For many years I was Peter Young’s (“lama” Dondrup Dorje) loyal student.
My opinion is the following:
1. He is a very dangerous, highly educated, exceptionally skilful, narcissist.
2. Pathgate Institute is definitely a cult. It has zero endorsement from the real Buddhist community.
3. He has developed extraordinary personal power through martial arts, esoteric practices, and long- term practice of brainwashing / social conditioning techniques.
4. He is totally ruthless. He will do anything, to anyone, including short-term positive actions, and ingratiating himself with real lineages, in order to achieve a goal.
5. He is obsessed with achieving a sense of self-worth through being superior to others. Despite his undoubted personal achievements (gaining power over others), he is tortured by a sense of self-worthlessness. This drives him to achieve extraordinary powers, and to degrade everyone around him.
6. He feels genuinely justified in the same way all dictators feels genuinely justified. At any moment, anything he decides is good, is good; and anything he decides is bad, is bad. What he decides is good or bad, or the people that he decides are good or bad, change at his whim.
7. He totally believes power = spiritual blessing.
8. He draws people in by pretending to offer to share the secrets of his power and skill. In 20 years, I have never seen this offering ever bear fruit. His senior students are allowed to advance just enough that they’re not totally ridiculous at first sight, giving away the game. 5 minutes with any of them is enough to see their seeming achievements are build on sand.
9. When “teaching”, he shares information in a way that guarantees nobody understands him, then blames the student for failing to learn, making the student feel worthless, or karmically cursed.
For example: He said “I don’t care how much you’ve been abused in your life, as long as you are angry about it, it will happen again”. This is, effectively, in a very limited way, a true statement. However, First: anyone who has been abused will react very badly to this, it is abuse on abuse. No abuse victim will learn a single thing from knowing this. Second: He doesn’t say how to address the anger one feels about being abused. This leaves the abuse victim in a terrible state of guilt for feeling angry about being abused. Again, abuse on abuse. Third: This opens the student to further abuse, as the student starts to try to not feel angry about being abused, in order to not attract further abuse. This, of course, enables further abuse to happen, which is Peter Young’s objective.
10. He loves to ridicule his students individually in front of the group. Public-shaming is one his
favourite things. He claims it does the individual good, in precisely the same way the Communist Chinese do.
11. He becomes extremely jealous of any of his students who do achieve some kind of advancement through sheer struggle amidst the tide of his wrong-guidance, and sabotages them, either directly or indirectly.
12. If he fails to sabotage them, or when sabotaged they manage to keep some sense of self-worth, he drives them away from the group, saying they are (in summary) evil.
13. He splinters his student’s sense of self, and isolates them, claiming that this is the way to
practice the level of dedication that leads to success. He believes this to be true, because it is what he did.
14. He fully expects his students to be as ruthless and narcissistic as he is. If they are not, they deserve to be exploited to the max.
15. None of his students show any signs of success as a result of what they “learn” from him, on any level. The students who have been with him for a long time are all very damaged, sad, scared and confused people. I’ve personally been around them for a very long time, and they become actually non-functioning in any normal situation.
16. His method, both overtly and covertly, is to make his students utterly dependent on him. He calls this “Guru Yoga”, totally debasing and corrupting a real Buddhist practice.
17. He does share some wisdom, some insight, some healings etc., but only enough to keep people paying him money and adoration, and generate more for himself. He does it only for his own good. He is exceptionally clever at this. Most of the actually real information he shares can be obtained from basic YouTube video or any basic self-help book. He charges a fortune for this information, and students pay it, because these occasional glimmers of real information seem like diamonds compared to the confusing nonsense he gives out the majority of the time.
18. In 20 years, I have not seen one of his students begin to teach. Those who are in charge of centres around Europe and the world do not teach for themselves in this sense. They are puppets. Every single one was appointed as centre-leader to open new income streams, not because they are qualified.
19. He programs his students to be self-hating, and to lose all motivation for anything that doesn’t have him at the centre and goal.
