Coming back to the topic of the Rockstar Gurus, I brushed past a wannabe recently:
A self-styled 'eminent philosopher' barged into the Couchsurfing (CS) online community in London and started soliciting audience for an enlightening seminar he wanted to give. Nothing wrong with that, except that he started it as an innocent CS Meeting, the type that CS-ers normally organize to have a beer, shake a leg and have fun! A few people signed up for his invitation, before being hit with this full-blown self-promoting advertisement Guruji started.....
"On the auspicious occasion of India's Independence Day, you are cordially invited to attend a free lecture and seminar with Sri VijayAnand, Indian spiritual master and Founder of Kaya Kalp Yoga........"
His first post sounded like, Oh, I'm in London next week, so is anyone interested in some indian cooking, and an evening of discussion about india? Lot of people jumped at the Indian cooking tag and offered to organize a get together.... He reverted, assigning responsibilities for organizing the Seminar!!! Ppl backed out immediately sensing what's going on, but there's no stopping the man!
He then sent the invite to thousands of members, posted it indiscreetly on every discussion forum and eventually got rebuked by the moderators for displaying crass commercialism to a totally unrelated community!! I bet a thousand people must have thought, 'What an ass-hole, this Indian guru!'
And then there was this article about a lawsuit in America!
Victoria Olsteen, co-pastor and wife of Joel Olsteen was sued by an airhostess, Sharon Brown, for assault and displaying un-christian behaviour that resulted in Brown's loss of faith! The Olsteen couple belongs to the celebrity class in US, preaches at a church attended by close to 200,000 people per month!! Joel Olsteen is also a mega-preaching TV evangelist on international networks with millions of followers.
Brown's contention was, seeing a self-proclaimed christian shepherd like Olsteen behave like a commonplace hooligan, resulted in her rethinking about her Christian beliefs and loyalty to Church. So ofcourse, she wants some money for medical counselling and a paltry 10% of the Olsteen's wealth! And no prizes for guessing the wealth accumulated by these shepherds btw!
Holy Shit, eh?
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