Current Page: 26 of 53
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 03, 2011 10:09PM

Mythomaniac Gurus and Their Response to Illness-Speculations

[forum.culteducation.com]

If the illness is comparatively mild or if severe and the person survives, the mythomanic may be able to include it in his or her personal myth.

If of an occultist or New Age bent, the person may guilt trip followers into believing their bad vibes or outside evil demonic influences caused the mythomanic leader's illness.

A mythomaniac may dramatize trivial ailments to elicit excitement, anxiety and solicitude from his or her disciples. However, if disciples fall ill, they are told to get out of the victim mentality, revealing that the hidden rule in all this is that all compassion is to go to the leader, never to the disciples, whose actual hidden role is to be enablers of the mythomanic and to keep the narcissistic supplies flowing one way--toward the leader.

Mythomanics may refuse to understand that their illness is a normal textbook condition.

They have to be seen as special.

As a result they may disdain the services of mainstream medical professionals who refuse to give any narcissistic enhancement to the meaning of their illness. The mythomanic may prefer to go to an alternative practitioner who collaborates by mythologizing the illness, thus flattering the leader and by supplying 'special' treatments.

A mythomanic who uses food, alcohol and drugs to self soothe will eventually develop complications as he or she grows older. In this situation, the mythomaniac guru may avoid or reject any medical professional who warns that diet, exercise and abstention from drugs are needed to restore the patient to health.

What very many people call spirituality may actually be myhomania. The two are very different. Mythomaniac persons can have an entralling effect. If they go out and study techniques (LGAT tech, conversational trance induction via Ericksonian method) they can become 'bliss technicians'.

Too many people equate this bliss and excitement with spirituality but it is nothing of the kind. It is ego driven and for the needs of a very empty and ruthless person.

Spirituality is rooted in truthfulness and doesnt need others to prop it up.

If you want to read what its like to be born into a setting of this kind, go to the search engine for this message board. Go to authors. Select the 'All Dates' option. First, put in webbydeb, read what she has written. Then put in Jupiter. Jupiter was born into a mythologizing cult called Subud. When Jupiter wrote here to tell us what it had been like, J was relentlessly dumped on by people who still bought into this mythomaniac belief system.

Yet another person who grew up in a household centered upon a mythomanic leader was Jeffrey Masson, who describes the process in My Father's Guru.

By contrast, if a mythomanic acquires a substantial empire, and must be seen as its effective leader, he or she may feel free to whine and dramatize comparatively minor illnesses.

But any illness that threatens that leader's autonomy is probably hidden. If the mythomanic says illness can be prevented by the practices of the group (Castaneda heaped contempt on those who got sick, especially from cancer) if the leader or faithful disciples become ill, this threatens the mythos of the group.

A dangerously ill mythomanic will try to hide his or her illness.

For a scary thrilling description, go read the chapter on Adolf Hitler in Deborah Hayden's book, Pox.

Hayden, using the diaries and records kept by Hitler (a mythomaniac if ever there was one), establishes that he had cardiac syphilis by the time he became Fuhrer. Hitler
puzzled his entourage by selecting a VD specialist as his private physician. And, significantly, Hitler refused advice to go into a hospital to have a full work up. He refused because as Supreme Leader he dared not let himself be seen as human enough to do such as thing.

Hayden noted that part of Hitlers terror as his disease progressed was to hide the visible rash and lesions that showed up as part of terminal syphillis. At one point he could not wear a boot.

So he kept his condition secret from the nation and from most of the entourage.

If you want to read how this lethal mythomanic hid his illness go here.

[books.google.com]

IF you wish to read the account of how Castaneda hid his final illness (liver cancer) and concealed his death so that it was not known for two months and how his entourage disappeared, (all this in 1998-they are now presumed dead) the primary source is Amy Wallace's Sorcerer's Apprentice: My Life with Carlos Castaneda
Additional material

[sustainedreaction.yuku.com]

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Date: August 04, 2011 04:33AM

corboy, I used to know someone who was (and probably still is) a New Age counsellor and author. The difference between her public image and what was actually happening in her life was huge.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Date: August 04, 2011 05:32AM

The counsellor I mentioned in my last post was forever quoting Louise Hay's book You Can Heal Your Life. A book I never found useful.

Here's an interesting review I found on www.amazon.co.uk:

"By Luna - This review is from: You Can Heal Your Life: 20th Anniversary Edition (Paperback)

I worked with this book several years ago. I started out feeling very positive and hopeful, but after several weeks of doing the affirmations the condition I was attempting to treat was not getting better. Realising this I began to feel despair, but as the whole premise of the book is we cause all our illnesses by our negative thoughts, I also began to be afraid that my "negative" feelings were making my condition worse. I then began to feel afraid that this very fear was also making it worse. So I then tried to stop all these feelings, and after a while realised that I was losing touch with myself and my true feelings. I also realised that I was getting into a vicious circle, and threw the book out. To this day if I read a typical self help-style affirmation I can feel my anxiety levels rising with the memory of this experience. It's a good thing my condition was not life-threatening, if it had been I think I would have become very frightened.

I did eventually find a resolution, and the cause was definately physical (though not diagnosed by mainstream doctors, a frustration that caused me to turn to the book in the first place). I do now believe that most diseases have a physical cause, and whether a person succomes is a combination of genes, lifestyle, external events and luck. While it could be true that positive people tend to have better health, you could put this down to them looking after themselves better physically and being less stressed. But it's no guarantee - unfair things happen, bad things happen to good people and the nicest people get cancer. And it's not their "fault", their thoughts did not cause it, it's just how it sometimes is. Saying otherwise is just going to cause unnecessary guilt and self-blame.

I think the author's philosophy can lead to unhealthy repression. While I do think it's better to have a positive outlook on life and to try to put a positive spin on life's difficulties rather than to be bitter and resentful, and positive people are much nicer to be around and will attract more love, friendship and happiness, if someone believes that any "negative" thought will bring on terminal illness or other dire calamity, then they will, out of fear, deny themselves their true, authentic and appropriate responses to genuinely stressful or distressing events. Sometimes feelings of distress, fear, sadness, grief, anger are valid responses and need to be experienced and worked through. Feeling you are "not allowed" to have these feelings because something else bad might happen can't be good for the healing process, psychologically or physically.

One very alarming thing in this book is that because the author's own cancer naturally regressed, she seems to be advising people not to go through medical treatment themselves, and simply focus on her affirmations instead. This is highly irresponsible advice.

