CultNEWS101 Articles: 1/16/2020

Event, Coercive Control, Shambhala Mountain Center, Video, Sexual Abuse, Ram Dass, Mormon, Legal, Bentinho Massaro

Event: Coercive Control, Cults, and Community Conference in Nashville, TN, February 22, 2020

Earn 6 CE hours and learn how we can heal and protect our communities. Join host Debby Schriver and Steve Eichel, Dylesia Barner, Lorna Goldberg, Alsandria R., Bill Goldberg, and Ragan Schriver in a day of learning and discussion tailored to professionals who serve our communities—counselors, law enforcement officials, social workers, legal professionals.

DATE: February 22, 2020

TIME: 8:30am–4:30pm

LOCATION: Tennessee State Museum, 1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd., Nashville, TN 37208

SPONSORS: The University of Tennessee College of Social Work, The International Cultic Studies Association

ChapmanNews: Special Report: Secrets of Shambhala (video)

"For months, Chapman News has been investigating an interterm travel course at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado. Today we bring you a special report that raises questions about student safety."

Matthew Remski: Quotes from Ram Dass That Fit the Pattern of Spiritualizing Sexual Abuse in Yoga
" ... Dass has an entire chapter in the book called "Krishna Play" (loc. 4661). Here's how he introduces it:

IT SEEMS AT ONCE surprising and obvious to note that Maharajji was quite different in the quality of his relationship with men and with women. With men he hung out and gossiped, scolded, and guided—as friend, father, and sage. With the women, on the other hand, in addition to those roles, he seemed frequently to assume roles like that of Krishna, as child and playmate and lover. Such play on Maharajji's part of course created some consternation and confusion among devotees and also grounds for criticism on the part of people who did not like or trust Maharajji. But for the women devotees who were directly involved with Maharajji in this way, his actions served as a catalyst to catapult them to God."

Oregon Live: Child molester's wife sues Mormon church for $9.5 million, says husband is in prison because clergy reported his confession

"The wife of an Oregon man serving a 15-year prison sentence for sexually abusing the couple's daughter has filed a $9.5 million lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, saying a clergy member violated a promise of confidentiality by reporting her husband to authorities.

The husband told a local church panel about the molestation in 2016 to "repent for his sins" under the eyes of God and to seek spiritual healing "to bring peace within his life and family," the lawsuit says. Instead, he was arrested and charged in 2017 and convicted in 2018 of four counts of second-degree sexual abuse."

The Guardian: My journey into the dark, hypnotic world of a millennial guru

"'Spiritual influencers' are flourishing online. Their model is built on recruiting eager followers – but what happens when they attract vulnerable people?"

"Towards the end of 2017, Bentinho Massaro, a 29-year-old self-styled spiritual teacher with a considerable online following, chose the town of Sedona, Arizona, as the location for a 12-day-long spiritual bootcamp. Among the red sandstone cliffs that rise like temples from the desert floor, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Dutchman offered to guide his most dedicated adherents towards communion with a higher life force, or in his words, "the absolute truth of the one infinite creator".

For those who could afford the $1,199 ticket, this would be achieved through group meditation, self-inquiry and grape juice cleanse fasting. For those who couldn't, enlightenment would be available for a reduced price online via livestream.

Over the preceding seven years, Bentinho had built a near half-million-strong following on the internet. On YouTube (86,000 subscribers), he uploaded lengthy "third eye power" meditations to help followers "activate their pineal gland". On Facebook (300,000 followers), he offered advice on how to maintain intimate and empowering relationships. His Instagram feed (32,000 followers) rendered a "super accelerated" lifestyle of adventure sports, international travel and cigar smoking.

The Sedona Experiment II, as the retreat was called, was set to be an intense distillation of Bentinho's most profound teachings. But a few days before the retreat started, an independent journalist named Be Scofield self-published an article on Medium claiming that Bentinho was using his social media nous to foster a cult-like following. His content, she alleged, encouraged devotees to abandon critical thinking and embrace Bentinho as a God-like figure.

This was not the first time Bentinho had come under scrutiny. Some detractors occasionally accused him of using his platforms to hook vulnerable seekers into endless engagement and blind support. And he did peddle some fringe ideas, like his plan to build a fully enlightened society by 2035, or his belief that he vibrated at a higher frequency than other humans. But for the most part, his followers consumed his content with relish. Though most had never met Bentinho in person, he became a daily, intimate presence in their lives. He was their spiritual influencer and they were his devotional fandom.

