Halfway through their meal, Carolyn remembers, Martha hesitantly said, "I know this will sound like a weird question, but has Swamiji ever asked you to have sex with him?" ." The Muslims draw out the liquid and call it pani. His American followers hear the spiritual teachings from his mouth, with his interpretation, and they rarely have the exposure to a variety of gurus, which would teach them to be skeptical of their own guru. Finally I found an opportunity to broach the topic of the lawsuit with Carolyn. The two women who wrote statements for the Cult Awareness Movement were among those involved: One stated that she was a patient at the Institute's holistic health center in New York City, and the other stated she was 17 years old when Swami Rama initiated a sexual relationship with her. Pandit Arya reportedly alternated between disbelieving and believing the growing number of his female students who told him that Swami Rama had sexually harassed or abused them. I am the one who has given the mantra!. You're bound to get mixed up. On Vasanta Panchami (the celebration of the first day of spring) morning at 4:30 suddenly he said, Now the time has come. Then he sat in the meditative posture, siddhasana, closed his eyes, and became silent. In August, Carolyn says, Swami Rama told her to meet him in New York City for the next step in her spiritual training. But something, which is truth, cannot be falsified by having one hundred witnesses. Terry* and Brian* say they were recruited into the Himalayan Institute's inner circle for their wealth and social connections. Rose, they explain, was not a disciple of Swami Rama, but had been invited by family members in the Institute's administration to come to Honesdale for medical treatment. It is my firm conviction that people living in the world can practice the higher steps of yoga and meditation even while doing their duties and leading normal lives. For a time, she says, she considered getting a pistol to carry to work. Researchers pored over his medical records and letters to figure out what he was sick with, according to the Royal Society of London. Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Dr. Ballentine denies sending out copies of Hughes's letter: 'I didn't do that. He spoke Bengali and knew neither English nor Sanskrit. Kamapukur, India There's no need for finding out, if I know it is completely wrong.". When I asked Pandit Arya about the allegations of sexual abuse, he admits that he was very disturbed when he first heard them. But she says his attitude toward her underwent a dramatic change; he began to make her a target for his anger, issuing contradictory orders and then screaming at her for her incompetence in front of the other secretaries and disciples and gossiping about her behind her back. The Meditation Center became affiliated with the Himalayan Institute, and eventually Pandit Arya achieved his dream of having his own ashram in India, when Swami Rama made him president of his Rishikesh ashram. Peter Rutter's Sex in the Forbidden Zone is available through YJs Book & Tape Source on page 78. Before the wedding, Carolyn and her fiance went to see a couples counselor both separately and together. Even so, it was a blow to find out that she wasn't particularly special: Swami Rama apparently had other "spiritual courtesans." She was dreamy! I must go. We watched his body steadily in pain and looking emaciated, but still tall and erect with no sign of any sadness on him; always inspiring, guiding the final phases of the hospital construction. He was soon reportedly adopted there by "one of the greatest masters of the Himalayas," Bengali Baba. Shortly after they returned to the U.S., Karen and George say that they and all their correspondents received a bizarre, defamatory letter containing an implicit death threat. But during the next three weeks, she says, she saw the Swami mistreating his disciples, especially the women, on a daily basis-yelling at them, ridiculing them, ordering them around, and occasionally kicking a woman in the buttocks when she was on her hands and knees weeding. This was to us a lesson in what total selflessness of a yogi means. Both women and men say they blamed themselves and their own spiritual obtuseness when they repeatedly failed to discern and follow the shifting rules. In one context as found in Atharva Veda, as stated by Monier Monier-Williams, means "dark, dark-colored, black" and is related . My work is now complete. Truth alone is the real teacher and master" - and asking for an explanation of the women's stories and challenging a possible Institute "cover-up" on professional ethical grounds. He looked hale and hearty, standing as usual tall and erect. And that was the first time I realized what all that stuff meant-the other women, the 'goofy' file, and the rumors about the lawsuit. "I thought: 'Maybe it's the only way he can break through some stubborn barrier in my ego. Those who do so," she says, "are responsible for the continuing