About 25 years ago I found out the guru whom I had been following for 15 years (
Swami Amar Jyoti) had been hording gold and screwing the wives of his disciples. He had given me a mantra, which I wanted to expunge from my psyche, so I took a one year break from meditation, then I took up the breath, which lead to the charisms, which I now attend to.
Slime Ball SwamiAmar Jyoti's Pants-Down Hanky-Panky Method Of Spiritual Enlightenment Gets Him In Trouble With The Law.
July 13 - July 19, 1995, B y D a n H u f f
GOD RECENTLY FAILED to show up in small claims court. He was found guilty of second- and third-degree sexual assault anyway. And in her own humble way, Antoinette Marcel, the woman who filed the suit, has helped make the quest of spiritual seekers a tiny bit safer in this dangerous world.
Marcel is a former devotee of the Swami Amar Jyoti, an Indian guru who has the gall to intimate he's an incarnation of one aspect of the Hindu god Vishnu.
But Jyoti, who puts on a big show of being celibate and other-worldly, is really just another religious con man, a manipulative, two-faced slimeball abusing the trust of others and bullying them to satisfy his uncontrollable cravings--in the cases of Marcel and other female victims, his need for total control and secretive sex; in the case of others, he manipulates them into renouncing personal property, which he absorbs into his own empire.
Jyoti's far-flung scam includes ashrams in Boulder, Colorado, Poona, India and, unfortunately, Tucson. His centers in Michigan, New Zealand and California have already folded.
Marcel is quick to point out she's not trying to denigrate religion in general nor Hinduism in particular.
She says what she hoped to accomplish in last month's suit in a Colorado court was to "gain some closure" on the abuse she suffered at the hands of this petty creep, and to help warn others--especially the young and impressionable--of the dangers of turning their lives over to anyone who claims to have all the answers.
The judge also awarded her $3,500 in damages to help pay for the counseling she needed to put her life back together once she escaped from Jyoti's grasping fingers and his pathetic little cult of brainwashed devotees.
As spiritual leaders go, Swami Jyoti sounds like a major piece of shit. He's also a coward--his Tucson spokeswoman refused to give her name, refused to divulge his whereabouts and refused to discuss his sexual peccadilloes, which may be considerable, judging by the length of time he's been running his guru scam..
