'I had met him just ten days earlier. When my turn came, I entered the serene atmosphere of the large open room in the meditation center that was sponsoring his visit. It was my first private audience with a spiritual teacher. Sitting on a raised dais bathed in the warm light of late afternoon, he exuded a quiet equanimity, a mysterious and powerful depth, and a penetrating clarity and i
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Hey corboy, I would actually be tempted to say that you can not really find any site on the internet about sufism that doesn't include more than one skeleton in the closet. When they try and and get money out of you it is rarely so overt. I was visiting one spiritual order for about two years but I liked another one better, not the people necisarily, but the order itself. The teacher ther
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

"Traditional Islam gained a following in North America and the UK with the emergence of a man named Hamza Yusuf (Mark Hanson) from the United States. He is the founder of the Zaytuna Institute in California and a world known speaker and teacher of Islam." I think people like this and so called traditional 'legitimate scholars' will send you for some of the biggest head trip
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

"As Mitchell admits, he doesn't read Chinese. Instead of calling this a "translation," he calls it an "English version."" English Version is some pretty duplictious use of language. If I went it into library or book store looking for the english version of a chinease of sanscrit text, that is definetely not what I would be asking for. Apparently they think
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Corboy said : "Cockroach Lady gets to have all the power. She gets to change the rules when she feels like it. She can phone her lawyers whenever she wants to do so, and when she calls her lawyer, its all about loooove. A former student of BK's concenred about having been captured on video in a moment of humiliation, who were to phone a lawyer to get advice, would be acting viol
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

Corboy said: "To Janaki: Just wait. Sooner or later the inevitable guru apologist (s) will arrive and claim that its only our own craving minds that cause all the trouble." I have heard worse rationalizations, this is the one Advaita 'teacher' Ramesh Balsekar used to explain his touching up (perhaps worse) of female students. The guru in the story is apparently pedoph
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"

I used to really be into studying the 'Work' and ironically it/she helped me overcome some of my own issues with authority figures and cults. I used to think she was one of the few 'good ones' out there and gave the benefit of the doubt about the tuition fee for the school. Reading this board and Janaki's story, what really broke the camel's back for was the woman
Forum: "Cults," Sects, and "New Religious Movements"