Book Review, Siddha Yoga, NXIVM, Legal, Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati
"The myths of India are rife with female goddesses both terrifying and placid. From the blood-filled mouth of Durga to the generous beneficence of Lakshmi, the varieties of religious experience are conveyed through graphic images. In Linda Johnsen's naïve treatise on women "saints" in India, we get a true believer's take on a few individuals who have become well known in today's spiritual marketplace. Goddess worship is embraced by many "New Age" Westerners as the cutting edge of millennial spirituality; yet, it often ignores the ancient traditions of the East. Those Westerners, both male and female, who idealize their teacher's status as divine risk getting caught up in a culture they neither understand nor have fully explored. It is often the exotic or eccentric that gets mistaken for the Divine."
Page Six: Allison Mack enjoys one of her last meals as a free woman ahead of prison stint
"Allison Mack is enjoying her last few days of freedom before she's expected to serve three years for her role in the Nxivm sex cult scandal.
"Smallville" actress Mack, 39, was snapped out and about with a new man in Long Beach, Calif. as they grabbed a bite to eat at Little Coyote Pizza Thursday.
The couple was spotted lunching, shopping and laughing while enjoying each other's company at the outdoor eatery.
Mack wore a sundress with black boots that covered her court-ordered ankle monitor while her unidentified beau kept it simple in a camel-colored shirt, black button-up and black jeans.
Back in June, Mack was sentenced to 36 months for serving as a Nxivm "slave master" that brainwashed women into becoming sex slaves for the group's twisted leader, Keith Raniere.
"In the language of [the cult], you were a slave as well as a master … It is hard to determine an appropriate sentence for a perpetrator who is also her co-conspirator's victim," Brooklyn federal court Judge Nicholas Gaurafis told Mack during her sentencing.
NY Post: Nxivm co-founder Nancy Salzman slapped with 3 years in prison
"Nxivm's co-founder Nancy Salzman was hit with three and a half years in prison Wednesday for her unwavering support of sex cult leader Keith Raniere — and her vicious targeting of his enemies and critics.
Wearing a white blouse and black slacks, Salzman appeared in Brooklyn federal court and apologized for her senior role in the twisted group that drained its members of their cash and operated a secret sorority that groomed young women as sex slaves for Raniere.
But Salzman, 67, claimed she, too, was a victim of the sick Svengali, telling Judge Nicholas Garaufis she didn't deserve to go to prison.
But the jurist rejected her plea for leniency.
"You were Mr. Raniere's second-in-command and shared his power," railed Garaufis. "You enabled and facilitated Mr. Raniere's heinous crimes. In your 20 years at Nxivm, the door was always open but you never left."
Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison.
Salzman won't start serving her time until January 19 after undergoing an undisclosed medical procedure."
RNS: An American Jew turned Hindu holy woman tells her story
In September 1996, a young graduate student at Stanford University accompanied her seeker husband on a trip to the holy city of Rishikesh in India. A vegetarian who loved Indian food, she knew nothing about India or its central religious tradition: Hinduism. She had grown up Jewish.
Hot and sweaty from a day of travel and wanting to cool off by the banks of the Ganges, which Indians call Ganga, she walked down to the river to dip her toes in the water Hindus revere as a goddess.
What happened there — and at an ashram just a few feet away — was an intense spiritual experience, an awakening to the divine that changed her life forever.
Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, as she is now known (she does not reveal her given name), quit her Ph.D. program, divorced her husband and became a Hindu renunciate, someone who takes vows of chastity, simplicity and nonattachment.
Now she's written a memoir about her life — "Hollywood to the Himalayas: A Journey of Healing and Transformation" — in which she reveals a less than happy Los Angeles childhood of sexual abuse at the hands of her father followed by the eating disorder bulimia.
But most of the memoir is devoted to the 25 years she has spent at the Parmarth Niketan ashram in Rishikesh working alongside its president and spiritual leader, Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswati.
There she helped edit The Encyclopedia of Hinduism, a multivolume compendium conceived by Chidanand Saraswati and written by a group of international scholars. But she has also devoted herself to seva, a Sanskrit word meaning "selfless service." Alongside her guru, the two have undertaken multiple humanitarian and environmental projects to alleviate poverty by installing toilets, building schools and health care clinics, and providing emergency relief after natural disasters. They also travel around the world to teach about Hinduism.
Religion News Service spoke to Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati while she is in the U.S. to care for her mother, who suffered a stroke, as well to promote the memoir."
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