So in conclusion while positive thinking has it's merits up to a point, the idea that your thoughts cause every illness (and every other thing that happens to you) is total rubbish. If you become ill then seek treatment, and if the docters can't help then seek your own answers (by doing your own research, or in alternative therapies perhaps), but avoid this book."

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 04, 2011 09:10PM

Yes, when taken to dogmatic extremes, positive thinking puts a load of pressure on people.

I was reading a book about the typhus epidemic that wrecked Napoleon's Grand Army on its march into Russia and out. No one knew that typhus was caused by a germ that was passed from human to human by body lice.

So one theory was that persons with a particular 'temperment' were more likely to get typhus.

Imagine the terror of thinking you had a typhus prone personality in the days when no one knew that infected lice were the vector.

Others thought tainted "miasmic" air was the cause. If you had no control over where you could live and pitch your tent, there was another source of fear.
---
The Illustrious Dead: The Terrifying Story of How Typhus Killed Napoleon's Greatest Army Stephan Talty

Worse, this notion that negative thinking makes a person disease prone ignores areas where action can and should be taken at a level over and above the individual.

Such as facing the ugly but real issues of class and unequal distribution of wealth.

Who can afford to shop at fancy-pants organic markets and artisan markets, eh?

News Flash:Healthy Eating is the Privilige of the Rich.

[www.google.com]

This is negative, revolutionary news.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 12, 2011 09:52PM

There's a four to five page thread entitled 'Carlos Castaneda.

[forum.culteducation.com]

However, discussion on this thread has become lively and could be re-titled as 'Mythomaniacs and Charisma.'

The discussion started with Carlos Castaneda and shifted to charismatic personality, an article on how disruptive charismatic teachers can be if immature and use charisma for their emotional needs and form divisive cliques or entourages in the schools where they teach.

Further discussion extended to include mention of Laurens van der Post, Stefan George, and Rudolf Steiner, along with Gurdjieff --mythomaniacs and that if mythomaniac behavior is combined with personal charisma, an immature drive to get emotional affirmation, and an authoritarian personality, this may well lead to a career as a domineering and dangerous partner or lead the person into a hurtful career as an abusive leader, whether of a business, or of a cult if the features listed by Robert J Lifton are present.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 13, 2011 08:42AM

When Positive Thinking Becomes a Poison: How 'The Secret and the Law of Attraction Poison Spirituality by Be Scofield

"By Be Scofield - Crossposted from Tikkun Magazine
We must understand that the founder of a cult or new religion has no room for compromise: absolutes are necessary. True believers in mystical psychotherapy will not embrace a gospel with modest claims: it must be all or nothing. – Martin Larson

“He could go to school and daydream.” That was the advice given by positive thinking guru, law of attraction teacher and “channel” Esther Hicks aka “Abraham” to a black woman who asked how her son should approach learning about the difficult history of slavery in school. After telling the curious mother “none of that [slavery] has anything to do with him,” and that “he won’t have to deal with it” Abraham-Hicks proceeded to equate the teaching of African-American history with a family legacy of passing down “bad” feelings. But this is nothing compared to what she said about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When the woman asked her about a way to interpret his life in an empowering way for her son Esther-Hicks launched into something that can be best described as an ignorant stream of psychobabble. She described his vision in the vaguest of terms and then said, “He lost sight of his dream momentarily…he began to push against. And when one pushes against in a very fast moving stream abrupt things happened…It’s trying to get others to agree with us about our dreams that causes backlash. But when we just dream them ourselves…the resources of the universe come into alignment with us.” Blaming Dr. King for his own death was paired with her instruction to the woman to not tell her son about the unjust things that Dr. King had to struggle against. Her point was that slavery, racism and segregation are all “negative” and so therefore we aren’t supposed to think about them..."

For the entire article read here:



[www.commonsensereligion.com]

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: August 22, 2011 12:50AM

. The ministers are ours. The police are in our hands. If anything happens to me, the minister calls,’ boasted Sunil. He nodded. “We have powertoni.”

From an Australian Journalist--Reflections on Guru Mentality

From a Man Born in Mumbai--Reflections on 'Powertoni'

Quote

Sarah Macdonald, Australian journalist and who lived in India for two years with her husband, also Australian and a journalist, writes this about guru mentality while covering the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad.

"The Hindu religion is a guru's gig, where ego is a dirty word and only supplication to a master can kill it. The closest thing I ever get to understanding the guru thing is my constant ability to fall in love with lead singers and bass players...I am not willing to touch the feet of any sadhus Ive seen so far. Its hard enough for me to surrender to a faith let alone to a fallible human...

"Besides, I am finding the guru mentality all too manifest in other areas of Indian life. I join Neeraj and Titi (two other reporters covering the Mela) at the media tent, where they are still awaiting a press pass...As we fill out more forms in triplicate, the press infomormation bureau officer sits behind a huge table revelling in his own authority to forbid filming.

(Corboy note: Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, sums this us: "India is the country of 'No'." )

"Not that we believe in censorship but we have had to start checking some stories and changing bits"

I try to speak. He shows me the hand.

"Madam, even though it is impossible for us to be offended, because we respect all opinions and criticisms, the Western media has offended us by showing naked sadhus."

Macdonald writes, "I can't get a word in to tell the Raja of Red Tape that hte local media has featured more racy bits than the international press. As (the Press Information Officer speaks), four men watch, drinking in the glory of their Goebbels. They prostrate themselves before him, vigorously nod and fall over with laughter when he tries to be funny. They're unpaid crawlers, men with not enough work and too much time who just love to sit at the feet of someone more successful than themselves. Indians adore authority. To these guys, this middle ranking offical is a Buddha of bureaucracy and a priest of paperwork. To me, he is a dickhead of the highest order."

Holy Cow! An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald.

Suketu Mehta in Maximum City points out that in India, everyone needs a connection, a fixer, a patron.

In some cases, it is as simple as finding a human connection with the person who is telling you 'No'. In some cases if you mention you have children, the person who started out telling you 'no' will turn out to have children too and see you as someone sharing a common ordeal--and then figure out who can fix your problem.

Other times, you will need a protector, a patron, a boss.

Here Suketu Mehta describes a form of 'juice' that his informants in Mumbai refer to as Powertoni.

A guru will have powertoni.


