Dharmabum, that is my hope too.
As a general rule of thumb, I am of the opinion that anyone who accepts somebody else's head at their feet and worship from them and service from them is a charlatan. Period. Being able to accept such worship necessitates a certain level paychopathic narcissism. It's got to be the furthest thing from humility and piety.
Time and again, I have seen these gurus and their organizations engage in underhanded methods making money, juvenile ways of disciplining their disciples, offering nothing in the way of practical and applicable day to day knowledge. They play up the pleasurable aspects of the religions Philosophies: dancing, eating, chanting, and now they dilute it further to include things that are completely westernized and make it appealing to the average youth. Call it rebranding.
I completely understand the reason for this. If one is to get very serious about the philosophy and start to explore the Disciplic succession and dive deep into the history of the tradition, they are very likely to come up to the surface with nothing short of a horror on their face.
I'm not saying that there's no room for spiritual teachers, or that people shouldn't be allowed to explore and enjoying whatever group makes them feel good. But the purpose of a forum like this is to open peoples eyes to the hoodwinking. And boy is there more than enough to go around.
Also, I firmly believe there is no absolute truth and reality. I think everyone in general feels that and understands that both rationally and instinctively. While there is much benefit to be had in various mindfulness practices and so forth, it's not beneficial to make the mental leap of trusting a tangible, perceivable reality, to all of a sudden believing in a fantastical metaphysical concept that really ends up only disassociating our mind and opening us up to potential BS. Once our reasoning faculties are softened we are less likely to see the gray areas of what we are being taught. Eventually we end up in the place where it's nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction.
If reason and logic no longer holds water in basic philosophical discourse and finds no place in Vedic mythology as a mechanism to at least act as symbolism for larger themes, then it should make it's way to the waste bin. What practical use and relevance does it pose to believe that a god walks on water, kills fantastical Demons and is an expert lover to 16108 queens? In a modern context, such stories fail to amuse as they once did in a bygone era. They are often full of contradictions and what can amount to nothing more than cheesy attempts to impress simple people.
Obviously there is the larger argument that these gods are very human in their representation. Man has modeled concepts of divinity riddled with base desires.
By definition, having desire necessitates having senses. If God is not human and is transcendental then why does he desire to create and to make things and ultimately to have us worship him and love him? They seem to be a very human concerns and involvements. And very conveniently, we are taught that this tiny little planet, is a perverted reflection of some sort of spiritual plane. Rubbish.
The Vedic literatures state that God is unknowable yet they spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince us that we can know him and have an authentic personal realization of him (i'm not sure if it's so relevant that it's a male or a female) They even go a step further and trying to convince us that specific pastimes actually took place or in someway are representative of God's thinking. Which, in modern context, unfortunately, makes him out to look like a complete idiot. Take for example the Bhagavad-Gita. The work itself is riddled with contradictions that never seem to make an effort to reconcile themselves.
The Gita speaks of selfless action and desireless performance of duty yet the contradiction lies in the very premise being motivated by the desire for liberation and freedom from samsara. Sounds pleasant on paper, but it holds no water.
While there is an aspect of playful cuteness in some of the mythology, that should certainly be understood from a symbolic standpoint rather than a literal one if one plans to have some authentic insight into the minds of great thinkers if the past.
In fact, the most significant contributions to Vedic thought have always come from those who are able to break apart the myths with systematic, logical, symbol oriented explanations.
It's always amusing, from a vaishnava standpoint, that such thinkers were often referred to as mayavadis and other terms like impersonalists. And we were taught that such great thinkers were falling short somehow in their insight about consciousness and nature. We were taught to fear such thinkers and steer clear of their very deep and sound philosophies in exchange for cheap, cheesy, silly, contradictory stories.
Yet, the one core principle of many of these great teachers philosophies, centered around the rejection of the Vedic scriptures and brahminical caste hierarchy which has ironically found its way back to the surface, yet again in both Hindu politics and smaller cults like the Hare Krishnas.
We see it's very vividly in the creation of the Brahmin and sanyassi hierarchy that exist within these organizations. Many of these organizations lay a proprietary claim on the way the Scriptures should be interpreted. With the creation of catchy book titles like the Bhagavad-Gita as it is, an entire generation of spiritual seekers has been hoodwinked into believing that God sat for four hours in the middle of a tense battlefield explaining to Arjuna the difference between foods in the mode of goodness, passion, and ignorance among other repetitive and useless themes found in the Gita. Devotees then spend years avoiding things like garlic and onions, based on these verses, fully believing that by eating such foods, they are degrading their consciousness and ability to progress on the spiritual path.
As with all things claiming to be absolute, enjoy with a grain of salt. It is more likely that a guru will continue to spoonfeed you half truths for the rest of your life if you do not start using your own mind and researching things for yourself and trying to understand them from the angle of reason and logic. Do reason and logic have limitations? Sure, existence is flawed. But this should not be an immediate excuse to gobble up nonsense or take something at face value.
