Sahaja Yogis Threaten Violence

from an email by Simon

On 1999/07/03 Peter Hewitson <hewitson@bigfoot.com> wrote to Usenet:

For the Seekers of the World

On July 10 1999 there will be a public program in the Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gore, London, at 7:30pm with Shri Mataji in person. The admission is free and open to the public as it is for all Sahaja Yoga programs.

The above is an example of the increasing tendency of followers of Shri Mataji's Sahaja Yoga to spam various newsgroups with advertisements for Sahaja Yoga recruitment meetings.

What follows is the experience of somebody who attended the above meeting and tried to hand out leaflets outside, but was met by the Sahaja Yogis with threats of violence and had to seek police protection.

I went to the Sahaja Yoga recruitment meeting at the Albert Hall to make sure that the newcomers had access to sources on information about Sahaja Yoga other than the official propaganda. My only weapon was leaflets, the contents of which are reproduced at the end of this message. I was within my legal and moral rights to share this information with whomever I chose on the public pavement outside the Albert Hall. However, the Sahaja Yogis had other ideas.
One Sahaja Yogini protested that what I was doing was wrong. I pointed out that Sahaja Yogis had stood outside the meetings of another guru and handed out propaganda against that guru - so any complaint from the Sahaja Yogis was pure hypocrisy. She had the integrity to say no more. In fact, when the Sahaja Yogis had been challenged by the other guru's followers about what they were doing, they had lied and said that they were paid by an agency.

A Portuguese Sahaja Yogi said that I had no right to be there. I pointed out to him that I was standing on the public pavement where anybody had the right to be. Then the Portuguese guy protested that they had paid for the Albert Hall - as if that meant they had also bought people's rights to information. Then the Portuguese guy protested that everything that was written on the leaflet was lies. I told him to read it properly and that if he found a single mistruth he could sue me as other Sahaja Yogis present knew who I was. He shut up after that. I remember from the time I was in Sahaja Yoga that this Portuguese guy once took a woman out of a recruitment meeting for asking an embarrassing question to Mataji: "If you are such a spiritual person then how come you are wearing so much gold and diamonds, why don't you sell it and help the poor?"

The Sahaja Yogis tried to explain my presence away to others with excuses including the following: he's been paid to come here by a false guru, he is twisted with cynicism, he's just mad so ignore him, he was in Sahaja Yoga for a while but had to leave because his ego was too big. They made up these lies without even bothering to ask me why I was there. The newcomers were being lied to before they even got into the recruitment meeting - such is the Sahaja Yogis' commitment to truth.

Another Sahaja Yogi told me that they had called the police and that I better clear off. I said, "Sure, let them come, I've done nothing against the law." They didn't come, it was another lie.

At this point four young male Sahaja Yogis took up my case. One was a guy called Jasbir Dosanjh and another was a tanned guy in a sharp suit with a Antipodean-sounding accent. They began by snatching the leaflets out of my hand and tearing them up. I just moved away and got more out of my bag and carried on handing them out while being more careful. Then they tried to my steal bag by snatching it away. I held onto it and shouted out that a crime was taking place. The presence of newcomers caused them to desist.

Then they switched to another strategy. As soon as I had given a leaflet to somebody they would take it away from them. I saw this happening so I told people to hang onto them and not let anybody take the leaflets away from them. They just became more insistent in taking the leaflets away from people. However, this didn't look good on them so they adopted a new strategy.

They began to crowd round me so that I couldn't get to newcomers and they threatened to smash my face in if I didn't leave that place. I pointed out to them that making threats was a crime under British law but this didn't deter them. They continued with their threats of violence. Their threats became more insistent and I could hear them saying things among themselves like "We are going to have to beat him up" and congratulating themselves on their macho behaviour eg "The boys are back again."

I started to walk off. Even as I walked blocks down the street the tanned guy with the sharp suit stuck with me. Eventually I crossed the road to the red phone boxes outside the main gates of Kensington Gardens. I went inside and called the police. At one point the tanned guy tried to come into the phone box but when he heard me saying to the police that "one of them is trying to come into the phone box right now" he backed off. Even after the police had rung off I continued pretending to talk to them so he wouldn't try anything again. I saw him directing a thin French Sahaja Yogi with a hand phone into the park. I suspect he was being positioned to warn them when the police came so that they could disappear.

When the police came I explained to them what had happened and they agreed to come and stay outside the Albert Hall to make sure nothing happened. When I returned with a police escort the four 'Sahaj warriors' had disappeared.  When any other Sahaja Yogis came up to me I just pointed out that the police were here because of threats made by their colleagues so they shouldn't try anything. This was successful and I was able to hand out my leaflets without any more threats or bully-boy tactics from Sahaja Yoga goons.

The Sahaja Yogis soon got to work on the police. One of the Sahaja Yogis told the police that I always turned up at Sahaja Yoga meetings trying to cause trouble. This was a lie, this was the first Sahaja Yoga meeting I had been to since I left Sahaja Yoga.

Another of the Sahaja Yogis said he was the brother of the tanned guy with the accent and said they were from the UK, not Australia. He suggested to the police that I had overstepped the boundaries by handing out the leaflets. The police said no. Then he suggested that my telling people not to go in was stepping over the boundaries (it had not actually happened, I only told them to keep the leaflet). Again the police said no. Then I suggested to the Sahaja Yogi that perhaps his brother and his cronies had overstepped the boundaries by threatening to smash my face in. Given the presence of the police, he had no choice but to concur.

It should be pointed out that Jasbir Dosanjh has been practising Sahaja Yoga for about 14 years and I suspect the other 3 goons who were also involved in the bully-boy tactics had been involved in Sahaja Yoga for a similar period. These were not just a few rogue members that the majority would disown. None of the other Sahaja Yogis who witnessed their behaviour did anything to stop them or to protect my rights.

It is clear from the above incident that Sahaja Yogis are terrified of newcomers having access to alternative sources of information on Sahaja Yoga and to avoid this happening they are willing to lie to newcomers, make threats of violence and mislead the police. They say that you can know a tree by its fruits. The fruits of Sahaja Yoga are the fruits of a dangerous religious cult.