stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

356 STRIPPING THE GURUS
“The Dalai Lama has known about this for years and done
nothing. There is a real code of secrecy and silence,” said
[Victoria] Barlow (Lattin, 1994).
Interestingly, contemporary disaffected disciples of Yogananda,
in spite of their own disillusion, have yet proposed that no one
should be informed about the behind-the-scenes issues with SRF
until they have been involved with the organization for at least a
decade. By that point, it is believed, they may have begun to lose
some of their initial idealism on their own, being then more willing
to listen to the possibility that the guru and his organization are
less than perfect. For my own part, however, I disagree completely
with that approach. After all, many of the most committed students
of any spiritual path will undertake a long-term, residential
stay within their first ten years or so. And it is exactly in that context
where the real damage is done. I speak from experience on all
of those points.
Further, ten years might as well be a hundred if one is only
having contact with such a community from “outside,” via books,
printed lessons, or mere casual and occasional contact. For, all of
those have been carefully edited to ensure that nothing uncomplimentary
about the organization is ever revealed through them.
(Compare simply attending Mass as a lay Catholic, versus being
imprisoned in the organization as a sodomized altar boy or a monastic.
Indeed, if we have learned one thing from Bette Midler, it is
that “from a distance there is harmony” ... even if, up close, the
situation is very different.)
One may well not be willing to consider the possibility that
any of the reported “dirt” on one’s favorite organization could be
true during one’s initial “honeymoon” period with it. To suggest,
however, that having that dirt swept under the rug is preferable to
at least being made aware of it, and thus being in a position to
make relatively informed decisions about one’s future there,
strikes me as ridiculous. When dealing with our world’s religious/
spiritual organizations in the long term, such ignorance is not
bliss, nor is it a path to anything but pain.
As Bailey and Bailey (2003) put it, when discussing the concerns
increasingly surrounding Sai Baba:
This is an opportunity to become aware of [the reported problems],
thus moving into a position enabling informed choice,
rather than one coming from ignorance.