The Marshall Govindan Babaji Fraud

[jinul]

600,000 Western women have gone to the Caribbean during the past 25 years in order to have sex with Caribbean men, especially men in Jamaica, Barbados, and the Dominican Republic. Women looking for sex also frequently go to Southern Europe; Southeast Asia (principally Bali in Indonesia and Phuket in Thailand); Gambia; Senegal; Kenya; Egypt; Tunisia; Morocco, Fiji, Ecuador; and Costa Rica.
Govindan Satchidananda, a kriya yoga teacher with a serious anger problem, says that because these women go abroad seeking sexual intercourse, they receive a "big current of negative energy." What exactly does he mean? He doesn't mean they become victims of violence or contract sexually transmitted diseases, because if that's what he'd meant, then that's what he would have said. Besides, it's obviously false, because the vast majority of these women do not become victims of violence or contract sexually transmitted diseases. He means something quite different. What he means is that there is something inherent in their activity such that each and every one of these women suffers serious karmic retribution, whether they realize it or not.
I find this view quite ludicrous, and I do not see the slightest reason why anyone would believe it. I've never heard of a single woman who experienced any such "negative energy." I've never heard of a woman who went to Jamaica, for example, making a report such as: "Wow, I met this wonderful, gorgeous man on the beach and we had such a good time! We had the best sex I've ever had in my life. He did things for me I'd never even dreamed of. I couldn't wait to get back to see him again. But then, eleven months after I got back, I felt the negative energy enter me through my left ear, and come down and rest in my right thumb and stay there. That was horrible! I know it was because of that wonderful, pleasant time I had in Jamaica. I was getting my karmic punishment for enjoying myself with that good-looking black guy, and I'm sure if I had not gone to Jamaica I never would have suffered all that negative energy. I wish I had listened to Govindan Satchidananda and just stayed home. Now I'll probably have to be reborn as a cockroach in my next life." I've never heard of any woman making such a report. In fact, many women go back to the Caribbean again and again, year after year. Still, no such "negative energy" manifests. So why does Govindan Satchidananda make this absurd claim?
I think the answer is that fundamentally, Govindan Satchidananda wants women to suffer. Govindan Satchidananda was forced by his teacher, Ramaiah, to be celibate for many years, and celibacy is nothing but a form of self-torture. It causes much harm, and produces no benefits. Celibate people are almost always quite unhappy. Only a tiny number of people are better off celibate than sexually active, and we can see from Govindan Satchidananda's marriages and relationships starting in his late thirties that he isn't a member of this tiny group. Celibacy, which requires you to always abstain from sex even when you wish to have sex and desirable sex partners are available, is a lot like other forms of self-torture traditionally popular in India, such as never using one of your legs, holding one of your arms in the air for several months or years, keeping silence (never talking) at all times, putting chains on your feet (like the jangamas), fasting for long periods of time, eating everything others give you to eat (even if do not wish to), always going barefoot, and always sleeping outside no matter what the weather conditions are.I understand that after the intense suffering he underwent due to the celibacy imposed on him by his teacher, Govindan Satchidananda developed a hatred of the object he was denied for so long--women. This explains his bizarre remarks about the women who seek sex in the Caribbean. He himself wasn't happy for many years, due to his practice of celibacy, so now he wants to impose the same unhappiness on European and North American women who can't find sexual partners at home. It's something like the common phenomenon of an abused child who grows up, has children of his own, and starts abusing them. Govindan Satchidananda was abused; this made him an angry person; and now he vents his anger by intentionally giving bad advice to women who seek sex in the Caribbean or elsewhere, in order to harm them.
Govindan Satchidananda produces the bogeyman of negative karma to scare women off from enjoying themselves. He wants them to suffer in the way he had to suffer. He wants them to resort to masturbation, however unsatisfactory, rather than having fulfilling relationships with foreign men. I think Govindan Satchidananda, instead of taking his anger out on so many of the people around him, should consult his therapist. Perhaps after many years of intensive therapy, he will be able to overcome his severe anger problem.

[dodge]

Six hundred thousand western women have gone to the Caribbean over the past twenty-five years in order to have sex with Caribbean men?

Where did you get that statistic, “jinul?” Was there a survey?

[jinul]

Govindan Satchidananda's constant pestering of students for more money


One of the things that bothered me the most about Govindan Satchidananda when I was his student was his constant pestering of all his students for more money. We used to get emails from him frequently and they were always on one topic--money. Every email we got was a plea for donations or an attempt to sell us something--a book, a class, a pilgrimage trip, etc. He would only spend time answering questions as long as he thought he could get more money out of you somehow, either immediately or else down the road. Let us compare how Marshall Govindan Satchidananda would answer a question to how two people he says he admires--Ramana Maharshi and Ramakrishna--answered questions.


