Author: Swami Devananda Saraswati
Publication: Vijayvaani.com
Date: June 13, 2009
URL: http://www.vijayvaani.com/FrmPublicDisplayArticle.aspx?id=628
In Catholic Ashrams: Sannyasins or Swindlers, Sita Ram Goel describes the
Christian missionary strategists' plan to infiltrate Hindu society and gain
the confidence of the people:
"Christianity has to drop its alien attire and get clothed in Hindu cultural
forms. In short, Christianity has to be presented as an indigenous faith.
Christian theology has to be conveyed through categories of Hindu philosophy;
Christian worship has to be conducted in the manner and with the materials
of Hindu puja. Christian sacraments have to sound like Hindu samskaras; Christian
churches have to copy the architecture of Hindu temples; Christian hymns have
to be set to Hindu music; Christian themes and personalities have to be presented
in styles of Hindu painting; Christian missionaries have to dress and live
like Hindu sannyasins; Christian mission stations have to look like Hindu
ashramas. And so on, the literature of Indigenization goes into all aspects
of Christian thought, organization and activity and tries to discover how
far and in what way they can be disguised in Hindu forms."
Sita Ram Goel wrote this in 1988, and he would
not be surprised to learn that Christian priests and monks in America have
adopted these very tactics to attract a whole generation of American youth
interested in Hindu spirituality, back to Christianity. The leader in this
movement today is Abbot George Burke of Atma Jyoti Ashram in Cedar Crest,
New Mexico. He is better known on the Internet as Swami Nirmalananda Giri.
Isha Jyoti to Atma Jyoti
Atma Jyoti Ashram was originally called Sri
Isha (Jesus) Jyoti Sannyas Ashram and was located at Borrego Springs, California.
Fr. George Burke is a Greek Orthodox Christian priest, and if reports are
correct, most or all of the community of brothers attached to him are Christian
priests.
On a visit to India, Fr. George met the Bengali
saint Ananda Mai Ma. She is said to have instructed him to remain in the Christian
religion and continue his Christian practices. This is not unusual advice
from a Hindu guru. In spite of their enlightenment, most are grossly ignorant
of Christianity's ideology and imperial designs, its triumphant, sectarian
prayers and bloody rituals. Hindu gurus advise their foreign followers to
remain in the religion of their forefathers, not realizing the negative consequences
of their thoughtless words.
This kind of advice is irresponsible, especially
when made to foreign seekers who take the guru's instruction as divine word.
Christianity is based on a false doctrine of vicarious salvation, and there
is nothing in Hindu scripture or the ancient Rishi tradition to support the
ill-conceived advice handed out to foreign seekers by Hindu teachers who do
not want to take spiritual responsibility for their charges.
Ananda Mai's alleged instruction suited Fr.
George and his followers to a T, and they quoted her later as their authority
to don the ochre robes of Hindu sannyasis and adopt the Sanskrit titles and
names of Smarta Dasnami monks. The fact that Ananda Mai Ma was not an initiated
Dasnami sannyasi and had no authority to give them ochre robes or Dasnami
titles did not deter them in the impersonation drama.
They continued to perform the bloody sacrifice
of the Christian Mass in secret, even as they presented themselves in public
as simple, unaffiliated Hindu monks. It was the old fraud of Robert de Nobili
and Henri Le Saux being repeated on an unsuspecting public, only this time
it was an American and not an Indian public being duped by persuasive snake
oil salesmen.
Om on Cross
At one point in their career, while still
the Sri Isha Jyoti Sannyas community in Borrego Springs, they were caught
out in their charade by none other than the Shaiva Siddhanta Church in Hawaii.
The brothers did carpentry for a living, being followers of the Carpenter,
and one of the items they produced for sale was a Roman cross with the sacred
Hindu word-symbol Om nailed to its cross bars. They sent a sample to Hinduism
Today with the hope of attracting sales. They got instead a negative response
and a return of the obscene article. Hindus, even modern American Hindu converts,
are deeply offended by this kind of syncretism and do not understand the appeal
it has for New Agers and gay Christian priests who flaunt it on their cassock
fronts as a sign of their radical universalism.
