My days as a door-keeper of the holy room

BY ROARING WOLF

This is the first time I break ”my silence” as a former insider and now ex-cult member of Art of Living. I spent 13 years whole-heartedly supporting the AOL, the then foundry of my life. I was a teacher for seven years, a full-timer four of them. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar was my Guru whose words I put before anyone else’s – even my closest family.

I have witnessed and experienced many of the incidents described in this blog. I have the same wish as the other collaborators to shed some light about the dark side of the organization. We all somehow know how criticizing SSRS in particular is a big no-no, especially as an insider, and how critical thinking around the movement is banned and justified with statements such as, ”You have low energy level. Do more breathing exercises” or ”be more in the knowledge and listen to Ashtavakra Gita” (SSRS´ comments on the Hindu text by the same name).

I was very close to SSRS and had fairly easy access to his room. He called me by name, I had his personal mobile number I could call whenever and I back-massaged him - dressed - in his room many times. The latter was for me not connected with any sexual energies but with a feeling of honor and extreme privilege.

I often played the role of doorman or door-blocker to his meeting room - a place where many people wanted to get in even without a real important agenda. People just wanted to “hang out”.

I remember one of the first times with this ”extremely important” job, realizing the complex and un-written rules that go with such a position:

1) Only a specific segment of people have free access to SSRS´ room: those with lots of money, media-influence, political influence or opinion makers such as actors and other public figures. This lets you right in because such a person could be used as a means to expand SSRS’s agenda.

2) Male senior German, Dutch, Indian and Swiss teachers also go right in.

3) Ordinary people with no titles or special influential powers stand very small chances for personal meetings.

Being the door-keeper was an akward situation to be in. You have to tell a lot of people SSRS is very busy and that they can´t come in. Though it is sometimes true, he often is just sitting on his couch watching CNN and/or not doing much besides chit-chatting with the ”lucky” one inside. Often people inside just sit on the floor – at his feet!! – and stare at him and carefully laugh at every one of his silly jokes or at any of his ”charming and playful” gestures. If an outsider (non-cult member) took a look inside, he would not understand what was so interesting – actually, nothing! So called ”devotees” believe they sit in the presence of the embodiment of God, a rather big deal for them.

Spending a lot of time ”inside” the room, both as a door-keeper or as a hang-out, it often struck me how bold and rude SSRS would comment about people who were not in the room (not a behavior you would expect from a dispassionate avatar-Guru!). I have often seen him making fun of people by ridiculing them in front of the crowd inside. Comments such as, ”She has such an artificial laughter – something is not quite right with her” or ”I think she/he is a blue-star” (a Sri Sri word for someone who is not right in the head).

Once he did not feel like going the ART Excel perfomance the kids had prepared for him. He said, ”It is such a poor performance”. I once overheard a phone-conversation he had with a full-time teacher who was upset and crying. When he hang up, he told the rest of us that because this person was not well because had been made teacher too young.

One of his most senior teachers of Germany, a very nice guy I happened to teach with and spent a lot of quality time with, decided to leave the movement after realizing that following ethical and, especially legal guidelines for organizational leadership was NOT vital to SSRS. The teacher sent a farewell letter explaining the motivation behind his decision. I happened to be in the room with SSRS and a group of people shortly after the teacher’s official departure was in effect. SSRS´ comment was pretty much like this, ”He is free to leave the organization. He anyway never did anything to promote my work!”

Even a hard-headed and true-believer myself then, I felt it was an unnecessary and insensitive thing to say. I never understood why SSRS, in his position as a leader, would ridicule anyone in front of others in that manner. I seems too far from the standards one expects from a Guru of compassion and, furthermore, truly very unprofessional.

The above experiences are just a few I had over the years and though I had a good time during my first years with the AoL, I soon started seeing how things really work behind the scenes. It is fair to say that these insights were the beginning of the end to me.