As a general rule of thumb, I am of the opinion that anyone who accepts somebody else's head at their feet and worship from them and service from them is a charlatan. Period. Being able to accept such worship necessitates a certain level paychopathic narcissism. It's got to be the furthest thing from humility and piety.
Time and again, I have seen these gurus and their organizations engage in underhanded methods making money, juvenile ways of disciplining their disciples, offering nothing in the way of practical and applicable day to day knowledge. They play up the pleasurable aspects of the religions Philosophies: dancing, eating, chanting, and now they dilute it further to include things that are completely westernized and make it appealing to the average youth. Call it rebranding.
I completely understand the reason for this. If one is to get very serious about the philosophy and start to explore the Disciplic succession and dive deep into the history of the tradition, they are very likely to come up to the surface with nothing short of a horror on their face.
I'm not saying that there's no room for spiritual teachers, or that people shouldn't be allowed to explore and enjoying whatever group makes them feel good. But the purpose of a forum like this is to open peoples eyes to the hoodwinking. And boy is there more than enough to go around.
Also, I firmly believe there is no absolute truth and reality. I think everyone in general feels that and understands that both rationally and instinctively. While there is much benefit to be had in various mindfulness practices and so forth, it's not beneficial to make the mental leap of trusting a tangible, perceivable reality, to all of a sudden believing in a fantastical metaphysical concept that really ends up only disassociating our mind and opening us up to potential BS. Once our reasoning faculties are softened we are less likely to see the gray areas of what we are being taught. Eventually we end up in the place where it's nearly impossible to separate fact from fiction.
If reason and logic no longer holds water in basic philosophical discourse and finds no place in Vedic mythology as a mechanism to at least act as symbolism for larger themes, then it should make it's way to the waste bin. What practical use and relevance does it pose to believe that a god walks on water, kills fantastical Demons and is an expert lover to 16108 queens? In a modern context, such stories fail to amuse as they once did in a bygone era. They are often full of contradictions and what can amount to nothing more than cheesy attempts to impress simple people.
Obviously there is the larger argument that these gods are very human in their representation. Man has modeled concepts of divinity riddled with base desires.
By definition, having desire necessitates having senses. If God is not human and is transcendental then why does he desire to create and to make things and ultimately to have us worship him and love him? They seem to be a very human concerns and involvements. And very conveniently, we are taught that this tiny little planet, is a perverted reflection of some sort of spiritual plane. Rubbish.
The Vedic literatures state that God is unknowable yet they spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince us that we can know him and have an authentic personal realization of him (i'm not sure if it's so relevant that it's a male or a female) They even go a step further and trying to convince us that specific pastimes actually took place or in someway are representative of God's thinking. Which, in modern context, unfortunately, makes him out to look like a complete idiot. Take for example the Bhagavad-Gita. The work itself is riddled with contradictions that never seem to make an effort to reconcile themselves.
The Gita speaks of selfless action and desireless performance of duty yet the contradiction lies in the very premise being motivated by the desire for liberation and freedom from samsara. Sounds pleasant on paper, but it holds no water.
While there is an aspect of playful cuteness in some of the mythology, that should certainly be understood from a symbolic standpoint rather than a literal one if one plans to have some authentic insight into the minds of great thinkers if the past.
In fact, the most significant contributions to Vedic thought have always come from those who are able to break apart the myths with systematic, logical, symbol oriented explanations.
It's always amusing, from a vaishnava standpoint, that such thinkers were often referred to as mayavadis and other terms like impersonalists. And we were taught that such great thinkers were falling short somehow in their insight about consciousness and nature. We were taught to fear such thinkers and steer clear of their very deep and sound philosophies in exchange for cheap, cheesy, silly, contradictory stories.
Yet, the one core principle of many of these great teachers philosophies, centered around the rejection of the Vedic scriptures and brahminical caste hierarchy which has ironically found its way back to the surface, yet again in both Hindu politics and smaller cults like the Hare Krishnas.
We see it's very vividly in the creation of the Brahmin and sanyassi hierarchy that exist within these organizations. Many of these organizations lay a proprietary claim on the way the Scriptures should be interpreted. With the creation of catchy book titles like the Bhagavad-Gita as it is, an entire generation of spiritual seekers has been hoodwinked into believing that God sat for four hours in the middle of a tense battlefield explaining to Arjuna the difference between foods in the mode of goodness, passion, and ignorance among other repetitive and useless themes found in the Gita. Devotees then spend years avoiding things like garlic and onions, based on these verses, fully believing that by eating such foods, they are degrading their consciousness and ability to progress on the spiritual path.
As with all things claiming to be absolute, enjoy with a grain of salt. It is more likely that a guru will continue to spoonfeed you half truths for the rest of your life if you do not start using your own mind and researching things for yourself and trying to understand them from the angle of reason and logic. Do reason and logic have limitations? Sure, existence is flawed. But this should not be an immediate excuse to gobble up nonsense or take something at face value.