Catholic writer S. Kulandaiswami said vis-à-vis
Fr. Bede Griffiths and his bastardized Om-on-Cross iconography:
"Ritual, rites, [and] ceremonies in Hinduism have not been changed to
suit the whims of modern innovators. Griffiths, by superimposing the sacred
word Om on a Cross, imagines he has created a new spiritual phenomenon. On
the contrary, he confuses and insults both Hinduism and Christianity. He fails
to realize that by such acts he is neither enriching Christianity nor honouring
Hinduism. One has to respect the unique rites and rituals of each religion,
which placed in another context, will be meaningless and confusing."
In a later debate published in the letters
column of the Indian Express, Chennai, in 1989, the Hindu correspondent S.
Venkatachalam wrote: "It is highly outrageous and objectionable to compare
Hindu leaders and religious heads with the Christian missionary experimentalists
like Bede Griffiths, Hans Staffner [and the] Christian missionary Fr. Henri
Le Saux, the so-called Abhishiktananda
Swami Vivekananda, Gandhiji,
Ramana Maharshi and Paramacharya of Kanchi never resorted to such experimentation
of a "cocktail religion" or "masala and kichidi religion"
by mixing religious symbols, donning the dress of [a Christian] father or
[Muslim] mullah, building church-like or mosque-like temples, fabricating
Bible- or Quran-like Hindu slokas, or asserting that Rama or Krishna or Shiva
is the only God and by accepting Him alone one can get salvation."
The Sri Isha (Jesus) Jyoti Sannyas Ashram
brothers did not succeed in pedalling their original handcrafted Om-on-Cross
to the Hindus of Hawaii then, but in their new incarnation as sadhus of Atma
Jyoti Ashram they have succeeded in getting advertising space in Hinduism
Today and the sponsorship of Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai. Yet they remain,
so far as we know, Christian priests in orange robes with false Sanskrit names
and titles, the usual New Age bells and beads added. They are quite a success
in Christian duplicity, if not in true Hindu spirituality.
The sponsorship of Ramana Ashram and the publication
of the Atma Jyoti Ashram brothers' articles under assumed Hindu names in the
Ramana Ashram journal Mountain Path is not really surprising. Sri Ramana Ashram
is a family business headed by a hereditary trustee. The current president
is the Advaita Vedanta paralogist V.S. Ramanan. The ashram was declared a
non-Hindu institution in 1961.
Theosophists and Benedictines
Though Ramanan is the editor of Mountain Path
as required by law, the de facto editor is the Australian theosophist Christopher
Quilkey, a disciple of the anti-modernist French Sufi Rene Guenon. Quilkey
is assisted by the American Catholic Benedictine monk Brother Michael.
Brother Michael divides his time between Shanti
Vanam near Tiruchirappalli, the Benedictine hermitage of the notorious Christian
missionary Fr. Bede Griffiths, and Ramana Ashram in Tiruvannamalai. He is
a Catholic priest and will say Mass whenever and wherever the Catholic spirit
moves him, including Ramana Ashram and other places of Hindu pilgrimage and
worship. His other duty is to vet articles sent to Mountain Path and forward
them to Christopher Quilkey in Kodaikanal for acceptance and publication.
Ramanan shows little or no interest in the articles selected for publication,
and though the ashram follows Vedic Brahminical traditions and can afford
to employ a professional, it is not able to find and keep a responsible and
dedicated Hindu editor for its magazine.
Ramanan appears to be in a state of denial
regarding Christians in his own ashram and missionaries in general. He writes,
"There is no doubt that Christianity has, over centuries been a proselytizing
religion and some of the preachers had indulged in scurrilous propaganda against
Hindu beliefs and mores. But there is nothing to worry. The worst is over
and the Vedantic Truth is eternal and imperishable. I know a number of Christian
priests who revere Hinduism and Vedanta. It is well known that Westerners
are increasingly being drawn to Yoga and Vedanta which Swami Vivekananda called
the 'Religion of the Future.'"
