and public faces who agree with them and provide much needed support. If all of these amazing people support Cohen he must be ok, right? Nowadays it seems all you have to do is add the word integral in front of something to boost its credibility. Add the word integral and you have a sexy and attractive product ready to be sold to eager spiritual seekers who are hungry for idealism and more purpose in life. The whole thing equates to a very large money making machine.
I want to be clear that this article is not an attack on integral theory or the nature of the teachings that many of the people here offer. I am a fan of integral theory in general—not of the Wilber sort, but the principle behind it. One can recognize that many of these teachers have said wise things while simultaneously being aware of their shortcomings.
Is it wrong to call out Cohen’s enablers? Is it wrong to expect them to break the silence on Cohen’s legacy of abuse, manipulation and cultish behaviors? In the face of the sadistic acts of Cohen isn’t it problematic when Wilber says “Cohen is here to tear you into a thousand pieces?” What about accountability? Responsibility? Ethics?
I would never appear on a program with Cohen, Wilber or Gafni let alone work with them. And if I was in a position of power as Cohen’s friends and supporters Ken Wilber, Craig Hamilton, Terry Patten, Marc Gafni, Genpo Roshi, Diane Hamilton are I would speak out against him. Do they deny the multiple, disturbing claims made by former disciples of Cohen? Or do they merely brush it aside as “Crazy Wisdom?” How can someone like Craig Hamilton continue to praise Cohen given the overwhelming evidence against him? After spending fifteen years with Cohen I suspect that Hamilton is still in Cohen’s cult trance. Can Cohen’s supporters be deemed legitimate if they are unable to call out his abusive, manipulative and sadistic behavior? There is really no excuse for the silence because it only enables Cohen further. In a post-Jonestown and present day Catholic Church scandal era we simply cannot afford their silence. I doubt any accountability will be had because this particular integral community is a family of “evolutionary thinkers,” who has discovered a revolutionary truth and will defend it to the end. They simply employ a form of group think that rationalizes, justifies and spins the truth to meet their agreed upon conclusions about each other.
The ultimate irony is of course that these spiritual teachers are supposedly on the forefront of instructing us on how to confront the shadow. However, I won’t take their advice until they confront the very large shadow of Andrew Cohen.
Be Scofield
The abuse went on through the year I was in 9th grade. The school year was almost over, I remember it was warm out. He called me on the phone one day to tell me that he would no longer be coming over. He realized that what he really needed was to get married soon, and he explained that this would give him a proper outlet for his sexuality. Its hard to describe how I felt at that moment, because it is complex. My molester finally decided to stop abusing me, to leave me alone, to move on. You would imagine I would feel great relief, but actually the full weight of the abuse I had endured in silence came crashing down on me. Here I was, left with this horrible experience, still with no one to talk to about it, and no language for it anyway. And he wasn't retreating because I had some how managed to make him stop, but because he decided it just wasn't worth the risk any more. He was terrified that he would do more and make me pregnant- then there would be no way to keep his secret. Until then, his abuse included exposing my body against my will, forcibly touching my breast, grabbing my hand and forcing me to touch his penis, and forced digital vaginal penetration. All were the most horrifying, degrading and painful experiences for me. All this only a year or so after my bat mitzvah...
Unfortunately, I knew Mordechai very well. He told me a lot about himself, and I knew him as a sexually compulsive, sexually violent man. After talking with counselors, lawyers, and professionals who advise and counsel sexual perpetrators, I learned that in 99% of cases, people who compulsively sexually abuse girls or women, especially those who were abused themselves as children, don't stop. These are dangerous people. The more we are silent about them, the more they have the freedom to act out their sexual compulsions. Further first hand accounts show that Mordechai continued to molest young women after he was married. Unfortunately, marriage did not solve his problems. There is no reason for me to assume he is not still victimizing girls and women. Back when I knew him, he was a refined manipulator, "groomer", "brain-washer", and he used those skills in order to victimize girls and young women. I have no doubt that, years later, he has honed his skills as a predator.
His defenders repeatedly claim that “he as done nothing illegal,” and ask us to believe that Ganfi is the victim of a widespread attack up on him. All of the women (over ten) exaggerated, distorted and lied about what really happened.
