stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

412 STRIPPING THE GURUS
Indeed, that perspective is fully comparable to Wilber’s safe distance
from Da and Cohen, and his equal recommendation that others
surrender themselves to an “adventure” which he himself has
never had.)
Meher Baba’s teachings also included the instruction, “Don’t
worry. Be happy” (C. Welch, 1995). His ideas in general greatly
influenced Townshend in writing his classic rock opera, “Tommy,”
about a child traumatized into being deaf, dumb and blind, and
thereafter receiving his knowledge of the world only through (skin)
sensations.
Ironically, Townshend himself went stone deaf within a decade
of recording that album, after years of in-concert aural abuse.
Along with Baba’s silence, then, between the two of them they covered
two-thirds of Tommy’s disabilities.
If I were Roger Daltrey, I’d be having regular eye checkups.
For, Baba’s own healing abilities, even while alive, seem to have
been markedly less impressive than he and his followers claimed
them to be. Indeed, as Paul Brunton (1935) related:
I have taken the trouble to investigate during my travels the
few so-called miracles of healing which [Meher Baba] is alleged
to have performed. One is a case of appendicitis, and
the sufferer’s simple faith in Meher is said to have completely
cured him. But strict enquiry shows that the doctor
who has attended this man could discover nothing worse
than severe indigestion! In another case a nice old gentleman,
who has been reported cured overnight of a whole catalog
of ailments, seems to have had little more than a swollen
ankle!
As further detailed by Brunton, Meher’s numerous prophecies
concerning upcoming calamitous events fared no more impressively,
consistently failing to materialize on time.
Brunton then came to an understandable conclusion:
Meher Baba, though a good man and one living an ascetic
life, is unfortunately suffering from colossal delusions about
his own greatness ... a fallible authority, a man subject to
constantly changing moods, and an egotist who demands
complete enslavement on the part of his brain-stupefied followers.