my writing as AmLearning January 13, 2004

THE WRITINGS OF AMLEARNING - 1/13/04
Site Map		Dear Tiger Lily, I just wanted to commend you on sharing what is obviously painful and nerve-wracking stuff coming up for you, while you are struggling with your dog's illness. I just wrote to a couple of cult experts and a journalist about the Sogyal situation, hoping their experience and wisdom can offer practical, legal ideas about how to help people from becoming Sogyal's future victims. If I can find the name of the lawyer who helped "Jane Doe" and me with the case a decade ago, I will post his details. Maybe Oscar can contact him and open another lawsuit. It could well be a class action lawsuit since there are so many victims. Actually, I do know another lawyer in NYC who deals with abuses by the Catholic Church, but I don't think any American lawyer would be of help in a case in England or France. I think Oscar needs to seek legal counsel in the country where the abuses occurred that he witnessed, and the legal jurisdiction of that country will be what decides the legal action that can be taken. I believe that "Jane Doe" could sue Sogyal in the USA because the abuses he committed in her case occurred not just in England but also in America. And Oscar is right about Sogyal's aggrandising himself with high-falootin' words of self-flattery.  What used to be called simply, "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" is now a trumpet being blown by a Narcissist: "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying: A New Spiritual Classic from One of the Foremost Interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism to the West," by Patrick Gaffney (Editor), Andrew Harvey (Editor), Sogyal Rinpoche (Author) Oh puleeeez, what hogwash! It should be called, "The Tibetan Art of Lies and Lying." As far as I know from "Jane Doe" and others who contacted me in 1993, and 1994, Andrew Harvey wrote most of the book and Sogyal put his name on it. Andrew is an ex-cult devotee of Sogyal's who opted OUT. You said: "We were told by Sogyal that when a Master meets a Dakini he has to rape her to gain her secrets, because she will never just give them away. (I've also heard that elsewhere).  It was meant to be funny. What an aggressive male way to interpret a mystery of such unfathomable beauty." Yes, it sounds like victims were being "groomed" for the abuse that he would then perpetrate. Interpol talks about the "grooming" a pedophile does in preparing their victims. I think the same "grooming" is being done in cults where the 'leader' sets the victim up to be sexually abused: http://www.interpol.com/Public/Children/SexualAbuse/Default.asp. "The majority of sex offenders groom their victims, this can take many months, even years, and often begins with the process of grooming the parents of the child. The pedophile may recognize that a family were having difficulty in managing the logistics and finances of the household and befriend them with offers of assistance, both financial and in kind. Eventually having gained the trust of the parent the offender then offers to baby sit or take the child on outings during which time he then moves on to begin the process of grooming the child victim. This part of the grooming process is the most crucial. The pedophile knows that he has to be able to control the child to the extent that he can sexually abuse him or her with the knowledge that the child will not disclose to another adult the fact that they have been sexually abused. This control is obtained in many different ways, fear, oppression, favours, threats against either the child or their parent, making the child feel guilty about what has happened or by using a combination of these methods. A typical example of how a pedophile operates would be the initial identification of a vulnerable parent who has either one or a number of children. It may be a single mother who having gone through an acrimonious divorce has had to move to accommodation that is smaller or of a lesser standard than her and the children are used to residing in. Family finances are stretched and there is less money available in the household for food, clothing and leisure activities. Once the new family unit is stable, the pedophile will then make his move, typically he may as part of his grooming process slowly introduced the family into accepting communal nudity within the home by, for example, leaving bathroom doors open whilst in use. Eventually the pedophile will sexually abuse his victim, he will have perfected a strategy to ensure their silence utilizing one or a number of the methods previously outlined. In this example it isn’t difficult to comprehend the dilemma that the child has been put in. Her mother has found a new partner in life, she is very happy, the pedophile will have told his victim that if she ‘tells’ then he will go to prison, there will be no extra money coming into the household, there will be no more nice holidays for her and her mother. Her mother won’t believe her and will not love her anymore as a result. In order to protect her mothers happiness and the new family the victim remains silent. This example is typical of how a pedophile may identify and ultimately abuse a child anywhere in the world, however, there are many other scenarios which could be used to describe how pedophiles infiltrate families, communities or organizations with the sole intent of sexually abusing children." You said: "I'm not an accomplished yogini, nor anyone special, yet I have had about a handful of powerful nyams which I know in this day and age are very unusual. Bar one, they took place during sleep. I'm only mentioning this to make the point that they took place during times I was also