At least five female students and staff members have come forward to accuse Rabbi Mordechai Gafni of luring them into sexual relationships through intimidation, psychological manipulation and deception. Late last week, Gafni, an Orthodox-trained rabbi who has become a star of the New Age-style Jewish Renewal movement, was dismissed from his position as the head of Bayit Chadash, a center on the Sea of Galilee that he co-founded six years ago.
Gafni subsequently issued a public apology for having “hurt people I love,” and said that he would seek in-patient treatment for what he called “a sickness.”
…He was originally ordained as an Orthodox rabbi and moved to Israel more than a decade ago, after leaving posts in New York and in Boca Raton, Fla., amid rumors of sexual misconduct. He assumed an Israeli name and transitioned into the world of Jewish Renewal….
Rosenblatt said he had interviewed about 50 supporters and critics, including two prominent Orthodox leaders – Rabbi Yosef Blau, spiritual mentor at Yeshiva University, and Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Efrat – who had known Gafni since the 1980s. Blau and Riskin, who both criticized Gafni, told Rosenblatt that over the years they had spoken with a number of women who had complaints about the rabbi.
Rosenblatt interviewed several alleged victims. One was a woman named Judy, who first accused Gafni of molesting her in 1986, when she was a 16-year-old member of a youth group he directed. Shortly thereafter, Gafni left New York for a pulpit job in Florida. Another woman, Susan, who was an adviser for the group at the time, said that Gafni had threatened her when she tried to intervene on the girl’s behalf.
When asked about the allegations, Gafni told Rosenblatt that Judy was a troubled, unstable teenager who fabricated the story after he rebuffed her advances.
But he admitted to having had a sexual relationship with another girl, when she was 13 and 14 and he was 19 and 20, studying to become a rabbi.
“I was a stupid kid and we were in love,” Gafni was quoted as saying in The Jewish Week. “She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her.”
The woman told Rosenblatt that Gafni had “repeatedly sexually assaulted her” when he stayed at her house for the Sabbath. The rabbi also told her that she would be “shamed in the community” if she told anyone.
As Frank Visser says, “Integral confirms integral confirms integral.” I have heard people defend Marc Gafni by stating that Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber support him. But it actually is a silly game they all play because they all defend and support each other. It goes something like this. Patten, Hamilton, Gafni and Wilber support Cohen. Cohen, Wilber, Hamilton and Patten support Gafni. Cohen, Gafni, Hamilton and Patten support Wilber. Wilber and Cohen support Patten and Hamilton. Wilber and Patten support Adi Da….etc. And they all appear on each others integral programs, websites, conferences, book chapters, magazines and platforms. Among the various offerings is Integral Life Practice, Integral Naked, Integral Institute, Integral Spiritual Center, Integral Enlightenment, EnlightenNext magazine…etc. And as Yenner notes above, they seem to employ the same tactic: surrounding themselves with other luminaries, celebrities, and public faces who agree with them and provide much needed support. If all of these amazing people support Cohen he must be ok, right? Nowadays it seems all you have to do is add the word integral in front of something to boost its credibility. Add the word integral and you have a sexy and attractive product ready to be sold to eager spiritual seekers who are hungry for idealism and more purpose in life. The whole thing equates to a very large money making machine.
I want to be clear that this article is not an attack on integral theory or the nature of the teachings that many of the people here offer. I am a fan of integral theory in general—not of the Wilber sort, but the principle behind it. One can recognize that many of these teachers have said wise things while simultaneously being aware of their shortcomings.
Is it wrong to call out Cohen’s enablers? Is it wrong to expect them to break the silence on Cohen’s legacy of abuse, manipulation and cultish behaviors? In the face of the sadistic acts of Cohen isn’t it problematic when Wilber says “Cohen is here to tear you into a thousand pieces?” What about accountability? Responsibility? Ethics?
