stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

AFTER THE ORDEAL 453
one of them has allegedly misused (i.e., effectively stolen) temple
funds, or feasted while his most devoted followers starved, thus
exhibiting less moral sense than the average bank robber. (Stealing
from a church or from one’s friends and admirers, after all, has
got to be morally worse than stealing from a faceless corporation or
a bank.)
In the same vein, more than one has been accused of physically
beating or otherwise brutally oppressing his or her spouse. As
the Mill Valley Record (Colin, et al., 1985) reported:
On one occasion during a raucous party at the church sanctuary
in Clear Lake, eyewitnesses say they saw [Adi Da]
push his wife Nina down a flight of stairs. They also claim
that during that party Jones pulled a sizable hunk of hair
from her head.
“Concerned physicians.”
[Rajneesh] wasn’t the Master [Deeksha had] fallen in love
with. She’d witnessed him beating Vivek once, she swore
(Franklin, 1992).
Recall also Swami Rama reportedly kicking women in the buttocks.
And further:
Chögyam Trungpa wrote that Marpa, the tenth-century Tibetan
guru, “lost his temper and beat people.” Marpa is also
considered an incarnate Buddha, the spiritual father of Tibet’s
greatest yogi Milarepa. Maybe his beatings were compassion
in disguise, but it is hard to understand why the
same argument could not be made for the drunk who abuses
his wife and children (Butterfield, 1994; italics added).
In terms of the aforementioned (and above-denigrated, by
Halifax) use of illicit and abused prescription substances: Included
among the usage attributed to various “genuine sages” have been
LSD, mescaline, psilocybin, nitrous oxide, and the opium derivatives
Percodan and Demerol. Also amyl nitrite, a blood vesseldilator
used to cause a “high” or to improve sex; and, it goes without
saying, marijuana. Not to mention Quaaludes reportedly given
as a medical treatment in Rajneeshpuram. (That only Percodan,
Demerol, Quaaludes and nitrous oxide among all those are recognized
as being—like the opiate heroin—physically addictive, seems