stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

AFTER THE ORDEAL 459
Wilber (1991). Branden is, further, another one of the founding
members of Wilber’s Integral Institute.
From the former’s own website (www.nathanielbranden.net):
The name Nathaniel Branden has become synonymous with
“the psychology of self-esteem,” a field he began pioneering
over thirty years ago. He has done more, perhaps, than any
other theorist to awaken America’s consciousness to the importance
of self-esteem to human well-being.
One would expect no less, though, from one of the two “greatest
intellects on the planet.”
So, it is a small, small spiritual world, after all. And even
smaller when one considers what happens when other scholars “go
bad”:
[Frithjof] Schuon, blessed by God and the Virgin Mary, [believes
that he] radiates grace from his body—at all times but
most potently when he is naked; and that this is itself a salvific
act....
[His given initiations] consist of Schuon in a state of
semi-nakedness at the center of a circle of semi-naked female
disciples (Rawlinson, 1997).
Even when fully clothed, Schuon was evidently no ordinary
man:
He himself says that “I was from the beginning a person different
from the others, I was made from different material.”
An unpublished paper, The Veneration of the Shaykh [written
by his Da-like fourth “wife”], says that Schuon is “an
eminent manifestation of the eternal sadguru ... an ‘avataric’
phenomenon ... a ‘prophetic’ figure ... and a great bodhisattva”;
that he demonstrates the qualities of Shiva and
Krishna; and has affinities with Abraham, David, Christ,
and Muhammad....
One disciple who questioned Schuon’s authority was
branded as mad; another was called “a natural swine”; and
many others (including these two) were excommunicated
(Rawlinson, 1997).
Dr. Schuon, as a recognized expert in the perennial philosophy
or transcendent unity of religions, was of course referred to re-