Here’s a web page is dedicated to the charlatan guru Osho. (Exemplifying our point of departure for this entry.) It’s hard to say his early Bagwan Shree Rajneesh persona covered up his later crazy tendencies, or those tendencies developed in his effusive identification with his “powers,” especially powers over people. His story is well-known, (positively, positively 2 [downoad] and negatively, if you track such stuff. Osho may have gone on to a real karmic reckoning or not, but his grip on his followers remains powerful.
In any case, the maker of this web site offers Guru Ratings for a plethora of spiritual teachers, leaders, snake-oil salespersons. The ratings aren’t at all reliable, (after all, Osho gets 4 1/2 ‘stars’). But, the commentary for each person is, at a minimum, interesting, and descriptive, and ridiculous in many cases. I suppose you would have to be a voyeur in a way to find your time rewarding here. Most gurus with followers are two-sided, as all people are too, and the problem of the Shadow is, likely, universal.
Then again, one can inspect the damage of ‘Guruism’. The Feedom of Mind Center, The Cultic Studies Review (see free resources) and CultNews are helpful resources. My own favorite source of all is:
Religious Tolerance.Org. (Disclaimer: the only cult yours truly has ever belonged to is the cult of yours truly.) Why does this interest me? Because any uncontrollable relationship to anything interests me; my own experience of this included.
