Now no power can hold me back. When the doctors were trying to heal his cancer, he is reported to have said something like: Here, I am trying to rid myself of the big disease called the body by using a small disease and you all are trying to rid of this small disease that is my instrument. Five minutes before her death she called all the family members and blessed them. - Swami Rama, "Living With the Himalayan Masters". Instead they deny the experience of the "unenlightened" women who are the guru's victims. She couldn't make sense out of his behavior, because she found it impossible to believe that it was really about sex-and she repeatedly told him so. To my relief, I could detect no flash of recognition, guilt, fear, or anger in Carolyn's eyes. The Christians draw out the liquid and call it water, but it is all the same substance, no essential difference. He sent copies of his letter to many of his former colleagues and other professionals on the Institute's stafT. The annual congress, held each June, offers a smorgasbord of lectures and "new age" workshops. Sadhana Mandir Trust ." Soon Carolyn noticed she wasn't the only woman being favored by the guru; he was also paying attention to Megan and Nirvana. But the University of Scranton didn't offer a degree program in Carolyn's area of study, so she saw a way to rationalize leaving the Institute while still saving face; she could still be considered a good disciple if she cold get the guru's blessing to go away to college. At the age of twenty-four, the story goes that he was given the position of Shankaracharya of Karvirpitham . Carolyn had sought a consultation with Pandit Rajmani, who told her that Megan was either lying because she was "on an ego trip," or fantasizing a sexual encounter that had never taken place. Like Pandit Rajmani, Dr. Ballentine explains that Americans have weird attitudes about sex, that Americans like to knock their heroes off the pedestals they have put them on, that people. Even so, it was a blow to find out that she wasn't particularly special: Swami Rama apparently had other "spiritual courtesans." After six months she fell sick and became bedridden. Some were afraid of Institute retaliation; most were afraid of hurting their families, who in some cases do not know about the abuses the women suffered; still others were worried that their professional reputations would be harmed. Over the past 15 or 20 years, numerous spiritual teachers have admitted to, or been charged with, having sexually exploitative relationships with their female students. But Carolyn says she stifled her doubts about the guru, transforming them into doubts about her own selfishness: "Because I'd rationalized that he was teaching me a lesson, I believed he must be teaching other women the same lesson, and I shouldn't begrudge his attention to other students.". . One spring evening a couple of weeks later, she says, Swami Rama called her aside to ask why she'd been avoiding him, and she tried to tell him she'd discovered his lies. Megan recalls that in one of her first encounters with Swami Rama, she watched as he humiliated a quiet, withdrawn woman resident. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Many disciples come from alcoholic and dysfunctional families where they have learned how to deny emotional abuse directed against them or their siblings, in order to believe that their parents really love them and are acting in their best interests. There's no need for finding out, if I know it is completely wrong.". . Pandit Arya radiates calm as he speaks. Become more involved with the projects of the ashram-seminars, residents, the patient program-in time she would be in charge of the whole thing. ", Why would the women want to blackmail Swami Rama? When someone we love dies, it is sad. Mantra is a syllable or word or set of words. . Carolyn says she recognizes the positive work of the Himalayan Institute and has no desire to destroy the Institute's beneficial programs. I ask him. [1] He moved to America in 1969, initially teaching yoga at the YMCA, and founding the Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Illinois in 1971; its headquarters moved to its current location in Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1977. (April 12, 2023). Encyclopedia.com. Once there, Carolyn devoted herself to her yoga practices and threw herself into her assigned jobs. Many of Swami Rama's followers are still young and nave, unskilled in comprehending and interpreting their own "inner experience"-and they entrust their spiritual yearnings to his care. Carolyn says she told him no, it "just didn't feel right." He told her he was writing a book of poetry for her, and he offered to find her a husband. He also sent out a letter resigning from the board. Carolyn remembers being amazed: Could Swami Rama possibly be talking about sex? In the following year, he served as a consultant to the Voluntary Controls Project of the Research Department of the Menninger Foundation at Topeka, Kansas. [CDATA[ Megan says her feelings told her that something was amiss, but because of the social environment, she began to entertain the notion that the Swami's motives might not be what they appeared to be, and that his attempts at a con job might be a spiritual test. He was asked why he is not healing himself. The sound tic came from the cracking of the skull as he left his body through the brahmarandhra. Fourteen years passed and he was still in the body and I took a sigh of relief. Tibetan Buddhism Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. It is a mistake to judge the external guru's worthiness by his behavior; instead, the student should look inside and determine whether that person is helping dispel the darkness of her ignorance. This is not the case with a spiritual person who has remembered the mantra faithfully. She sounded unhappy, so I made plans to visit her at the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where she had been a resident for more than four years. When the couple confided their resulting marital troubles to Karen and George, Karen confirmed her friend's experience by revealing that she, too, had had a supposedly exclusive and spiritual sexual relationship with Swami Rama before her marriage. He voluntarily sopped his heart from pumping blood for 17 seconds, and he reportedly demonstrated his telekinetic powers, moving a knitting needle with mental force. The victim's confusion and loss of trust are compounded when her community refuses to acknowledge her suffering. However, the date of retrieval is often important. He backed off, Megan says, while telling her that sex wasn't necessary-she could be his special student. At that, she says, he raged at her until she was sobbing, unable to speak a word in her own defense: No! I have witnessed two similar cases. "If the guru's instruction leads to a deeper peace, freedom from conflict, a deepening of meditation, harmony in relationships - all of these. Numerous former students say they left the Institute because they were sexually exploited by Swami Rama or knew someone who was. It was years more before she felt she had the right to be angry at her spiritual family, the staff and residents of the Institute who, she says, denied the signs of abuse all around them. He and Pandit Rajmani say that a guru is "that which dispels darkness." by Swami Veda Bharati, Glory to All Saints (interview) -- Swami Veda Bharati, Parents, Children, and Spirituality by Swami Rama, 50 Kids in a Memorable 4-day Program by David Rodrigo, Yes! [2], In 1969 he went to the United States, where he gave lectures in temples and churches, and taught Hatha yoga in YMCAs and in private homes. The yogi suddenly went into deep meditation. Since the early 1970s, women have been claiming sexual abuse at the hands of this prominent spiritual teacher. Swami Rama frequently invited them to parties in his private quarters, where they say he entertained them with funny stories and racy gossip. [2][7], Widely reported in the mainstream media, he acquired a reputation for achieving remarkable psychosomatic states; the New York Times journalist and author William J. She was feeling so disgusted with her body and afraid of the guru's humiliating comments that one night she couldn't face going to his room, she says. One of them, along with the other women from the tour group, attended the wedding of Swami Rama's son, although the guru is officially supposed to have been celibate since taking his Swami's vows. To view the video Swami Rama: Hansda Ashram, Nepal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHwDV9UeyfE, Why Did He Not Heal Himself? One of my friends, Vinaya Maharaj, sent a messenger to my camp informing me that he was going to drop his body and I should come to witness it. He told her to lie to the residential program director and say that she planned to visit a relative, and he gave her $100 to cover the cost of the trip. He explains that Nuernberger was just a graduate student, inexperienced and lacking in professional judgment, when the incident with Marston occurred: "At a time when he was learning to be a therapist and thought that someone is asking for you to reach out, you reach out and you touch them and you let them see your feelings, and I think that was very bad." But not all of us know the real reason (s) behind his demise. During my weekend visit, Carolyn and I took long walks on the Institute's wooded grounds while talking about her compulsive eating patterns and her disastrous relationships with men suggested as possible husbands by Swami Rama. What a foolish woman! A few weeks later she moved to Honesdale. There they became priests in a temple dedicated to the goddess Kali. The Swami. She could not control her emotions, he could not talk to her! As Rutter explains in his book, a sexual relationship between a man in a position of power-doctor, psychologist, mentor, or priest-and a woman who is dependent on him-as patient, student, client, or troubled soul-almost always involves an element of coercion and a betrayal of trust. In the presence of others, we spoke only of positive or spiritual matters, in the deliberately modulated tones all the residents used. But Swami Rama's disciples do not hold him to these standards. Both women and men say they blamed themselves and their own spiritual obtuseness when they repeatedly failed to discern and follow the shifting rules. But the followers of such "enlightened" men are usually reluctant to find fault with them, since to do so could invalidate the students' own years of study and devotion. At bottom, however, she believed her feelings didn't matter. Ramakrishna, originally called Gadadhar Chatterji or Gadadhar Chattopadhyaya, (born February 18, 1836, Hooghly [now Hugli], Bengal state, Indiadied August 16, 1886, Calcutta [now Kolkata]), Hindu religious leader, founder of the school of religious thought that became the Ramakrishna Order. If a hundred people come and say that the day is night and I know that it's not, the voting system doesn't do it here, you know? Swami Rama is survived by his Indian son and daughter, Mohit Dhasmana and Devyani Mungali, and his American son, Robert Walter. I informed him that I had interviewed women who sought him out because they respected him and trusted him to be interested in the truth. mother Sita, that she split up the ground and was absorbed into the earth, but when the question was asked when Lord Rama died, Swami Satyendra Dasji says that the description of Lord Rama's going to heaven can be found in Valmiki Ramayana. She listened calmly as I admitted that I'd worried she might be a victim. Fortified by their mutual discovery, Karen says, the two couples undertook to inform their fellow students back home in Minneapolis. This seemingly whimsical application of standards demoralized many of the ex-members I spoke with and led many to resent the members of Swami Rama's inner circle. Brian and Terry say her family members at the Institute harassed her by mail and by telephone, with accusations that she had "a habit of inducing this sort of behavior from men.". Lectures on Yoga. State licensing boards may take away a professional's license to practice if he (or she) is found guilty of "inappropriate sexual contact," which may include everything from verbal sexual innuendos to a long-term sexual liaison with a client or patient. Why did he not Heal himself blamed themselves and their own spiritual obtuseness when they repeatedly failed discern! 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