stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

348 STRIPPING THE GURUS
During her freshman and sophomore years at Monrovia
High School, Leslie [Van Houten] was one of
the homecoming princesses. She tried out again her
junior year, but this time she didn’t make it. Bitter
over the rejection, she ran away with [her boyfriend,
Bobby] Mackey to Haight-Ashbury. The scene there
frightened her, however, and she returned home to
finish high school and to complete a year of secretarial
training. Mackey, in the meantime, had become a
novitiate priest in the Self Realization Fellowship. In
an attempt to continue their relationship, Leslie became
a novitiate nun, giving up both drugs and sex.
She lasted about eight months before breaking with
both Mackey and the yoga group (Bugliosi and Gentry,
1975).
The fact that Van Houten—the explicit namesake of
The Simpsons’ Milhouse—was let into the ashrams at all, of
course, says nothing positive about the ability of the “advanced
souls” at SRF to evaluate others’ character, via intuition
or otherwise. Indeed, less concern about sexual orientation
and blind obedience to an “infallible” dead guru or
living mother-figure, and more about character and the
many positive aspects of independence, would serve the organization
far better
• And just when you think it really can’t get any worse, you
discover the white supremacist Jost (Joseph) Turner (d.
1996), founder of the National Socialist Kindred. For, Turner
received kriya initiation from SRF, and then lived for
two years in
a small intentional community in northern California
which was founded by one of Yoganandas [sic] direct
disciples.... He foresaw the importance of Yoganandas
[sic] cooperative communities, and he realised
[sic] that it was his mission to fulfill that vision. Today,
his intentional community is probably the largest
and most successfull [sic] in the world (Turner,
2001).
Turner went on to evolve and teach his own version of
“Aryan Kriya,” claiming guidance and inspiration from Ba-