Cult Bible
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SRF Walrus Issues
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| Basically, guru subjection and cult-hard living are rather baboonlike. |
The SRF Walrus discussion board is online. It was set up by a former monastic of Self-Realization Fellowship, SRF, and many contributors find it right to talk down on the SRF management there, but not Yogananda - for that is not allowed there, as part of the policy of the board.
The question is: Why not direct fair criticism to Yogananda himself? The guru talks against himself too often. He talks with two mouths on many issues. He talks for and against selfishness, for and against human evolution of the human mind, for and against individuality, and so on. And what do his apparent loyal church leaders do? They devote their energies to claiming his guidelines are infallible and his wisdom flawless, instead of abandoning him. To get beneath Yogananda is to be victimised in a cult way, even though "It breaks my heart when I see blind dogmatism. - Yogananda [Ak 48]"
The first thing to notice is that the hallmarks of a cult are found right here: Big Boss hailing, calling Yogananda divine and so on; growing confusion among naïve members, who tend to be too gullible all in all; and claims of guru infallibility against sound documentation to the contrary.
The foremost example of messing with minds:
There is no material universe; its warp and woof is . . . illusion. [Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi, ch. 30.]
If so, there would be no Yogananda either, for one thing. A humorous example or three:
"The next generation will not give us a thought." - Yogananda [Ak 344].
However, SRF is there to spread his teachings and counteracts his sayings by such and other means. How odd and biblical in its way. Why "biblical"? Have a look:
Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, [and] overcame the Amalekite army with the sword. Then the Lord said to Moses, "Write this on a scroll as something to be remembered and make sure that Joshua hears it, because I will completely blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven." [Exod 17:9-14]
The Lord's ordinance secured that the memory of Amalek was preserved and not blotted out - the opposite of what the Lord wanted. His approach was plain stupid. Besides, much content about conquests and genocides of Joshua, are unsupported by bible archaeology, and in part contradicted. [More]
"We don't really know what is right or real . . . we are often incorrect in our judgements." - Yogananda. [Ak 414].
Compare: "We do not find fault with Yogananda's guidelines. Since we believe that . . . his wisdom is flawless." - Self-Realization Fellowship, in a notarised letter.
"No more blind believing." [Yogananda, Ak 456]
What is entertaining to outsiders is more like tragedy to victims of guru-hailing. To be a victim of false doctrine is bad, and to be a victim of a cult with confusing guidelines is bad too. By all means, Yogananda is a source of many problems that run deep in his society, the Self-Realization Fellowship Church. And if corrections need to be made, as in the sorry case of SRF, one is to direct one's fair and fit points to those in charge, and not omit remedying the true source of present errors. If such basic steps are ignored, reform is hardly had.
The Walrus Discussion Forum
This brings us to the SRF Walrus discussion board, which is on-line. Many originally well-meaning monastics and SRF devotees became disillusioned and dismayed with their fare in SRF. One third of all the SRF monastics left the SRF premises in a year or two, for example. These disgruntled ones and some others started to pour out their concerns and hearts and hurts on a discussion board. It affords many glimpses into the true state of affairs in SRF - things that ordinarily remain hidden from outsiders.
Further, someone who posted on the Walrus board said that at least parts of the Walrus Board look like a swamp. That is an alternative to the Hornet's Nest of troubles - organisation, according to Yogananda. He created his own.
Some who start discussion boards may get disappointed or disillusioned as the conversations drift or wind along according to those who get involved and how they involve themselves. And some seem to lose interest in keeping the board tidy and as a result disillusionments may grow.
Success would be fine . . .
Skill in studying and observing can be trained or nurtured. Besides, basic skilfulness, study, and mindfulness are all advocated by Buddha. Many of the ways of success are fine.
To nurture success is to assist character.
Also, a boring life-style - if solid and well founded - may nurse many future leaders, as boredom encourages initiative and things like that.
Fair ones have to tackle decent critique to appear normal. Most Yogananda's followers would say he still rides - as he wrote in his poems he would.
Spirited Conversations with Monastics
What is so great about being a monk or nun? Is it better than not becoming one, or becoming a former monk or nun? In such deliberations, the question of what kind of monk or nun that we talk about, matters just as much. After all, some monks may have sex. They seem to be in the minority, but in such as Tibetan Buddhism there are some, for your information. Also, in early Celtic Christianity the man-made rules and regulations against the sex life were not so stiff either.
