Hi everyone,
I have posted here on and off for a few years as I have come to terms with leaving the Sri Chinmoy Center. I found it difficult at first to consider that it was a cult and I have seen that people leaving the group have had quite different reactions and varying degrees of difficulty in adjusting to a new life after the group. For me it has been a hard road and I have felt very lost at times. Slowly and in part with help from this forum i am finding my own new life and my own sense of myself.
I want to say hi to anyone else from this group and I would love to connect with you and share our experiences. Please send me a private message if you would prefer not to post on the forum,
With love,
Pegasus

pegasus, thanks for sharing. I had a friend who was on the outskirts of the cult (he was friendly with many members and participated in some marathonesque swims in off NYC.)

Did you also participate in "acts of heroic feats" to impress "Guru"?

I am sure you have already poured over all the info pertaining to Sri Chinmoy on this site. See here:

[www.culteducation.com]

Hopefully other ex-members will join in with you.

Did you escape this cult before "Guru's" death or after?

Wasn't in Sri Chinmoy group, but read some of his books.
From the outside, Sri Chinmoy was an expert of the Big Lie method. Tell a brazen enough lie, many people will believe its true, as they can't believe someone could lie so openly in the "spiritual" field.

That's why he could get away with his fake contraption, to lift weights using leverage.
And claim supernatural Kundalini powers, and the rest of it. The Big Fat Lie.

Former SGI members, Sri Chinmoy, Ikeda [forum.culteducation.com]

"Cartwheels in a Sari: A Memoir of Growing Up Cult." [forum.culteducation.com]


Sri Chinmoy search [forum.culteducation.com]

Hi Sparky
Thanks for your message. Well, I got as far as running a few marathons (Even though I hated running!) Also learned and sang many many indian songs and did some full on recruiting, so I was a most obedient disciple (translate good cult member). In fact he used to have us sing songs about obedience, I remember the phrase "there is no such thing as negligible disobedience" which was put to several different tunes and which we sang over and over.
Of course I thought this meant obedience to God, not to a cult leader.
Purity was also a major theme with sexual relationships severely frowned upon - we were to live like nuns and monks - no romantic relationships or marriages allowed for singles. It was mindblowing to me when I found out about the gurus own sexual abuse of disciples which has recently come out. I know it is the classic tale, but still if you can imagine we saw him as this jesus like, purest God who made out that he was childlike, kind of angelic and that anything sexual was beneath him.

For me to realise I have spent so much time worshipping a man who is in fact a sexual abuser is pretty unsettling, to say the least!

Anticult - thnx for the useful links and comments. Cartwheels in a sari was written by Jayanti, ex member who grew up in the group, and it makes good reading.

One of the wealth builders for Chinmoy were the veggie restaurants run with donated or cheaply paid labor from his followers. The food was and is often excellent and an added attraction are the affordable prices. A cheap labor pool provided by eager disciples made this possible.

It is worth noting that vegetarian and vegan restaurants can be part of what has been termed the cultic milieu and any foodie or person interested in health is invited to research who owns a restaurant and what principles are held or imposed upon employees.

A lot is being said about the need to research whether chocolate or coffee or other items are produced by fair labor or underpaid labor. Make sure the same is true of your local eatery.

Final note: Chinmoy produced a trail of afflictive emotion even before his demise.

One ambitious disciple who defected from Chinmoy and started his own cult was Frederick Lenz aka Zen Master Rama, who also abused money, sex and power--and despite his claim to be Buddhist, died by an overdose of pills, and had persuaded a girlfriend to keep him company in death and OD. She survived.

That is not Buddhist behavior.

Quote

In 1979, Chinmoy apparently decided to teach Lenz a lesson in humility and
obedience by sending him to San Diego to open a Laundromat

[www.google.com]

Money left from the estate of this captive of afflictive emotion has since been used to finance a variety of causes, some noble, some controversial--to be polite about it.

I raise the question what the implications can be of accepting grant money that was generated from a tangle of afflictive emotion and whether accepting that kind of dirty money may bring with it chains that bind.

Troubled gurus not only hurt their own followers, but those with ambition may leave a troubled guru and become troubled gurus themselves, passing the hurt and and the tangle of afflictive emotion outward in a widening circle.

This is the opposite of what dharma practice is supposed to accomplish.

[forum.culteducation.com]

From the very clever, master of manipulation and advertising genius, Dr Seuss, addressing children:


.....That sun, let me tell you, is dangerous stuff!
It can freckle your face. It can make your skin rough.
When the sun gets too hot, it can broil you like fat!
But this piece of green string, sir, will NEVER do that!
THIS PIECE OF GREEN STRING IS COLOSSAL! IMMENSE!
AND, TO YOU … WELL, I’ll SELL IT FOR 98 CENTS!”
And the Hoobub … he bought!
(And I’m sorry to say
That Grinches sell Hoobubs such things every day.)......

From a discussion on NLP, persuasion and hypnotism on

[saltydroid.info]

Courtesy of Christopher Tomasulo, who blogs on covert communication (my bold emphasis):

'EVERYONE CAN BE HYPNOTIZED.

If your heart beats when “you” don’t tell it to beat then guess what? – you have another consciousness. That means you got yourself TWO consciousnesses. If someone can get that first consciousness to drop it’s guard or “fall asleep” at the job – which can be done through a variety of methods – including the most powerful of all – the use of AUTHORITY TO ENGENDER BELIEF – then you’re going to be hypnotized – like it or not – regardless of what all the feel good hypnotists and other Pollyanna folk would have you to believe. Smart-mind, weak-minded and predominantly Alpha-Waves? – irrelevant in that case. You’re toast and will be highly suggestible whether you like it or not.

Have you ever believed an authority? Have you ever studied an elaborate system to look at or study things in the world? These things all DROP RESISTANCE which is the real key to hypnotism and effective suggestibility.'


That use of of the word 'authority' would apply to all such authority, no division into so-called 'good' authority and 'bad' authority.

Authorities subjectively perceived as 'good' in the eyes of the beholder are as complicit in using this manipulative tech as those subjectively perceived as 'bad' in the eyes of the beholder.

Remember Sagan and his appeal to critical thinking: 'arguments from authority are suspect, science recognises no authorities.'-----not even authorities that claim the benefit of ancient scriptural authority, something the buddha never relied on himself, but nevertheless his followers exhort others to rely on to this day.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/11/2010 07:52PM by Stoic.

Manipulation is manipulation is manipulation, some techniques are dirtier and more repellant than others, but the reponsibility for employing the techniques always rests with the individual alone.

No-one is immune, sanctimoniously invoking the word 'dharma' is no more an excuse or a protection from this hypocrisy than invoking the magical words 'abracadabra' or 'hey presto!'

On afflictive emotions, a verse from a Leonard Cohen song, 'Bird on a Wire:'

I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me "You must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me "Hey, why not ask for more"

And a little commentary from Cosmic Connie on the verse and its application to new age thought:

[cosmicconnie.blogspot.com]

'For some reason, I’d always envisioned the woman in Cohen’s song as an Amsterdam hooker. But these days I tend to think more about the New-Wage hustlers of both genders who are selling not sex, but bright shiny promises of untold wealth. "Ask, believe, receive. That'll be $1,000.00, please."

Like Cohen, most of us live our lives with our attention focused somewhere between the beggar and the pretty woman. At any given time in our lives, our heads can be turned by either one. But The Secret and its promoters seem to be strongly encouraging us to ditch the beggar completely and turn all of our attention on the woman, who, all too often, is also a beggar – just a far richer and slicker beggar, who only pretends to have our best interests at heart.'