When presented with the Palestinian national movement, he criticized the majority of his activist followers stating "The Hebrews were there first. They were forcefully removed. The land is theres."

Some thought that he was really getting senile and didn't mean it, in fact meant the opposite. Maybe they're right. Maybe he was senile, and anything that he said during that session is not to be considered at all.

I presented a history of Israel to that session, with the assertion that Israel was a samaj in development, that it successfully created the institutions of national welfare, governance, mix of confident safety net with markets in a decentralized manner, with identity and respect for minorities within its community.

The organizer of the samaj movements (decentral semi-nationalist movements), hated my comments. He almost threw me out of the community (a dangerous situation, as the center was in a poor Muslim community that hated the group, and next to one of centers of one of the communist movements in Calcutta that hated the group even more).

It was hard to hear the Bengali intellectual antecedents of Rabindranath Tagore speak so harshly and ignorantly.

They rejected them, and few have gotten to the mature place of respect while pursuing something different. That strikes me as a tragedy as well as a contradiction to their teachings.

An even more amazing person is Savitra Devi. Look her up in Wikipedia, or elsewhere.

Fortunately, the Indian goverments caught them.

"I have contacted Israel. One of our captains has been to Israel, eliciting a very positive response from their side. They have asked us to show them something on the ground because we have just shown them everything on paper right now. They said wait and watch for six months," Lt Col Purohit is quoted as saying in the recording and on the charge sheet.

Hmmm? Interesting Richard. I watched the Bhagwan Shreee Rajneesh movement here with quite a bit of suspicion. Which usually doesn't keep my from looking at their respective bibles. And occasionally followed the invitation of a girlfriend to do an our of wild shaking or other New Age exercises. I have very strong mental barriers against any person parading as spiritual leader …

The latest experience with one of these movements with roots in India, was about a decade ago. I forget who their hero was. An artist friend told me about daily meditations at 5 or 6 a.m in the morning. I was admittedly more interested in this daily ritual then the context. But that context turned out to be unbearable. They were all Western people, mostly with the idea to be able to have a fast feed introduction into the whole highly complex religious and spiritual Indian context in about 2 to 3 month, and than advancing to teachers for newcomers like me. I made notes and started to read about religion and the India, and started to get really worried about what was happening there. Religion in India is a highly syncretic affair, none of them bothered or even considered it worth to look at the roots and the traditions they were using. The idea of being able to get a fast-speed introduction is simply unbelievable to me. What they do is basically use matters exactly how they understand it. And rather freely bent or interpret them to their own designs. Maybe that's India, but I somehow doubt it is so easy.

It of course gave the core group the means and connections to live in a rather lavish surrounding. They opened a gallery too on the space. With followers simply swallowing whatever they were fed as the ultimate wisdom. The most ridiculous basic idea they were fed, was that they would all be reborn as kings and queens once the circle of the respective ages (e.g. iron age)had returned to zero to start all over again. Their "service" somehow would get them into this state in the future world. I talked with people, since I was curious what exactly attracted them to this tale. All I got were glazed expressions.

I have no idea, why people are attracted to this scenario, but they obviously are.