Quote

Quote:
Powertoni
Suketu Mehta, 19 May 2005

Subjects:Culture asia & pacific arts & cultures literature

“Being Muslim or Hindu or Catholic was merely a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle” but in the second extract from the prize-winning “Maximum city: Bombay lost and found”, Suketu Mehta also discovers a more sinister force: “powertoni”.
About the author
Suketu Mehta is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. His first book, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found won the Kiriyama Prize.All great cities are schizophrenic, said Victor Hugo. Bombay has multiple-personality disorder. During the riots, the printing presses were running overtime. They were printing visiting cards, two sets for each person, one with a Muslim name and one with a Hindu name. When you were out in the city, if you got stopped your life depended on whether you answered to Ram or Rahim. Schizophrenia became a survival tactic.

People told people: the Muslims, angered by the destruction of the Babri Masjid, are stockpiling arms; there will be a bloodbath. The news was relayed at the pan-wallah’s, in the commuter train, during the office tea break. In the evenings, a small convoy of cars would drive on to the beach at Shivaji Park, turn towards the wide Arabian Sea, leave their headlights on and keep vigil all night. They were standing guard against the Iranian armada that was supposed to be just off the shores of Bombay, holds packed with all kinds of bombs and guns and missiles for the coming jihad.

After the riots, 240 NGOs united to put the city back together. Human chains of citizens were formed, stretching across the city, to demonstrate unity. Groups called Mohalla Ekta Committees were formed to bring together Hindus, Muslims and the police, to identify fist fights before they could escalate into riots. There hasn’t been a major riot since. But the fault lines had been set. An entire segment of the population had been made to feel like foreigners in the city in which they were born and raised. *

In the Bombay I grew up in, being Muslim or Hindu or Catholic was merely a personal eccentricity, like a hairstyle. We had a boy in our class who I realise now from his name, Arif, must have been Muslim. I remember that he was an expert in doggerel and instructed us in an obscene version of a patriotic song, “Come, children, let me teach you the story of Hindustan”, in which the nationalistic exploits of the country’s leaders were replaced by the sexual escapades of Bombay’s movie stars. He didn’t do this because he was Muslim and hence unpatriotic. He did this because he was a twelve-year-old boy.

Now it mattered. Because it mattered to Bal Thackeray. (Ganster King, leader of the Shiv Sena)

The Shiv Sena shakha in Jogeshwari was a long hall filled with pictures of Bal Thackeray and his late wife, a bust of Shivaji (the king who fought for Hinduism and Maharashtra and fought off the Mughal Muslims in the 17th Century-Corboy), and pictures of a muscle-building competition. Every evening, Bhikhu Kamath, the Shakha Pramukh, sat behind a table and listened to a line of supplicants, holding a sort of durbar.

There was a handicapped man come to look for work as a typist.

Another man wanted an electric connection to his slum.

Husbands and wives who were quarrelling came to him for mediation.

An ambulance was parked outside, part of a network of several hundred Sena ambulances ready to transport people from the slums to hospitals at all hours, at nominal charges.

In a city where municipal services are in a state of crisis, going through the Sena ensures access to such services.

The Sena shakhas also act as a parallel government, like the party machines in American cities that helped immigrants get jobs and fixed streetlights. But the Sena likes to think of itself not so much as a political party but a social service organisation. It functions as an umbrella for a wide variety of organisations: a trade union with over 800,000 members, a students’ movement, a women’s wing, an employment network, a home for senior citizens, a cooperative bank, a newspaper.

Kamath was a diplomatic sort, hospitably showing me around his terrain. He had the reputation of being honest. “There are very few people like Bhikhu in the Sena,” said Sunil (a deputy leader of the Jogeshwari shakha, or branch, of the Shiv Sena). “He still has a black-and-white TV at home.”

But he could be a street thug when the occasion warranted. And through his connections in the state government, he provided political cover for Sunil


He repeated the word a few times. Sunil had hired a Muslim boy in the Muslim locality for his cable business. “He has twelve brothers and six sisters. I give him money and his brother liquor. He will even beat up his brother for me. I hire him for powertoni.” Likewise, the holy man who exorcised his daughter had powertoni. Then I realised what the word was: a contraction of power of attorney, the awesome ability to act on someone else’s behalf or to have others do your bidding, to sign documents, release wanted criminals, cure illnesses, get people killed. Powertoni: a power that does not originate in yourself; a power that you are holding on somebody else’s behalf. It is the only kind of power that a politician has: a power of attorney ceded to him by the voter. Democracy is about the exercise, legitimate or otherwise, of this powertoni. All over Mumbai, the Shiv Sena is the one organisation that has powertoni. And the man with the greatest powertoni in Mumbai is the leader of the Shiv Sena himself, Bal Keshav Thackeray.

His monstrous ego was nurtured from infancy. Thackeray’s father considered himself a social reformer and anglicised his surname after William Makepeace Thackeray, the Victorian author of Vanity Fair. Thackeray’s mother had given birth to five girls and no sons. She prayed ardently to the family deity for a son and was blessed with Bal. He was therefore considered a navasputra, a boon directly from God. Thackeray, now in his seventies, is a cross between Pat Buchanan and Saddam Hussein. He has a cartoonist’s sense of the outrageous. He loves to bait foreign journalists with his professed admiration for Adolf Hitler. Thus, in an interview for Time magazine at the height of the riots, when he was asked if Indian Muslims were beginning to feel like Jews in Nazi Germany, his response was, “Have they behaved like the Jews in Nazi Germany? If so, there is nothing wrong if they are treated as Jews were in Nazi Germany.” A woman in the Jogeshwari slums observed, “Thackeray is more Muslim than I am.” He is a man obsessed by Muslims. “He watches us, how we eat, how we pray. If his paper doesn’t have the word ‘Muslims’ in its headline, it won’t sell a single copy.” The organ of his party is the newspaper Saamna (Confrontation), which, in Marathi and Hindi editions, distributes Thackeray’s venom all over Maharashtra.

Thackeray, like anybody else in the underworld, is called by many names: the Saheb, the Supremo, the Remote Control, and, most of all, the Tiger – after the symbol of the Shiv Sena. The newspapers are full of pictures of him next to pictures of tigers. Public billboards around the city likewise display his face next to that of a real tiger. He has taken pains to be present at the inauguration of a tiger safari park. He is a self-constructed mythic figure: he drinks warm beer, he smokes a pipe, he has an unusually close relationship with his daughter-in-law.