The 12-day Sedona retreat started on 4 December 2017. Around halfway through, tragedy struck. A longtime devotee was found in a river at the bottom of a ravine, a few miles from where the retreat was taking place. A suicide note was found in his Toyota, parked 225ft above, beside an overhanging bridge.

As news spread, Bentinho's well-crafted online image began to unravel. Was it possible, some of his most loyal followers began to ask, that Bentinho was the digital incarnation of the manipulative guru, his powers amplified by the vortex-like suck of social media?"

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Baba Ram Dass, Proponent of LSD and New Age Enlightenment, Dies at 88

Born Richard Alpert, he returned from a trip to India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru and wrote more than a dozen inspirational books.

Douglas Martin

New York Times
December 23, 2019

Baba Ram Dass, who epitomized the 1960s of legend by popularizing psychedelic drugs with Timothy Leary, a fellow Harvard academic, before finding spiritual inspiration in India, died on Sunday at his home on Maui. He was 88.

The death of Ram Dass, who was born Richard Alpert, was announced on his official Instagram account.

Having returned from India as a bushy-bearded, barefoot, white-robed guru, Ram Dass became a peripatetic lecturer on New Age possibilities and a popular author of more than a dozen inspirational books.

The first of his books, “Be Here Now” (1971), sold more than two million copies, and established him as an exuberant exponent of finding salvation through helping others.

He started a foundation to combat blindness in India and Nepal, supported reforestation in Latin America, and developed health education programs for American Indians in South Dakota.

He was particularly interested in the dying. He started a foundation to help people use death as a journey of spiritual awakening and spoke of establishing a self-help line, “Dial-a-Death,” for this purpose.

When Mr. Leary was dying in 1996 — and wishing to do it “actively and creatively,” as he put it — he called for Ram Dass. Over the years, Ram Dass had alternately been Mr. Leary’s disciple, enemy and, at the end, friend. In a film clip of the two men preparing for Mr. Leary’s death, Ram Dass turns to Leary, hugs him and says, “It’s been a hell of a dance, hasn’t it?”

A year later, Ram Dass suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that left him partly paralyzed, unable to speak and needing a wheelchair. From his home in Maui, Hawaii, he learned to “surf the silence” at first, he said, but over time and painstakingly he reacquired a halting form of speech and was able to lecture on the internet and make tapes.

Richard Alpert was born in Boston on April 6, 1931. His father, George, a lawyer, was a founder of Brandeis University and president of the New Haven Railroad. Richard had a bar mitzvah, but said he had no religious convictions as a youth.

A “spit and polish” son of a corporate executive, as he described himself, he graduated from Tufts University as a psychology major in 1952 and studied for a master’s degree in the subject at Wesleyan, only to flunk the oral exam.

Nevertheless, Mr. Alpert, as he was known then, was accepted as a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford and earned his doctorate, staying on afterward to teach. That was followed by twin appointments, in psychology and education, at Harvard.

He was soon riding high, with an apartment full of exquisite antiques, a Mercedes sedan, an MG spots car, a Triumph motorcycle and his own Cessna airplane.

It was at Harvard where he crossed paths with Mr. Leary, who was lecturing there in clinical psychology. They became drinking buddies. Mr. Alpert admired Mr. Leary’s iconoclasm, telling Tufts University Magazine in 2006 that Mr. Leary was “the only person on the faculty who wasn’t impressed with Harvard.”

Mr. Leary, while working at the University of California, Berkeley, had done research on psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in some species of mushrooms, and he continued the work at Harvard. Psychiatrists were interested in mind-altering drugs as clinical aids because they mimicked schizophrenia, but Mr. Leary wanted to see if they could be beneficial.

He invited some friends — including Mr. Alpert and the poet Allen Ginsberg — to his house in Newton, Mass., on Saturday, March 5, 1961. In his kitchen, he distributed 10-milligram doses of psilocybin.

After taking his, Mr. Alpert recalled, he felt supreme calm, then panic, then exaltation. He believed he had met his own soul. “It was O.K. to be me,” he said he had realized.

The Harvard work led to many articles in newspapers and magazines, but it also provoked criticism. A Harvard dean suggested that psilocybin, LSD and other psychedelic chemicals could cause mental illness.

