In September 2009, Equalizer produced a blog entry glorifying the Findhorn Foundation. This was evidently intended as a counter to my criticism of that “commercial workshop” organisation.
This development aroused speculation that Equalizer (Gerald Joe Moreno) was an affiliate of the Foundation. Meaning as a consequence of the former association of the Findhorn Foundation with Sathya Sai Baba. The activity of “channelling,” under the auspices of Sathya Sai, had been popular in that new age centre. The critical assessment of “channelling” can be severe.
Critics observed that Moreno’s elevation of the Foundation contradicted his loudspeaker critique of ex-devotee Conny Larsson, whose “workshop” activities were to some extent reminiscent of the Foundation counterpart. Moreno mentioned approvingly such controversial workshop exemplars as Caroline Myss, William Bloom, Eckhart Tolle, and Neale Donald Walsch. All of these entrepreneurs had made appearances at the Findhorn Foundation, with Myss and Bloom being regular attractions. On the internet, Eckhart Tolle TV became regarded by many critics as another “new age” consumer distraction. The “power of now” is a soporific exercise following on from the 1960s Baba Ram Dass inflation.
A very different approach to the Foundation can be found in such web articles as Myth and Reality. Workshop commercialism was also repudiated by Stephen J. Castro in his book Hypocrisy and Dissent within the Findhorn Foundation (1996). This work was afflicted with a misleading classification by Moreno, even while academic status ICSA (in America) were recognising the merits of that annotated book as an important statement in the face of questionable new age managerialism (despite the CIFAL promotionalism).
Moreno had erroneously described the relevant publishing imprint of Hypocrisy and Dissent as my own. The real publisher was Stephen Castro. The latter was not a “vanity publisher,” to use misleading Moreno language. Castro demonstrated considerable courage in publishing his book at Forres, in the close vicinity of the Foundation, who were notorious for their extremist reactions to criticism. The Foundation management had even attempted to place a legal interdict upon a former dissident book, though without success. Democracy is not a feature of the American and European new age.
Gerald Joe Moreno (Equalizer) was so uninformed about events in Forres that he even rendered the logo of New Media Books as New Media Books Ltd, perhaps wishing to give the impression of capitalist vanities. In actual fact, Castro only published two books under that imprint; he was far from possessing company status. As to the content of those books, perhaps a long time will elapse before the “alternative” society arrives at any due recognition of past events and current critical priorities.
While the Findhorn Foundation were indulging in a putative “channelling” of Sathya Sai Baba, some of his followers were becoming very disillusioned. One of the ex-devotees wrote in an Open Letter to the guru: “[People] should not ever let their children go to Puttaparthi [ashram] or to any place where you, Sai Baba, reside, since they all [the children] would risk being at your altar of sex.” Testimonies of sexual (and paedophile) abuse are more realistic than “channelling” fantasies.
The significant Open Letter to the abuser observed that the well known sentiment of “Love All Serve All” amounted to “Hurt All – Rape All” (Conny Larsson, Open Letter to Sathya Sai Baba, 2000, exbaba.com). The same epistle noted the tendency of Sathya Sai and his devotees to openly state that “your rapes and molestations are of divine nature.”
The apologist tactic of Moreno was designed to offput attention from the sordid details of sexual abuse and other forms of affliction.
Kevin R. D. Shepherd
March 2014 (modified 2021)
ENTRY no. 21
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