Nothing to worry, eh? The worst is over, eh?
Either Ramanan is a fool or he is in league with the Christian missionaries
who publish in the ashram journal.
The first articles to appear in Mountain Path
by an Atma Jyoti Ashram member were by a Catholic priest who resides in Tiruvannamalai
and calls himself Swami Sadasivananda Giri. The articles were inoffensive
enough, but because it was known to a number of sadhus and Ramana Ashram devotees
that the author was in fact a Christian priest masquerading as a Hindu sannyasi,
the matter was brought to the Ramana Ashram president's attention with the
request that Sadasivananda be identified by his real Christian name and titles
to Mountain Path readers.
The letter was ignored, and when the April-June
2009 issue of Mountain Path appeared, it was discovered that not only did
Swami Sadasivananda's article appear without proper identification, but an
article by Fr. George Burke, Greek Orthodox abbot of Atma Jyoti Ashram, New
Mexico, was also included under the name Swami Nirmalananda Giri. The request
to identify Christian contributors to the journal was not only denied by the
Ramana Ashram president Ramanan, but a strong message of contempt and scorn
for Hindu sannyas traditions was given out by the Mountain Path editor and
his dubious, uncommitted assistants.
Infiltration by impersonation
The problem of Christian priests and missionaries
masquerading as Hindu sannyasis is an old one in India. The impersonation
drama was first carried out by Robert de Nobili in Madurai in the 17th century.
It was continued and made notorious by Fr.
Bede Griffiths (aka Swami Dayananda) in the 20th century, though his collaborator,
the French Benedictine monk Fr. Henri Le Saux, was without doubt the most
successful Hindu sadhu impersonator. He is known to this day by his assumed
Sanskrit name Swami Abhishiktananda, and had none other than the late Swami
Chidananda Saraswati of Sivananda Ashram in Rishikesh as a patron.
The new twist in the criminal impersonation
of Hindu sadhus is that Christian priests in the US are adopting Hindu names
and dress in order to deceive and entrap America seekers who have already
rejected the false doctrines and superstitions of Christianity, in the hope
of bringing them back to Jesus and the Church.
Missionary activity in India has peaked under
the benevolent gaze of the Christian-Congress UPA regime of Sonia Gandhi.
Andhra Pradesh is now said to be 30% Christian and growing, with Tamil Nadu
following closely behind. Both states will soon rival Kerala with their Christian
populations.
The real problem is not missionaries flashing
American dollars or dressing up as sadhus in order to deceive unsuspecting
villagers. Christians in India are doing what Christians have always done
throughout history: they are subverting and subsuming the non-Christian cultures
and societies that they are not able to conquer by force.
The real problem is with Hindu leaders - political,
social, cultural, and religious leaders. They are first of all in a state
of denial, unwilling or unable to admit the Christian threat and the grave
implications it has for Hindu civilization and society. Or, like the editors
of the Ramana Ashram journal Mountain Path, they take the out-dated, irresponsible,
and non-Vedic theosophical view that all religions are one and the same anyway,
so what does it matter if a few million villagers become dollar Christians.
Or, and this is especially true of Hindu religious
leaders, they recognise the Christian threat, but are not sufficiently equipped
or knowledgeable to counter it. Unlike Christian priests who study Hindu scriptures
and doctrines in depth for years, they have never read the Bible or studied
the imperialist Christian ideologies formulated out of the Bible story. They
are helpless, and they are made even more helpless by their own superficially
understood and secularised doctrines of an abstract, impersonal, and all-pervasive
Brahman godhead.
Every popular religious teacher in India today
espouses some form of Advaitic philosophy. Even the popular Chennai Christian
newspaper Deccan Chronicle carries a weekly "spiritual" column of
secularised Neo-Vedantic commentary called "Vedanta Rocks!" This
de-mythologised Vedanta with its abstract terminology and concept of Oneness
is the great love of the modern Indian secular sophist or Jesuit-trained Christian
casuist. They can turn these Hindu concepts and ideals any which way they
like and use them for any amoral purpose when taken out of their original
Hindu religious context.