20. He is utterly convinced that he is doing the right thing, and that anyone who doesn’t agree with him or his methods is (in summary) evil, or at minimum in a state of pitiful delusion. He convinces his students of this. He rewards those students who buy into this view by making them feel superior to everyone else.
21. He is exceptionally clever with what he says, and how he acts, so that nothing can be “pinned on him”, including pretending to be enlightened without ever actually saying the words. His students all think they’re being insightful by seeing him as enlightened when he doesn’t explicitly say so. He makes them think they’re “seeing with wisdom”, so he doesn’t have to say it.
22. He feeds off his students, and at the same time ridicules them at every turn. Part of that ridicule is getting them to believe he is enlightened without ever saying it. He, very clearly once one sees what he’s doing, thinks it’s hilarious his students are so gullible as to imagine he is enlightened, without him having to convince them in any way.
23. He bought his lamahood with cash and favours, it was not earned. I was there when it happened.
24. He does not teach Buddhism, he uses Buddhism as a frame to advance his narcissism.
25. I have never seen one of his students achieve anything of any worth or value that they wouldn’t have achieved by themselves, and much quicker if they’d been away from his influence. I have seen many of students become much less capable at things they used to be good at.
26. He truly believes, and openly states that “fear makes the world go round”. This, in one phrase, explains everything about him, his insecurities, and his methods. That he doesn’t even hide this as his world-view is another example of how he ridicules his students – he has them so brainwashed they don’t realise he is subjecting them to this paradigm.
27. Every one of his students is terrified of him. He makes them think this is the correct psycholo
gical position for accelerated learning.
28. He attracts students with the promise of power. If you are attracted to him, be warned he will use your lust for power to trap you in powerlessness.
I learned a lot from my time with him.
However, it is the kind of learning one gets from horrible experience.
In that sense it is valuable, but I only just managed to get out with my mind intact. It’s taken me
years to be able to speak up on this forum.
The time and money I spent on him, if spent elsewhere, would have advanced me 1000 times further.
I have seen many others destroyed, burnt-out or succumb to what can only be described as a kind of deliberate imbecility.
STAY THE F**K AWAY FROM HIM.
My opinion is the following:
1. He is a very dangerous, highly educated, exceptionally skilful, narcissist.
2. Pathgate Institute is definitely a cult. It has zero endorsement from the real Buddhist community.
3. He has developed extraordinary personal power through martial arts, esoteric practices, and long- term practice of brainwashing / social conditioning techniques.
4. He is totally ruthless. He will do anything, to anyone, including short-term positive actions, and ingratiating himself with real lineages, in order to achieve a goal.
5. He is obsessed with achieving a sense of self-worth through being superior to others. Despite his undoubted personal achievements (gaining power over others), he is tortured by a sense of self-worthlessness. This drives him to achieve extraordinary powers, and to degrade everyone around him.
6. He feels genuinely justified in the same way all dictators feels genuinely justified. At any moment, anything he decides is good, is good; and anything he decides is bad, is bad. What he decides is good or bad, or the people that he decides are good or bad, change at his whim.
7. He totally believes power = spiritual blessing.
8. He draws people in by pretending to offer to share the secrets of his power and skill. In 20 years, I have never seen this offering ever bear fruit. His senior students are allowed to advance just enough that they’re not totally ridiculous at first sight, giving away the game. 5 minutes with any of them is enough to see their seeming achievements are build on sand.
9. When “teaching”, he shares information in a way that guarantees nobody understands him, then blames the student for failing to learn, making the student feel worthless, or karmically cursed.
For example: He said “I don’t care how much you’ve been abused in your life, as long as you are angry about it, it will happen again”. This is, effectively, in a very limited way, a true statement. However, First: anyone who has been abused will react very badly to this, it is abuse on abuse. No abuse victim will learn a single thing from knowing this. Second: He doesn’t say how to address the anger one feels about being abused. This leaves the abuse victim in a terrible state of guilt for feeling angry about being abused. Again, abuse on abuse. Third: This opens the student to further abuse, as the student starts to try to not feel angry about being abused, in order to not attract further abuse. This, of course, enables further abuse to happen, which is Peter Young’s objective.
