Manipulative "Gurus"

[egoless]

One woman reveals how she fell prey to a manipulative guru who took her money (over £300,000) and destroyed her career, her marriage and very nearly her sanity...

How could someone fall into such an obvious scam? 

Edited March 14, 2018 by egoless

[Leo Gura]

Same way people fall into the scam of materialism.

There are people right now going to law school, for example, working their asses off 80 hours per week to become top notch lawyers and businessmen, and for what? It's scam.

The rat race is a scam even more subtle than a cult.

All because people take knowledge for granted. They just believe whatever their culture tells them. There is little difference between a Harvard lawyer and an Islamic fundamentalist.

Most people are just robots.

How about you?

[Key Elements]

@Leo Gura Many ppl don't know what the term "rat race" means.

 

[egoless]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

How about you?

I am meta meta  

[Joseph Maynor]

Maybe the world's oldest profession is the pseudo-guru.

[Ayilton]

Life is just a dream and the modern dream it's a just scam  ! 

I want my time back please ?

[Prabhaker]

@egoless

First, the word "guru." Guru means one who has gravitation, around whom you suddenly feel as if you are being pulled. The guru is a tremendous magnet, with only one' difference. There is a man who has charisma -- you are pulled, ut you are pulled towards him. That is the man of charisma. He may become a great leader, a great politician. Adolf Hitler has that charisma; millions of people are pulled towards him. Then what is the difference between a charismatic leader and a guru? The difference is tremendous. The difference is: when you are pulled towards a guru you suddenly feel that you are being pulled inwards, not outwards.

When you are pulled towards Kabir, Nanak, Buddha, you have a strange feeling. The feeling is that you are being pulled towards them and at the same time you are being pulled inwards -- a very strange paradoxical phenomenon ,at the closer you come to your guru, the closer you come yourself. The more you become attracted towards the guru, the more you become independent. The more you become surrendered to the guru, the more you feel that you ave freedom you never had before.

So it is a very subtle difference. Remember it. If you are Pulled towards a man and that pull creates a slavery, that an is not the guru. That man may have charisma, may have magnetic power -- maybe his great intelligence, his physical beauty, or his sheer vitality pulls you -- but you will be going away from yourself. It will be an infatuation. You will be obsessed with this man, and you will be off your center. Avoid such people; these are the greatest mischief-mongers in the world. Adolf Hitler, Napoleon, Alexander -- these are the people who have created great havoc, because people feel tremendously attracted and people feel like surrendering.

Remember, if your surrendering gives you freedom, then the man is a guru, a Master. If your surrendering makes you a slave, makes you a robot -- as all the followers of Adolf Hitler were turned into mechanical robots.... They lost their souls; he simply exploited their souls. They lost all their awareness. This happens in the spiritual world also, because these charismatic people are everywhere. So make it a criterion inside: if by the presence of your guru, of your Master, you are becoming freer and freer, more and more independent; by surrendering, the paradox is happening -- that by surrendering you are gaining more willpower, by surrendering you are becoming powerful not impotent -- then you are near the guru.

The guru is one who pulls you towards himself just to throw you back into your own being. He functions as a mediator; via the guru, you arrive at your own self. Because you cannot go directly, he helps you via him. But his whole effort is to make you yourself.

A true guru will never impose himself upon you. He will never impose his life-style on you. He will never give you any rigid discipline. He will not enforce anything on you, regiment you. He will not try to create soldiers of you. No, he will help you to become yourself. He will help you to be yourself, whatsoever that is. He will help to give you more and more understanding about yourself. You will become more and more centered, rooted, near him. More and more you will feel he has given you back to yourself -- that which was lost or forgotten, he has made you aware of it.

Osho Book Name: Ecstasy - The Forgotten Language

[SpaceCowboy]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Same way people fall into the scam of materialism.

There are people right now going to law school, for example, working their asses off 80 hours per week to become top notch lawyers and businessmen, and for what? It's scam.

The rat race is a scam even more subtle than a cult.

All because people take knowledge for granted. They just believe whatever their culture tells them. There is little difference between a Harvard lawyer and an Islamic fundamentalist.

Most people are just robots.

How about you?

I agree! It's absolutely astonishing how many people are living their lives and never realizing that they are part of the rat race and basically wasting their live every day. Do you have a theory why this is the case? Why aren't more people realizing their foolishness?

I personally only know one friend who has nearly the same mindset as I have. All the other people I know in person take societies bullshit for granted. I think the reason why I had to become more conscious than most people is because I have suffered so severely for many years (because of personal circumstances) that my only chance of survival was to really look for what is true and what isn't.

By now, I feel like I can't really connect to people in my immerdiate surrounding any more, feels like they (or I) am from a different planet somehow . Glad this forum exists!

Edited March 14, 2018 by SpaceCowboy

[sarapr]

16 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Same way people fall into the scam of materialism.

There are people right now going to law school, for example, working their asses off 80 hours per week to become top notch lawyers and businessmen, and for what? It's scam.

The rat race is a scam even more subtle than a cult.

All because people take knowledge for granted. They just believe whatever their culture tells them. There is little difference between a Harvard lawyer and an Islamic fundamentalist.

Most people are just robots.

How about you?

If you think it that way life in general is a rat race of survival . for what?  

[SpaceCowboy]

39 minutes ago, Outer said:

They're not wasting their lives. I think you say that so you feel better about yourself.

