ATD New Age roots, etc. re: http://guruphiliac.blogspot.com/

[pynchonoid]

see:
http://www.ex-premie.org/papers/kirpal_statistic.htm

THE KIRPAL STATISTIC
Using Inner Visions to Your Social Advantage
The Indian Background Index

Excerpt from:
EXPOSING CULTS: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the
Mystical.
(More chapters of 'Exposing Cults' online here.)
Author: David Christopher Lane
Publisher: Garland Publishing, Inc. New York and
London.
Publication date: August 1994.

It turns out that almost everybody has the inherent
ability to see inner light and hear inner sound.
Moreover, almost everybody has the capacity to have an
out-of-body experience and behold wondrous inner
visions. You don't need to go to an Indian guru to
have such experiences indeed, you don't need to go
anywhere at all.

But that's not what Kirpal Singh and his successors
told their vast following. Instead, unsuspecting
seekers(who number in the thousands) were taught to
believe that it was the guru himself, not the
disciple, who was orchestrating the elevation of the
soul into higher regions. But Kirpal and crew were not
being completely forthcoming about the mechanism which
governs access to such amazing sights and sounds. That
mechanism is the brain and that three pounds of
glorious tissue is the lot of all humans.

In the early 1980s when I was teaching religious
studies at a Catholic high school, I tried several
meditation experiments with my students which
convinced me that Kirpal Singh and other gurus like
him were taking undue credit for their disciples'
inner experiences. In my trial mediation sessions, I
informed my students beforehand about the possibility
of seeing inner lights and hearing inner sounds.

Naturally, given the boring routine of secondary
education, my students were intrigued. I informed them
that I knew of an ancient yoga technique that would
facilitate their inner voyages. I turned the lights
off, instructed them briefly about closing their eyes
gently and looking for sparks of light at the
proverbial third eye. I told them that I would touch
some students on the forehead lightly with my fingers.
They meditated for some five minutes. I then proceeded
to ask them about their experiences.

[Kirpal Singh invariably did such a process directly
after his initiation ceremonies; he also kept a
running tally of how many saw stars and so
on-something which I have called the 'Kirpal
Statistic'.]

To my amazement, since I felt that Kirpal Singh and
others were actually transmitting spiritual power, the
majority of my students reported seeing light. A few
students even claimed to have visions of personages in
the middle of the light. Others reported hearing
subtle sounds and the like. [...] 

--- pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dovetails nicely with ATD, and some of you may get a
> kick from Guruphiliac,
> http://guruphiliac.blogspot.com/, written by a good
> friend, Jody Radzik, who was the art director for
> two
> magazines I published in the early 90s.  It's worth
> digging into the Comments, too, especially for the
> current top post on Tilak
> 


>http://pynchonoid.org
>>"everything connects"


 
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