Question: What is the nature of the Self?


Ramana Maharshi: What exists in truth is the Self alone. The world, the individual soul, and God are appearances in it. Like silver in mother-of-pearl, these three appear at the same time, and disappear at the same time. The Self is that where there is absolutely no “I” thought. That is called “Silence”. The Self itself is the world; the Self itself is “I”; the Self itself is God; all is Siva, the Self.


Here's how Marshall Govindan Satchidananda would answer this question: Who do you think I am, your friend? Your therapist? Pay me $500 and I'll answer your question.


Or let's take Ramakrishna, who said:


"This universe is God's glory. People see His glory and forget everything. They do not seek God, whose glory is this world. All seek to enjoy 'woman and gold'. But there is too much misery and worry in that. This world is like the whirlpool of the Viśālākśi. Once a boat gets into it there is no hope of its rescue. Again, the world is like a thorny bush: you have hardly freed yourself from one set of thorns before you find yourself entangled in another. Once you enter a labyrinth you find it very difficult to get out. Living in the world, a man becomes seared, as it were."


Then a student asked a question.



Question: Then what is the way, sir?
Here's how Ramakrishna answered it: "Prayer and the company of holy men. You cannot get rid of an ailment without the help of a physician. But it is not enough to be in the company of religious people only for a day. You should constantly seek it, for the disease has become chronic. Again, you can't understand the pulse rightly unless you live with a physician. Moving with him constantly, you learn to distinguish between the pulse of phlegm and the pulse of bile."


Here's how Marshall Govindan Satchidananda would answer this question: Who do you think I am, your friend? Your therapist? Pay me $500 and I'll answer your question.
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A NOTE ON RAMAIAH.


"Govindan Satchidananda writes on his website that his teacher "Ramaiah’s preferred relationship with students was to work on 'crushing their egos.'”


Ramaiah died in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in 2006 at the age of 83. He first began establishing kriya yoga centers in North America in 1968. He came to the United States from India primarily for three reasons--(1) to make money dishonestly from kriya yoga students, (2) to have sex with female students, and (3) to abuse and harm as many people as possible for kicks. A typical trick of Ramaiah's was to invite you, through his agents, to come from thousands of miles away to attend one of his seminars for a certain price. Then, after you had paid your fee and the seminar was well underway and you were getting quite interested in learning what he was teaching, he would suddenly demand that you pay four times as much as you had already paid. Govindan writes, "Very few students, and especially very few Westerners, are prepared to work with a teacher who does that. It is too difficult." This is sort of like saying, "Very few people are prepared to put up with burglers smashing their way into their houses and robbing them of their possessions." I do not mean to say, however, that Ramaiah never did any good for anyone.

[Srivasu]

I apologize for writing a reply without reading the entire thread first. But you don't have to eat the whole omelet to know if the eggs are rotten, now do you?

Do you have any compelling evidence to back up your "quotes" from Govindan regarding women traveling great distances for sex - like the page number of one of his books or newsletters or ????

It is difficult to believe that the drivel you write about is anything other than the product of your own imagination. I don't know why you bother to write it.

Warmest Regards - Srivasu Yogi

[jinul]

I really had to laugh when I read Govindan Satchidananda's stooge's (seagull8's) bizarre comments (of which Govindan Satchidananda thought highly enough to reprint on his website at http://www.babajiskriyayoga.net/english/factnet.htm ) about Rudra. (For the poorly educated reader out there, a "stooge" is one who plays a subordinate or compliant role to a principal.)

First of all, he says that when Rudra "chooses to take the alias “Rudra,” [that] is an obvious attempt to confuse." That's because he thinks that when people adopt a sobriquet, they are trying to make everyone think that that moniker is their real name. This is quite ridiculous. It is the custom on thousands of internet forums to adopt an assumed name, and factnet.org is no exception. Those who dislike the customs adopted on factnet.org should probably find some other forum on which to post their comments. No one that I know of actually thinks that the names used on factnet.org are, in general, the real names of the authors. Of course, there could be a few exceptions, and perhaps some people who write on factnet.org do post their real names. But those are the exceptions. To say that all these authors are trying to DECEIVE everybody into thinking that these names are the authors' real names, as seagull8 does, is absurd. But why SHOULDN'T Govindan Satchidananda warmly embrace seagull8 and reprint his remarks on Govindan Satchidananda's website? After all, seagull8's remarks are no more ridiculous than Govindan Satchidananda's statements that there's a 2000 year old man living near Badrinath, India, who cannot be seen with physical eyes, or that Sri Aurobindo would have been immortal if only he had practiced hatha yoga postures.

