Sunday, July 30, 2006

Steps asaram bapu takes to cheat people of their wealth and family

As a retired person who has well established family and family memebers and a person who has studied asaram closely and once was his follower i can understand what psychology has has and how demeaning cumming and low self esteem this leader is. My article is based on the personal research and personal meeting with his followers. I thank to god that i was able to get out of his ashram before i gave up my life savings to asaram, becuase i was given talks like see this guy is here from so many years even he had a luxurious life, the fact is all his money and luxuries are owned by asaram. i was taught in ashram to tell new recruits that we have so many followers and give examples of followers who had been made to left thier homes, and family and they are lving here in ashram. I was made to recuit more and more people to work in ashram and seduce them to give up their family responsibilities in the name of spirituality. i was shocked when i was told to tell my grand child that i don't love him if he doesn't tell his father means my son to come and join ashram in ahmedabad. I was told not to keep in contact with my family. I was always told no one ever calls me in ashram whereas my son had requested thousands of times to ashram people to send me home. I was manipulated to lie to my family that I am not in ashram. I was standing next to the main phone in ahemdabad ashrma when my son called, but they other sadaks made fun of the call and told me to change my voice and tell my son that i am not there, it was made a fun to lie, but now i relaize how my lies have hurted my family just becuase asaram bapu wanted my money and our house as a gift deed. I was saved seems like with the thoughts of my grand son but there are number of other young kids are in ahemdabad ashram who are playing same games becuase they are being played mind games and are being manipulated to consder asaram as god and ashram as heaven. I really can't go in detials of ashrma becuase it will get ugly but you can understand what i mean and what worst you can think of can happen to a person when he trusts someone and gives up his family in the name of god. Forget about my age i have seen so much dirt and filth in the corrupt minds of asaram ashram that i have never seen anywhere in the world. A prostitute may have a better life than a sadak of asaram. I am not talking about businessmens who are using asaram as relgious figure to promote their own business. Asaram has successfully maniuplated the system and has mastered the art of deception and fraud in the name of relgion.



Asaram Bapu cult exploits its members' vulnerability in order to gain complete control over them, often using unethical psychological techniques to bring about thought reform. It can be said that a Asaram Bapu cult attempts to alleviate its members' vulnerability through spiritual guidance in an effort to help them exercise control over their own lives.
You probably know it as the doomsday cult whose Kool-Aid mass suicide/murders took more than 900 lives in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. How can something that began with so much hope go so very wrong? There's a lot of speculation about what happened to the members of The People's Temple, but for the most part, what went wrong is what goes wrong with destructive cults like of asaram bapu.

It's really a two-part problem. First, Asaram Bapu cult is founded by a single person who retains a position of exclusive power within the organization, and power tends to corrupt even the most ethical among us. In the case of The Asaram Bapu, there is evidence that its leader, Asaram Bapu, is abusing religious beliefs and is involved in forgery, scams, land grabbing, land encroachment, seduction, mass fantatics protestors. Because Asaram Bapu groups operate outside the mainstream, there is usually no one checking up on their operating procedures, so a corrupt or mentally unstable leader like Asaram Bapu is free to exploit his followers to his heart's content. In addition to this authoritarian leadership structure, some primary tactics or characteristics of a destructive cult like of asaram bapu uses are ::
Charismatic leadership --- It is asaram himself who poses himself as god to his followers. and followers become fanatic in believing asaram as god and they forget in real god or the supreme power.
Deception in recruiting ---- Asaram manipulates his new followers by showing he is a religious man rather than coming in open and telling this is my past and how many people and families i have ruined for my own benefit.
Use of thought-reform methods ---- Asaram followers who are manipulated to live in ashram as sadak are never left open to know whats happening in the world , they are made to listen to his tapes 24 hours /day and think about asaram only.
Isolation (physical and/or psychological) --- asaram bapu has grabbed lands and built number of ashrams all over India with small rooms and instructs his followers to lock themselves in room for hours and think about asaram only, they call it dhayan. Infact in psychology a person is made to think about asaram only and only asaram. Plus most of his followers are dislocated like Delhi follower will be sent to work in his Ahmedabad factory and Ahmedabad follower will be sent to Delhi vice versa. he has number of thikanas to hide his followers if followers family want to take their son/daughter back to their homes.
Demand for absolute, unquestioning devotion and loyalty ==== asaram will ask for total dedication from his followers who are living in his ashram, or are new recruits, they are not allowed to pray to any god except asaram, they are not allowed to belive in or listen to any other religious leader.

Sharp, unsurpassable distinction between "us" (good, saved) and "them" (bad, going to Hell) ====== Asaram bapu has made categories like hierarchy in followership -- like a new follower is seen as a skeptic, and then when a person leaves his home and starts living in his ashram then he is given some work, and made to think if he works hard and recruit more people form his family then he is promoted with in his cult . Followers are taught any one who speaks against asaram bapu is an evil, and his followers will go to the person who speaks the truth about asaram and will harass him, like they did to Nana Patekar, to new magazine in Delhi, or to respectable saint in north Delhi.
"Inside language" that only members fully understand ==== Ask any of the family members who are hurt by asaram what happened to their child, in fact followers attitude towards parents and family changes , and he sees them as an outsider, and his sect in ashram has their own code words like satta bazaar has their own words same way asaram followers who are living in Ahmedabad ashram has their own words which we can't understand. in these words they tell each other we can trust the third person or be aware of the person because he is against asaram, or if we can make fool and con the person of his money or can make him a slave for their ashram.
Strict control over members' daily routines ==== Asaram bapu control the daily routine of his followers who are living in his ashram by not giving them any real knowledge or skill rather than to emotionally blackmail them and make them speak they were unhappy in this world now they are happy by ruining their life and family and are happy while working as slaves in un humane conditions, It's amazing to see some people are working 20-22 hours per days and have been working in the ashram form last 10 years . asaram in his private meeting with his staff will manipulate all court cases against him and say these outsiders people are fool they are suing me, they cant do anything to me.
Asaram bapu and his cult followers are driven by political and financial goals as well. In the end, it's all about subjugating members' individuality to achieve the desires of Asaram bapu(s), whether that means reinforcing a self-proclaimed messianic status, participating in destructive activities in the name of spiritual revolution or simply filling the Asaram bapu's pockets with their hard-earned money. Asaram bapu sect employ similar recruiting and indoctrinating techniques as destructive religious cults, targeting people with certain vulnerabilities and then playing on those vulnerabilities to keep them "in the fold." The end result is a "convert" who will blow himself up in the name of destroying capitalism, try to get all of his loved ones to buy into the same business deal that he is losing his life savings on, or keep signing up for an unending series of lectures, seminars and retreats that promise psychological and spiritual healing but really only drain his bank account.