stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

AFTER THE ORDEAL 441
confession (to one’s superiors) and humiliating public penance, for
even ridiculously minor “sins.” And that Church is by no means an
easy one to surpass, in terms of guilt and ignorance:
Even today, the official teaching of the Roman Catholic
Church holds masturbation to be a mortal sin [i.e., one “punishable
by eternal damnation, unless one repented in confession”],
though few serious theologians consider it a cause for
the loss of heaven (Berry and Renner, 2004).
* * *
Interestingly, had Rajneesh and his inner circle of followers not
gone “over a line” with their public bioterrorism activities, etc., his
ashrams would still be viewed today as fine models of how spiritual
communities should be run—as J. Donald Walters’ Ananda
was, for example, prior to his own disgrace. That is in spite of the
fact that, as early as 1979, the National Institute of Mental Health
had been warned that Rajneesh’s Poona ashram might become
“another Jonestown” (Gordon, 1987). (Likewise, the San Francisco
Zen Center had “long [been] thought of as the very model of a modern
Zen center,” prior to the “Apocalypse” following from the public
airing of Richard Baker’s hitherto-private reported activities there
[Fields, 1992].)
Until Rajneesh spoke publicly, the only charges pending
against him or anyone else on the ranch were related to immigration
fraud. If he hadn’t exposed Sheela’s wrongdoings,
the authorities would probably never have found informants
to testify, let alone obtained convictions on wiretapping, poisoning,
and arson. And if Rajneesh hadn’t tried to flee the
country, both he and his commune would in all likelihood
still have been in Oregon (Gordon, 1987).
The composition of that same ex-ashram is of significant interest:
According to the Oregon University survey, 11% of the [Rajneeshpuram]
commune members had postgraduate degrees
in psychology or psychiatry and another 11% had B.A.’s in
the field (Fitzgerald, 1986).
Thus, nearly one-quarter of the residents at Rajneeshpuram
were trained psychologists. That documented fact does nothing to