capable of doing exceedingly stupid things. One of them, the first seems to have been a genuine encounter with Dakini activity. I was doing Vajrasattva ngondro at the time in retreat at my old home. I will speak of it here, (though with great reluctance) because as extraordinarily life changing as it was, I still went on to make hopelessly foolish decisions in seeking out Lamas to be my partners. It was a forceful dream that completely swept me up with a power of its own into a radically different form of non-dual blissful consciousness. The nature of the dream was Yab-Yum and clear light, and receiving a message. It finally ended with me pondering an unfamiliar script in the sky, at which point my intellect interfered and I fell down, down, down and woke up. I know these things should not be talked about, especially plastered over the Internet for god's sake, but I sort of feel ok about it because I have not divulged the message, though I have done so to a handful of trusted friends, and I probably shouldn't have, and I won't in the future. The point I am trying to make here is that one can (and if I can, anyone can) have powerful awakening experiences and still be pretty much fucked up in other areas of one's life." I think it would be okay to not talk in detail about what is very privately meaningful to you, your awakening experiences, if you don't want to. Yes, I agree with you I do think that that one can "have powerful awakening experiences and still be pretty much fucked up in other areas of ones life". However, I do not think that is the case with Sogyal. I do NOT think he has had or ever had any awakening experiences. I think he's just a mess; a conniving, abuser, who takes advantage of people when they are not really even there emotionally, but grieving terrible loss, and very fragile. I mean, imagine you grieving for your dog, or Tara grieving for her father, reaching out to Sogyal for spiritual comfort, and being faced with either sexual assault, being sexually molested, seduced, raped, battered, or 'just' verbally abused. I think lots of people in the world throughout history have had experiences that feel spiritually powerful in one way or another. And they went on to have regular lives. I don't think these experiences necessarily make a person emotionally or practically healthy in any way. I think they are just that, experiences, that need to be incorporated in sane, healthy ways into ordinary life. You said: "So, is this what is happening with the Lamas?" Who knows?   There are lots of kinds of "lamas". The word means 'teacher'. Some are professors of Buddhist logic, some are administrators of monasteries, some are doctors. If a person sits through a 3 year, 3 month, 3 day retreat, anybody can be called a lama, "fucked up" or not. Often in Tibetan culture a CHILD is called a lama, for very political reasons, when they are pronounced a reincarnation by another so-called reincarnation. Is that child capable of teaching? I don't think so. When this child 'lama' grows up in a monastery, being brainwashed for 20 years, is that a person who has had a CHOICE to be a teacher? I don't think so. Just because somebody calls himself a lama, a 'teacher', does that mean they ARE? I don't think so. Even if they are a teacher and had some "awakening", does that necessarily mean they are well people? I don't think so. You said: "Though I am asking myself whether such experiences do not belong to the Eastern Tradition alone, but are within the capacity of every human being. It is a function of the human mind." Throughout history there have been many, many people who said they had mystical experiences. So much of what was not understood about the mind before, about life, was treated like it was soooo strange, when now it's routine because people have worked on problem solving, learning science, and practical-reality-based knowledge about how things work. Now people don't think they will fall off the edge of the world, or that a bout of indigestion is demonic possession as they once did. Scientists, like in the book about belief systems and the brain, see that there is a part of the brain that can literally be pressed with an electrode and automatically the person whose brain is being touched there has a cosmic bliss, cosmic union, non-dual awakening experience. It's described differently by the person's belief system, but the experience of that blissful state can be replicated with the touch of an electrode. Check out the book, "Why God Wont Go Away : Brain Science and the Biology of Belief," by Authors Eugene G. DAquili , Vince Rause , M.D. Andrew Newberg Released: 26 March, 2002 You said: "However the Tibetan Lamas and yogins seem to have monopolized it and have somehow managed to steal power over women.  So we are being raped." Well they do not have the monopoly on this raping of the desire to connect with the Divine or non-dual awakening, whatever you want to call it. Have a look at Steven Hassan's cult recovery  site:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/freedomofmind/ There are many people there who were raked over the coals by cult leaders of all kinds, all shapes, all traditions. I think they all feel, and were, very ripped off.  Some were raped, literally. At the moment, the Tibetan lamas are in fashion in the West, and so students of TB are more likely at this time to be hurt. There needs to be a heads up, and clear warnings to people about this, such as the discussion on this board by people who have had first-hand experience with abusive lamas. May I ask you Tiger Lily about the abuses you experienced with lamas? What were they and what was it that you were trying to tell others all these years and were not heard? all the best, AmLearning