Sunil and the Sena boys described the Saheb for me. It was impossible to talk directly to him, they said; even an eloquent and fearless man like their Shakha Pramukh became tongue-tied in front of him, and then the Saheb would berate him. “Stand up! What’s the matter? Why are you dumb?” It was impossible to meet his eyes. On the other hand: “He likes it if you are direct with him. You should have the daring to ask direct questions. He doesn’t like a man who says ‘er... er...’”

Sunil’s colleague talked with great pride about the time every year on the Saheb’s birthday when they went to his bungalow and watched a long line of the city’s richest and most eminent line up to pay homage. “We watched all the big people – ministers, businessmen – bow and touch his feet. All the Tata-Birlas touch his feet and then talk to him.”

“Michael Jackson only meets presidents of countries. He came to meet Saheb,” his friend added. The president of the giant American corporation Enron had to go to Thackeray to get a power deal cleared. When Sanjay Dutt, son of the principled MP Sunil Dutt who resigned in disgust after the riots, was newly released from jail, his first stop, even before he went home, was to go to the Saheb and touch his feet. Every time one of the corporate gods or a member of the city’s film community or a politician from Delhi kowtowed before him, his boys got a thrill of pride, and their image of the Saheb as a powerful man, a man with powertoni, was reinforced.

They told me what to say if I met the Saheb. “Tell him, ‘Even today, in Jogeshwari, we are ready to die for you.’ Ask Saheb, ‘Those people who fought for you in the riots, for Hindutva, what can your Shiv Sena do for them? Those who laid their lives down on a word from you? What can the old parents of the Pednekar brothers, who have no other children, do?’”

I felt (writes Suketu Mehta)like a go-between carrying messages from the lover to the loved one: “Tell her I am ready to die for her.” But there was a hint of reproach in their questions, as if they felt their Saheb had been neglecting them, these people who had died for his love. As if the blood sacrifice their comrades had made had gone unacknowledged.
"

Westerners are going to Amma for love and healing.

She's an operator, a source of Powertoni--the kind of power that was misused and damaged the same Westerners who are now going to her for some kind of healing.

In his book, Suketu Mehta described very many in Mumbai, the best and brightest, who were looking for ways to abandon the city and leave India--the country was breaking down and no longer able to protect them.

And they were moving West to nations were rule of law is still effective.

So, here are Westerners, unaware of all the advantages they were born into, seeking answers from an Indian woman who wields Powertoni.

And being processed like parcels.

Amma's income and her ability to function as a fixer in India.



Sathya Sai Baba--he had powertoni, folks-politicians fawned on him. [www.google.com]

Ditto for Muktananda [www.google.com]

Gurumayi (SYDA Yoga) [www.google.com]

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar [www.google.com]

Jaggi Vashudev (http://www.google.com/search?q=jaggi+vasudev+culteducation.com&hl=en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Search)

Maharaji [www.google.com]




In Kerela, Amma has powertoni. She's just like the male powerbrokers described by Suketu Mehta, except she has a double XX chromosome and wears white saris. But the dyamaic is the same.

Powertoni. Only the packaging is different. And unlike Bal Thackeray, Amma gets some of her income from Westerners who wont research the background.

And she and her Indian managers know this.

[forum.culteducation.com]

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: September 03, 2011 07:10AM

Here is a grateful salute to member JP who posted a description of the Large Group Awareness Training Process (LGAT) to rebut one person who denied the entity was an LGAT.

If anyone requires you to submit to the kind of treatment described here, get out. You'll be processed like meat in a stinky hamburger plant.

LGATs fuck with your body as well as your brain--sleep deprivation, folks.

[forum.culteducation.com]

---
Having had personal experience of courses run by Steven Gullan, I’d like to address this post by “MarkR” who I believe is negligent in his research at best and blatantly lying at worst. You decide which is more likely.

“The South African Life Dynamics Training CC is a training company... I can assure you it is not a LGAT and certainly is not a cult in any way.”

Really? Let’s just have a look at that since I would hate for you to be so undeservingly aggrieved by something that is “simply not true in any way whatsoever”. Steven Gullan runs Life Dynamics which offers, among other things, the Gateway, Genesis and Revelations courses. I know this because I have participated. So are they LGATs? Since you “sincerely appreciate the information and material on this website” you won’t mind if I make reference to some of it to help your “story” to fit in more closely with “what actually happened” (it’s mighty pesky when something happens and we give it the wrong “context”).

LGATs are courses which take place, usually over four or five days
- Gateway runs Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday the whole day and Sunday the whole day (four days)
- Genesis runs Wednesday night, Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday and Sunday (five days)

Complaints against LGATs include the fact that there are incredibly long hours
- During Gateway we started at 18:00 every evening and finished just before 02:00 in the morning on Thursday and Friday night, Saturday we started at 10:00am and finished at midnight and Sunday was an eleven hour day
- Genesis is much the same

LGATs are accused of trying to occupy every waking hour of the person’s life both during the course (course time) and between sessions to minimise contact with people who may disagree with the process
- Homework was given on top of the training time, despite the fact that during week nights we would be working full days in our normal jobs
- This inevitably led to sleep deprivation – by the last day many people were finding it very difficult to stay awake

LGATs are accused of creating an extremely stressful environment, where ALL IMPORTANT RULES are agreed to at the start and may never be broken
- The first three hours of Gateway is a monologue by Gullan, delivered in the manner of a dictator (you may say that this is just my opinion, but it was also the opinion of the majority of participants. To clarify I mean that he spoke loudly, banged his pulpit a number of times, shouted and called everyone names.) Part of this monologue is getting everyone to agree to rules (Rules which hand all control over to him... even though he tells you that "no one can make you do anything" Fall for that?)
- At one point someone, apparently, sat in the wrong chair and he was verbally abused (screamed at, accused of having no integrity)

There are ‘assistants’, all dressed the same, who show no emotions and gaze eerily into the distance unless called upon for exercises
The environment is intentionally tense. Gullan mocks particpants, taunts them and repeatedly calls them “assholes” (something that happened in 1971 in est, the original LGAT)

