stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

380 STRIPPING THE GURUS
“These guys were all peaceniks,” [Zimbardo] recalled of
the students chosen to be guards. “They became like Nazis”....
“It shows how easy it is for good people to become perpetrators
of evil.”
Zimbardo’s website, at www.prisonexp.org, presents a fuller,
online photo/video documentary of that chilling experiment.
* * *
Temporary residents of psychiatric asylums have observed with
discomfort how easy it was for them to slip into enjoying having all
of their decisions made for them—as to when to eat, bathe, sleep,
etc.
It would be naïve to think that a similar dynamic did not apply
to a significant proportion of our world’s ashram residents. For,
they equally have their practical decisions made by the rules of the
community, and their moral and metaphysical ones made by the
guru-figure. With or without profound energy flows and transmitted
bliss/enlightenment, that abdication of independence would
appeal to far too many, and provides a very significant additional
impediment in attempting to return to the “real world.” For in the
latter, one must make one’s own choices, and be held responsible
for the consequences. In the former, by contrast, to yield one’s decisions
to others is taken as a sign of loyalty and spiritual growth in
the loss of ego, and is correspondingly socially rewarded.
Once you get the rules and the rituals straight, it’s easy. No
decisions, no choices, nothing to plan. It’s ever so much harder
to live on your own [than as a Zen monk] (Boehm, 1996).
Given that all daily needs were taken care of—food, clothing,
living arrangements—there were few decisions left for a
member [of Heaven’s Gate] to make (Lalich, 2004).
Persons can voluntarily elect to enter a total institution and
cease thereafter, to their regret, to be able to make ... important
decisions. In other cases, notably the religious, inmates
may begin with and sustain a willful desire to be stripped
and cleansed of personal will (Goffman, 1961).
Jetsunma’s telephone number was unlisted and kept private,
even from most of her students. “Otherwise, I’d get calls all