abuse. Updates? Two women wrote statements, which said they had discovered that Swami Rama was attempting to "seduce" both of them contemporaneously. Swami Rama Tirtha believed that his creative ability did not lie in his speeches which enthralled his listeners, but in the poems and articles he wrote in the solitude of the Himalayas. A pearl necklace that Brian had bought from Swami Rama as an "investment" was appraised at roughly one-third of the $100,000 he had paid for it. [1] Views He has been subject to criticism over his racist views against blacks, discrimination against lower castes, anti-Semitism, negative views on women, and advocacy of crimes of Adolf Hitler. He became famous for his ability to control his body in yoga nidra, writing many books including the autobiographical Living with Himalayan Masters. A small band of disciples, most of them Western-educated, gathered around Ramakrishna in the early 1880s, drawn by the appeal of his message and by his charisma as a guru and ecstatic mystic. But the victims of what Jungian analyst Peter Rutter, M.D., has termed "sex in the forbidden zone" (in his book of the same name) submit to sexual advances because of a powerful psychological threat. Hughes is not so easily coerced into silence: he says he plans to continue to press the Institute's administration to fulfill iLs edii-cal obligations to investigate the women's complaints and put a stop to any abuse. The people Bob had referred to were Carolyn, Susan, Brian and Terry, Dr. Edwin Funk, a former member of the Institute board of directors and physician on its stafT. IT HAPPENED.. (SWAMI RAMA) S WAMI R AMA WAS SUPPOSEDLY BORN in 1925, and allegedly grew up as an orphan in northern India. Some were afraid of Institute retaliation; most were afraid of hurting their families, who in some cases do not know about the abuses the women suffered; still others were worried that their professional reputations would be harmed. He was reputed to do the same thing Swami Rama did throughout his life, taking on peoples illnesses upon himself and dissipating them. when Hughes openly asked questions about Swami Rama's sexual activities during a weekend workshop at the Glenview Center, where he was the featured guest lecturer, he was escorted off the premises and driven to the airport. He was among the first notable teachers of Hinduism to lecture in the United States, travelling there in 1902, preceded by Swami Vivekananda in 1893 and followed by Paramahansa Yogananda in 1920. Rama, Swami. We kept it under observation for three days. So far 2 volumes of memoirs by different disciples have been published by Swami Rama Centre at the Himalayan Institute Hospital Trust in Dehradun. Like incest victims, women who say they have been sexually abused by their gurus are sworn to silence by their abusers. Many disciples come from alcoholic and dysfunctional families where they have learned how to deny emotional abuse directed against them or their siblings, in order to believe that their parents really love them and are acting in their best interests. 2019Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved. Yes! He says he was only directly confronted once-the rest has been hearsay. The Ramakrishna Order also played an important role in the spread of Hindu ideas and practices in the West, particularly in the United States. Since our interview, Dr. Ballentine has been sent at least two letters by women who say they were sexually abused by Swami Rama: one from Carolyn and one from Susan. she remembers him demanding. Dr. Ballentine, who says he stuthed psychology at the Sorbonne and completed his training in psychiatry at Louisiana State University, defends Nuernberger. The yogi suddenly went into deep meditation. In the year 1938 when I was sent to Benares to stay with a Bengali couple, I was informed that the couple would drop their bodies at the same time. [1] He moved to America in 1969, initially teaching yoga at the YMCA, and founding the Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Illinois in 1971; its headquarters moved to its current location in Honesdale, Pennsylvania in 1977. Corrections? The other was at Kanpur. Unfortunately, his health kept deteriorating and he died in 1920 at the age of 32. Arya, however, says that much of Darling's information is inaccurate. At a young age, Swami Rama is supposed to have been appointed Shankaracharya of Karvirpitham, an exalted spiritual post. Rma is a Vedic Sanskrit word with two contextual meanings. D., about abuses that allegedly took place in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York City, and India, for a chapter in Darling's doctoral dissertation, "Turning East in the Twin Cities: Converts and Movements in the 1970s" (University of Minnesota, 1987). No definite diagnosis could be arrived at. Early the next morning, she says, he announced to her that she was going to leave; he never set up the promised program. He replied: I am very well, sonny. His response: "Listen, there are certain