throwaway034829392 reported at Reddit about Mooji in 2015:
I'm hesitant to share these thoughts, but I have a few things to say regarding Mooji. I like him, and I owe a great deal to him, insight-wise. I have no doubt that he is a highly realized person, but I would not say that he is without flaw. I have had the privilege of sitting with him on numerous occasions both in large group satsang and in more intimate settings.
Mooji is a great storyteller and unflinchingly charismatic. He exudes a surreal, almost supernatural peacefulness that attracts people to him. He speaks directly but not forcefully, he gently challenges people to see what is obvious to him.
But he is also a crowd-pleaser, and seems to enjoy playing the guru, the beloved master, showering attention on the many spiritually infantile seekers around him, a large number of which are young women, while often dodging more difficult questions or difficult people. Sometimes he addresses the crowd more than he does the person in front of him, even making fun of them in front of the crowd, and he often goes off on tangents and stories.
He doesn't address people as ego or offer their egobound selves a way out in the form of method or teaching. He just expects people to "get it", the way he did. At most he encourages people to self-inquire, which is in my experience very hard to do right and requires some razor sharp discernment, not available to many novice seekers and people caught up in their own suffering.
In short, he may be highly realized, but he is not a naturally great teacher. He is compassionate, but he also sometimes does not seem to want to make the effort to understand the fears or misconceptions of the person in front of him, and sometimes loses his patience when they don't "just get it". His "teaching" mainly consists of staring people in the eyes and showering the audience with divine energy or whatever it is that happens in his satsangs to make people become so starry-eyed. I've seen people, I know people, who've been following him around for years and seem no closer to self-realization. Instead, they seem hooked on the feel-good energies that he projects. People in the satsang community around him would often complain or joke about when they're with him, everything seems clear, but when they go home and try to live their lives, everything falls apart and they have to come back and see him.
I do not think he has a great interest in being a teacher. He's run off and started a commune in Portugal with his closest followers, and while they're no doubt having a great time together, he's stopped allowing people to come visit him unless they pay for attending his silent retreats. The podcasts and recordings that come out of there seem to be much less about confronting people and bringing them to understanding and more about telling stories and speaking about god and bliss and joy and other cosmic things. Not a lot of his followers seem to challenge him or to take up his challenge and he's outright expressed frustration with their unwillingness to follow his prescription of self-enquiry.
Furthermore, his "lineage" from Papaji is exaggerated at best, whose own lineage from Ramana Maharshi is suspect to say the least. Maharshi appointed or approved no successors, and neither did Papaji. In fact Papaji outright stated that no students of his ever "got it". Mooji no doubt sat with Papaji a few times (there are some movies of him approaching Papaji) and no doubt revere him greatly, but he makes a great show of being connected spiritually to both Papaji and Ramana, always keeping their images close at hand and visible to the audience in satsang. It may be innocent or it may be that he wishes to piggyback to some extent on their renown.
Supposedly he's also wanted for tax dodging in India where he used to hold retreats. I know that his followers run a great business selling not only satsang tickets (they used to call it "taking donations") but also books, DVDs and digital downloads and streams ("online retreats"). He, or some people in his group, are definitely deft enough to capitalize on the great number of people simply wishing to be in his presence.
[www.reddit.com]
I'm hesitant to share these thoughts, but I have a few things to say regarding Mooji. I like him, and I owe a great deal to him, insight-wise. I have no doubt that he is a highly realized person, but I would not say that he is without flaw. I have had the privilege of sitting with him on numerous occasions both in large group satsang and in more intimate settings.
Mooji is a great storyteller and unflinchingly charismatic. He exudes a surreal, almost supernatural peacefulness that attracts people to him. He speaks directly but not forcefully, he gently challenges people to see what is obvious to him.
But he is also a crowd-pleaser, and seems to enjoy playing the guru, the beloved master, showering attention on the many spiritually infantile seekers around him, a large number of which are young women, while often dodging more difficult questions or difficult people. Sometimes he addresses the crowd more than he does the person in front of him, even making fun of them in front of the crowd, and he often goes off on tangents and stories.
He doesn't address people as ego or offer their egobound selves a way out in the form of method or teaching. He just expects people to "get it", the way he did. At most he encourages people to self-inquire, which is in my experience very hard to do right and requires some razor sharp discernment, not available to many novice seekers and people caught up in their own suffering.
In short, he may be highly realized, but he is not a naturally great teacher. He is compassionate, but he also sometimes does not seem to want to make the effort to understand the fears or misconceptions of the person in front of him, and sometimes loses his patience when they don't "just get it". His "teaching" mainly consists of staring people in the eyes and showering the audience with divine energy or whatever it is that happens in his satsangs to make people become so starry-eyed. I've seen people, I know people, who've been following him around for years and seem no closer to self-realization. Instead, they seem hooked on the feel-good energies that he projects. People in the satsang community around him would often complain or joke about when they're with him, everything seems clear, but when they go home and try to live their lives, everything falls apart and they have to come back and see him.
I do not think he has a great interest in being a teacher. He's run off and started a commune in Portugal with his closest followers, and while they're no doubt having a great time together, he's stopped allowing people to come visit him unless they pay for attending his silent retreats. The podcasts and recordings that come out of there seem to be much less about confronting people and bringing them to understanding and more about telling stories and speaking about god and bliss and joy and other cosmic things. Not a lot of his followers seem to challenge him or to take up his challenge and he's outright expressed frustration with their unwillingness to follow his prescription of self-enquiry.
Furthermore, his "lineage" from Papaji is exaggerated at best, whose own lineage from Ramana Maharshi is suspect to say the least. Maharshi appointed or approved no successors, and neither did Papaji. In fact Papaji outright stated that no students of his ever "got it". Mooji no doubt sat with Papaji a few times (there are some movies of him approaching Papaji) and no doubt revere him greatly, but he makes a great show of being connected spiritually to both Papaji and Ramana, always keeping their images close at hand and visible to the audience in satsang. It may be innocent or it may be that he wishes to piggyback to some extent on their renown.
Supposedly he's also wanted for tax dodging in India where he used to hold retreats. I know that his followers run a great business selling not only satsang tickets (they used to call it "taking donations") but also books, DVDs and digital downloads and streams ("online retreats"). He, or some people in his group, are definitely deft enough to capitalize on the great number of people simply wishing to be in his presence.
[www.reddit.com]