10. He loves to ridicule his students individually in front of the group. Public-shaming is one his
favourite things. He claims it does the individual good, in precisely the same way the Communist Chinese do.
11. He becomes extremely jealous of any of his students who do achieve some kind of advancement through sheer struggle amidst the tide of his wrong-guidance, and sabotages them, either directly or indirectly.
12. If he fails to sabotage them, or when sabotaged they manage to keep some sense of self-worth, he drives them away from the group, saying they are (in summary) evil.
13. He splinters his student’s sense of self, and isolates them, claiming that this is the way to
practice the level of dedication that leads to success. He believes this to be true, because it is what he did.
14. He fully expects his students to be as ruthless and narcissistic as he is. If they are not, they deserve to be exploited to the max.
15. None of his students show any signs of success as a result of what they “learn” from him, on any level. The students who have been with him for a long time are all very damaged, sad, scared and confused people. I’ve personally been around them for a very long time, and they become actually non-functioning in any normal situation.
16. His method, both overtly and covertly, is to make his students utterly dependent on him. He calls this “Guru Yoga”, totally debasing and corrupting a real Buddhist practice.
17. He does share some wisdom, some insight, some healings etc., but only enough to keep people paying him money and adoration, and generate more for himself. He does it only for his own good. He is exceptionally clever at this. Most of the actually real information he shares can be obtained from basic YouTube video or any basic self-help book. He charges a fortune for this information, and students pay it, because these occasional glimmers of real information seem like diamonds compared to the confusing nonsense he gives out the majority of the time.
18. In 20 years, I have not seen one of his students begin to teach. Those who are in charge of centres around Europe and the world do not teach for themselves in this sense. They are puppets. Every single one was appointed as centre-leader to open new income streams, not because they are qualified.
19. He programs his students to be self-hating, and to lose all motivation for anything that doesn’t have him at the centre and goal.
20. He is utterly convinced that he is doing the right thing, and that anyone who doesn’t agree with him or his methods is (in summary) evil, or at minimum in a state of pitiful delusion. He convinces his students of this. He rewards those students who buy into this view by making them feel superior to everyone else.
21. He is exceptionally clever with what he says, and how he acts, so that nothing can be “pinned on him”, including pretending to be enlightened without ever actually saying the words. His students all think they’re being insightful by seeing him as enlightened when he doesn’t explicitly say so. He makes them think they’re “seeing with wisdom”, so he doesn’t have to say it.
22. He feeds off his students, and at the same time ridicules them at every turn. Part of that ridicule is getting them to believe he is enlightened without ever saying it. He, very clearly once one sees what he’s doing, thinks it’s hilarious his students are so gullible as to imagine he is enlightened, without him having to convince them in any way.
23. He bought his lamahood with cash and favours, it was not earned. I was there when it happened.
24. He does not teach Buddhism, he uses Buddhism as a frame to advance his narcissism.
25. I have never seen one of his students achieve anything of any worth or value that they wouldn’t have achieved by themselves, and much quicker if they’d been away from his influence. I have seen many of students become much less capable at things they used to be good at.
26. He truly believes, and openly states that “fear makes the world go round”. This, in one phrase, explains everything about him, his insecurities, and his methods. That he doesn’t even hide this as his world-view is another example of how he ridicules his students – he has them so brainwashed they don’t realise he is subjecting them to this paradigm.
27. Every one of his students is terrified of him. He makes them think this is the correct psycholo
gical position for accelerated learning.
28. He attracts students with the promise of power. If you are attracted to him, be warned he will use your lust for power to trap you in powerlessness.
I learned a lot from my time with him.
However, it is the kind of learning one gets from horrible experience.
In that sense it is valuable, but I only just managed to get out with my mind intact. It’s taken me
years to be able to speak up on this forum.
The time and money I spent on him, if spent elsewhere, would have advanced me 1000 times further.
I have seen many others destroyed, burnt-out or succumb to what can only be described as a kind of deliberate imbecility.
STAY THE F**K AWAY FROM HIM.