We were to fly out on 17th December 1980. But after two unsatisfying years, she left college and returned to the Chicago area. Shri Swami Rama clearly understood that Health, Education and Livelihood skills form a triangular primacy and that holistic development . Dr. Ballentine says he has good reason to think that Marston "was very anxious for [Nuernberger] to go further, and he didn't. Residents are expected to donate a large portion of their labor, and they must sacrifice personal freedoms and privacy. He dictated the instructions for his several hundred organizations to his secretaries. Rama, Swami. The ant came back to life and started crawling. Swami Rama is held by his disciples to be a kind of god: He makes up the rules of the game, he can change them at will, and he cannot be judged by them. Before he reached the state of deep meditation, there were violent jerks in his body. Dr. Ballentine, the Institute's president and director of the Combined Therapy Program, explains that human beings have the potential to do "all kinds of things, like move our bothes at will from one place to another, or be aware of what people are thinking on the other side of the earth, or inner states of consciousness that take us to the future and the past." Yet she is vulnerable to feeling re-victimized every time her experience is denied or distorted. It was years more before she felt she had the right to be angry at her spiritual family, the staff and residents of the Institute who, she says, denied the signs of abuse all around them. Swami Rama of the Himalayas: His Life and Mission. From an early age he was raised in the Himalayas by his master Bengali Baba and, under the guidance of his master, traveled from temple to temple and studied with a variety of Himalayan . His early American followers had been spiritual seekers of the counterculture who found their guru at his ashram on the banks of the sacred Ganges in Rishikesh, India. 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. Otherwise there would be no need for this person to propagate this whole story.". She sounded unhappy, so I made plans to visit her at the Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy in Honesdale, Pennsylvania, where she had been a resident for more than four years. EVEN IF. Brian also received a threat, he says: a note telling him he "might get hurt," which was accidentally shoved under the door of a lawyer who rented the office next door to his in a Honesdale office building. Growing up in Calcutta in Bengal, https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/rama-swami-1925-1996, Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy of the U.S.A. [3] [note 1] He was born in Tiruchuli, Tamil Nadu, India. VIVEKANANDA was the religious name of Narendranath Datta, or Dutt (18631902), a leading spokesman for modern Hinduism and neo-Vednta in, Sri Ramakrishna The accumulated testimony of their personal experiences through the years exhibits a pattern typical of "sex in the forbidden zone," coupled with institutional mechanisms of defense and denial. . He spoke Bengali and knew neither English nor Sanskrit. Carolyn had sought a consultation with Pandit Rajmani, who told her that Megan was either lying because she was "on an ego trip," or fantasizing a sexual encounter that had never taken place. To the ordinary mind this seems like a fantasy. It was also about this time that Calcutta newspaper and journal articles first referred to him as the Hindu saint or as the Paramahamsa (a religious title of respect and honour). [2] He further claimed to have gained degree-level qualifications from an Indian school of homeopathic medicine, the University of Hamburg, Utrecht University, and finally the University of Oxford. I was counting years. I have personally witnessed yogis casting off the body consciously on many occasions. Perhaps during his visit to Asia Minor he learned these techniques from the yogis. In the presence of others, we spoke only of positive or spiritual matters, in the deliberately modulated tones all the residents used. Indian religious leader and mystic During those days I was very anxious to know this mystery, termed parakaya pravesha. He says he spends most evenings with the guru until midnight or 2 a.m., and that he knows better than anyone who is with Swami Rama late at night and who isn't. "Rama, Swami (1925-1996) One woman Institute member, who was desperate to talk with someone but afraid to give her name, called twice. Gold, http://www.hihtindia.org/SRC%20NEW/src_home.htm, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHwDV9UeyfE. [2][R 1] All the same, The time of her parting seemed imminent. At the same time, she felt anxious, because she'd seen how severe Swami Rama could be with those closest to him. But my Gurudeva has left his body. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. But still, she was afraid to leave the community she'd been part of for so long and reenter a world that had practically forgotten her existence. Pandit Arya radiates calm as he speaks. During her first eight months at the Institute, Megan was able to pursue her Studies, but her situation altered dramatically when Swami Rama returned to take up summer residence. But in 1980, they say, they returned to Honesdale after a brief vacation to learn that their friend Rose* had allegedly been sexually assaulted by Swami Rama during their absence and had fled the Institute for New York City. We kept it under observation for three days. The program seemed to provide the ideal family she'd never had, where everyone shared her values and spiritual goals. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). 