I think that Mooji sometimes says the right things but he is not the right man. In the short term, some people including myself benefited from it, but in the long terms one may get confused and one does not make any progress. I try to respect the freedom of the speech (Mooji videos, satsangs) and freedom of the assembly (Mooji ashram). I think that the both are above what is right or wrong.
Now, I warn anybody from meeting or watching Mooji for a long time, it’s my experience. His main motivations are only to make the spiritual legacy, make the name for himself, and be surrounded by young women. Mooji is a kind of cynical person without any love.
By the way, I read new Mooji’s bio on his new website. There is a lot of funny stuff there. For instance: Mooji went to a college, where?, no mention that he left several wives or life partners with three or more kids. On the other hand, he may have experienced some child’s trauma, he lost both parents when he was one year old his mother left him and father died when he was nine years old, in addition, he was an immigrant in the UK not easy life for a Jamaican. It may be the reason for building the ashram and creating the cult. In his bio, he really met some spiritual people (priest) and went to India to seek for a spiritual master, he was a kind of serious about it at the times, it is the truth about him as well. But generally, everything about him has been half-baked and he is full of half-truths and small lies.

Newsgroup post from 2017:

"> I watched a Mooji video in which a very zoned-out young devotee asked
> from the back of the hall if he could "come close," and on being
> invited, sat down at Mooji's feet, who then began speaking. He said,
> with the appropriate gestures, if I take away your ears, your nose,
> your mouth; if I take away your hair, your skin, your teeth and skull;
> if I take away all this, what will I find? (paraphrased from memory)
>
> He then went on to ask: and when there is only that [aware emptiness],
> is there any distance?

I know that the above was supposed to happen in
public (being recorded on video), and be metaphorical,
not physical, but transposed to the physical realm, it
would sound much like how some gurus get their
followers to give themselves up to them for sex. (Adi
Da and Trungpa, rightly or wrongly, come to mind).

Perhaps some Tantric scriptures are records of such
disquisitions and their results. "


[groups.google.com]

About Mooji’s new bio and his wives and kids: Mooji Video: Mooji Shares the Experience of Loosing His Son: [online-satsang.com]
At 3:00 Mooji said “a friend? called me from home, my son died, my son was brought up by his grandmother…”
In India in 1994, Mooji did not feel anything to learn of this tragic event because his son was a foreigner person for him. His son was 23 years old in year 1994, it means Mooji was 18 to conceive his first child, Mooji was not with him, Jeason was brought up by his grandmother….
Mooji’s second wife/partner worked at a gas station in Brixton in 1987 (from the Guardian paper article) about Mooji, he had probably two kids with her and he left her as well when he was between 30-40 years old and after that he lived with his sister in times, when he was in India. One may also look at so many Mooji’s girlfriends in ashram (Radha, Brazilian girlfriend, Samadhi, Lakshmi, and Krishnabai…)



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2018 01:33AM by Horowitz.

Hello all

I have been following this topic since the beginning and I am grateful to those who moderate and contribute to this neccessary dialogue.

I speak as a former devotee of Moo, as a casualty of his method, and thankfully now as a neutral observer on the path of Advaita.

I have recovered from a truly devastating time in my life which can be directly attributed to the false teaching which moo espouses and the mind control, hypnosis, and psychological tactics which he and his parasitic sangha employ at his estate in Portugal.

I may be vague about any timeline related details because i wish to remain anonymous and the reasons for this will become clear. I can say that i lived at sahaja many times and had close contact with moo, i have seen over the years how the place changed , how moo changed and how the whole organisation has been micro-managed by moo to create a very clever and deceitful trap designed to extract money from genuine seekers and to select people who are vulnerable to the tactics of fear, group-think, mind control and a sexual meritocracy.

I have great empathy and compassion for anybody here who has experienced this personally either at sahaja or anywhere else and encourage you to speak out about your experience .

I am aware of my own fear about talking about this stuff which only helps to remind me that i was completely taken in by a fraudster. Common sense tells me that a genuine, compassionate, loving teacher would not leave me feeling confused, paranoid and deem it necessary for me to hide my identity before discussing my experience around him ? AND YET i can still sometimes question wether the whole thing is just my mind playing tricks on me ( not that often now) here is the residual power of this kind of trickery.

To trick somebody out of a few hundred or thousand quid in some kind of rip off , lets say for example identity fraud or car deal is bad enough but kind of expected these days and is generally forgotten quite quickly. But to trick someone by taking advantage of a genuine desire for Liberation arising out of a state of suffering is perhaps the most heinous of frauds, and it IS fraud because i can tell you that although moo is certainly deluded he knows full well that he is not enlightened, he knows he is lacking and this is what is driving him.