I would never appear on a program with Cohen, Wilber or Gafni let alone work with them. And if I was in a position of power as Cohen’s friends and supporters Ken Wilber, Craig Hamilton, Terry Patten, Marc Gafni, Genpo Roshi, Diane Hamilton are I would speak out against him. Do they deny the multiple, disturbing claims made by former disciples of Cohen? Or do they merely brush it aside as “Crazy Wisdom?” How can someone like Craig Hamilton continue to praise Cohen given the overwhelming evidence against him? After spending fifteen years with Cohen I suspect that Hamilton is still in Cohen’s cult trance. Can Cohen’s supporters be deemed legitimate if they are unable to call out his abusive, manipulative and sadistic behavior? There is really no excuse for the silence because it only enables Cohen further. In a post-Jonestown and present day Catholic Church scandal era we simply cannot afford their silence. I doubt any accountability will be had because this particular integral community is a family of “evolutionary thinkers,” who has discovered a revolutionary truth and will defend it to the end. They simply employ a form of group think that rationalizes, justifies and spins the truth to meet their agreed upon conclusions about each other.
The ultimate irony is of course that these spiritual teachers are supposedly on the forefront of instructing us on how to confront the shadow. However, I won’t take their advice until they confront the very large shadow of Andrew Cohen.
Be Scofield
Monday, January 13, 2014
John Friend and Anusara: Do yoga, gurus and scandals go hand in hand?
In this week's cover story, I profile John Friend, who built his Texas-based Anusara yoga school into a global empire before losing it all in a lurid 2012 scandal and moving to Denver to start anew.
While Friend's fall from grace captured major media attention, he was far from the first yoga guru to weather controversy. Is there something about yoga that leads to such problems? A look at some of the other yoga scandals might provide some answers.
Up until fairly recently, yoga itself was controversial in the United States, since it clashed with xenophobic and conservative undertones in American culture. In the 1910s, newspapers blared headlines such as "Police Break in on Weird Hindu Rites: Girls and Men Mystics Cease Strange Dance as 'Priest' Is Arrested" and "A Hindu Apple for Modern Eve: The Cult of the Yogis Lures Women to Destruction." Between the 1960s and 1980s, Western yoga practitioners worked hard to downplay the spiritual aspects of the ancient tradition that had led to this backlash, instead focusing on the largely physical branch of the practice called hatha yoga, which they positioned as a form of exercise.
The move paid off. Since then, Yoga's rise in popularity had been meteoric -- but it's also been marked by more than a few controversies. Among the scandals:
Bikram Choudhury, founder of the wildly popular Bikram school of "hot yoga," has long weathered controversy, including claims that he's denigrated women and homosexuals and allegations in a lawsuit filed in March 2013 that he sexually harassed a former prot?g?
To some, the pattern is hard to ignore. In the wake of Friend's scandal, William Broad, author of The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards, penned a New York Times essay noting,
...this is hardly the first time that yoga's enlightened facade has been cracked by sexual scandal. Why does yoga produce so many philanderers? And why do the resulting uproars leave so many people shocked and distraught?
One factor is ignorance. Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult -- an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.
Not surprisingly, Broad's essay didn't go over well in the yoga community. Among those not impressed was Yoga Dork, a prominent blogger in the scene who had, incidentally, helped break the Friend scandal. As Yoga Dork noted in an online retort:
...For crying out loud, Broad, are you really saying John Friend behaved the way he did because he had a predetermined predisposition to do so due to the fact he was a leader of yoga? That is silly and just plain dumb.
We'll remember to tell that to the veterans who are able to sleep better at night, the kids who can focus better in school, those prone to heart disease who lost weight and lowered risk of heart attack and stroke and the cancer survivors who've found strength, calm and community all due to the help of a regular yoga and meditation practice.
Saying it's yoga's fault doesn't seem like the answer.
Plus, yoga is far from the only modern realm wracked by scandals. (Just take a look at Washington, D.C.) So maybe the problem isn't with yoga, maybe it's with yoga's financial and cultural ascendance.
Yoga's explosion in the United States has led to millions of happy practicioners, but it's also led to million-dollar profits, corporate power moves, powerful male gurus and lots and lots of endorphin-fueled, spandex-clad bodies.
