himalayan institute scandal

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. His response: "Listen, there are certain things which are based on witnesses-those are facts. But as she spent more time around Swami Rama and his inner circle, Megan says, the guru subjected her to a barrage of sexual harassment. Ag Innovation Center Business Plan. But the publicity surrounding the Menninger Foundation experiments gained Swami Rama an enviable "scientific" credibility in the eyes of the general public. 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. Several months later, the two couples met up again. himalayan institute of modern arts & learning (HIMAL) Giving back through life-changing experiences. He rapidly attracted a following that included many graduate and professional students. The original creator of the neti pot, the Himalayan Institute has been offering traditional and modern products for health and spirituality since 1971. We inspire, educate, and. Sexual contract between gurus and their American disciples is not a new or rare phenomenon. Carolyn went away to college at the end of that year, as her parents expected. When she shared her news with the other residents at East West Books, they told her she should feel honored: She had been chosen, while long-time devotees had been denied the privilege. She began talking about Swami Rama's exploitative behavior with anyone who would listen, especially women who she thought were being victimized. Shortly after Marston filed her suit in 1978, Nuernberger moved to Honesdale, where he is currently a member of the Institute's teaching staff. A guru has the wisdom of experience and the ancient teachings, so he can provide guidance, Dr. Ballantine says, but students should "judge every [practice] on the basis of your own experience." Cons Not one that I can see. Back; 2022 Clean Water and Public Health Fund; Make a Donation; Blog; Search for: Log in . Two women wrote statements, which said they had discovered that Swami Rama was attempting to "seduce" both of them contemporaneously. Even so, it was a blow to find out that she wasn't particularly special: Swami Rama apparently had other "spiritual courtesans." Our new online platform for community, courses, and content. Experts and some inside the system say that in justifying its decision, UC perpetuated outdated claims about online learning. The 10-campus system closes a loophole that could have let undergraduates piece together a degree. During my weekend visit, Carolyn and I took long walks on the Institute's wooded grounds while talking about her compulsive eating patterns and her disastrous relationships with men suggested as possible husbands by Swami Rama. 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. He bragged about his sumptuous homes in India and Japan and about his shopping sprees for designer clothes, she says. At the same time, she felt anxious, because she'd seen how severe Swami Rama could be with those closest to him. Put that letter in the 'goofy file.'" The jury called the abuse "spiritual incest . She says he arranged for her to meet him at the Gramercy Park Hotel and instructed her not to call him Swami in public. Yet she is vulnerable to feeling re-victimized every time her experience is denied or distorted. So far, none of their attempts to communicate their experiences has been met by official Institute willingness to investigate their charges. Megan recalls that in one of her first encounters with Swami Rama, she watched as he humiliated a quiet, withdrawn woman resident. And she was afraid to leave in her old car because a freezing rainstorm had covered all the roads with ice. A leader in the field of yoga, meditation, spirituality, and holistic health, the Himalayan Institute is dedicated to serving humanity through educational, spiritual, and humanitarian . Sex with a guru is a form of spiritual incest. The lawsuit I heard rumors about in New York City never materialized. Over the past 15 or 20 years, numerous spiritual teachers have admitted to, or been charged with, having sexually exploitative relationships with their female students. Pandit Rajmani cannot entertain the notion that the women's stories could be true. The two women who wrote statements for the Cult Awareness Movement were among those involved: One stated that she was a patient at the Institute's holistic health center in New York City, and the other stated she was 17 years old when Swami Rama initiated a sexual relationship with her. In my interviews with current and former members of the Institute, I heard an almost unvarying litany of beliefs about Swami Rama's abilities. That one gesture unleashed a storm of long-suppressed emotions. Spiritual head of the Himalayan Institute, Pandit Tigunait is the successor of Swami Rama of the Himalayas. A world leader in yoga, meditation, and holistic health, we are dedicated to serving humanity through educational, spiritual, and humanitarian programs. Patricia Trescelli, and attorney with Parker, Chapin, Flattau, and Klimpel, agreed to consult with the women concerning possible legal action on a pro bono basis. In private sessions, ex-disciples say, Swami Rama has arranged marriages and instructed disciples to break off relationships. 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. And she would help him write books. Sanctions on an institution can cause students to look elsewhere for higher education. At the same time as he dismissed her, Swami Rama also gave her a Sanskrit name. What a foolish woman! Expert wellness consultations direct to your home. Our endeavors are distinguished by their living connection to an ancient wisdom tradition of the Himalayan Masters, expressed through a unique offering of online and in-person mission programs. Nor does Dr. Ballentine mention that in 1977 Nuernberger was formally reprimanded by the Minnesota Board of Psychology for unethical practices stemming from his relationship with a third woman patient. "Unpurified ego is an evil which obstructs one's own progress. 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. Most of the former members of the Institute who agreed to be interviewed for this article were also afraid to have their identities revealed; they appear under pseudonyms, marked with an asterisk. Swami Rama frequently invited them to parties in his private quarters, where they say he entertained them with funny stories and racy gossip. Pandit Tigunait holds two doctorates: one in Sanskrit from the University of Allahabad, India, and one in Oriental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. RFP & Business Plan for Dairy Processing Investor/Operator. Ayurveda Become more involved with the projects of the ashram-seminars, residents, the patient program-in time she would be in charge of the whole thing. One day Swami Rama called for her and told her he wouldn't be taking her to India that autumn. Anyone can read what you share. And he abruptly dismissed her. A world leader in yoga, meditation, and holistic health, we are dedicated to serving humanity through educational, spiritual, and humanitarian programs. The women's fears have aborted projects intended to expose possible exploitation to a wider audience. Such a relationship, instead of giving the woman the healing or validation she seeks, reinforces her feeling that the only thing of value she has to offer a man with worldly power is her body. In today's Academic Minute, the University of Houston's Christopher Burnett determines how bad the damage can be. Initially, Brian says, most of the other directors responded with concern. Discover our new online platform for community, courses, and content. 