stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

HELLO, DALAI! 237
and need for salvation out of all that, perhaps even moreso when
God “asks nicely.” Webster (1990), quite honestly, covered all of
those points over a decade ago. Only because all indications are
that they have not yet properly sunk in is it worth repeating them
here.
We will return to that issue in a later chapter.
In any case, Janwillem van de Wetering (2001) related further
experiences with an eighteenth high-lama (i.e., one who had ostensibly
been recognized as a lama in seventeen lifetimes before):
Rimpoche [sic] had been given [a] car by his support group of
London-based backers and often took girl disciples on outings
to the seashore. A month later, when I was in Amsterdam,
an accident interfered with the temple’s routines. Rimpoche,
driving home after visiting a pub in a nearby town,
accompanied by his favorite mistress, hit a tree. “Alcoholrelated”....
Rimpoche drank constantly and became irritable at
times. My wife was about to whap a fly that was bothering
her during dinner and Beth [the favorite, mini-skirted mistress]
screamed, “Don’t kill a sentient being!” and got
whacked over the head by Rimpoche, who told her to keep
her voice down.
The amorous lama in question, after years of hard living, died
in his early forties. A Mohawk Indian shaman, to whom that story
of debauchery was told, offered her scattered analysis:
“Yes,” she said, “I’ve heard of that happening before. It probably
was the only way Rimpoche could have stayed here”
(van de Wetering, 2001).
The ridiculous idea there is, of course, that the more elevated
the soul is, the more he must ground himself into the earth to keep
from simply leaving his body and returning to the bardo realms or
astral worlds, etc.
By contrast, though in line with the teachings of his own more
conservative lineage, the current Dalai Lama obeys and enforces
well-defined limits on the “pleasures of the flesh”:
His adamant stand on sexual morality is close to that of Pope
John Paul II, a fact which his Western followers tend to find
embarrassing, and prefer to ignore. The Dalai Lama’s U.S.