In other words, maybe all these yoga scandals aren't due to the practice's ancient Tantric origins -- maybe they're due to yoga becoming Americanized.
In this week's cover story, I profile John Friend, who built his Texas-based Anusara yoga school into a global empire before losing it all in a lurid 2012 scandal and moving to Denver to start anew.
While Friend's fall from grace captured major media attention, he was far from the first yoga guru to weather controversy. Is there something about yoga that leads to such problems? A look at some of the other yoga scandals might provide some answers.
Up until fairly recently, yoga itself was controversial in the United States, since it clashed with xenophobic and conservative undertones in American culture. In the 1910s, newspapers blared headlines such as "Police Break in on Weird Hindu Rites: Girls and Men Mystics Cease Strange Dance as 'Priest' Is Arrested" and "A Hindu Apple for Modern Eve: The Cult of the Yogis Lures Women to Destruction." Between the 1960s and 1980s, Western yoga practitioners worked hard to downplay the spiritual aspects of the ancient tradition that had led to this backlash, instead focusing on the largely physical branch of the practice called hatha yoga, which they positioned as a form of exercise.
The move paid off. Since then, Yoga's rise in popularity had been meteoric -- but it's also been marked by more than a few controversies. Among the scandals:
- In the early 1980s, former devotees accused Swami Muktananda, founder of Siddha Yoga, of molesting and raping women.
- In 1991, multiple women accused Swami Satchidananda, who gave the invocation at Woodstock, of sexually exploiting them.
- In the early 1990s, Swami Rama, founder of the Pennsylvania-based Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy and one of the first yogis to be studied by Western scientists, faced controversy after several women alleged he sexually abused them. Not long after his death, one of his accusers won nearly $2 million in a lawsuit filed against him.
- In 1994, Amrit Desai, founder of the Massachusetts-based Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health, resigned from the organization after he admitted having sex with followers, since the retreat required vows of celibacy from its residents. The center later settled a lawsuit brought by former residents for $2.5 million.
- In 2009, former members and employees sued Dahn yoga, a Korean exercise system, for fraud, deceptive business practices, emotional distress and other offenses. The plaintiffs eventually withdrew their lawsuit, but in the wake of the ensuing media coverage, which emphasized Dahn's cult-like activities, the program's founder, Ilchi Lee, announced his resignation.
Bikram Choudhury, founder of the wildly popular Bikram school of "hot yoga," has long weathered controversy, including claims that he's denigrated women and homosexuals and allegations in a lawsuit filed in March 2013 that he sexually harassed a former prot?g?
To some, the pattern is hard to ignore. In the wake of Friend's scandal, William Broad, author of The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards, penned a New York Times essay noting,
...this is hardly the first time that yoga's enlightened facade has been cracked by sexual scandal. Why does yoga produce so many philanderers? And why do the resulting uproars leave so many people shocked and distraught?
One factor is ignorance. Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult -- an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.
Not surprisingly, Broad's essay didn't go over well in the yoga community. Among those not impressed was Yoga Dork, a prominent blogger in the scene who had, incidentally, helped break the Friend scandal. As Yoga Dork noted in an online retort:
...For crying out loud, Broad, are you really saying John Friend behaved the way he did because he had a predetermined predisposition to do so due to the fact he was a leader of yoga? That is silly and just plain dumb.
We'll remember to tell that to the veterans who are able to sleep better at night, the kids who can focus better in school, those prone to heart disease who lost weight and lowered risk of heart attack and stroke and the cancer survivors who've found strength, calm and community all due to the help of a regular yoga and meditation practice.
Saying it's yoga's fault doesn't seem like the answer.
Plus, yoga is far from the only modern realm wracked by scandals. (Just take a look at Washington, D.C.) So maybe the problem isn't with yoga, maybe it's with yoga's financial and cultural ascendance.
Yoga's explosion in the United States has led to millions of happy practicioners, but it's also led to million-dollar profits, corporate power moves, powerful male gurus and lots and lots of endorphin-fueled, spandex-clad bodies.
In other words, maybe all these yoga scandals aren't due to the practice's ancient Tantric origins -- maybe they're due to yoga becoming Americanized.
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