stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

122 STRIPPING THE GURUS
One of the girls thus allegedly marching—“Jennifer”—claimed
to have been raped by the great guru in early 1978.
Muktananda had intercourse with Jennifer for an hour, she
said, and was quite proud of the fact. “He kept saying, ‘Sixty
minutes,’” she said (Rodarmor, 1983).
“An incredibly loving man.”
The “celibate” guru’s reported tolerance for sex, however, apparently
did not extend to sexual tolerance:
“A Guru would never be flirting with mistresses or hobnobbing
with homosexuals,” a 1976 Muktananda missive reads.
“Homosexuals are considered to be eunuchs—disgusting, impure,
and inauspicious” (Chew, 1998).
* * *
If Shiva is angry, the Guru can protect you, but if the Guru
becomes angry, no one can save you (in Muktananda, 1999).
Unfortunately for his disciples, then:
“Muktananda had a ferocious temper,” said [Richard]
Grimes, “and would scream or yell at someone for no seeming
reason.” He [claims that he] saw the guru beating people
on many occasions (Rodarmor, 1983).
Indeed, Noni Patel, the guru’s valet, reportedly once sought
treatment for an odd wound in his side.
“At first, he wouldn’t say how he had gotten it,” Grimes’ wife
Lotte recalled. “Later it came out that [Muktananda] had
stabbed him with a fork” (Rodarmor, 1983).
A clear breach of etiquette, that.
* * *
Former journalist Sally Kempton, a.k.a. Swami Durgananda, began
following Muktananda in 1974. She has since found work as a
columnist for Yoga Journal, and been an interviewee on Ken Wilber’s
Integral Naked (2005) forum.
After decades in the ashrams of the “fully enlightened” Muktananda
and his successor, she returned to the secular world in