"I used to listen to Spira a lot, now it looks like nonsense to me.
Pretty Cult like"

This is a comment from Jackson Peterson's fb page.
It's under a video he posted comparing Spira and Swami Sarvapriyananda.

Rupert isn't shaving student's heads, or giving them new names, but there is a growing faction of people that don't buy him as a legitimate spiritual teacher.

There's a facebook page called Questioning Rupert Spira that has over 400 followers on it. They are quite critical of his teachings there, with some rather intelligent contributors.

I, and others feel he has unprocessed childhood trauma that was simply never dealt with. He became a teacher in a questionable, loose "lineage" which includes his own teacher Francis Lucille, and Jean Klein. The vibe is that he poses as if "awakened", qualified, and able to speak on the Ultimate nature of reality!

It's come out now that he left his wife Ellen Emmet, and is in a relationship with a younger student of his, Kyra O'Keefe who teaches meditation. Apparently Spira also dated another young student before Kyra moved into his house. This first student actually blogged about him being narcissistic, controlling and patriarchal among other things.

I'm just starting this thread to see how things wind up for Rupert. I've met followers of his, that have drank his non-dual Kool Aid, and proudly now state that what they truly are is "ever present, spacious awareness". Parroting him to a "t".

If it's a cult, it's a cult of spiritual bypassers at the very least.
It sounds like in his personal life he's a nasty piece of work, due to all that un-adressed trauma.

Non Duality is rife with Narcissism, and yes CULTS - like the scene around Benthino, Sat Shree, and Mooji. Spira is making thousands of dollars posing as enlightened, when it's clear he's not. We'll have to see how this unfolds.