Ashleigh Freckleton, Kripalu Maharaj, India, Legal, Guru's, Kripalu Maharaj
Mamamia: Three years before she was a contestant on The Bachelor, Ashleigh Freckleton survived a cult."
There was a period in 2018 when Ashleigh Freckleton felt split in two.
There was the lucid, rational Ashleigh who was alarmed by what was unfolding around her, who knew the yoga school she'd joined was something far more dangerous, manipulative, and abusive than it claimed. Then there was the Ashleigh who'd been coerced and brainwashed into justifying it all, into unpicking her suspicions, one by one.
Ashleigh, who many will recognise from the current season of The Bachelor Australia, joined the school while living in London. She was 25, alone in a new city, recovering from a relationship breakdown, and searching for a purpose.
A deeply spiritual person, raised in the Catholic faith, she was contemplating studying yoga in India when a well-meaning friend recommended a yoga school with branches across Europe. (The group will remain unnamed in this article.)
"This friend was so charismatic, and he was the first person I'd spoken to about spirituality who wasn't afraid to use the word God, who wasn't afraid to talk about all different types of faith, and synchronicity, and fate and destiny and life path, and all these sorts of things. I was like, 'This is my calling. This is the first person I've ever met, that understands me,'" Ashleigh told Mamamia.
"Eventually, he said, 'Look, rather than going to India, come to Romania and live for a month amongst all the yogis. It's one of the only true schools that teaches real yoga with a real guide.'"
After taking classes online for several months, Ashleigh flew to Romania in August 2018.
There was a period in 2018 when Ashleigh Freckleton felt split in two.
There was the lucid, rational Ashleigh who was alarmed by what was unfolding around her, who knew the yoga school she'd joined was something far more dangerous, manipulative, and abusive than it claimed. Then there was the Ashleigh who'd been coerced and brainwashed into justifying it all, into unpicking her suspicions, one by one.
Ashleigh, who many will recognise from the current season of The Bachelor Australia, joined the school while living in London. She was 25, alone in a new city, recovering from a relationship breakdown, and searching for a purpose.
A deeply spiritual person, raised in the Catholic faith, she was contemplating studying yoga in India when a well-meaning friend recommended a yoga school with branches across Europe. (The group will remain unnamed in this article.)"
Devdiscourse News Desk: Police Apprehend Driver and Conductor in Kripalu Maharaj Daughter's Tragic Road Incident
"The driver and conductor responsible for the accident involving the car of Dr. Vishakha Tripathi, daughter of spiritual leader Kripalu Maharaj, have been detained. The accident occurred on the Yamuna Expressway while the victims were traveling to Delhi. A case has been registered under multiple legal sections.
The driver and conductor linked to a fatal accident involving the car of Dr. Vishakha Tripathi, eldest daughter of spiritual leader Kripalu Maharaj, were arrested, police confirmed Tuesday.
The tragic road collision on the Yamuna Expressway claimed Dr. Tripathi's life and left others critically injured. The accused, residents of Firozabad, had initially fled the accident scene, said Dankaur SHO Munendra Kumar.
While Bablu was arrested on Monday, Sonu was tracked down early Tuesday for questioning. The victims were en route to Delhi, intending to travel to Singapore. Legal charges have been filed, and distressing footage of the wreckage has surfaced online."
The Belated Writer: Gurification
"Back in the 1990s, my then therapist pointed out that I had a tendency to 'gurify' certain people, i.e. to see them as far wiser, more spiritually aware and generally better human beings than I was, even when this turned out not to be the case. At that time I'd just started my psychotherapy training and had been to see Mother Meera, an Indian guru or, if you believe it, a divine avatar or incarnation – there are quite a lot of those in India. I paid several visits to Mother Meera in Germany, where she still lives, and not long after that I made a life-changing trip to India. There I visited the ashrams of two living gurus/divine avatars, Ammachi (Mata Amritananda Mayi), who is known for hugging people, and Satya Sai Baba, instantly recognisable by his Afro hair and orange gown, which on Christmas Day he exchanged for a white one – make of that what you will. Sai Baba has since died but Ammachi is still hugging people. I also spent time in two ashrams dedicated to teachers who are no longer alive, Sri Ramana Maharshi and Sri Aurobindo, whose ashram is a shrine to him and his consort, known as The Mother.
These weren't the first beings described as gurus that I'd come across. Back in the seventies I knew people who were involved in the Divine Light Mission led by Guru Maharaj Ji and later I learnt Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This is really very little different from any other mantra meditation except that you have to pay a lot to learn it and some practitioners go in for 'yogic flying': bouncing about the room in a cross-legged position. The flying is said to have huge benefits for the practitioner and the world, but I have to take their word for that. I was never advanced enough to try it. In the late seventies and throughout the eighties I was involved in what was then called the 'growth movement' and took part in different therapy groups where many of the participants were followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later Osho). For those who remember, they were the ones who called themselves sannyasins and wore orange or dark red. A few still do and many have kept the Sanskrit names they were given, but many have also become disenchanted or drifted away. The leaders of a series of groups I attended were at that time devotees of Baba Muktananda. I once went to their flat in Amsterdam for a course that consisted of chanting, meditation and video presentations by Muktananda himself. People spoke about his extraordinary power to call forth deep devotion and awaken spiritual energies. At that time I didn't experience much of it, but I could see from his photograph that he was an enormously charismatic and attractive man.
Despite becoming involved with Theravada Buddhism, which unlike Tibetan Buddhism doesn't see the power of the teacher as central, I still longed to find someone whose presence would enable me to enter new realms of experience. Like many people, I was led to Mother Meera by Andrew Harvey's book Hidden Journey. I longed to be turned upside-down and inside-out the way he was. Or part of me longed for it. Another part would have been shit-scared if anything so dramatic had happened. It didn't, but at a time of upset and upheaval in my life I was more than usually open to the atmosphere that surrounded her, and a sense of its peace and beauty definitely reach me. If Harvey and her other devotees were to be believed (he is no longer a devotee), she too seemed to be a divine incarnation and she apparently speaks about herself as such, referring to the rest of us as 'human beings'. At the time I was prepared to entertain the possibility. I'm less so now; I believe we all have the divine within us and are all ordinary human beings, even though it's clear that in some people certain energies that I would call spiritual have been awakened to an extraordinary degree."
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