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Thursday, April 7, 2005
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STRIPPING THE GURUS*
Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment*
By Geoffrey D. Falk
Press Release
April 7, 2005

http://www.strippingthegurus.com

Ramakrishna was a homoerotic pedophile.

His chief disciple, Vivekananda, visited brothels in India.

Krishnamurti carried on an affair for over twenty years with the wife of a
close friend. Chögyam Trungpa drank himself into an early grave. One of Adi
Da's nine "wives" is a former Playboy centerfold. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh
sniffed laughing gas to get high. Andrew Cohen, guru and publisher of What
Is Enlightenment? magazine, by his own reported admission sometimes feels
"like a god."

These are typical of the "wizened sages" to whom otherwise-sensible people
give their devotion and unquestioning obedience, surrendering their
independence, willpower, and life's savings in the hope of realizing for
themselves the same "enlightenment" as they ascribe to the "perfect,
God-realized" master.

Why?

Is it for being emotionally vulnerable and "brainwashed," as the
"anti-cultists" assert? Or for being "willingly psychologically seduced," as
the apologists unsympathetically counter, confident that they themselves are
"too smart" to ever fall into the same trap? Or have devotees simply walked,
with naïvely-open hearts and thirsty souls, into inherent psychological
dynamics of power and obedience which have showed themselves in classic
psychological studies from Milgram to Zimbardo, and to which each one of us
is susceptible every day of our lives?

Like the proud "Rude Boy" Cohen allegedly said, with a laugh, in response to
the nervous breakdown of one of his devoted followers: "It could happen to
any one of you."

Don't let it happen to you. Don't get suckered in. Be prepared. Be informed.
Find out what reportedly goes on behind the scenes in even the best of our
world's spiritual communities.

You can start by reading this book.

A FREE version of selected sample chapters, containing approximately half of
the material in Stripping the Gurus, can be read online at
<http://www.strippingthegurus.com>. The full (paid) eBook is available for
download at <http://www.millionmonkeyspress.com>, in PDF format.

...........

"Stripping the Gurus is superb. The research is meticulous, the writing
engaging, and the overall thesis: devastatingly true. A stellar book." --
Dr. David C. Lane, California State University

............

INTRODUCTION
By Geoffrey D. Falk
Toronto, Ontario
March, 2005

http://www.geoffreyfalk.com

One of my dear, late mother's most memorable expressions, in attempting to
get her children to behave, was simply: "Be sure your sins will find you
out."

It may take a minute, an hour, a day, a year, ten years or more, but
eventually the details of one's behaviors are likely to surface. Whether
one's public face is that of a saint or a sinner, ultimately "the truth will
out."

This book, then, concerns the alleged sins which have been concealed behind
the polished façades of too many of our world's "saintly and sagely"
spiritual leaders and their associated communities, with a marked focus on
North America over the past century.

Why, though, would anyone write such a book as this? Why not just "focus on
the good," and work on one's own self-transformation instead?

First of all, one hopes to save others from the sorrow inherent in throwing
their lives away in following these figures. Even the most elementary
bodhisattva vow, for the liberation of others from suffering, would leave
one with no moral choice but to do one's part in that. Likewise, even the
most basic understanding as to the nature of "idiot compassion" would
preclude one from ignoring these reported problems just to be "nice" or
avoid offending others.

As a former follower of Carlos Castaneda eloquently put it, in relating the
depressing and disillusioning story of her experiences with him, amid her
own "haunting dreams of suicide":

"[I]f some reader, somewhere, takes a moment's pause and halts before
handing over his or her free will to another, it will all have counted for
something (Wallace, 2003)."

Or, as Margery Wakefield (1991) expressed her own opinion:

"As trite as it may sound, if I can prevent even one other person,
especially a young person, from having to live through the nightmare of
Scientology‹then I will feel satisfied."

Second, I personally spent the worst nine months of my life at one of
Paramahansa Yogananda's approved southern California ashrams (i.e.,
hermitages/monasteries), and have still not recovered fully from that awful
experience. I thus consider this as part of my own healing process. That is,
it is part of my dealing with the after-effects of the "wisdom" meted out in
that environment by its loyal, "Godinspired" participants.

Third, with my own background in Eastern philosophy, we may hope to do all
this without misrepresenting the metaphysical ideas involved. With or
without that, though, it is not the validity of the theoretical ideas of
each path which are, in general, of concern here. Rather, of far greater
interest are the ways in which the leaders espousing those ideas have
applied them in practice, frequently to the reported detriment of their
followers.

Fourth, the mapping of reported ashram behaviors to psychologist Philip
Zimbardo's classic prison study, as presented in the Gurus and Prisoners
chapter, yields significant insights into the origins and pervasiveness of
the alleged problems cataloged herein.

Fifth, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, if we eliminate everything which is
impossible, then what is left, however improbable it may appear, must be the
case. Becoming aware of the reported problems with our world's "sages" and
their admirers, then, eliminates many pleasant but "impossible" hopes one
may have with regard to the nature of spirituality and religion.

This book will not likely change the mind of any loyal disciple of any of
the spiritual figures and paths specifically addressed herein. Indeed, no
amount of evidence of alleged abuse or hypocrisy on the part of those
leaders could do so, for followers who are convinced that they have found
"God in the flesh," in their spiritual hero.

This text may, however, touch some of those devotees who are already halfway
to realizing what is going on around them. And more importantly, in
quantitative good, it may give a "heads up" to persons who would otherwise
be suckered in by the claims of any particular "God-realized being"‹as I
myself was fooled, once upon a time. And thus, it may prevent them from
becoming involved with the relevant organization(s) in the first place.

Ultimately, the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" approach to life
simply allows the relevant problems to continue. No one should ever turn a
blind eye to secular crimes of forgery, incest, rape or the like. Much less
should those same crimes be so readily excused or forgiven when they are
alleged to occur in spiritual contexts. That is so particularly when they
are claimed to be perpetrated by leaders and followers insisting that they
have "God on their side," and that any resistance to their reported blunders
or rumored powertripping abuses equates to being influenced by Maya/Satan.

To say nothing in the face of evil, after all, is to implicitly condone it.
Or equally, as the saying goes, "For evil to triumph in this world, it is
only necessary for good people to do nothing."

In the words of Albert Einstein:

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."

The alert reader will further note that, aside from my own relatively
non-scandalous (but still highly traumatic) personal experiences at Hidden
Valley, all of the allegations made herein‹none of which, to my knowledge,
except where explicitly noted, have been proved in any court of law‹have
already been put into print elsewhere in books and magazine articles. In all
of those cases, I am relying in good faith on the validity of the extant,
published research of the relevant journalists and ex-disciples. I have made
every effort to present that existing reported data without putting any
additional "spin" on it, via juxtapositions or otherwise. After all, the
in-print (alleged) realities, in every case, are jaw-dropping enough that no
innuendo or taking-out-of-context would have ever been required in order to
make our world's "god-men" look foolish.

As the Dalai Lama (1999) expressed his own opinion, regarding the value of
such investigative journalism:

"I respect and appreciate the media's interference.... It is appropriate ...
to have journalists ... snooping around and exposing wrongdoing where they
find it. We need to know when this or that renowned individual hides a very
different aspect behind a pleasant exterior."

Finally, with regard to the use of humor herein, the late Christopher Reeve
put it appropriately: "When things are really bad, you have to laugh."

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