A friend exhibits his photography at a gallery here in New York. While exploring this gallery's website, I noticed that they also exhibit the work of a fairly prominent female digital artist who's name I was familiar with. One of the shows she had was called "The Vibhuti Series", which consists of large polaroid prints of "vibhuti", the ash that the notorious Indian God-man Sathya Sai Baba allegedly "manifests" to boggle the minds of his credulous followers. In this case, however, the vibhuti was "manifested" by her guru, Derek O'Neill, who in turn is an acolyte of Sai Baba. [
www.clampart.com] He apparently is another popular globe-trotting, workshop-conducting New Age guru-type who is regarded by at least some of his followers as an avatar. [
www.energyblessing.com]
With all my Googling, I easily found many effusive raves about him from followers, but have yet to find a truly critical commentary. The closest I've found to a journalistic portrait of him is this largely sympathetic article from New York magazine from 2005: [
nymag.com]
Has anyone here ever heard of him and have anything to report about him from the cult/cult leader perspective?