stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

386 STRIPPING THE GURUS
tenets on which the community was originally founded. (Compare
SRF’s current monopoly on “valid” kriya initiation, etc.) Yet, there
is simultaneously no shortage of indoctrination, required deference,
ostracism and worse, utilized to keep the followers from even
cognizing, much less speaking up about, those power-grabs and
rule-changes. And before you know it, the Board of Directors members,
for example, have become “more equal” than the people they
should be accountable to. They will further benefit from there being
no shortage of peons eager to prove their loyalty to the cause,
and work their way up “toward God,” by doubly reinforcing that
inequality on anyone who dares to question it.
Profound deference in such spiritual communities will further
occur even if all below the “alpha sage” believe that they themselves
can eventually attain to his or her ostensibly exalted level of
wisdom or spiritual realization. For, no small part of the means
toward attaining that enlightened wisdom is to “temporarily” defer
to its manifestation in the guru-figure. Conversely, to question
“God’s” wisdom is to suffer one form or another of damnation within
the community, just as to obey him unquestioningly is to secure
one’s own salvation.
There is in the Indian tradition the notion that ... “criticizing
the guru” is a thing that the disciples must not tolerate; and
they don’t (Bharati, 1976; italics added).
Whatever you do should be done only to please the guru.
Without the guru, enlightenment is impossible (Butterfield,
1994).
You have to do everything your guru says. You must obey
(Neem Karoli Baba, in [Das, 1997]).
[Ramakrishna] once admonished an unsuspecting young
man who refused to wash the Master’s feet after the latter’s
toilet: “If I piss standing, you buggers have to do it dancing
around. You must do my bidding for your own good” (Sil,
1998).
In the relevant words of Upasani Baba (1978)—a disciple of
the original Shirdi Sai Baba—who was himself married, by ancient
Vedic custom, to a full twenty-five virgin girls: