Incredible

[Guest guest]

Subject:

Incredible

 

Hello Benjamin,

 

In case you missed it the url is http://homepage.eircom.net/

~ombhurbhuva/babas%20place.htm

 

You are totally correct in your attitude of scepticism, faith should not be

given lightly. The fact that a

great many people believe something is no evidence for its being the case.

After all 1 million Americans

believe that they have been abducted by aliens! A lot of what is written on

the Internet seems to emanate

from the Grassy Knoll. Then there is the well known phenomenon of false

memory, children who claim that

their parents abused them in satanic rights and yet it emerges later that this

was physically impossible.

 

This area is off list essentially so I'll leave it there. Certain other

statements you've made need to be

corrected. The expert concensus is that pedophilia is not simply a matter of

concern about celibate clergy,

most of those involved in it are married men and the children are usually

relations. These are facts borne

out by the recent FBI/INTERPOL sting Operation Amythest which traced thousands

of men all over Europe who

were downloading illegal images. Amongst them in this country (Ireland) were a

judge, a famous chef, a bank

manager, a soliciter all the pillars of society are there.

 

To extoll the glory of Hinduism/Sanatana Dharma or Buddhism over and against

other faiths, well as they say

comparison is invidious. Baba has a museum at His ashram in which all the

creeds and their main tenets are

featured. Christmas is celebrated there. Myself, I go to church on sunday

though I am far from orthodox

but you know I like the satsang, to join in prayer, to offer thanks, to praise

God. A devotee is a devotee

is a devotee.

Best Wishes, Michael.

P.S. If you any queries about Baba, I'd be happy to relate what I know. I've

been around Him for extended

periods. But off list of course.

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Namaste Michael,

 

Thank you for your message. You are right to remind us not

to get off topic, and I wish to assure the moderators that I do not

wish to pursue the allegations of child abuse levelled against Sathya

Sai Baba or other spiritual leaders. Thank you for your offer, but I

have already collected more than enough information from the web on

this topic. It is not uplifting, and I do not wish to pursue it.

 

However, I agree with Tony that some brief discussion of the

topic of spiritual frauds is indeed related to our current theme of

bhakti. For it is primarily the bhaktis who seem to get into this

trouble, since many of them tend to be naive and emotional and too

trusting of the guru, as far as I can tell. It is no secret that

'intellectuals' on an Eastern spiritual path tend to be drawn to

Advaita or similar paths such as Zen. (Actually, one can think of

scandals in the Advaita or Zen communities as well, if one searches

the web, so my generalization should be taken with a grain of salt.)

 

Also, you are right that perhaps I sometimes seem to be a bit

too critical of Christianity and other non-Eastern paths. Those

remarks are mostly addressed to the orthodox and fundamentalist

variants. The silver lining in the cloud of religious bigotry is

that many of the faithful innocently ignore the darker passages of

their scriptures and find their way to the light. There are many

trends in Christianity that contain 'Advaitic' wisdom, not least

certain words of Christ, e.g. 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.'

I could elaborate on how I believe that Christ only intended to be a

guru and a lot of extra dogmatic baggage was placed on him after his

departure, but I'd better not...

 

Om!

Benjamin