In May 1963, both Mr. Leary and Mr. Alpert were fired — Mr. Alpert for giving drugs to an undergraduate, and Mr. Leary for abandoning his classes.

In the fall of 1963, after visiting Mexico to sample psychedelic mushrooms, the two men and a group of followers moved to Millbrook, N.Y., finding quarters in a 64-room mansion on a 2,500-acre estate provided by Peggy Hitchcock, an heiress to the Mellon fortune.

Residents took lots of LSD, which did not become illegal for recreational use until 1968. Don Lattin, in his book “The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America” (2010), called the commune “a Disneyland of the Psychedelic Sixties.”

But Mr. Alpert found that after coming down from a high, he was depressed. As his tolerance to LSD increased, the thrill had diminished. And as the drug experience deteriorated, tensions between Mr. Leary and Mr. Alpert rose. One issue was Mr. Alpert’s acknowledged bisexuality.

Mr. Leary accused Mr. Alpert of trying to seduce his 15-year-old son, Jack, whom Mr. Alpert often took care of while Mr. Leary, a single parent, traveled.

“Uncle Dick is evil,” Mr. Leary told Jack, according to Mr. Lattin’s book.

“Oh, come on, Dad,” Jack replied. “Uncle Dick may be a jerk, but he’s not evil.”

Mr. Alpert went to India in 1967 more as a tourist than as a pilgrim. Events led him to a twinkly, old man wrapped in a blanket: Neem Karoli Baba, who was called Maharajji, or great king, by his followers. Maharajji appeared to read Mr. Alpert’s mind by telling him that his mother had recently died of spleen disease — information he had told no one in India, he said.

The experience sparked a spiritual upheaval in Mr. Alpert, who forever after considered Maharajji his guru. It was Maharajji who gave Mr. Alpert the name Ram Dass, or servant of God, and added the prefix, Baba, a term of respect meaning father.

Ram Dass gave Maharajji some LSD, but it had no effect. Ram Dass surmised that the guru’s consciousness had already been so awakened that drugs were powerless to alter it.

In 1968, Maharajji told Ram Dass to return to the United States. When he got off the plane in Boston — barefoot, robed and bearded — his father, he said, told him to get in the car quick “before anyone sees you.” He moved into a cabin on his father’s estate in New Hampshire. Soon, as many as 200 people were showing up to chant with him.

Ram Dass hit the lecture circuit, his presentation a mix of pithy wisdom and humor, often joined in the same sentence. “Treat everyone you meet like God in drag,” he said in one talk.

Wavy Gravy, the eccentric poet and peace activist, once said, “Ram Dass was the master of the one-liner, the two-liner, the ocean-liner.”

Ram Dass’s biggest public success came in 1971, when the Lama Foundation published “Be Here Now,” originally issuing it as loose pages in a box. It has had more than three dozen printings, with total sales exceeding two million.

Here, in its entirety, is Page 2: “Consciousness = energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity. It’s all the SAME. Any trip you want to take leads to the SAME place.”

By the 1980s, Ram Dass had a change of mind and image. He shaved off the beard but left a neatly trimmed mustache. He tried to drop his Indian name — he no longer wanted to be a cult figure — but his publisher vetoed the idea. He said that he had never intended to be a guru and that Harvard had been right to throw him out.

He continued to turn out books and recordings, however. He started or helped to start foundations to promote his charities, several to help prisoners, and to spread his message of spiritual equanimity. He made sure his books and tapes were reasonably priced.

The old orthodoxies slipped away. He said he realized that his 400 LSD trips had not been nearly as enlightening as his drugless spiritual epiphanies — although, he said, he continued to take one or two drug trips a year for old time’s sake. He said other religions, including the Judaism that he had rejected as a young man, were as valid as Eastern religions.

In a 1997 interview with the website “Gay Today,” Ram Dass said he had always been primarily homosexual, despite earlier statements that he was bisexual. “I always had a front to go to faculty dinners and things like that,” he said. He said he had had thousands of clandestine homosexual encounters.

In 2010, he received a letter from a man, a stranger, saying that Ram Dass might be the father of the man’s brother. DNA tests proved that Peter Reichard, a 53-year-old banker in North Carolina, was indeed Ram Dass’s son, the offspring of a liaison with a Stanford graduate student.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/23/obituaries/baba-ram-dass-richard-alpert-dead.html?auth=login-email&login=email