stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

... TO A NUNNERY 315
The people running [SRF] are supposedly enlightened siddhas,
which makes it even more confusing, because how dare
lay devotees question, or worse, challenge, what they have
done? But then how can we swallow what’s being done (radical
editing, photo alteration, and the rest of it [see Dakota,
1998])? (Kriya Yoga Discussion Board, 2001).
In a letter to me, SRF defined a siddha as one who is “unconditionally
one with God, partaking of all God’s attributes,
including those of omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence”
(Rawlinson, 1997).
Such beings would ostensibly never make mistakes. Yogananda
himself essentially confirmed as much:
The actions of true masters, though not easily understood by
worldly people, are always wisdom-guided, never whimsical
(in Kriyananda, 1979).
A master’s word cannot be falsified; it is not lightly given
(Yogananda, 1946).
Regarding “mistakes” and the like in Yogananda’s own life,
however: It has been asserted that, in the February 1934 issue of
the SRF-published East-West magazine, he had praised the Italian
fascist leader Mussolini as being a “master brain,” who had been
sent to Earth by God to serve as a role model for humanity. (I have
not been able to obtain a copy of that issue myself, and so cannot
corroborate that claim. Significantly, though, an earlier issue of
East-West had approvingly included a short piece by Mussolini
[1927] himself, on “Science and Religion.”) A mere year later, however,
the same dictator invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia), in what has
been viewed as the opening round of WWII.
Of course, that a guru would sympathize with a totalitarian
dictator should really not be so surprising: There is, after all, very
little actual difference between the two positions. (Interestingly,
Pope Pius XI, too, “spoke of Mussolini as ‘a man sent by Providence’”
[Cornwell, 1999].) That is so, even down to both sets of societies
beginning, in the most generous reading, with the best of
intentions for all, prior to their leaders becoming utterly corrupted
in their exercise of power.
Nor, given the history of violence and suppression in our
world’s secular totalitarian states, should we be surprised to find