Back in the early 1990’s Syddha Yoga was introduced
to Hong Kong by fashion maven Joyce Ma and a bunch of her
wealthy girl friends roped in to help. Now Joyce is no kook.
You don’t single handedly put Hong Kong on the fashion
map if you’re totally into the woo-woo. No, she and
her pal, the diminutive but preternaturally charming Roberto
Dominici, built a retail fashion empire in Asia until they
over-reached themselves trying to pre-empt the inevitable
take-back. “Giorgio and Bernard say Grazie, Merci and
Sayonara Joyce dahlink, but Hey Girl......., business is business
in’it? We just knew you’d understand.”
At a low ebb and looking for something completely different
Joyce lights upon Syddha Yoga. No accident this, it is of
course MEANT. Hey Presto! Before you know it, the resplendent
scarlet clad figure of Gurumayi, pill box hat, peacock duster
an’ all, is gracing a paying host of Hong Kong’s
spiritually athirst. Joyce is first onstage, trilling and
cooing her adoration of the guru. Up next, a spiritual MLM-type
spielmeister from head ashram, clad in the hucksters’
pastel hued 3-piece suit with far too much material in it,
whipping up enthusiasm recounting his miraculous healing from
earache via the guru’s grace. Finally, The Lady herself.
She tells us we’re all gonna get Shaktipat today.
Yup, Today’s the Day! Here and now, Boys. Here and Now…...
Do not envy your neighbours experience, even if they do go
off like a rocket and you don’t, warns the guru. Shaktipat’s
like that, you see. It can be ever so subtle. Some of you
might not even notice. But don’t worry, trust me, you’re
all going to get it. Shaktipat having duly descended on all
there gathered, the assembled company has a nice sing song
with Gurumayi in her fetchingly flat croon, leading the way.
For a finale everyone spends the next three hours waiting
in line to be dubbed with the peacock duster.
Just Say My Name.....
The guru departs, never to be seen in such a minor outpost
of empire ever again, but sending various peripatetic swamis
to keep Hong Kong tithes ticking over, bringing with them
slickly produced videos of the guru to succour the faithful.
One of the biggest “do’s” in the Syddha
calendar celebrates Muktananda’s mahasamadhi. For an
entire day tens of thousands of devotees worldwide gather
to meditate upon and gabble Muktananda’s name, over
and over and over again. It was all a very BIG deal. But why?
Obviously something rather more was going on than honouring
the passing of a revered guru. Now Muktananda was a considerable
magician, a very naughty fellow and, along with his US investors,
an astute businessman. Why on earth would he go to such enormous
lengths to ensure his anointed successor was his young “companion”
and translator and not one of the more qualified aspirant
swamis, if not because his young successor could be trusted
to decree the gabfest as an anniversary in perpetuity? But
why, having passed on, would he give a stuff anyway?
I sure hate to be the one to break this to you, but the answer
my friends, is psychic vampirism and spiritual cannibalism,
nothing less.
If you think I jest, just have a listen to your average everyday
common or garden channeller, be she an academic from New Mexico
or a salesman from San Diego, whose channelled entity sounds
like nothing so much as dear old Prof. Coghill reciting Chaucer.
Whether from star systems Sirius, Orion, Lyra, the Pleiades
or the Ashtar Command, cruising in the Sixth Density in a
starship somewhere East of Gunung Agung, or from Ra, the Archangels,
the Arcturians, sundry Ascended Masters or a bevy of Archangels,
the message is pretty much the same. The wise ones from afar
are looking out for us. They love us and are here to guide
us. However there are dangers, evil disembodied ones, Reptoids
and their like, seeking our life force and to keep us in darkness,
who are colluding with misguided or evil persons in our governments
(of course! Dick Cheney!). But, fear not. All will be well
if we live in the light and do our best to lead our lives
as good little New Age persons. In fact such channelled advise
sounds very much like the upbeat message proffered in your
average human potential workshop. Here’s a typical sample
from an entity called Bashar hailing from a planet called
Essassani:
All of you are as powerful as you need to be to create everything
you desire in life without having to hurt anyone else or yourselves
in order to create it. Believe in the power you are as the
reflective representation of Infinite Creatorhood.
It’s a Gnostic World
It does sound like a very Gnostic cosmos out there. Rather
as if there’s a schism, if not War in Heaven. The Demiurge
and his Archon minions have created this Earth as a world
of snare and delusion in which we incarnated beings are mired
as we struggle dimly back toward the light from whence we
sprang. But ultimately good will prevail come the End of Days.
Well, that may be so. I hope so, but I don’t know. And
nor do you, or anyone else for that matter. But leaving that
aside as quite a few aeons off, what are we going to be doing
in the meantime, between the time we shuffle this mortal coil
and Judgement Day? Off to Heaven, a term in Hell or a spell
of Purgatory perhaps, depending on how we’ve behaved
ourselves? I wonder what it takes these days to have us walk
the line. Fear of Hellfire doesn’t really do it for
most of us any more. Maybe we need even spookier stuff.
Just to balance things, here’s a less comfortable channelled
teaching. Try it on for size.
Rooting for us, the Invisible College, the hippest bunch of
inner plane guides around. The folks behind the Rosicrucians,
the Freemasons, who invented rock & roll, were into Civil
Rights, the anti-War movement and are none too thrilled about
Dubya. They’re trying to wise us up, individuate us.
Stay away from authoritarian spiritual movements of any kind,
take responsibility for yourself, know yourself, develop your
intuition, follow your bliss and don’t be a sap, they
tell us.
Merge with Care!
Set against them, a very nasty and powerful conglomeration
of disembodied inner plane spirits called Theocrats, who have
co-opted most of the world religions, cults and what have
you. They hang around churches, ashrams, and other places
of worship soaking up the energy devout believers beam their
way in prayer and meditation. They’ve been at it for
thousands of years. Whoa! Powerful!
And what if these fiends (dressed up as St. Peter no doubt)
are fond of meeting the newly deceased as they reach “the
other side” ushering them into an illusory Heaven where
their souls are gobbled up by the top Theocrats? In other
words, spiritual traditions teaching love of God and, ultimately,
union with the Divine, are really scams run by these inner
plane Theocrats to rip off psychic energy and souls. I mean,
who can you trust these days? If you think such things do
not go on, just ask a friendly dukun, who swings both ways.
Is this paranoid or what? Is it in fact any less preposterous
than the other channelled stuff? Or the memotic dogma put
out by any established patristic churches for millennia? Just
because it’s old, don’t make it true. Who is to
say what is true or not, if not your own inner voice, that
is if you ever listened to it or can hear it? Maybe it’s
good to examine one’s spiritual assumptions from time
to time, even if it may seem to undercut the spiritual moorings
of world civilisations. The Dalai Lama enjoins us to follow
our inner voice and not to buy into imposed dogma. That must
make it seemly so to do. Right?
Mordecai Malignatus
c/o Villa Vamana, Ubud.
ParacelsusAsia@yahoo.com
(ParacelsusAsia, who returns next issue, delayed his return
from the Pamirs feeling a need to commune further with the
Ascended Masters on hearing the news that Uncle Mordecai was
in Bali).