You have probably heard that "the life of a monk is not easy", as an SRF monk said to me when he was back "home" at the SRF headquarters after some time in India. And that would depend on what kind of monk it is that speaks. If monks and nuns in the SRF monastic order have sex with one another, it may give rise to puritan scandals. Even in the case of a former vice president of SRF it happened. He also tells somewhere he was the one that imposed the regulations onto SRF monastics. He has a large output.
Instead of suppressing human nature, it is often advisable to regulate it tactfully, and free from lies and such human weaknesses.
Another SRF brother, Anandamoy, said directly to me once, "Have you ever thought of becoming a monk?"
"Yes, but it will have to wait," I said. I was an SRF member then, but did not feel I was quite at death's door anyhow.
"I think that is wise," he consented.
Greatness of not Being a Monk or Nun
When you lose virility, then you may get it far more easy as a monk. This outlook brings us to the ancient Hindu ashramas (life stages), where the phase of being monkish is the last before death overtakes us. That is the bottom line of the great concepts. The real-life scenario of how a monk should be is: Almost dead (to the world), at least when it comes to having sex far and wide.
Hindus traditionally divide life into four main stages. And to add to it: In Vedic times there were only three such stages, and eating meat was not prohibited. But letting such issues rest for now, here is more:
In ancient times . . . the individual practiced self-discipline [and a wide-ranging education with martial arts too] up to the age of twenty-four; then, with character formed, he entered family life. Later, giving half of his worldly possessions to his children and the other half to his guru's hermitage, the man (often with his wife) retired to the guru's place in the forest. The fourth and final ashram or disciplinary state of life consisted of complete renunciation of all worldly ties; the man and his wife would become homeless ascetics, wandering over India to receive the veneration of all householders and to bestow their blessings of light on all receptive hearts.
Such was the fourfold path of life pursued by the ordinary man of Vedic India.
- Yogananda, Self-Realization Magazine, 1950.
Some parts of the above look idyllised to me, like "veneration of all householders", and not "eaten by wild animals on wanderings through the jungles", but, anyway, the outline is there, and it stands out that the last life stage is aligned with leaving the world for good. And renunciation is a good part of it. If you have a more optimistic, even affirmative attitude to life, you try to make the best out of every season of life, without renouncing anything voluntarily.
Four Hindu Stages of Life
First, let us define some more central terms: The sex monastic is a monastic that has not dropped having sex and auto-sex. The ex monastic is a former monastic. One may become an ex monastic by dying or quitting. Then we have the moanastic that moans. He can be a monastic and a sex monastic. However, he does not even have to be a monastic, just someone having sex or moaning for other reasons, such as getting old, or getting the thing going. The sex moanastic can be just about anyone who has reached puberty or adulthood.
These things made soapy, some monastics tend to think down on sex moanastics and sex monastics. There is no biologically necessary reason for that. Faking favours hypocricy. Also, the Christian who eats blood food, is about as good as the Congressman who commits adultery for that matter, according to the central chapter 15 of Acts. The Christian who has an ample supply of black pudding, Brat, Wurst, and similar blood food in his stores, and still talks down on adulterers, oi oi! [Acts 15, 21:25]
If you look for great consistency and self-condemnation among common eaters of blood food, give it up. They seem to take the Transcendentalist philosopher Emerson's words against foolish consistency to heart instead: "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines". If you stick to foolish consistency, you persecute adulterers and smile benignly at all who eat black pudding, for example. So many unread Christians do that! They may appear to read the Bible, but have not got the wit to not take its four basics for the Gentile Christian (themselves) to heart.
Anyway, the life stage of being a common monastic seems so close to being dead. And the sexual abstinence tied in with being a monastic, is fairly clumsy. The question is what has been set up for all to follow or adjust to. No to having sex is no God-given thing, generally.
A human is a sexual being, begotten by sex, entering the world through sexual organs, and when the id (libido, zest) leaves him, there is a problem. And those who look down on women may have forgotten their mothers and fathers too, and so on.
Hindu scriptures spell out four stages of life (ashrams), and duties of each stage.
- Childhold is for play and fun and a little well adapted teaching.
- Adolescence is for studying thoughts to live by, gaining know-how of how to handle the needed things in a normal life, and so on.
- Adulthood is for getting wed and for having children and support the rest, after all. The householder or breadwinner "carries them all on his back".
- Retirement is for getting deeper and favouring one's dear ones and making the best out of what is left and right -
- The lowest caste is the sudra caste of manual workers. As you know, they can be very bright as well, and suffer from lack of privileges, including education and fair wages.
- The next caste bargains, deals in trade, money-making, and gets richer day by day if things go well. It is mercantile, like the West is becoming.
- The third caste is for statesmen. They stage strifes and wars and order and meritorious living.