LGATs use a number of games or exercises that appear to be common among the majority of them. These fairly specific games, which have been described as having been used in other LGATs discussed on this site, are also used by Gullan: (I assume that this isn’t giving away trade secrets because I’ve seen all of these mentioned by other LGATs on this site. I, for example, can’t sue you if you’ve also started to wear pants. If I get a group of people together and tell them that I actually came up with pants then I’d be lying. Likewise I imagine you can’t sue for revealing games that someone “borrowed” from other LGATs.)
- The lifeboat game
- The red and black game
- The “nothing” exercise
- Tarzan and Jane (cross dressing)
- Regression to infancy (confronting your earliest hurt or confronting your mother / father)
- Guided imagery (when someone stands in the front and leads everyone by describing an event or a sensation etc.)
- Group hypnosis (You may argue that it isn't hypnosis, but when someone says... in a very soothing voice "Uncross your arms, uncross your legs... close your eyes... close your eyes... close your eyes," and then proceeds to tell you... in that same soothing way... to imagine a beach and the waves and the cool ocean air... and then ends this process by slowly counting from 20 to 1 then it seems like hypnosis to me? Inducing a relaxed AND MORE RECEPTIVE state without telling anyone first. Of course he's done the little "YOU TRUST SOMEONE... WHEN YOU DO!!!!" trick just before so you trust him unconditionaly. Hope you didn't fall for that one?)
- Face to face sitting positions with knees touching

LGATs are accused of limiting eating and bathroom breaks
- Our breaks were 30 minutes max
- Often they were just 15 minutes (the first 7 of which had to be spent on your own – not talking to anyone else)

LGATs often lead to mass sobbing as a result of the exercises, tiredness, stress, catharsis
- At numerous occasions there were people in the room with me who were bawling their eyes out

LGATs are known for promoting New Age philosophies, along the lines of "You are responsible for everything that happens in your life - therefore you are empowered to do something about it" and for stretching this thinking beyond where the average South African would believe it should go. These types of philosophies are certainly a part of Gullan's trainings.

So what are the biggest, most notorious, original LGATS? Most people who’ve researched the subject will mention ‘est’ and ‘Lifespring’. From these two, it seems, a great number have been spawned. I wonder if there’s any way that Life Dynamics and Steven Gullan could be linked to these VERY OBVIOUS LGATs?

In Steven Gullan’s “CV” given to us before the training he mentions serving an apprenticeship under Baruch Banai (who runs the Insight Training Centre in Johannesburg). Banai has already been mentioned in previous threads on LGATs so go check him out. Looking at other South African based LGATs previously mentioned on this site, QUEST has a long thread, describing some fairly worrying stuff. Wendy Sefor, who runs Quest, and Baruch Banai were both trained by Pat Grove. You can go to Pat Grove’s website and he has their names nicely listed as some of his star pupils. Here’s the connection – In Pat Grove’s book “I AM COMPLETE” he states that he has participated in all of the major trainings, including EST and LIFESPRING among others.

So Steven Gullan runs courses that have the same format as LGATs, use all of the same exercises and language as LGATs and he was trained by someone who was trained by someone who ACTUALLY DID est and Lifespring and you’d like us to take your word that it’s not an LGAT? Interesting.

Now unless Steven Gullan has an equal appetite for, I don’t know… teaching the tuba, as he does for screaming his lungs out at people and charging them for it, then my guess is that the two courses you refer to having done are Gateway and Genesis (rather than something else entirely unrelated). If that is not the case then I sincerely apologise for mistaking you for an unashamed liar. If, however, these were the courses that you did then you are not being forthright. It’s one thing to say that you enjoy drinking vinegar – that’s an odd preference for which you might be excused, but it’s another to tell people that it’s not vinegar but red wine. What you are doing is not even trying to defend the process that you apparently support – instead you are denying that the process even happened and intentionally misleading others who are looking for information. If people want to be screamed at and belittled for five days then they are quite welcome to pay someone to do that to them, but – in order for INFORMED CONSENT to have taken place – they need to have a fair idea of what they are getting into. Your description of Gullan’s courses as being as innocuous as computer software training is highly misleading.

As for “serious harm to people” I know of two people personally who had to take a significant amount of time off work to deal with the stress-reactions that resulted from his courses. Of course you may now be convinced that these people have “chosen” their breakdowns and so it’s not the course’s fault, but it’s very misleading to use your newly acquired “logic” when communicating with people who are still using the language of the general population. If a person off the street wanted to know if psychological casualties have resulted from this ‘training’ then the answer is “yes”. You may then try – without the thought-reform tactics used by Gullan – to explain that they will only have a breakdown if they ‘choose’ it.

Funnily enough the conversion of people to this way of thinking is far lower when the topic is presented in a way that allows them to consider the idea and make a decision without pressure, information overload, hypnosis, sleep deprivation and some sort of stress-generated high at the end. I know, I know – the course isn’t about logic – it’s “EXPERIENTIAL”. Gullan repeatedly tells you that thinking is bad and that you shouldn’t think, but since neuro-linguistic programming (altering the meaning of words to change how people respond to them) is used in many LGATs, here is a little hint about the term “EXPERIENTIAL”: It’s just a euphemism for “by-passing logic”. When someone says to you “Trust me”, “thinking is bad” and “get other people to do the course” (which Gullan says quite directly during the period of the course) you have to ask yourself whether the intentions are all altruistic. (Of course Gullan really enjoys telling EVERYONE at the end that the real reason he does it is “TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!” A difference, yes – the money and power are really just incidental.

Using a level of communication that is understood by most English-speaking people, the two people I refer to having been injured were seriously psychologically harmed as a direct result of the “one-size fits all” approach used by Gullan (and by that I mean they were damaged significantly enough to prevent them from living a normal life –and working – for a period of days or weeks. Who knows how long the residual damage will last).

“I personally find it criminal that someone can make such an accusation on a public forum...”

Please save us your indignation – it appears that you are either a liar or a tuba student.

“The courses I attended could no more have caused me to commit suicide, than going on a computer software or driving course would.”

I’m not sure what sort of software training courses your company imposes on you, but if you are deprived of sleep, have limited bathroom breaks, are screamed at for the slightest transgression, are hypnotized without anyone telling you, have zombie-like assistants refusing to greet you back and have people sobbing randomly throughout the session AND if you think that the guy leading the course is the wisest, kindest person you’ve ever encountered despite this, then maybe you should speak to HR about the sort of software courses you’re doing. If, on the other hand, you did the same courses that I did then your comment, in my opinion, reflects either dishonesty (once again) or just a complete void where any understanding of human vulnerabilities may preside. Possibly the course couldn’t push you towards suicide, but there is no screening of participants in any form (other than people who can't afford it I imagine??) and there are many people – I assure you – that would react poorly to the treatment handed out by Gullan.