Deconstructing Advaita Vedanta
Most modern Indian religious teachers do take
Advaita Vedanta out of its original Vedic religious context, and in so doing
give a potent weapon to the enemy with which to attack Hindu religion and
undermine Hindu society and culture. Sita Ram Goel, in Catholic Ashrams, writes:
"[T]he literature of Indigenisation provides ample proof that several
Hindu philosophies are being actively considered by the mission strategists
as conveyors of Christianity. The Advaita of Shankaracharya has been the hottest
favourite so far. The Vishistadvaita of Ramanuja, the Bhakti of the Alvar
saints and Vaishnava Acharyas, the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the
Vichara of Ramana Maharishi are not far behind."
The medieval Acharyas and more recent teachers
of Vedic spirituality like Ramana Maharishi were able to know without difficulty
the religious identity and affiliations of their disciples. They did not have
to search out and verify their students' political and religious backgrounds.
This is no longer true today. Hindu society has become secularised in the
cities and teachers are faced with multicultural audiences from different
countries and traditions. It is therefore incumbent on all Hindu gurus in
India and abroad to put their philosophical teaching into its original religious
context, so that it cannot be distorted and abused by Hinduism's scholarly
Marxist and Christian enemies.
Apostle Paul and the Early Church Fathers
conquered ancient Greece by forcibly secularising Greek society. They divided
the unity of Greek religion and mythology from Greek philosophy and philosophic
terminology. They then secularised and appropriated Greek philosophic terminology
and took the Greek religious concept of an Unknown God for themselves. The
religious vacuum that followed in Greek society was filled in with the Jesus
cult and other Christian superstitions. Indian bishops are perpetrating the
same apostolic fraud today when they claim the Tamil saint Tiruvalluvar was
a disciple of the legendary St. Thomas! They add to their cultural crime by
claiming his "secular" ethical treatise Tirukkural as their own
sectarian Christian book.
This is how ancient Greece became a Christian
country, and how modern India is fast becoming a Christianised Hindu country.
The difference is that in modern India, ill-informed Hindu spiritual teachers
and ashram administrators are assisting Christian predators in the downfall
and obliteration of Hindu religion and culture.
Perhaps we are mistaken; perhaps we have been
misinformed about Atma Jyoti Ashram and its abbot Fr. George Burke. Perhaps
he and his disciples have converted to Hinduism and gone through Vedic samskaras
of purification and name change under the guidance of a Hindu priest.
If that is the case, let them produce their
certificates of de-baptism and apostasy from the Christian religion. As they
claim to be Smarta Dasnami sannyasins with Giri titles, let them produce their
certificates of sannyasa from a recognised Dasnami mahamandaleshwar and math.
They can post these important documents of religion on their website. We will
then give them our blessing, for their good sense in religion and spiritual
endeavour, and hold our peace.
[All Atma Jyoti Ashram photos are available
at http://hamsa.org/ashram.htm]
Links and References:
1] Atma Jyoti Ashram and their Jesus-in-India
propaganda with Swami Devananda's comments:
http://vivekajyoti.blogspot.com/2009/02/jesus-in-india-pure-unadulterated.html
2] Hinduism Today, "Catholic Ashrams:
Adopting and Adapting Hindu Dharma":
http://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1986/12/1986-12-03.shtml
3] Catholic Ashrams in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Ashram
4] Catholic Ashrams: Sannyasins or Swindlers
by Sita Ram Goel, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1994:
http://www.indiaclub.com/shop/SearchResults.asp?ProdStock=22597
5] Christian Aggression: "Catholic Ashrams:
Sachidananda Ashram gets a woman Acharya"
http://www.christianaggression.org/item_display.php?type=NEWS&id=1155837015
6] History of Hindu-Christian Encounters by
Sita Ram Goel, Voice of India, New Delhi, 1996:
http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/
7] Radical Universalism by Frank Morales:
http://www.dharmacentral.com/universalism.htm