3 [7] He then produced the longer theta waves of dreaming sleep, and finally the slow delta waves of deep sleep, staying aware throughout and able to describe accurately what had happened in the laboratory although he had been lying in the laboratory "snoring". Early the next morning, she says, he announced to her that she was going to leave; he never set up the promised program. In one context as found in Atharva Veda, as stated by Monier Monier-Williams, means "dark, dark-colored, black" and is related . She was thrilled; it was commonly believed at the Institute that the fastest way to reach enlightenment was to spend as much time as possible in the presence of the guru. ." Swamis, he explains, are renunciates who take vows of abstinence which include giving up sex, wine, and red meat, as well as other stimulants to the physical senses. Friends of the two couples set up a "truth booth" outside the entrance of the Institute's first annual congress in 1976. Swami Rama Himalayan University But the purified ego is a means in discriminating real Self from not-self-real Self from mere self. ." By 1977, the Institute was able to purchase the Honesdale ashram, a former Catholic seminary in the rural Pocono Mountains, which now houses more than 100 residents and guests. [13], Himalayan Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy, "15 Yoga Gurus That Are Empowering The World Through Social Media", "The Case Against Swami Rama of The Himalayas", "$1.9 Million Awarded In Swami Sexual Case", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Swami_Rama&oldid=1147688250, This page was last edited on 1 April 2023, at 15:01. It was located on the way to Dhulikhel on the mountain of Janagal. Swami Vivekananda died of diabetes. No one can expand his consciousness if he remains egotistical. Tigunait, Pandir Rajmani. "A lot of people have confused the siddhis-the powers to control body, emotions, and mind-with spirituality. "I felt two-dimensional, like a piece of paper, a cunt-he didn't care about me. The Ramakrishna Math and Mission is the main organisation founded by Swami Vivekananda in 1897. Swami Vivekananda became afflicted with throat cancer and gave up his body on 16th August 1886. Gurus were supposed to have conquered their desires, but in the spiritual literature they were often portrayed as contradictory, tricking their disciples into enlightenment. As the couple started making arrangements to move to England, they received another blow. Two of the guru's most devoted disciples left the Institute three years ago because they had learned while in India as part of an Institute tour group that parts of Swami Rama's official biography were fabricated. And the secondary trauma of having every single one of her former friends turn their backs on her, she says, has scarred her and left her with a legacy of emotional distrust and feelings of betrayal. I am keeping this last arrow in my quiver to use at that time. Carolyn has been in therapy for the past five years, trying to rebuild her self-confidence and heal the damage done by what she now calls her "sexual abuse" by Swami Rama. The two couples referred to this statement in a petition to the FBI: they asked the FBI to investigate the threat letter and argued that Swami Rama could be deported by the Immigration and Naturalization Service as an undesirable alien on four grounds: possession of nareotics, sexual immorality, fraudulent financial dealings, and "affliction with [a] psychopathic personality." In daily lectures by the Institute's teachers and in conversation with Swami Rama's disciples, she frequently heard that Swami Rama had a "greater purpose that we couldn't understand," and that he was "beyond morality and judgment. When the couple confided their resulting marital troubles to Karen and George, Karen confirmed her friend's experience by revealing that she, too, had had a supposedly exclusive and spiritual sexual relationship with Swami Rama before her marriage. At age 23 Ramakrishna married Sarada Devi, a five-year-old girl, but, because of his advocacy of celibacy, the marriage was never consummated, even though they remained together until his death. No one had thoroughly investigated, until journalist Katharine Webster decided to spend two years researching their allegations. Had Nirvana said anything? Brian says he felt betrayed, but the knowledge that Swami Rama had financially exploited him made it easier for the couple to cut their ties to the Institute. Yoga and Psychotherapy. So far, none of their attempts to communicate their experiences has been met by official Institute willingness to investigate their charges. He is also supposed to have graduated from a homeopathic medical school in India, and studied at Hamburg University, the University of Utrecht, and Oxford University. [2][11] The journalist Katharine Webster stated in Yoga Journal in 1990 that women had since the early 1970s made claims of sexual abuse against him, and that since the matter had never been investigated, she had spent two years researching it. She loved him like "a second father," she says, "and the real tragedy is that this is how our relationship ended. He says he once had a patient falsely accuse him of getting her pregnant, and that any psychologist knows that this happens frequently with emotionally disturbed women patients. Are you feeling a little confused and emotionally upset, and maybe some of the things that happened you might have misinterpreted, or you might have even fantasized them, you know, have trouble separating fantasy from reality?" Carolyn,* an old friend, called me collect. Rose spent the next six months moving from place to place, terrified that the Institute network would track her down. What a foolish woman! The yogis, he says, have demonstrated these abilities in the past and continue to do so. As soon as that ashram was established, he left from there, came back to the Rishikesh ashram and earnestly set about to establish the grand hospital for the service and benefit of the mountain people. The couple had been meditating together for several years. They introduced her to the guru, and she remembers he made a fuss over her, slapping her cheek lightly and calling her a good girl. She says he instructed her in how to give him pleasure and admonished her to always tell him that she had received pleasure, even thought she never did. 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.