- The fourth caste is for the fully grown information-getters and -seekers and -finders, in other words the well-educated ones or great and croaking frogs, as the case may be. Some froggy ones have serious assertion problems on their own behalf. A 'frog' in this context is not a Parisian; it is a term from the Transactional Analysis, TA, that was first formulated by Eric Berne in Games People Play. [Gyl].
On SRF Monasticism
Eric Dwight Ben-Meir (alias Sankara Saranam) was an SRF monastic who left and got married, and also got at least one child. Eric has this to say about other monastics who left SRF:
SOMEONE: You stated that those on the Walrus Board are biased. [. . .]SS: "The real problem with ex-SRF monks is that they are writing to people who do not have an insider's perspective . . . This is the bias . . . After reading much of the material and considering it . . . I saw unconstructive gossip, bias, and spleen venting. . . . most people involved in the discussion are not trained in . . . mathematics, philosophy, and the historical study of religion. They are simply people". (Sankara Saranam) . . . .
It could help to know why the many monastics left like that [one third of them left SRF in 2001-2].
They left for all the reasons that were written up in that series of articles that appeared in the New Times LA.The long answer: the exodus had been brewing under the surface. The Internet that came and changed everything in our lives, also made its impact felt in SRF. People were talking. News was coming out. There were leaks [and] stories.
Ananda people were . . . telling people about the SRF lawsuits over a decade. The changes to PY's teachings. The forgeries, signature changes, airbrushing of pictures and history, etc.
Then the New Times articles dropped like a hundred atomic bombs. Until now NOBODY knew, not even most monastics, what had really been going on behind the ramparts of 3880 San Rafael [SRF international headquarters]. The mansions. The illegitimate children. The duplicity. The abuse. The dysfunction. The secrecy. The lawsuits. The high-powered million-dollar attorneys. The biggest secret of all: [The SRF Leader] Daya Mata hadn't lived in MW [Mount Washington] for over 30 years and nobody even knew, even the monastics!
All this sent tidal waves throughout the membership and the ashrams. Copies of the New Times were smuggled into MW and the other ashrams. People were talking. At the temples. In the ashrams. In hushed tones. [To many] monastics the farce was too painful to keep up.
In the end, the year 2000 was the beginning of the fall. Monastics were secretly plotting their escape. Many knew what the others were up to. For some it was a collusion. They planned their escape together. For others they could no longer stand to be in a place that
- was no longer conducive to spiritual advancement,
- no longer lived by the now held ideals and the ideals of its founder,
- was abusively and severely repressive and dysfunctional and did not turn out to be the heaven they thought it would be.
It was a shakeup that was long overdue. [Extracts]
You cannot tell it very much clearer than that, I guess.
Cults and Regrets
Jesus said, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick . . . go and learn what this means: "I desire . . . not sacrifice." . . . "I haven't come to call the righteous, but sinners." [Matt 9:12-13, excerpts]
So to be a Christian is to be sick, which is regrettable. So is being herded if you were created for something better. Man was.
SRF is headed by monastics who claim to be following Jesus - and Krishna, and four Hindu gurus. It is in their current aims and ideals.
If monastics, they seem to be hard nuts. If Christians too, alas for that! Yet as it turns out or as luck would have it, the SRF Christianity is a sort of shewbread thing.
The dictum "The more Christian, the worse," deserves some explanation, but not expiation. There are many degrees of being Christian, or fanatic, or mislead, or both. In traditional Christianity, many feel lax and hardly go to church more than once a year, apart from the weddings, christenings and burials. That is how it is in Scandinavian countries, by and large. At the other end are the "reborn Christians". "Personal Christians" may be less tense and fanatical, and then there are all the goody-goodies in between those ends of the spectre. In Norway, about one fourth or third of all who are registered as Christians, are personal Christians and "reborn". As you may see, their health may be at risk.
To be Christian is to be a member of what once started as a sect, one with millions of killed members. "It has not rained; the Christians are to blame," said Romans as they made martyrs of millions. And Jesus said his followers are sick, sinners, and need a doctor:
To spoon-feed it: There is something better than being a Christian: it is being healthy and having a fine moral - says Jesus. We should go for that, and not go for being herded like sheep, for "How much more valuable is a man than a sheep!" [Matthew 12:12]". Christianity is founded on vicarious sacrifice - the idea that it is good to let an innocent pay for your errors. Feel free to go for higher moral than that. Buddha teaches how to.
In conclusion, watch ut for conformity and its pressures too. Some forms of conformity and its shared, tense faith may be detrimental to higher health.