"The best way to be sane is to define the insane"

It's a judgmental attitude, and possibly downright authoritarian. People have freedom and I am so glad that there is, and the uniqueness of every individual and perspective. Obviously that doesn't mean some perspectives aren't more right than others. But without freedom, the right perspective or truth, do not prevail over others. Top down control of the right perspective is probably false... I don't intend to straw man you, I just wonder what you think of freedom.

No, I don't say that to feel better about myself, that would be way to easy and lead to nothing in the end...

You're right, there are many perspectives and neither is right or wrong, it's all relative. But most people are not conscious of what they are doing (and I don't necessarily exclude myself from this). People don't know who their are, why they exist and what life is about BUT they are convinced that they know and act like they know. This is where all of the worlds problems and suffering come from. This is not freedom, but enslavement to the individual and collevtive ego. I sincerely hope that people will wake up and finally be free.

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Outer said:

There's also a massive difference between Harvard Lawyer and Islamist Fundamentalist. That type of argument is called false equivalence, as you're equating many characteristics of two people based on one, in this case, cult or something.

You understand, right?, that all sameness and difference is relative?

1) You could say that no two things are alike because every object is totally unique.

2) You could say that all objects are alike because they are all the Absolute.

And anything in between. Depending your inclination.

Which is true? Both and neither.

All human cognition relies on false equivalence. Otherwise you would not be able to recognize your mother from one minute to the next, because obviously that's a false equivalence. Your mother is changing every nanosecond.

So stop equating the many characteristics of two experiences of your mother with one, in this case, "your mother"

What I was obviously pointing out was a common feature for you to see: Western and Middle Eastern cultural brainwashing.

[Joseph Maynor]

5 hours ago, Outer said:

@Leo Gura  I don't think the rat race is a scam. There's also a massive difference between Harvard Lawyer and Islamist Fundamentalist. That type of argument is called false equivalence, as you're equating many characteristics of two people based on one, in this case, cult or something.

"They're both living animals that metabolize chemical energy. There's no difference between a pet cat and a pet snail."

the "equivalence" is in factors that are not relevant to the animals' suitability as pets).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

What if neither the Harvard Lawyer nor the Islamic Fundamentalist chose their lives?  What if that's just the way things are?  We assume the president of Fortune 500 Company and a bum on the street are different in some way.  What if neither had a choice?  What if that's just the way reality is?  And how can you say that one person's life is objectively better than another's?  Maybe the bum on the street is totally content with his life and the fortune 500 guy is looking to jump off a bridge somewhere.  

Edited March 15, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Sunderland]

It seems to me, as far as lawyers are concerned. It's better to get into a company that is really responsibly approaching the people's cases and really understanding the situations. I broke the car at one time. It was an accident. At that the person because of which all this happened accused me of this. I went to the company JaeLeeLaw they helped me a lot. Therefore, it's best to contact a company like this.

[Barry J]

Nina Collins had it all: a high-flying career, a new partner and a smart house − but inside she felt empty

She did everything right. The false guru was there to capatilise. Faith is a double edged sword

 

[Leo Gura]

On 3/14/2018 at 5:42 PM, Outer said:

@Leo Gura  Sure, but there's a difference on false equivalence in patterns that's beyond your control and what you write and think, especially when it comes to arguments. This was specifically related to arguments with false equivalence being the fallacy. I think it's in fact kind of lazy.

There is a large difference between an islamist fundamentalist and a harvard lawyer. If you compare those two with the comparison of two other random people, there's no difference in the amount of difference. But it depends what difference we're comparing those two on.

In the wikipedia example, it was between the suitability of pet between a snail and a cat.

Here's one of spilling oil:

 

"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is no different from your neighbor dripping some oil on the ground when changing oil in his car."

(the comparison is between things differing by many orders of magnitude: Deepwater Horizon spilled 210 million US gal; 780,000 m3 of oil, your neighbor might spill perhaps a pint.)

All of this is purely subjective and relative -- a construction of your mind.

The differences are large and significant only because your ego says so.

Notice how you sneak your egoic agenda into the discussion to help you convince yourself that you have a winning argument here. The oil spill only matters because you think it matters to your survival. The oil spill is a positive thing from the perspective of bacteria that thrive off eating the dead animals killed by the spill.

All argument is ego, not truth.

Once you see the truth, you will stop all argument.

[Joseph Maynor]

1 minute ago, Outer said:

I don't think it's a matter of ego or not. Words aren't truth so I don't see how you can expect me to write out of that truth here. I'm just here making a good argument that what I think you said isn't that reasonable, just trying to take you down to planet earth.

I've been reading eputkonen's blog here and I think that guy is enlightened. "I'm far from enlightenment" myself.

If you’re not Enlightened yourself, how would you be able to assess whether someone else is Enlightened?  I’m not trying to be a d*ck here by the way, this is a legitimate Epistemological issue.

Edited September 19, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Nahm]

“Welcome to the real world”, she said to me, condescendingly, “take a seat, take your life, plot it out in Black & white....they love to tell you, stay inside the lines - that something’s better, on the other side”.

”I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world, just a lie we got to rise above”.

J Mayor

 

[Toby]

44 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

If you’re not Enlightened yourself, how would you be able to assess whether someone else is Enlightened?  I’m not trying to be a d*ck here by the way, this is a legitimate Epistemological issue.

There are certain byproducts to "Enlightenment". For example one cannot be "enlightened" and not be aware also during deep (dreamless) sleep.

[Hellspeed]

Show me a guru who is not manipulative  

Enlightenment has no morality nor rules, only the mind/ego. 

[Barry J]

@Hellspeed  pointing to the truth is a different shade of manipulation than pointing to mistruth