stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

454 STRIPPING THE GURUS
somewhat beside the point.) And God only knows what the police
were expecting to find when they raided Trungpa’s Scottish center.
(People with nothing to conceal generally do not feel the need to
desperately hide themselves, as Trungpa did, in such circumstances.)
Even metaphorically, the analysis fares no better:
Fred [Stanton]’s final comment on Andrew [Cohen] was, “Andrew
creates addicts. It’s like giving people heroin” (Tarlo,
1997).
On top of that, we again have “genuine masters” allegedly
building secret passageways leading to the dormitories of young
girls in their care. (Caplan quotes frequently and respectfully from
Muktananda in her books, thus inadvertently providing a bad, bad
example from him of how not to do the guru-disciple relationship
properly. Both of her relevant books were written well after the
1994 New Yorker exposé of him by Lis Harris.) Plus, we have the
reported pedophilia/ephebophilia of universally revered figures
such as Ramakrishna, as an early precursor to the allegations
against Sai Baba. Also, holy Zen masters “beating the crap out of”
their disciples, even to the point of death, and being celebrated for
their macho, “ego-killing” abuse by foolish persons who themselves
have obviously never been thus “beneficially” beaten. And all of
that is ever done, of course, “in the name of God, for the compassionate
benefit of all sentient beings,” by great bodhisattvas and
otherwise. And woe unto any “disloyal” disciple who should even
think otherwise, and thereby risk his “one chance at enlightenment”
in this life.
I myself am again in no way anti-drug, anti-dildo, anti-secretpassageway-to-the-dormitory,
anti-whorehouse, anti-orgy or antileprechaun.
It is simply obvious, by now, that any of those, when
put into the hands of “god-men” who have carved islands of absolute
power for themselves in the world, only make an already dangerous
situation much worse.
We can surely agree with Ms. Halifax in her three decades of
experience, though, that the delusion of enlightenment generally
“represents an aspiration that is better than an aspiration to be a
murderer.” Unless, of course, you’re Charles Manson. For, he borrowed
heavily from Eastern philosophy in creating his own prerational
view of the world, hinted at “deity status” for himself, and
believed that “since all is one, nothing is wrong.”