Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: Valma ()
Date: April 04, 2019 01:13AM

[youtu.be]

Latest video of H. Jolicoeur where he shows a satsang with Papaji (the sound of it is not so good but some of it is transcribed by Henri.)

Also a very interesting remark he makes about giving new names to people in such a spiritual group setting.

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: PapajisaysNO ()
Date: April 04, 2019 02:07AM

Another teacher speaking up about abuse of power in guru dynamics. Not sure if it’s in reference to Mooji or not. It seems spot on to the accusations about him though.

It may be helpful to some here so posting.

[youtu.be]

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: Sahara71 ()
Date: April 04, 2019 05:37AM

Thanks PapajisaysNO,

for sharing that video. I felt very sorry for that particular teacher explaining manipulation and abuse by spiritual teachers- she seemed confused at times, lost for words at other times...

To me, it seemed like she was very unsure and unhappy, trying desperately to hold on to some beliefs about non-duality while at the same time recognizing how non-dualist positions can be used to exploit people.

I very strongly suspect that she has been abused within a cult herself - I actually didn't watch the whole thing, but that seemed to be what she was alluding to. (Just my opinion, as someone who has worked for many years with people in crisis situations.)

I think that most religious doctrines, or political doctrines, or even philosophical doctrines for that matter, can be used to exploit people... if you are a manipulative person who has the intentions to use other people for your own advantage.

But in my experience, non-dualism particularly lends itself to creating an uneven power relationship between teacher and student. Just by way of being called a 'teacher', that person gives themselves some authority or places themselves above others in experience or knowledge. The 'student' hungers to learn, so they are very open to being (unknowingly) exploited.

If you let yourself believe that "everything in the universe unfolds naturally in a great play of consciousness" and that "I am not actually this person" and "emotions are just conditioning" - then, you know, whoopeee! Anything goes, doesn't it???

Abuse is not really abuse and I am not really here, anyway. Things happen, but who is to say those things are either good or bad??? No-one, it seems.

No ethics, no morality, no right or wrong.... just stuff happening to no-one in particular. A big recipe for disaster, in my opinion!

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: PapajisaysNO ()
Date: April 04, 2019 11:55AM

Good points Sahara71.

I don’t think she presents things very directly and is difficult to follow.

But this is what I got from it.

Mooji reportedly said in satsang in Rishikesh that he could leave the stage right then if everyone wanted him to because “I have always been nothing”...she’s calling that bull crap. She’s saying the “character” is not what is nothing. The character (person) will always be a conditioned personality and the only reason she can think someone would deny their humanness and claim to only be nothing (the absolute, God) is to exploit those who follow them. She’s calling it manipulation.

That’s one of they points I liked.

I felt he was manipulating to say that to the crowd at the moment of controversy.

She continues with how if people believe someone is nothing they will get hurt and do what that person tells them to, including have sex with them and/or give them loads of money. They will do this to try to align with the “nothingness”. Therefore it’s a ploy.

Another point I liked.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2019 12:08PM by PapajisaysNO.

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: April 04, 2019 08:02PM

Jeffrey Masson visited India as a teenager--in the 1950s. His family had been students of a Theosophical guru named Paul Brunton and had learned Advaita from Brunton and later studied with Atmananda.

Masson describes himself and how he coped when he was shocked by Bombay.

Quote

'This was my first trip outside of Europe and the United States' Jeffrey Masson writes. '..and my first visit to a Third World country. I was not prepared in any way for the reality of India, fo rthe poverty and human suffering that I glimpsed for the first time in my life from the window of the taxicab driving past some of the world's biggest and poorest slums. The only way I knew to deal with this sudden descent into the real world was to immerse myself even more in the shadow world of spirituality. The appalling poverty and disease I saw when I arrived in Bombay did not really exist: it was Maya, an illusion. What you see is not what you get. What you see, the sufering you preceive around you, is unreal, a philosophic illusion ("the external world is a joke and a very poor joke at that", and therefore not be attended to.

'India was particularly well suited to the spiritual insularity I had developed. It too suffered from some of the same debility, so we were well matched. Indian philosophy long ago solved the puzzle of human suffering by depriving it of reality.

The philosophers were constantly discoursing on a cosmic double standard. Suffering, misery and unhappiness were defined as such only form the lower(Masson's italics) point of view. From the higher point of view, there was no difference between the wealthy man and the beggar. It was, needless to say, extremely convenient as a balm for any conscience that threatened to erupt when faced with the suffering all around.