One useful definition of “brainwashed” is ‘the failure to acknowledge what has been clearly proven through evidence and logic’. Based on what I’ve told you, MarkR, would you still say that Steven Gullan’s courses are not LGATs? Would you acknowledge that some people might respond poorly to the methods used? Would you acknowledge that, without some form of screening, these more vulnerable people may suffer harm?

Maybe I’m wrong, X, and I have this whole thing backwards. Feel free to provide your perspective – I’m eager to hear what you have to say.

JP

P.s. I did see that a few people have commented on their negative experiences doing these courses. I'm interested to hear both positive and negative comments if any other participants care to share.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: September 15, 2011 12:56AM

The Honor and Splendor of Mediocrity

Friends, please notice how often we are lured by advertisements for products, or for experiences that will bring us specialness, power, that will enable us to discover our 'brilliance'.

Psychologist James Hillman gave an interview and made some suggestions.

Quote

It suddenly struck me that by sticking to the ordinary with devotion, which is a very old religious idea, you are more a rebel in society than you imagine. You are really a revolutionary because this is a society that wants the wealthy to run the country and the celebrities to be the only ones we read about or watch and are the model of how to be. Whereas to cling to the ordinary in a faithful way and with your character, so that it involves doing it according to your way, your style, that's a real accomplishment. And that's saying no to the whole bologna, which is really an act of courage.


Hillman notes that we fail to give deep, creative attention to behaviors and qualities in people. We have some sort of calling, something that cannot be ID'd in the usual aptitude tests.

So we ache to be Understood.

Quote

HILLMAN: That obsessive quality. You see, we call it obsession, but it's also devotion.

We have bad language for what goes on. If we were in a tribe the elders would be watching. This boy keeps looking at the monkeys--we're in a Brazilian fantasy now--this boy keeps looking at the monkeys, he can see a monkey that nobody else can see in the trees, but we don't know. But that means this boy would even change his name in some way. The elder would see that particular talent, that particular obsession, that gift, and he might become an important hunter or a shaman. There would be a noticing of qualities. We don't notice now.

We put a child through psychological tests to find out what he can do or can't do. We don't notice the peculiarities and value them as indications. And if you remember in the book, I show how many important people, or people who became useful to societies, writers and scientists and so, had trouble at school. Big trouble in school. Failed school. Were thrown out of school. Because I think the daimon would not allow them to comply or adapt, that there was too much danger, that they would lose their calling. Because what is it that kept the kid, produced that tremendous resistance? Do you realize how hard it is for a child to fail? To not comply? I mean I don't think the child wants to be a stubborn and dyslexic and impossible and all the rest of it, it's something that we don't understand that refuses, something in the child refuses. And as long as we see that as sick or pathological we don't pay adequate attention to it.

[www.worldmind.com]

Sad thing is that that understanding cannot happen in ashrams or LGATs where people are seen not as unique persons but as income producing objects. You risk losing access to your calling if you're processed like sausage meat through one of these entities. Ecstacy merely disguises your calling, it wont bring it out.

Options: ReplyQuote
Re: Recovering from New Age Mumbo Jumbo
Posted by: corboy ()
Date: September 15, 2011 11:26PM

Was Jesus in India? Debate Concerning the Notovich Book

------------------------

[jesustobuddha.blogspot.com]

Monday, October 26, 2009
Did Jesus Live In India? I
We usually think of the process of myth-making as something that happened in ancient times and over many centuries. Not so. Myth-making is alive and well and the myths made today spread faster and become more widely accepted than in the past mainly because of modern communications. Take the 'Jesus lived in India' myth for example. In 1894 a Russian journalist, Nicalos Notovitch about who little is known, published a book called The Unknown Life of Jesus which was rapidly translated into English and several other languages and attracted a much attention. In the book, Notovitch claimed that during a journey to Ladakh in 1887 he had broken a leg, been put up at the famous Himis Monastery and while there the abbot had read out to him an ancient document called Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men. It told of Jesus' visit to Kashmir/Ladakh/Tibet where he studied with Buddhist masters and of his eventual return to Palestine where he taught, was crucified and died. Some years later a Jewish merchant visiting Kashmir/Ladakh/Tibet met the teachers of Jesus, heard of Jesus and wrote an account of his 'unknown years.' Notovitch claimed that the life of Issa was fairly well-known in Kashmir etc and even that detailed accounts of his life in India were to be found hidden away in the Vatican's secret archives. In other words, Notovitch's story had all the ingredients that would make it an irresistible to certain people - the 'wisdom of the East', the romance of the Himalayas, an alternative to conventional Christianity and a good old-fashioned Catholic conspiracy. The book attracted a lot of attention despite being panned by most reviewers.
But then the big guns were brought to bear on it. Prof. Max Muller, the most widely known and respected scholar of his generation gave his verdict on Notovitch's book. He started by pointing out that despite the claim that the life of Issa was well-known it did not appear in any of the catalogues of the literature of Tibet (and there many of these catalogues, some of them very ancient). He continued by highlighting some of the extraordinary coincident in the book. 'If we understand Mr. Notovitch rightly, this life of Christ was taken down from the mouths of some Jewish merchants who came to India immediately after the Crucifixion.' Muller asked how these Jewish merchants happened, among the uncounted millions of India, to meet 'the very people who had known Issa as a casual student of Sanskrit and Pali in India…and still more how those who had known Issa as a simple student in India, saw at once that he was the same person who had been put to death under Pontius Pilate…Two things in their account are impossible, or next to impossible. The first, that the Jews from Palestine who came to India in about 35 A.D should have met the very people who had known Issa when he was a student at Benares; the second, that this Sutra of Issa, composed in the first century of our era, should not have found a place either in the Kandjur or in the Tandjur.' As Muller was writing his article about Notovitch's book he receive a letter from an Englishwoman friend who happened to have just visited Himis Monastery. It was dated Leh, Ladakh, June 29, 1894, and read in part, 'Yesterday we were at the great Himis monastery, the largest Buddhist monastery up here, - 800 lamas. Did you hear of a Russian who could not gain admittance to the monastery in any way, but at last broke his leg outside and was taken in? His object was to copy a Buddhist life of Christ which is there. He says he got it and has published it since in French. There is not a single word of truth in the whole story! There has been no Russian here. No one has been taken into the Seminary for the past fifty years with a broken leg!'
In June 1895 Professor J. Archibald Douglas of Agra wrote a letter to the papers concerning Notovitch. He was at that time a guest in the Himis monastery, enjoying the hospitality of the very abbot who was supposed to have imparted the Unknown Life to Notovitch. Douglas found that no memory of any foreigner with a broken leg lingered at Leh or at Himis. The abbot of Hemis indignantly repudiated the statements ascribed to him by Notovitch, and said that no traveler with a broken leg had ever been nursed at the monastery. He stated with emphasis that no such work as the 'Life of Issa' was known in Tibet, and that the statement that he had imparted such a record to a traveler was an invention. When Notovitch's book was read to him he exclaimed with indignation, "Lies, lies, lies, nothing but lies!" Further, the abbot had not received from Notovitch the presents Notovitch reported having given him - a watch, an alarm clock, and a thermometer. In fact, he didn’t even know what a thermometer was. The Victorians took great note of their scholars and scientists and The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ quickly lost its appeal and was relegated to well-deserved obscurity.
But literary frauds (and there are many of them) have an amazing ability to hang on - just think of the Book of Mormon, the Protocol of the Elders of Zion and the Mahatma Letters (these last two perpetrated by Russians incidently). The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ was to become anything but 'unknown' and to take on a life of its own.