things which are based on witnesses - those are facts. He was ready to embark on his project to build the hospital, but first he chose to establish an ashram in Nepal. I told her what I'd heard, and that I wasn't sure the rumor was true-as a beginning student of yoga and meditation at the Institute's East West Books in New York City, I was reluctant to believe it myself. In the following year, he served as a consultant to the Voluntary Controls Project of the Research Department of the Menninger Foundation at Topeka, Kansas. There's no need for finding out, if I know it is completely wrong.". He laughed, Megan says, and told her that the women didn't know what they were weeding. As he relaxed, he created alpha waves by "imagining an empty blue sky with drifting clouds". "If you give more weight to rumors instigated by emotionally disturbed individuals and by those who are jealous or vindictive than you give to your own experience of dealing with Swamiji, then you are indeed in trouble." [2][3] Abuses alleged to have taken place against former students of Swami Rama in Chicago, in Minneapolis, in New York, and in India in the 1970s were documented by Patricia Ann Darling in a chapter of her 1987 University of Minnesota PhD thesis. Williams, however, did not sue Nuernberger himself; she sued the clinic where he worked, alleging that the clinic "knew or should have known" that Nuernberger was engaging in harmful sexual activity while treating her. She could not control her emotions, he could not talk to her! When Carolyn had to work, I attended classes in Hatha yoga or read. Carolyn and others say Megan caused a scandal in the Honesdale ashram by breaking the silence surrounding Swami Rama's sexual behavior. The Mission conducts extensive work in health care, disaster relief, rural management, tribal welfare, elementary and higher education. Hughes wrote Dr. Ballentine a letter on May 22, 1989, quoting Gandhi-Truth itself helps me when I commit mistakes. Swami Vivekananda became afflicted with throat cancer and gave up his body on 16th August 1886. Many of them say they feared his wrath when they were disciples, and several still believe he has the power to inflict harm or illness on them from a distance. The great yogi Totapuri (whose name is well known to the students of the life of Paramahamsa Ramakrishna), like many other yogis, changed his name several times. Chicago, II. "The real guru is within," Dr. Ballentine says, "that still small voice within you." Karen, the woman whose claims were ridiculed at the meeting where Swami Rama and the other directors responded to Brian's charges, was one of the first ex-members to confront top Institute administrators. Karen and George say their friends told them that the woman had been pressured to have sex with Swami Rama even after their marriage, which the guru had arranged. Each time the Institute's top professionals have been confronted with complaints that Swami Rama is abusing his position, institutional mechanisms of denial have come to the guru's aid. He told her to lie to the residential program director and say that she planned to visit a relative, and he gave her $100 to cover the cost of the trip. The chapter on the Meditation Center in Patricia Darling's dissertation details the growth of the center and the subsequent disillusionment of many of Pandit Arya's students with his new guru. Reprinted from Sacred Journey, an HIHT publication. [5], In 1966, he founded the original Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Kanpur, India; this was followed by an institute in Glenview, Illinois in 1971; it is now headquartered in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, purchased in 1977. Obedience to the guru's commands is implicitly expected of all long-term residents; former students describe him walking through the main dining room and ordering one person to move to the New York branch, another to change jobs. She believes Swami Rama was trying to buy her collusion, as he had bought the collusion of the Institute's staff and many residents. "Nirvana is one," Carolyn says she told him. Carolyn says she spent years blaming herself and trying to rationalize away what she now regards as sexual abuse. [7], Swami Rama has been accused and convicted of sexual abuse. She loved him like "a second father," she says, "and the real tragedy is that this is how our relationship ended. Through her sympathy for what appeared to be his plight, and disarmed by his jokes, she says she allowed him to cajole her until she let her defenses down. He bragged about his sumptuous homes in India and Japan and about his shopping sprees for designer clothes, she says. Carolyn rationalized: Swamiji was her guru, so even though the prospect of having sex with him seemed morally wrong and physically revolting, he must be doing it for her own good. They would travel together to England. At bottom, however, she believed her feelings didn't matter. 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