Skip to main content
Category

Conny Larsson

Findhorn Foundation

By Conny Larsson, Findhorn Foundation, ICSA, Sathya Sai Baba, Stephen J. Castro
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 
Copyright © 2021 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Conny Larsson and Sathya Sai Baba

By Bedroom Murders, Conny Larsson, Puttaparthi Ashram, Sathya Sai Baba
Conny Larsson
On a website, I reported an address given by ex-devotee Conny Larsson at a FECRIS conference in 2006. In this relevant talk, Larsson furnished information concerning sexual abuses achieved by his former guru Sathya Sai Baba (d.2011). Equalizer (Gerald Joe Moreno) reacted to my report by accusing me of endorsing Larsson’s “new age” activities. I had not done anything of the sort.
There followed a tiresome spate of Moreno online accusations about my supposed support for Larsson’s fashionable and exotic “workshop” roles. I was obliged to refute this apologist tactic in a new web article. That article described Moreno (Equalizer, SSS108) as an internet terrorist. 
The idiosyncratic reasoning of sectarian Gerald Joe Moreno preferred to assume that, anyone who mentioned what an ex-devotee said, was necessarily in agreement with all the thinking and behaviour of the other party. This very illogical exercise in attempted stigma was patently ridiculous. Strongly visible on Google were blog idioms of Equalizer such as “Shepherd’s desperate and shameless justifications and cover-ups for psychic medium Conny Larsson.” All this amounted to an apologist recourse of superficial rhetoric. 

I have never been in contact with Larsson, merely reporting relevant details about which he knew at firsthand. Those details can be encapsulated here by his well known observation that the Puttaparthi ashram of Sathya Sai was the scene of “a paedophile ring.” Larsson himself was encouraged by the guru into a homosexual relationship (with Sathya Sai) for five years.

Larsson’s book Behind the Mask of the Clown is very revealing. He relates how Sathya Sai sexually molested him in a private interview, explicitly wishing him to keep quiet about the new relationship. Larsson eventually discovered that he was not the only one in this predicament; there were many others. The guru even paid sexually exploited students and devotees, desiring their attention at this intimate and secretive level.
Larsson also says that the four men who died in the notorious bedroom murders at the Puttaparthi ashram (in 1993) were victims of sexual abuse whom he had known personally. This otherwise concealed dimension of a well known event serves to explain at least some of the gruesome details. 
Close analysts remarked that the “Larsson complex” of Moreno served as a distraction from the testimonies of sexual abuse by victims of Sathya Sai Baba. In trying to divert attention from the numerous reports of abuse, Moreno invented fantastic scenarios which he imposed upon critics. He described this ruse in terms of “exposing” the critics.
Conny Larsson wrote a significant Open Letter to Sathya Sai Baba, dated October 2000. This document should be more widely analysed by competent psychologists who are not fooled by the web antics of apologists like Moreno. The Swedish ex-devotee first encountered Sathya Sai in 1978, with the consequence that he was lured into an oral sex relationship with the guru for five years. In 1986, Larsson witnessed an episode in which a 23 year old Western visitor retreated from sexual molestation. That visitor left the ashram, became depressed, and later committed suicide. As the years passed, Sathya Sai increased his predatory sexual activity “with younger and younger boys.”
Those Indian boys faced severe problems in their situation at schools and Colleges existing in the name of Sathya Sai Baba. Molestations by the guru were very numerous,  accompanied by the incomprehension of devotee parents who disliked complaints against Sathya Sai. Larsson wrote to the predator: “Your own students, both in Brindavan [near Bangalore] and in Puttaparthi, started to confront us Westerners with this unpleasant news” (Open Letter Conny Larsson to Sai Baba, exbaba.com, Witnesses tab). Partisans like Moreno, and the more prominent Dr. Michael Goldstein, served to maintain the plight of victims in stranglehold situations of paedophile dimensions.
Kevin R. D. Shepherd
February 2014  (modified 2021) 
ENTRY no. 19 
Copyright © 2021 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.

Kevin RD Shepherd Not a New Age Promoter

By Conny Larsson, Equalizer, Findhorn Foundation, Gerald Joe Moreno, Sathya Sai Baba

Sathya  Sai  Baba
 

The Pro-Sai campaign of Gerald Joe Moreno entailed an excessive and blanket denunciation of all critics of Sathya Sai Baba and himself. This activity involved an acute tendency to misrepresent his opponents.

The misleading blogtalk of Gerald Joe Moreno (alias Equalizer) presented me as a “New Age Promoter.” In a 2008 blog bearing this title, I was assailed as “a vanity self-publisher and author whose writings mostly revolve around (or include numerous references to) the Findhorn Foundation, Stanislav Grof and Holotropic Breathing.” 

This judgment reveals an acute misconception, or manipulation, that is not supported by my writings. Not having read my books, Moreno invented capricious themes of an extremist nature. My first website did frequently mention the Findhorn Foundation (in a critical context), and to a lesser extent Grof, but that factor is no gauge of my output as a whole. 
A related peculiarity was the assertion of Equalizer that “Kevin Shepherd typically references Kate Thomas (aka “Jean Shepherd,” his mother) and Stephen J. Castro in his writings.” Uninformed readers gained the impression that all I wrote about in my books and web articles were my mother and one other writer. The convenience of this contraction for Pro-Sai polemic was considerable, at the expense of truth. See further my bibliography of books and web articles
In the same blog, Equalizer arrived at the disputed conclusion that “these verifiable facts leave Kevin Shepherd looking rather pathetic and foolish and reeking of hypocrisy.” This demeaning verdict appeared in the same paragraph as the incessant Moreno theme that I had endorsed the “psychic trance medium Conny Larsson.” I had done no such thing, as inspection of my output will reveal. 
I had merely cited the FECRIS report of ex-devotee Conny Larsson concerning sexual abuse on the part of Sathya Sai Baba (d. 2011). In contrast, the Larsson workshop adventures in “psychic trance” and Vedic mantra may well amount to confused ex-devotee activity. Such lapses could hardly be more objectionable than the vituperative polemic of an aggressive blogger like Gerald Joe Moreno. 
Kevin R. D. Shepherd 
ENTRY no. 18 
Copyright © 2014 Kevin R. D. Shepherd. All Rights Reserved.