Source: [sdhammika.blogspot.com]

Posted by Narinda at 9:44 AM 0 comments
Labels: The Hidden Story of Jesus
Did Jesus Live In India? II
In 1908 Levi H Dowling published The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ which he had been able to download from the 'akasic records' and which included a chapter on Jesus' life in India. The book only circulated amongst a few theosophists and other cranks. But in 1926 a newspaper in America reported the discovery in a monastery in Tibet of a lost Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men ( a rehash of Notovitch's story), other papers, first in America and later overseas, took up the story and it came into popular consciousness again. This pumped a bit of life into the myth and allowed it to hang on until the 1960's. With the growth of the New Age movement in that decade the 'Jesus lived in India' myth really became firmly established (we could call it an 'urban myth' although I think its quite popular in rural areas too).
Since then a small and rather profitable industry has developed around the myth. There are more than two dozen books dedicated entirely to the subject, many others allude to it as fact and there are literally hundreds of articles about it. There are several pseudo-documentaries about it too. We even have authentic pictures of Jesus during his Indian sojourn - meditating, backpacking through the Himalayas and on the cover of Elizabeth Clare prophet's book staring wistfully at Lamyuru Monastery in Ladakh, founded in the 10th century CE, a thousand years after Jesus. Recently a Jesus Thanka, a Tibetan painted scroll, has been 'found' (it was only a matter of time I suppose). A quick examination of this thanka, particularly the careless and hasty brush strokes on the outlines and the use of chemical pigments, shows that it was painted by one of those artists from Katmandu who knock out fake thankas for tourists. I would date it circa 2000.
With each new publication more 'facts' come to light, more details are 'discovered' and more sayings of Jesus emerge, so that now the account of his life in India is longer and more well-documented than his life in Palestine. Here are some of the more popular books on the subject. King of Travelers - Jesus Lost Years in India by Edward Martin, The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed by Charles H Potter, Jesus Lived in India by Halgen Kersten, Jesus In India by H. N.G. Ahmed, Jesus of India by Maury Lee, Jesus in India by James Deardorff (by this stage authors are struggling to think of titles that do not contain the words 'Jesus,' 'lived' and 'India'), The Mystery of Israel's Ten Lost Tribes and the Legend of Jesus in India by J. M. Benjamin, A Search for the Historical Jesus by Fida Hassnain, Jesus in Heaven on Earth by K. N. Ahmad and Christ in Kashmir by Aziz Kashmiri.
Now you have to admit, this is rather fascinating. More fascinating still is that there is not an iota, not a shred, not an atom of evidence that Jesus ever left Palestine. Not one inscription, not one fragment of ancient parchment and not one 'legend' or 'account' that can be traced back before the late 19th century. There isn’t even a puff of smoke and a few mirrors.




Indeed, the evidence that Jesus even lived in Palestine is scarce enough. Nearly all historians accept that there was a person called Yehoshua (Joshua) of Nazareth (Jesus is an Anglicized pronunciation of the Greek attempt to say Joshua. An equivalent of this is if the English had gone to Thailand in the 17th century and had attempted to say the Thai pronunciation for 'Buddha' which is something like Putowar, and we today were calling the Buddha Putohyouare) who attracted attention sometime between around 29-35 CE. But curiously, the earliest documents to mention Jesus, the letters of St Paul, (a man who never met Jesus and whose letters make up nearly half the New Testament) contain hardly a single quotation of Jesus. The four Gospels date from between 35 and 70 years after the death of Jesus and no scholars consider them to be written by the direct disciples of Jesus or to be eyewitness accounts. That somebody named Jesus lived, taught and attracted attention there is little doubt, that he went to India there is no more evidence than that he went to Newfoundland, Outer Mongolia or Polynesia.





Except for Dowling's 1908 'akasic records' all the early books on Jesus in India relied on statements like 'it is widely believed', 'in Kashmir ancient tradition says', 'historians think it is possible that', i.e. they make at least some pretence at drawing on ancient evidence. But as the myth has become more accepted 'evidence' is asserted as if it were general knowledge. The confidence with which this is done doesn't even bother to take into account genuine and well-established facts. Swami Satyasangananda of the Bihar School of Yoga in his book on Indian gurus, for example, writes that Jesus studied at Nalanda, disregarding the unimpeachable fact that Nalanda wasn’t founded until about 350 years after Jesus death. But hey! We're talking about belief here and when belief takes up the front see seats facts sit at the back. Source: [sdhammika.blogspot.com]

Posted by Narinda at 9:41 AM 0 comments
Labels: The Hidden Story of Jesus
Did Jesus Live In India? III
(1) The belief seems to be that there should be some information about Jesus' first 27 or 28 years and because there isn’t the information that was there must have been 'lost.' The reality is that there probably never was any information about Jesus' early life, undoubtedly because he did nothing during that time but hammer in nails, saw logs and plane planks. The situation is similar with the Buddha. Other than a few details about his birth, the fact that he was from a privileged background and the names of some of the members of his family, we know almost nothing about the Buddha until he renounced the world to become a monk. Nearly everything we do 'know' about those 30 years is legends from a later period. The first, second and third generation of Buddhists were mainly interested in what the Buddha taught, not what he did before he became a monk. Incidentally, we know almost nothing about Shakespeare for the same reason. People only became interested in the man several generations after he died, by which time all the people who knew him were dead. We know nothing about Fred Smith of No 32 Railway Cuttings, East Cheam either - quite simply because he did never did anything of any significance beyond his own family (if he had one). If he had shot the prime minister, invented the can opener or painted a masterpiece someone would have taken some notice of him and recorded some facts about him. There are no 'lost years' of Jesus.