Secondly, seagull8's real name is very unlikely to be seagull8, so by seagull8's own reasoning, seagull8 is trying to deceive everyone by using that name. He evidently wants us all to believe that that's his real name.

[Eckumbarum]

It would be kind of fun to see some other old KY 'sathacks' chime in on this thread. Those of us who have been there, and have now thankfully regained our 'sanity' realize its a 'house of cards'. Its curious to me that 'Yogiar' just kind of let the whole thing collapse with his death. It's kind of like admitting that its a farce. I mean, how 'valuable' was the sangam if it was just left to flounder as it is now? Govindan took the opportunity to have his shot at celebrity.

[jinul]

Srivasu on whether on must eat the whole omelet to know if the eggs are rotten.-----More on RAMAIAH.

In reply to Srivasu, I am familiar with Govindan Satchidananda's views because I was his student for about seven years and had many conversations with him about many topics.
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Eckumbarum's remarks about Ramaiah, who I met and investigated, are insightful. I think the key to understanding Ramaiah is to see that he basically didn't care about people at all. He wasn't interested in anyone's spiritual growth. He only used his classes in kriya yoga as a way to make money and find sex partners. He loved to cause harm to other people. Nothing made him happier than to force people to work hard 22 hours a day and get only two hours of sleep at night, which of course is a way of harming people. He loved to do such ridiculous things as to make people pick weeds at 2:00 a.m. Ramaiah was only interested in himself. That's why he didn't care what might happen to his kriya yoga students after he died, and didn't set up a means for his teaching to continue--he didn't care about their welfare while he was alive, so he certainly didn't care what would happen to them after he died. This is not an especially unusual attitude among Indian gurus. Many Indian gurus think of themselves as gods, and think of everyone around them as worthless trash. Many gurus think they're doing their students a favor just by letting them sit in their presence. Nor is Ramaiah's greedy, money-oriented behavior especially unusual among Indians. At many temples in India, you'll be constantly harassed by priests trying to get money out of you. The typical priest doesn't care about the people who visit the temple--he cares only about the money he can get out of them. I also found in India that whenever money is paid, or at least about 90% of the time, there's an attempt made by the Indian to cheat the customer. Thus, Ramaiah's dishonesty, which I discussed at the bottom of my posting entitled, "Govindan Satchidananda's constant pestering of students for more money," under the heading, "A note on Ramaiah," is really just typical Indian behavior. This is not to say, of course, that ALL Indians are dishonest. Nor is it in any way a general comment on the Indians who live in the U.S., the vast majority of whom are professional people whose moral standards are at least as high as that of the average American.

[Srivasu]

... on some of the points brought up here.

Ramaiah's behavior was totally inappropriate, and Govindan often commented on the "ego crushing" behavior of Ramaiah and others, and how it had nothing to do with Kriya Yoga.

When money is involved, the original message is always hopelessly obscured. Anyone who has dealt extensivley with SRF, Donald Walters, Yogiraj Gurunath, or any of the other pay-to-play religious "organizations" can readily see that. It took the Catholic Church 1,000 years to get hopelessly mired in its crazy rules and moral judgements, while the Kriya Yoga efforts in the West got that way in less than 50 years.

You can find a great teacher, but you will have to look. You will now him when you find him, because he will teach you for free.

Warmest Regards - Srivasu Yogi

[Nick11]

I've been doing ramaiah's version of the first initiation of Kriya Yoga for 21 years, and lately had the inclination to learn the rest of the techniques. I didn't want to roll the dice on finding another iffy teacher who disguises his own issues as concern for his students' egos, so my intuition
found govindan's list of babaji's supposed 144 kriyas online. After upping my pranayam to 48 breaths, and doing the advanced versions of the
dyanam techniques, I've been experiencing great loving feelings, and surges of happiness. These techniques are very similar to the ones in Franz Bardon's book Initiation Into Hermetics that I practised in the 1970's. I took initiation from ramaiah in the 1990's, and found him to be cold, and he acted like people weren't worthy of his glance, he would always look away when you looked at him, some kind of mind control B.S. no doubt, plus everything was "the master this and the master that", like the whole thing was about worshipping babaji, not becoming your own master. After the initiation, he wanted me to trim his bushes , I told him no and left. I never heard from that organization again. Months earlier, when I went to kriyananda in Chicago he said I failed a big "test" when I walked by one of the many collection baskets he had lying around, so he only taught me the hong saw technique and didn't think I was worthy enough to answer my questions about it. I
found the techniques that I wanted, I don't need teachers at this point and don't want them. maybe hopefully what the new-agers say about all of the old systems crumbling out of existence includes the ridiculous guru/disciple arrangement too.