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Thread: Western gurus

  1. #1

    Thumbs Up Western gurus

    Namaste,

    Normally I am quite wary of Western spiritual teachers. But these two gentlemen seem to be true followers of Sanathana Dharma.

    Jeffrey Armstrong

    I just saw this vid and was sold.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON87LlLBnmw

    his website

    http://www.jeffreyarmstrong.com/

    Stephen Knapp

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzfl5RffpA

    an excellent exhaustive website on Sanathana Dharma

    http://www.stephen-knapp.com/

    your thoughts?

  2. #2

    Re: Western gurus

    Quote Originally Posted by Kumar_Das View Post
    Namaste,

    Normally I am quite wary of Western spiritual teachers. But these two gentlemen seem to be true followers of Sanathana Dharma.

    Jeffrey Armstrong

    I just saw this vid and was sold.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ON87LlLBnmw

    his website

    http://www.jeffreyarmstrong.com/

    Stephen Knapp

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTzfl5RffpA

    an excellent exhaustive website on Sanathana Dharma

    http://www.stephen-knapp.com/

    your thoughts?


    Namaste.

    My thoughts are this: many false gurus are conspicuous and give themselves away rather easily with false and harebrained teachings. This is not a problem for them because their 'target audience' consists of ignorant Western new age subcultures without real values.

    Others know exactly how to talk the talk without walking the walk. They can expound, even brilliantly, on the finer points of dharma and sadhanas, yet entirely fail to practice it in their own lives, and be completely without divine sight or self realization of any kind.

    These are of course quite dangerous.

    However, one can even invoke divine glimpses of God which appear to be the Guru's doing purely through one's own devotion and adoration, even to a false guru. This muddies the waters even further.

    Still other gurus attain some level of self realization, even siddhi, and due to a lack of purification become exploiters and mindless manipulators of their followers still! These are the most dangerous as their entire lives consist of power trips. A little divine power and knowledge is so dangerous in the wrong hands.

    It is my personal belief that technology will solve the issue of false gurus by giving us a way to map the human consciousness and perceive so-called 'psychic' phenomenon around other human beings


    Without meeting and spending a good deal of time with these gentlemen I don't think it'd be possible to say one way or the other. Of the two gentlemen's sites you posted, I have a cursory familiarity with Stephen Knapp's and approve of his exposition. The other, Jeffrey Armstrong, seems rather representative of the sort of stale new age pop yoga appropriations that are common place. These are, of course, just my opinions and are without merit - the real decider would be personal experience.

    Namaste

  3. #3

    Re: Western gurus

    I have to admit he is convincing. I think I would need to spend more personal time with the man to know. His charging for things is not nearly the problem though as even my local temple charges for all of their services.

  4. #4

    Re: Western gurus

    Namaste Kumar_Das,

    I had checked out Stephen Knapp's website before but never looked into the man himself. He seems to be very knowledgeable of Sanatana Dharma and a true follower of the faith. The book of prayers, mantras, and gayatris on his website is great: http://www.stephen-knapp.com/a_littl...s_gayatris.htm

    Jai Sri Krishna

  5. Re: Western gurus

    usual test for fake/true gurus is the money test

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