A Summary of the Charges
Against James Swartz
Recently a good friend sent a message which, in part, queried as to how I'd summarize the charges against James Swartz. Below is an amended version of my reply.
Yes, "How" James Swartz teaches is excremental.
Many of his teachings "techniques' are terrible, with mind-screwing, bullying, and manipulation which is unethical, to say the least. Now Earthquake has also shown his financial corruption. Withholding teachings to force people to pay him money is beyond the conception of a true spiritual teacher, even, and especially, in Swartz's own (falsely claimed) lineage.
The thing is, "What" Swartz claims about his spiritual history, and what he teaches, are both reprehensible. He is not only a (sex and other) criminal, but has also lied about his spiritual history and deliberately teaches Rubbish (incorrect and distorted versions of Advaita Vedanta).
These things combined totally finish James Swartz as a credible and reputable spiritual teacher.
In summary, without even including the book "Guru? The Story of Heather" in the mix, this thread on the Cult Education Forum has made four huge points;
-- James Swartz has been proved to be a criminal. At the very least, he is the self-confessed killer of a neighbor's family pet who sexually preyed upon poverty-stricken widows in India. Add to this the fact that he has confessed to knowing 14 year-old Heather intimately during the time in which she claims he was her rapacious and drugging "guru."
-- As a teacher, he has bullied and mind-screwed his students during his whole (over 40 year) "career" as a (self-proclaimed) spiritual teacher. The whole time, he has used others (wife, students, and whoever else he can) for his own financial gain. This included having his first wife do sex shows live on stage, training two underage 'students' to work as strippers, and, more recently, demanding "donations" to pay for his (underhandedly obtained) "ashram" in Spain
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-- Regarding his spiritual history, Swartz's lies have now been documented. Where he claims he was a valued assistant and achieved a sort of "teacher certification," instead the truth is that he was evicted for having sex with other students and was never accredited in any way. To him, claimed "years" were really "weeks before being expelled."
-- Regarding his teachings, his lies and distortions have been totally illuminated and proved. He claims to be fluent in Sanskrit and able to translate sacred texts to English. His attempts at translation are, by experts, found to be "poor," "lamentable," and "apparently purposefully distorted." Whole verses of the Bhagavad Gita are left out of his versions. (Why? They would point students to the Truth, not to his distorted teaching of Swartz.) Plus, he leaves the "heart" out of Advaita, which Ramana Maharshi never did. He makes Advaita Vedanta totally a mental construct, and then distorts the thinking it's based upon.
In the Forum, and in and by his entire life, Swartz has been shown to teach others to and himself behave as a Sociopath, using his distorted versions of Advaita Vedanta to promote his "I can't sin, since you don't exist," philosophy. To the question, "How could anyone even consider such a person as a teacher?" the only possibility can be terrible stupidity or blind ignorance. That, or a masochistic nature.
What else can be said of such a "person"?