Seriously, no offense intended, but I knew people like you, with an engineer guru ji from some foreign university, could not have reacted in any other way. I also had a guruji at one time. He too was an great researcher (Believe me, he was a B Tech from IIT, did his PHD from a top US university, had been among leading researcher in Computational Fluid Dynamics in the world at one time). He seemed to be a great soul. even after experiencing the best physical life one would imagine, and being capable of earning a lot of money, his only priorities were spiritual. I was very much impressed by him. He also told me all the history you wrote in our comment..and even more. He even told the future as predicted by the scriptures, till the advent of lord Kalki and finishing every thing up. I did not find all that funny at that time. I was very serious about spiritual life. And tried very hard, and very sincerely to completely assimilate it. He also said the same thing - you can not know what spiritual life is unless you get into it. No one an explain it from outside, you have to see it from inside to know what it is. And I did that. After spending two years in trying to be spiritual, I realized all he was doing was to recondition my mind, from its material state to a spiritual state by putting the right kind if thoughts in it. All he was doing was to recondition my mind to accept everything that his cult thought was true. But I guess I was too free spirited to be bogged down the rules of that so called spiritual life. I found it too much against by true basic human nature. In an attempt to get closer to god, in an attempt to get closer to the truth which nobody really knows, I was going farther and farther away from the realty, that I am a human. After two years I realized that things were getting too dogmatic, and I was easily accepting those dogmatic ideas, which I would have never accepted if he had not conditioned my mind for it. I just looked at myself once, as an outsider, what I was before, and what I had become. I was essentially the same person inside. Just the way I represented myself to the outside world had changed. I was the same person, with or without god. I realized that I did not need it at all to be good person, and hence left it. And do you know why I got interested in that stuff in the first place, because when I first heard of it, I was just eighteen, and had never seen any other paradigm of life but the prevalent material one. I found their ideas very interesting. just like you, they also said "if the same information would have been given by a westerner in any university u would have said is that so". They said that everything we see around is created by something. How could the world have been produced by a big bang. they gave me all sorts of interesting argument like that. And I was convinced. They said that perfect knowledge can be imparted only by someone who has it. And it has to travel in disciplic succession. With the limited capacity human mind, we can never decipher all the mysteried of nature. We can know them only when the one who created it (god) explains it to us. And to test its truthfulness, one has to follow it, there is no other way. I decided to follow it. I decided to be proud of the spiritual culture that India has for so many years and follow it. But later on, when I looked at it as an outsider, leaving aside my positive bias towards him, I realized that he did not really convince me about the correctness of his way of life. He convinced me of the uselessness/futility of the material I had before I came to him. All he said about spiritual life was that it is sublime, and I can understand it only once I am in it. I realized what a trap it was. The power of control over minds of people is very alluring, even more that that of money or political power. Thats what the guy was doing. Misleading young, impressionable minds to increase his and his cult's influence. thats what all these guyz do. They seem to be very logical, very nice, they talk of making you nice people, of making you god's people (Well, they have to offer something alluring, otherwise no one would follow their unnatural suppressive life style), but they are just trapping you. We humans have fears, we are very afraid of the unknown. these guyz take advantage of it. Just think about it once. Nobody knows what the absolute truth is. Some people claim they have seen it, but the claim can not be tested. When you go to these people, first they give very convincing arguments about the futility of material life, then they train your mind to accept their philosophy. You see other people following their philosophy, they all seem to be following it so well, you think you are the only fallen one who is unable to follow the right thing. You feel wretched, and vow to follow your guru's teaching even more strongly. every time this happens, your gurus hold on your mind becomes stronger. When you get deep into it, you become friends with other guyz, who seemed to be following it so well, you find that they have their own problems. even they havent realized god, but they believe that the guru has, and following him, they also will. But the fact is, you never come across people have attained the truth, accept your guru and some of his closest people. Others only feel the ecstasy sometimes. Read about/experience hypnosis, and you will know what it is. I have experienced hypnosis, I know what it is. I do not know how you will react to it, but thats the way I feel about these things. Its good to be connected to your roots. I am an Indian, sone of Mr so and so, a hindu by birth etc. But these are facts about me, which are not in my control. They can be used to track me physically, these do not define me. they are a part of me being, but not my identity. It is what I do that defines me, not the physical facts about me. When One starts confusing these things with his identity, one becomes vulnerable target people who like to control other's minds.
See, no body do really knows the truth about the absolute truth. One can not be logically sure about the right way of life. One can put faith in anything one wants, and follow it through out his life. What one can be sure about is this life one has - one has to decide himself what he wants to do. Going just by logic, not by any faith, nobody knows what will happen if me and you follow any religion or not. It doesn't even matter, i guess. As far as western people adopting indian ideas is concerned, well Yoga is definitely a good thing, and it is bound be popular on the whole earth. as far their their following Sanatan dharma is concerned, well, they are as susceptible to falling it these spiritual traps as we are, they are also humans.
Some last notes: I do not like anybody preaching his lifestyle to me, or me preaching mine to others. But when I see such things as you comment written for public viewing, I feel compelled to present my side of it to people. People should know the tricks commonly used by religious sects/cults to trap them. So that they do not get trapped, instead they are able to do what they wanna do, with an open mind.