Also keep well in mind that "the message received is not necessarily the message sent." So double-check to see you have got the meaning intended, as in "foolish consistency" by Emerson. Is it "foolish consistency" or "foolish consistency" or both he is at? The bet is that the philosopher had the second meaning in mind. Just remain aware of possible double meanings here and there in other passages too. One should not be taken in.
Following a decent Eastern path is far more decent than one of vicarious sacrifice, which burdens innocents. And learn to recognize who are your friends, in time. Buddha offers helping guidance here. [Link]
Many cultic groups seek to "contract" members by demagoguous skills and a play on such as isolation, nervousness, no way out, all too common insecurity, and largely unfulfilled natural yearnings too, and all too often turn out to be a nuisance, even a danger to members.
An initially painful truth can be less painful and serve you far better than
returning to a pleasant lie as a willy-nilly. Small wonder that many ex-members of the SRF cult have been depressed and grieving over lost time, lives, and other resources.
Against depression
When depressed, seek to acknowledge this:
1. A vocation helps against despair many a time. A vacation should help a lot too.
2. Be bold enough to have it your way. And, secondly, be bold enough to recognize that you have been discouraged, for that may well be a fact that you don't want to confront. Confidence to believe what suits yourself and not cult leaders is basic, and time to see it through. Critically reexamine many ideas that you may have held for a long time.
3. A long series of small steps, even baby steps, may be needed, Set about doing something sensible about what bothers you. But as you do, try to look behind the surfaces too, to avoid the stumbles. Look sweet enough; that often helps, especially women.
4. Apply principles and skills of problem solving to identify and evaluate optional strategies toward one or more of your true goal in life. This phase may be assisted by common-sense oriented therapy. [Link]
The Adlerian approach of social learning assumes that problems may be solved or modified by recognition of them or their areas, or both, and then regulated a bit or more. In step with this, solutions nearly always require a series of strategic small steps toward one or more long-range goals. And especially initial progress should regularly be monitored and solution strategies altered for the sake of more success.
With regard to vocation one can re-examine the possible directions to take and review the career options open. One may deliberate very carefully.
Get to know enough. One may take adult education courses, join clubs, join museums and attend museum social events, and other such activities.
Make extra effort to contact extended family members and old friends, even though most of them will be busy with their careers and families. Making friends (male and female) will most likely come from getting involved in social activities that are likely to be frequented by single people.
Don't try mind-emptying techniques of meditation if you are too introverted. Ample rest could do you well. If you don't expect all too much, you may simply enjoy nature, happenings, meetings, and things as is convenient till you find somebody with whom you "click."
A monastic life is suitable only for the few that feel great with having no sexual contacts and outlets. They live "old peoples' stage of life", one may say. That they are a harsh step from death is another way of putting it.
5. Choose a suitable, realistic course of action, and don't look down on tavern people: Don't feel snub. Some there try to be comrades too.
Some need to have good feelings about themselves through opinions as facts, but rise above it.
Good intentions include getting old as someone of sterling worth too. To age with grace is no unattainable ideal today either. Nonetheless stay flexible and accept help as you need it.
6. You may also want to look at the pages on complementary remedies, such as Bach Remedies. Such things may accompany other and well-directed efforts.
Among antidepressant herbs there are St. John's Wort and oats to try too. Even basil tea may be tried, and thyme tea too. The first suggestion, St. John's Wort has now acknowledged, well documented effects against mild depressions. David Hoffman goes into some of these and some more - including ginseng, lavender and rosemary in his excellent The Complete Illustrated Herbal [Tih 207-8]. Tea can be made from one or more of these combined, and had three times a day, for example.
As for homeopathic remedies, if anyone with a depression came to me to get some assistance, I should suggest Ocimum basilicum D30, (it is basil) and Benzodiazepine D100 among the remedies to be tried. Against periodic depressions I might suggest Kalium muriaticum D6, or Mercurius nitros D12.
How to take them: [Link]
Broadly on homeopathy: [Link]
There are many other remedies to consider, however, and medical investigation and proper medicine is not to be abandoned for the sake of complementary stuff.
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Ak: Yogananda, Paramahansa. Man's Eternal Quest. New ed. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship, 1982.
Falk: Falk, Geoffrey D. Stripping the Gurus: Sex, Violence, Abuse and Enlightenment. 2008. On-line.
[www.strippingthegurus.com/stgsamplechapters/yogananda.asp]
Gyl: Berne, Eric. Games People Play. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967.
Tih: Hoffmann, David. The Complete Illustrated Herbal: A Safe and Practial Guide to Making and Using Herbal Remedies. Bath: Mustard/Parragon, 1999.
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