THis powerful rationalizing phrase---which parallels many other spiritual traditions---was invented by a priviliged Brahmin class to distract (dissociate? C) from the poverty and misery created by this same class.'

page 112

My Father's Guru:A Journey Through Spirituality and Disillusion by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson


Arthur Koestler visited India at about the same time the Masson family did. He wrote about it in a small book, The Lotus and the Robot.

Koestler was struck by one feature of Indian life in particular--the staggering levels of noise and the utter lack of privacy. Even the temples were noisy.

Koestler that he found it easier to find contemplative peace and quiet in New York City than in India.

Worse, those in the Indian spiriutal elite, including MK Gandhi had the attitude that if one was a sufficiently spiritual person, one would not be bothered by this ambient noise.

Though Koestler did not use the term dissociation (the term did not exist in the 1950s), it appeared to him that all too often in India yoga and meditation were used to split oneself off from a problem or from a painful situation, rather than acknoweleging the situation, the stress one actually felt, and then examining ways to solve the problematic features of that situation.


Am starting to wonder if advaita developed as one of a number of methods to dissociate oneself from social suffering.

There's little privacy and quiet in India. What is a sensitive person to do?

In the early 19th century, Richard Francis Burton commented on the lack of privacy in India. (Personal Narrative of the Pilgrimage From Medinah to Meccah")

Quote

But caste divides a people into huge families, each member of which has a right to know everything about his "caste-brother," because a whole body might be polluted and degraded by the act of an individual. Hence, there is no such thing as domestic privacy, and no system of espionage devised by rulers could be so complete as that self-imposed by the Hindus."

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...one cannot retire into oneself an instant without being asked some puerile question by a companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one's shoulder; when from the hour you rise to the time you rest, you must ever be talking or listening, you must converse yourself to sleep in a public dormitory, and give ear to your companions' snores and mutterings at midnight.

Perhaps many Indian religious practices developed as ways to carve out some personal relieve in a cluster of cultures notable for instrusive snoopiness, envy, and lack of privacy.

Those of us acculturated in Western cultures characterized by excessive social isolatation might have very toxic reactions if we were to apply dissociative strategies that developed as coping strategies in the non private, instrusive social structures of India.

Whether in India or the West, it appears that many can abuse Advaita or Buddhism as a kind of dissociative strategy.

And, such teachings can be easily abused by assholes and downright predators to confuse their prey.

A teacher who faces crowds and who possibly is running away from his or her own human feelings of vulnerability wont be able to assist students who are tempted to use
this material for dissociative purposes.

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: GODHIMSELF ()
Date: April 05, 2019 11:29AM

At what point does a guru (like Mooji ) start to lose everything?

Sogyal Rimpoche lost everything as soon as the serious allegations where publish and victims came forward

Bikram lost everything when video testimonial of his victims whent online

When a small group like this forum help someone get deprogramme of Mooji ...possibly a few important victims of Mooji will do a video testimonial
And it will be game over for Mooji

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: Valma ()
Date: April 06, 2019 02:21AM

[youtu.be]

Another interesting video/feedback of someone who questioned Mooji & co

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: Sahara71 ()
Date: April 07, 2019 06:07AM

A very informative article from the Questioning Mooji facebook page:

[www.facebook.com]

The author has written a compilation of what other spiritual teachers have to say about Moo and none of it is very flattering.

Jeff Brown has this to say:

"Tony (aka Mooji) always struck me as deeply delusional."

Jeff does not mince his words!


Even Joan Tollifson has re-posted her initial response to the Moo allegations. (She posted a response, then removed it and now has apparently reinstated it.)

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: GODHIMSELF ()
Date: April 07, 2019 02:15PM

Thank you sahara ...that was needed a series of opiniom bt Moo piers ...

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Re: Mooji a cult?
Posted by: GODHIMSELF ()
Date: April 10, 2019 04:01AM

"I too received multiple accounts independent of what Be Scofield wrote
.And they were from friends whose judgment I trust.Mostly spiritual teachers who have counseled traumatized /disillusioned ex -Moji students "
Rick Archer (founder of Buddha at the Gas Pump )

Rick Archer is a very important person with an impeccable personality
I think we will witness soon the end of Mooji cult .
1

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