Inside Mooji's Cult

[Preetom]

27 minutes ago, Jack River said:

Thats the thing, dude!..I can’t find any doors/exits from HOME to even leave. 

Im trapped with none other than MYSELF. I got a feeling things will remain as such as well.?

Enjoy 

[SerpaeTetra]

Plus no sources for the quotes, everything is anonymous?  I looked at 3 articles, and not one direct source in there.  It just seems exaggerated to me.  The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  

[whoareyou]

18 minutes ago, SerpaeTetra said:

Plus no sources for the quotes, everything is anonymous?  I looked at 3 articles, and not one direct source in there.  It just seems exaggerated to me.  The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  

The videos are alone enough of any proof that you would need. 

How do you expect the investigative journalist to post all the sources, if the sources wish to be anonymous? A lot of people are in fear for their lives, and you expect them to be outed? 

You apparently missed one:

Here is one that was linked in the article: 

 

 

26 minutes ago, Mikael89 said:

https://culture-or-cult.com/index.php/2019/04/10/be-scofield-an-angry-sociopath-disguised/

So you find this to be reputable but not what I posted? LOL.

Edited June 6, 2019 by whoareyou

[whoareyou]

@Mikael89 If all you can take away from the videos is "someone is performing Bhakti yoga by kissing the feet of God", then you got much bigger problems to deal with.

[outlandish]

Mooji schmooji. My favourite part of that article was learning that his name is Tony. Can we just call him Tony?

[Leo Gura]

8 hours ago, whoareyou said:

Because you skimmed an article, you do not understand the complexity and nuances described in this article.  Your own mind is distorting you into labeling Mooji as "legit spiritual teacher".

This is not what I said. He is abusing his position to have sex with his students, while being in a monogamous relationships.

If you haven't skimmed the article, actually read it and CONTEMPLATED, you would see it is not relative and subjective. Your own devilry is coming to play here.

How do you determine that something is "legit"? Your perception of what is "legit" and what is not could very easily be distorted here. 

It's a relative matter to you, because you skimmed the article. If you bothered to read, and take it in the context, you would see the bigger picture. Having his students engage in criminal activity for him, and then take the falls for it, all just to earn his devotion is a VERY red flag.

Somewhat? It is VERY problematic. The fact that you don't see the significance of what is going on here, given the context, is hilarious to me.

All spiritual communities have this kind of abuse? Wtf are you talking about? 

Do you factor in your own projections, judgments, and beliefs that you hold about Mooji? 

If you want to understand what is going on here, you need to read the entire article. There is a lot more than "cult-like" features, there are a lot of red flags that you fail to see. 

Again, all of that assumes the reporting is accuate and not exaggerated or taken out of context. That's a big assumption unless you have personal experience of being inside that community.

The reason I skimmed the article is because I have no idea if what's being reported is accurate and I intuit a bias on behalf of the reporter. Ultimately I don't know.

Of course I encourage anyone entering any kind of spiritual community to be very mindful of red flags and cult behavior, which is why I realease 2 videos about cults and put 4 books about cults in my book list. Armed with such information it will be very hard to get sucked into a cult.

[MM1988]

10 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Watch your projections.

I engage people in discussion more than any other Youtuber alive. I have answered tens of thousands of peoples critiques, questions, and comments. It is almost a full-time job because the ignorance and devilry from some of you guys has no end.

I respect you a lot for that. You are here everyday clearing up questions from people who are not even customers.

[abrakamowse]

Western society is also a very bad Cult....

 

[whoareyou]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Again, all of that assumes the reporting is accuate and not exaggerated or taken out of context. That's a big assumption unless you have personal experience of being inside that community.

The reason I skimmed the article is because I have no idea if what's being reported is accurate and I intuit a bias on behalf of the reporter. Ultimately I don't know.

Of course I encourage anyone entering any kind of spiritual community to be very mindful of red flags and cult behavior, which is why I realease 2 videos about cults and put 4 books about cults in my book list. Armed with such information it will be very hard to get sucked into a cult.

We can't know 100% for sure, but I am willing to give the reporting the benefit of the doubt, for these reasons:

1) Mooji has faced sexual allegations for years. This is not the only thing out there.

For example here is a big thread where other women are coming out:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/88nf2l/mooji_metoo_movement/

Here is also a cult forum where people share VERY disturbing reports about him:

https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,135827,page=9

2) Using intuition and inference from what I see on the videos - you just don't see those kinds of things from some other known Gurus.

 

 

[Leo Gura]

@whoareyou I have been suspicious of Mooji from the very beginning. Not suspicious of his enlightenment -- I think that's legit -- but shadow issues. This is very common. Loose sexual activity tends to be extremely common in small spiritual communities. It's so common I don't even blink when I hear of it. I just expect it as a given.

If a woman is  going to sleep with Mooji, it's pretty obvious what the end result will be. It would be silly to assume he'd marry you and stay true to you given all the women who worship him. The problem is, when women worship him and then sleep with him, they only become even more attached to him and by that point they cannot help it. They will naturally get clingy, fall in love with him, but he's probably not gonna restrict who he sleeps with because at his level of consciousness it doesn't matter from his POV. And then this ends up emotionally hurting lots of women who fall in love with him because they want to make him go exclusive. It's every female worshiper's dream to be the one who gets Mooji all to herself.

[mandyjw]

One solution is just to exclude women from your spiritual communities. No temptations, no problem. 

[Bill W]

Or exclude men if the guru is male and gay, or exclude both men and women if the male guru is bisexual.

[whoareyou]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@whoareyou I have been suspicious of Mooji from the very beginning. Not suspicious of his enlightenment -- I think that's legit -- but shadow issues. This is very common. Loose sexual activity tends to be extremely common in small spiritual communities. It's so common I don't even blink when I hear of it. I just expect it as a given.

