stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

346 STRIPPING THE GURUS
• In the midst of all that top-heavy yet inadequate management,
I was informed—unsolicited—by the non-monastic
project manager of that enterprise, that the whole programming
venture was sure to succeed. That assurance
was given on the basis of the “enlightened” (yet medicationfleeing)
ashram administrator’s visualizing of “blueprints
in the ether” for those plans in his meditations. Compare
Daya Mata’s (1971) confidence:
The blueprint for this work [i.e., SRF] was set in the
ether by God; it was founded at His behest, and His
love and His will sustain and guide it. I know this
beyond doubt.
“And God will lead the way.”
Indeed, the relevant manager’s expectation was that
the current project would bring in a thousand hours of work
per month. That, at least, is what he explicitly requested
from the associated devotee salesman, for an anticipated
programming staff of half a dozen people. The contract I
signed further specified that I would be paid $30 U.S. per
hour. That works out to over a third of a million dollars of
anticipated gross income per year, just to cover the salaries.
Plus, the project manager was already building a house
near the ashram, with the intention of deriving his full income
from the software shop. Thus, with his cut, the annual
gross would have had to be around half a million dollars
for there to be anything left over for the ashram.
Such rosy pictures of the future, however, were not to
come to pass.
Not even close.
I spent three months working with the external project
manager on that “content management” programming,
against the foot-dragging of my immediate supervisor. (By
the end of that period, even the hardly brilliant project
manager was floating the idea of replacing that defective
individual.) After completing that “training in negativity”
period at HV, I returned to Canada, and waited for the
promised telecommuting work to arrive. And waited. For
two full months. With not a single hour of paying work provided.