I came to see a positive side in this and here is an explanation of this. be;low is a question i asked a true Sage and his answer is full of light

Q How can i know if a Guru/ teacher is fake?

A Don't waste you're time with this question, ask yourself instead 'is the devotee fake?' A true devotee cannot be fooled by a fake teacher.

It has some depth. It may seem controversial in light of the subject of this thread which is that minds are being controlled and money taken and psychological tactics employed to entrap the unwary but it is a positive message. Most of the readers and contributors to this topic will have already detached from or disregarded moo but may still be caught up in the confusion/disbelief/ self doubt and even despair that that he creates in people so i wanted to add this early on to remind you that it is your great fortune that you have been able to see the falsity of his words through the the very real power that he has. You have learned a vitally important lesson and this has strengthened you in a unique way. Many of those who remain with him are unable to escape the lie, they have abandoned their lives and face a very difficult time ahead when he decides to retire with his millions of euros and boots them all out without a penny to their name and the kind of psychological damage that renders them unable to function in society.

Perhaps some of the readers here are not in search of a teacher or even of some spiritual truth but to those who are, do not be discouraged, you have good intuition and this is vital.

The Sage's answer also reveals another truth. The close sangha and parasitic homeys are not really genuinely looking for a Guru who can set them free. I can assure you that None of his long term team are anywhere near as spiritually developed as they think they are. Time and time again the ones who have been with him for over a decade ( vishnu, rhibu, krishnabai, mirabai, omkara, lakshmi, janaki etc) they go home for a month or two and when they come back its always the same mantra - oh moo my mind came back !! it wass awful , the ego attacked me, society is awful , the energy out there took away my peace blah blah blah. That is not spiritual development , it is a sick dependence on another person to make you feel normal. Very few of these or any of the the parasites at sahaja have any understanding of advaita vedanta, i know because i used to ask them, lots of them, about the vedas, about non-duality, about self enquiry and it baffled me that most of them didnt understand the very basic teachings. All they could do was dismiss the mind/ego as bad and the Guru as good.

Many people came to stay and anyone who had any kind of inner authority born of a direct experience of the truth was totally dismissed or targeted as egoic. Only the ones who were susceptible to the group-think and fear based tactics would be accepted. The whole place is micro-managed by moo, he knows absolutely every fuckin thing that happens there. he absolutely is not interested in anyone who is having a genuine spiritual experience , in fact he often dismisses these as ' just your ego' his interest is in those who are susceptible to the fear and control tactics . What kind of enlightened being needs a a constant team of security day and night , in the middle of fuckin nowhere? he is paranoid , he is deluded and he is a Narcisistic Psychopath in the true psychiatric meaning of the words

More later x

Dear Abdias, welcome to the CEI discussion.

As a longtime denizen of CEI and the older Rick Ross website, I can assure you that
reports such as yours often bring visits from disruptive persons, aka trolls or more politely, apologists.

Here is what to do:

Rick Ross is owner and moderator of this message board. We can contact him here any time at:

[forum.culteducation.com]

1) If you get any private message that is dodgy, disrespectful or threatening ., copy the text,
send it to Mr.Ross.

Doing this protects this discussion and safeguards all participants. Reporting abuses does not mean you are whinging, weak or that you cannot take a joke.

A common method used by bullies is to poke, prod, insult and then if challenged, claim it was just a joke and that we are being too sensitive or "lack a sense of humor".

Codswallop.

Or, as we say in the States, bullshit.

Mr. Ross has no way to know if the private message function is being abused.unless we inform him immediately.


2) Rick Ross has intervened as moderator on this Moo discussion many times and is quite approachable. Feel free to ask him questions.

Just in case this is useful, here are a couple of things to read.

Meditation can have quite undesirable side effects, even when not taught by
a greedy teacher.

Meditation Is a Powerful Mental Tool—and For Some People It Goes Terribly Wrong

"I just felt shattered. I had a job, a wife, and two beautiful children, and yet I felt that I would never experience joy again.”

[tonic.vice.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2018 08:25AM by corboy.

Recall how Sahara described his or her own experiences, how these were happy, illuminating, grounding, clarifying and did NOT induce confusion or disorientation as many persons have reported Moo's methods do.