If a woman is  going to sleep with Mooji, it's pretty obvious what the end result will be. It would be silly to assume he'd marry you and stay true to you given all the women who worship him. The problem is, when women worship him and then sleep with him, they only become even more attached to him and by that point they cannot help it. They will naturally get clingy, fall in love with him, but he's probably not gonna restrict who he sleeps with because at his level of consciousness it doesn't matter from his POV. And then this ends up emotionally hurting lots of women who fall in love with him because they want to make him go exclusive.

By "loose sexual activity", do you include prostitution and abuse of his power, for him to have sex? Do you understand what some of the sexual allegations are about? He tells some of the women that if they sleep with him, they would get their "awakening" quicker.  And sure enough, why would they question the enlightened master? 

Why are you not suspicious of his enlightenment? How can you know it's legit? Why do you question the reporting, but not his enlightenment? 

Didn't Jesus give warnings about false prophets and masters? The ones that you think are "enlightened", but it's just a devil that is hiding and abuses his power.

 

Edited June 6, 2019 by whoareyou

[abrakamowse]

4 minutes ago, mandyjw said:

One solution is just to exclude women from your spiritual communities. No temptations, no problem. 

That would be very boring.

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, whoareyou said:

By "loose sexual activity", do you include prostitution and abuse of his power, for him to have sex?

No, I mostly mean just sleeping with lots of people without going exclusive with any one.

Abuse of power is a very relative thing and difficult to adjudicate. You'd have to be more specific by what that actually means. Yes, I suspect he does use his fame/status to help his own survival, which you could call an abuse of power. But then again, this is what survival is all about. This is how most people live. Famous people often use their fame to get easy sex.

I'm not sure why there would be prostitution or even if this activity is a crime in his country. You'd have to specify what prostitution means in his case. Is he forcing women to have sex for money? Is he paying women to have sex with him? That seems farfetched. If he is, obviously that's a problem.

Quote

Why are you not suspicious of his enlightenment? How can you know it's legit? Why do you question the reporting, but not his enlightenment?

Because it's clear he has some degree of enlightenment. What degree is hard to say. Probably not the highest degree.

You can't really teach the things he's teaching without some degree of enlightenment.

It's important not to conflate enlightenment with moral perfection. These are very distinct things.

[mandyjw]

@abrakamowse Well if your intent is for things to run smoothly, I guess that's what you have to do. Masons do it, and most religions do it to some degree.

It shouldn't be a problem in nonduality, except apparently anything goes so we're especially fucked. 

How many books on enlightenment have been written by women? How many female enlightened masters are there? Apparently women are only capable of fawning over a master and not being there for purely spiritual reasons. They are a distraction, bad luck, too emotional, not to be taken seriously. 

If someone wants to be valued, they will either leave or find a way in which they can be valued. Finally respect women as equal spiritual beings as a community and these things won't happen. 

[Leo Gura]

This is why in many of the best spiritual communities/ashrams/monasteries sex is simply not allowed and vows of celibacy are taken.

Of course that still doesn't fully resolve the problem as sexuality is too strong a force to simply be suppressed. Sexual tension will still run high and it can get expressed in very creative ways. Buddhist monks commonly have sex with each other by rubbing their genitals between the other's legs. Technically it ain't "sex". Lol

You have to really appreciate how powerful of a force the sex drive is. It's basically impossible to just drop it. And sex leads to lots of drama and ego games. I would never expect any teacher or human being to be "above it".

Of course there are healthy and unhealthy ways of expressing it.

[abrakamowse]

@mandyjw  The only woman that comes to my mind is Evelyn Underhill. Did you know about her? She was a Christian Mystic.

 

@Leo Gura  Lol Leo, didn't know about that... hehehehehe... 

[mandyjw]

@Leo Gura We already figured this problem out as a society, monogamy. It doesn't always work but it works better than anything else we've found yet. Of course, it's not for everyone. It doesn't work for chimps but it works for Canadian geese. 

@abrakamowse I'll check her out, thanks. 

[whoareyou]

28 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

No, I mostly mean just sleeping with lots of people without going exclusive with any one.

Abuse of power is a very relative thing and difficult to adjudicate. You'd have to be more specific by what that actually means. Yes, I suspect he does use his fame/status to help his own survival, which you could call an abuse of power. But then again, this is what survival is all about. This is how most people live. Famous people often use their fame to get easy sex.

I'm not sure why there would be prostitution or even if this activity is a crime in his country. You'd have to specify what prostitution means in his case. Is he forcing women to have sex for money? Is he paying women to have sex with him? That seems farfetched. If he is, obviously that's a problem.

According to some reports, one of them which I linked to you already, a person described a situation where Mooji forced a woman to be his prostitute.

It is more than just using fame/status to get easy sex, it is abusing the position of an "enlightened master", and twisting spiritual truth to get what he wants. For example, telling a student that their awakening would come quicker if they have sex with him is a SERIOUS abuse.

Quote

Because it's clear he has some degree of enlightenment. What degree is hard to say. Probably not the highest degree.

You can't really teach the things he's teaching without some degree of enlightenment.

It's important not to conflate enlightenment with moral perfection. These are very distinct things.

If that is the case, then your definition of "enlightenment" is a very loose one. To teach what he is teaching is not rocket science - you LEO can easily teach the stuff that he is teaching.

We are not talking about moral perfection here. We are talking about serious abuse and causes a huge amount of suffering to other people. In order to do those things, you have to be unconscious to a huge degree, and that certainly would exclude enlightenment in my book.

"Enlightenment" and "morality" are distinct, but they overlap as the person gets closer to enlightenment. 

Imo, you really need to re-evaluate your definition of "enlightenment" and who you view as "enlightened".

Edited June 6, 2019 by whoareyou