athmonnathi retreat

Today i attended an athmonnathi retreat program, conducted by Divine Park. i got the invitation from sudhindra, one of my colleague and my ex-TL/PL. I never intended to attend this program, but he forced me again and again, and I had to finally succumb to it, when he convinced me that i would benefit from it immensely. well i dont know the exact reason why i got convinced, may be my inquisitive mind wanted to know what kind of stuff goes on in such programs or may be i wanted to learn the art of meditation. what ever it is, one thing is sure that i was there at 9 am.

the venue was Hotel Capitol in Raj Bhavan Road. i had payed a fee of 1000 Rs to enroll for this event. i didnt like the idea of paying this amount, to a spiritual lecture, which is so common in this country. i question the organisers why they felt that Hotel Capitol would be a conducive environment to carry out this retreat. i did question this to sudhindra, for which he told me that it was basically to facilitate the esteemed guests from the corporate world, as this program was targeted for them. his feels that the effect of the retreat would be avalanches if the message is carried out to a influential person, who caters for more people.

on reaching there i could see beautiful ladies, cladded in their ceremonious sarees, welcoming their guests at the entrance. i met rashmi rai at the entrance, who informed tat even guru and manu had arrived. sudhindra came along to invite me. he asked me to register before i took my seat. on regestring i received a package of materials.
i collected them, and went straight to meet guru and manu. took a seat besides them.
nandan prabhu, was the person responsible to address us. i had heard about him through sudhindra. nandan prabhu, had worked closely with padma sheshadri a renowned RSS activist.

hmmmm.... well if i go on meticulously describing each moment, i guess i wud run out of my allocated space on e-blogger. so it would be less taxing for u, e-blogger and me, if i briefly present my ideas/thoughts that were provoked after listening to the lecture from nandan prabhu.


well after listening to his lecture, i really appreciated his commanding oratorship. but it failed to impress me, and thus failed in its objective to envision me to the truth. on the contrary it was just another good lecture where the orator plays with his words, and deludes his listeners. i feel that all these people who give lectures on spirituality, use mainly 3 weapons to make their point.
a) they choose some GOD(say X) as a platform for their discussion, around which they go on weaving a dogma as per which they want the people to act. if any questions are put forth, which cannot be explained rationally, they will give sloppy answers by saying that X has told it that way. Hence in the name of X, they elude most of the questions. lets say if u ask him how can u say that by doing so and so u will find X? they wud bluntly reply back saying that is what is said by X, and I have followed it and realised X, and now if u follow it u would also realise X.

it so funny sometimes when i reflect on this. but at the same time its a tragedy when ppl simply fall prey for it. they dont even make an analysis or reason out to find whether what is said is right or wrong.
please see my story, which will give u an anology of what i want to convey here.

b) they choose analogies from the real world, to explain their tenets having an intangible subject as their basis. i strongly condemn this because one should not explain such tenets using an inference. they both operate at a different level. even though they use this to give a conceptual understanding it creates a tendency of blind belief of their principles without questioning.

c) i could clearly see the psychological techniques used by the orator, inorder to ram his points into his listeners without their knowledge. Let me illustrate with a small example of what he did.
His point was that, if one has to beget a child with good qualities, the parents have to keep their thoughts clean by doing 'Japa' of desired gods. he said that the couple must perform this 10 days before intercourse and 10 days after. he said that a child would derive the karmas of his parents, his grand parents, his great grand parents. and this is what i call as psychological technique to entrap his listeners. the point that he made would def be carried sub consciously by everyone back to their home, since anyone would obviously want to beget a good child. hence they would peform whatever actions that were prescribed/advised to beget a child with su-karmas.

After some contemplation i realise that these so called(some self proclaimed) spiritual gurus, are just like the militants/terrorists. Take the example of Osama Bin Laden, who uses the Gods name to motivate people to do what he wants. On the similar lines even these spiritual gurus tend to motivate people to do what they want. To sum it up in one sentence, "both of them manipulate people to achieve some purpose".

I would like to end this post with these few words.
"While the rest of the world asks the question, 'Who gave permission to terrorists like Osama to manipulate people to do jehad and kill people?' I ask this question, 'Who gave permission to these spirtual gurus, to play with the innocent minds of billions of people?'"