Moo claimed Poonja was his guru. There is a memoir entitled The Mother of God that gives a quite detailed description of Poonja by a person who lived near him and with him for at least a month - Luna Tarlo, mother of Andrew Cohen, whom Poojna claimed to be enlightened and sent out to be a guru and to "start a revolution amongst the young."

Andrew Cohen became a notoriously abusive guru.

Luna Tarlo wrote a book describing all this and tells us how Pooja informed her, Tarlo, that she herself was enlightened. Tarlo reports this left her feeling more confused, more bewildered -- and more and more dependent on the two authoritarian males who had told her this - Poonja and her son Andrew.

Among other things, Tarlo states that Poonja had told his own sister that she was enlightened. Despite this, Poonja's sister remained silently in the background, doing the household drudgery.

Being told by Poonja that you were enlightened did not give you dignity or autonomy. You were still subordinate to him.

As The Who sang, Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Tarlo described many episodes in which she felt spaced out, alienated from her surroundings.

Andrew and his guru HWL Poonja assured her that these states of mind were evidence of enlightement.

Significantly, these assurances did not give Tarlo any sense of empowerment or confidence. Instead, she felt more confused, more powerless--and yet more dependent on Pooja and her son for guidance and validation.

It appears that many of the experiences she describes were episodes of depersonalization/dissociation, and not enlightenment at all.

Tarlo began experiencing these episodes while reeling with the news that her son had 'become enlightened' was suddenly deferred to and adulated as a guru, and began demanding deference and total submission from his followers---and his own mother.

And all this was happening in India, a foreign country that many new visitors like Tarlo find quite overwhelming and stressful.

If you're under massive stress, experience depersonalization and are told that this is evidence, not of distress, but proof that you're enlightened, this will not empower you. It will only make you more dependant on the person peddling the enlightenment label.

Its a perfect method for a hustler: place people under stress. Confuse them and disorient them.

Trigger depersonalization

Tell them they're enlightened
Tell them they need more exposure to the kind of treatment that has disoriented them.

Play this game properly and you'll keep people confused and dependent on you forever.

This is from an earlier discussion some years ago entitled What Some Call Enlightenment May Be Depersonalization

[forum.culteducation.com]

Depersonalization Derealization Disorder

All this seems quite different from what Sahara described. Ive had a few peak experiences and the ones that mattered most helped me feel more attuned and connected with people and my surroundings, while preserving a sense of independent agency, responsibility and dignity -- the best of both worlds, as it were.

Derealization Depersonalization

[www.google.com]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2018 01:19AM by corboy.

Willoughby Britton on meditation- related difficulties: building competency

[vimeo.com]

Thanks for the heads up Corboy

What Adias describes would have the effect of selecting only malleable persons who look only to Moo as a role model while rejecting exactly those persons who
have the ability to challenge Moo.

This eliminates social, intellectual and psychological diversity.

Somewhere I once read that in POW camps run by the Chinese communists, part of their recipe for social control was to observe the prisoners and identify and remove those persons who showed initiative, leadership and who were respected. Once these persons were removed, the remaining group of POWs could be more easily controlled.

Quote

how the whole organisation has been micro-managed by moo to create a very clever and deceitful trap designed to extract money from genuine seekers and to select people who are vulnerable to the tactics of fear, group-think, mind control

and

Quote

Many people came to stay and anyone who had any kind of inner authority born of a direct experience of the truth was totally dismissed or targeted as egoic. Only the ones who were susceptible to the group-think and fear based tactics would be accepted. The whole place is micro-managed by moo, he knows absolutely every fuckin thing that happens there. he absolutely is not interested in anyone who is having a genuine spiritual experience , in fact he often dismisses these as ' just your ego' his interest is in those who are susceptible to the fear and control tactics

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2018 09:06AM by corboy.

Abdias824,

Thanks for your first comment about Mooji and ashram in Monte Sahaja. You are definitely right. You said that you want to tell us more to share more direct experience later. You are welcomed here. It’s important to write direct testimonies about some event or a detailed story about Mooji and ashram. It’s good to put it in a real time and a real place with a direct speech, some indian names, or some evidences (video, web), and etc. otherwise the critical readers here will not believe it and they will doubt it and see this like a fabrication or only minority cases or negligible events in ashram.

I like these: "....moo is certainly deluded he knows full well that he is not enlightened, he knows he is lacking and this is what is driving him..."
and "...he absolutely is not interested in anyone who is having a genuine spiritual experience, in fact he often dismisses these as 'just your ego'"....



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2018 09:02AM by Horowitz.