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. Carolyn remembers being amazed: Could Swami Rama possibly be talking about sex? Himalayan Meditation Institute is dedicated to providing authentic and transformative training in the art and science of meditation. The Greens' experiments caused a furor in the scientific community because they gave powerful support to autogenic biofeedback research, which 10 years earlier had begun demonstrating that body functions which had formerly been considered involuntary could be controlled. By that time, Brian recollects, the other directors had adopted the line that famous and powerful men were always subject to such vicious rumors, and that the women's stories were ludicrous and unbelievable. But Trescelli says she had to discourage her. "I felt two-dimensional, like a piece of paper, a cunt-he didn't care about me. The Institute's "scientific" approach to yoga has made it a success, attracting long-term spiritual disciples as well as large numbers of people who merely want a boost for their psychological or physical well being. There's no need for finding out, if I know it is completely wrong.". Halfway through their meal, Carolyn remembers, Martha hesitantly said, "I know this will sound like a weird question, but has Swamiji ever asked you to have sex with him?" Himalayan Institute Online. "Before [these women] started saying these things, I also had a very good feeling that these people were wonderful people and they would never lie and they were trustworthy people. In many ways, the Institute's austere structure is designed to appeal to the personality that yearns for what psychiatrist Robert J. Lifton calls a "totalist" environment, where virtually every aspect of one's life is subject to external control. When I asked Pandit Arya about the allegations of sexual abuse, he admits that he was very disturbed when he first heard them. The jury awarded $275,000 in compensatory damages and $1.6 million in punitive damages to the woman. For a time, she says, she considered getting a pistol to carry to work. As Rutter explains in his book, a sexual relationship between a man in a position of power-doctor, psychologist, mentor, or priest-and a woman who is dependent on him-as patient, student, client, or troubled soul-almost always involves an element of coercion and a betrayal of trust. 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. In order to believe in his perfection, they must rationalize behavior that others would judge to be tyrannical, cruel, or self-indulgent. At that, she says, he raged at her until she was sobbing, unable to speak a word in her own defense: No! Carolyn is not alone. Later, many of the women broke out in head-to-toe swelling and rashes from what had in fact been poison ivy roots. She became paralyzed by her fear of angering him. Some were afraid of Institute retaliation; most were afraid of hurting their families, who in some cases do not know about the abuses the women suffered; still others were worried that their professional reputations would be harmed. At about the same time, Carolyn was accepted into the residential program at East West Books Chicago, the Institute's downtown branch. "Nirvana is one," Carolyn says she told him. Since its inception in 1971, the Himalayan Institute has been at the leading edge of personal and social transformation. Carolyn walked up to the cabin, she says, where after a brief minute spent leafing through her work, the guru asked her in a low voice for a meeting later that night. They are instructed to have "no emotional relationship inside or outside the Institute," and residential program directors are charged with monitoring disciple's behavior and attitudes to make sure they conform to Institute expectations. Only recently has she acknowledged her anger at Swami Rama. In three months, Carolyn says, she gained 20 pounds. As an enlightened being, he is thought to be beyond the judgment of ordinary mortals, their laws and morality. One of them, along with the other women from the tour group, attended the wedding of Swami Rama's son, although the guru is officially supposed to have been celibate since taking his Swami's vows. And I feared that Carolyn-young beautiful, idealistic, and worshipful of Swami Rama, the Institute's founder and spiritual leader-could be vulnerable to such exploitation. Years later, Carolyn told me that four years of discipleship under Swami Rama had taught her to be a successful liar. But Mr. Schneider told the jury that evidence indicated the relationship was consensual. At some point, we ran into Swami Rama in a hallway. At the Himalayan Yoga Institute we believe in providing you with a broad yogic education to empower you to make the best possible choices for your students and create a modern yoga class that respects yoga's traditions and foundation while taking into account the unique personal needs of your students. The next day, she says, Swami Rama called her to his office and asked her if anyone had said anything to her. 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 narcotics, sexual immorality, fraudulent financial dealings, and "affliction with [a] psychopathic personality." Together we ate superb vegetarian meals in the Institute's dining commons and chanted evening prayers. 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 bodies 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." Study Online -- Swami Rama, "Living With the Himalayan Masters". Swami Rama, she says, would extol his own sexual abilities but tell her she was bad at making love. I ask him. "The real guru is within," Dr. Ballentine says, "that still small voice within you." Megan says her feelings told her that something was amiss, but because of the social environment, she began to entertain the notion that the Swami's motives might not be what they appeared to be, and that his attempts at a con job might be a spiritual test. She recalls that he would repeat a series of affirmations and commands in a hypnotic monotone: She had done very well organizing the book distribution operation, Carolyn says he would tell her. Its mission, according to the Articles of Incorporation, was "to make known to the members and people in general the real, synthetic, and harmonious view of world religions and philosophy in terms of modern scientific achievements and undertake researches for all around ethical, social, economical, and spiritual development of humanity to attain world peace, international integration, understanding, and spiritual awakening of the human race." Wisdom must show itself in action and lovingness." Or, in the words of Rudolph Ballentine, M.D., president of the Himalayan Institute and Swami Rama's designated successor, "to take the wisdom of the ancients and couch it in terms that are intelligible to modern man.". 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