(2) During Notovitch's time it was already known that there was some contact between the Roman Empire and India and it was assumed that most of this was by land. Consequently Notovitch claimed that Jesus went to India by land. Now we know that most direct Roman-Indian contact was by sea. Many of the books about the 'Jesus lived in India' myth have maps showing the supposed route Jesus took to India. Such maps prove nothing. A map showing the Buddhas route up the east coast of Australia may well look 'official' or 'authentic' but it is not evidence that the Buddha made such a trip.

(3) Notovitch claims to have traveled through Ladakh/Tibet in 1885. That the British India Secret Service has no record of him having done so is very strong evidence that he never did. The last decades of the 19th century were the height of the Great Game, the imperialist competition between Britain and Russia. The North-west Frontier Agency, Gilgit/Swat/Kashmir/Ladakh, was perhaps the most sensitive and closely watched border in the world at that time. It was said that a third of the population were spies for the British and the other two thirds spied on the spies. The presence of a Russian 'journalist' (read 'spy') snooping around Ladakh, which was under British suzerainty, would have set off alarm bells in Calcutta and Simla. It is highly unlikely that Notovitch would have been given permission to enter Ladakh and if he was he would have been followed every inch of the way. And yet his name does not appear in any official British documents.

(4) Some later versions of the 'Jesus lived in India' myth say that Jesus studied Buddhism at Hemis Monastery, no doubt a detail originating in a careless reading of Notovitch's claim that he heard about Issa while convalescing at this monastery. The problem with this claim is that Hemis Monastery was only founded 1672, quite a few centuries after Jesus. In 1989 I stayed at Hemis as the guest of a senior monk there and had the good fortune to witness the famous Hemis Festival. I asked my host about the Jesus story. He groaned, rolled his eyes upwards and told me that Westerners often come to the monastery and ask about Jesus and that some of the younger monks string them along for both fun and profit - mainly for profit.

(5) Notovitch claimed that the document about Jesus which was read to him was written in Pali, probably because he knew enough about oriental studies to know that it was the oldest Buddhist language. Had he known just a little more he would have claimed the book was in Sanskrit which was by far a more widely used language. And if it were in Pali it is virtually impossible that a monk in Ladakh or Tibet in the 19th century would have known or even known about this language.

(6) Despite Notovitch's claim that the Issa story was well-known in the Himalayan region, no copy of this text has ever been found, nor are there any quotations from it or even a mention of it in other ancient writings. The famous Blue Annals (Deb-ther sngon-po) for example, chronicles the early history of Buddhism in India and Tibet and refers to hundreds of scriptures and hundreds of teachers but makes no mention of Issa or his biography.

(7) Those who accept the 'Jesus lived in India' myth usually make much of the supposed tomb of Jesus in Kashmir. According to the original 1894 tale, Jesus came to India and then returned to Palestine where he was executed. A later expanded version of the story (myth have a tendency to grow) says that he survived the crucifixion, decided that the Jews weren't worth the effort, and returned to India where he lived happily ever after and finally died. Now I have not been able to find any archaeological account of Jesus' tomb so I'm going to give you my conjectures on it. It is hardly surprising that there should be such a tomb. Muslims have always considered Jesus to be one of the prophets of God, at least at some period there may have been a desire to have or visit some 'relic' of this prophet, and as it the case of pilgrimage in all religions, the law of demand and supply operates. When the devote want a relic or a holy site, one inevitably emerges. The inscription on the supposed tomb mentioning Jesus proves nothing. It is in Arabic script so it must date from after the 14th century when Kashmir became Islamic, although its probably much later and likely rather recent. Further, judging by from the photos of the inscription it looks more like graffiti. The great gate at the entrance of the Taj Mahal in Agra has the names of all the prophets revered in Islam carved on it, including the name of Jesus. This does not prove that Jesus visited the Taj.

(8) The other evidence that Jesus went to India and studied with Buddhist masters is the supposed similarities between some passages in the Buddhist scriptures and the Bible. Perhaps it's just because I'm out-of-step with current trends but I have always considered this to be the weakest of all the 'evidence' that Jesus did go to India and have contact with the Dhamma. If Jesus knew the Dhamma you would expect there to be some reference to Buddhism's most characteristic teachings - the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, etc. Instead, we have a few vaguely similar similes, sayings and parables, most of which are found in other religious traditions too and which could have been borrowed from a common source. On the other hand, when we compare Jesus' parables, similes, theology and sometimes phrases or even whole sentences, they look very like a continuation of the great Jewish sages and teachers who preceded him. Almost everything he said fits well with the Jewish world-view and Jewish spirituality from around the first millennium. His few ideas which do deviate from Jewish tradition (in the John's Gospel 'I am God') have no parallel in Buddhism. And his beloved Kashmir and the Himalayas? Why didn’t he make at least one or two references to them? If Jesus had studied with Buddhist masters the Bible would contain much more wisdom than it does.

Years ago I happened to be in a remote Sri Lankan village and amongst the supplies I had was a few cans of food and one of those can openers with a sharp disk which you put on the rim of the can and turn with the handle. An old Sinhalese govitang who must have never seen such a can opener before, looked at and said, 'Meka carika vage' (Like a car). At first I laughed at this; a can opener doesn't look anything like a car. But then I became intrigued and asked the old man what he meant. He said, in affect, that both have wheels, both have moving parts, both are made of metal and both perform a task. He mentioned how like turning the handle of the can opener and having the wheel go round was to putting a key in the ignition and having the car's wheels move. An interesting way at looking at it! In my opinion, the similarities between Buddhism and Christianity are like the similarities between a can opener and a car.
The picture is of the supposed tomb of Jesus in Kashmir.

Source: [sdhammika.blogspot.com]

Posted by Narinda at 9:33 AM 0 comments
Labels: The Hidden Story of Jesus

Options: ReplyQuote
Current Page: 26 of 53


Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.
This forum powered by Phorum.