I just wanted to add in a few words about Jaggi here, as I did a search and found that there was a starting bias from the OP. So I did my own research.
I stumbled across his videos and started watching them, checking to see if he demonstrated the fruits in any way. I cannot say since I have never met the person himself, but here is my analysis.
I will use the following list:
critical thinking; following ethics, leading a rigorous, self-aware, contemplative life; teaching an ethical, rigorous, self-aware, contemplative life, manifesting the fruit there of; and the rigorous followers of that person must also be manifesting these fruit. I did not see any of that, but I did see magic tricks, devotion, and religious practices without manifesting the above fruit.
(1) Critical thinking. He always seems to want to explain things by how people experience their current reality. He says that anything outside of one's experience is mere fantasy. He also seems to speak in quite a rational manner. I am quite amazed at how eloquent he is in thinking of suitable metaphors to explain things, however, that is a side-note, as eloquence is a skill and not a fruit of enlightenment.
(2) Leading a rigorous, self-aware and contemplative life. I am unable to verify this. However, upon reading his history, he seemed to be an extremely self-aware child who was very intense in investigation. Eventually, yoga happened when he was sitting intensely on a mountain in India. He repeatedly insists that people connect with nature, retreat to nature and seek spirituality intensely. He says that one must be intense in practice, which is quite consistent with what i have learnt here. He might be using yoga terminology a lot, but I feel that he is being genuine.
(3) Manifesting the fruits of a contemplative life. He definitely has bliss, for he is always smiling and in equanimity no matter how aggressive the questioner is. I found that quite intriguing, as he always seeks ways of answering with a peaceful tone, to the motivation of the individual asking, instead of the actual content. He describes himself in a state that is reminiscent of an equanimous jhana state throughout his day.
He seems to have the following fruits: Upekkha, Adukkha, paticca samuppada (past-life recalls, he talks about his past 3 lives in huge detail, including his previous teacher.).
However, I cannot verify if he has the following fruits: Manomaya, Dibba-sota, Dibba-cakkhu, Nanadassana.
From researching around, I found a source that says that all of the profits that is earned by the website has only been set up by a volunteer group known as "Isha foundation". The money is apparently, largely used to support a contemplative lifestyle for the volunteers (who stay over), for greening/environmental projects and many other projects such as the Dhyanalinga, which is supposedly a consecrated space for meditation. He does not seem to indulge in wealth and is uninterested in it, other than its use in making changes.
(4) Dialog to still the mind. Here, I quote a few abstracts of his words:
The moment you pump some energy into an inert mind, it becomes active, but it could be scattered. If you energize the mind further, the mind comes to a place where the mind is not so scattered, but it is oscillating – one day it is this way, another day that way. This is a huge improvement over being scattered moment to moment. If you energize it further, it slowly becomes one-pointed – that is far better. But the most important thing is the mind should become a conscious process.
If you transcend the intellect you become equanimous. This does not mean you lose the ability to discriminate. If you lose the discriminatory intellect, you will become insane.
When you are living in the body there are eight samadhis available to a human being. Of these eight, they have been broadly categorized as savikalpa: samadhis with attributes or qualities – samadhis that are very pleasant, blissful, and ecstatic – and nirvikalpa: samadhis that are beyond pleasant and unpleasant, they are without attributes or qualities.
It seems that he is talking about the 4 jhanas and 4 formless samadhis here.
As long as you are in the body, whatever liberation you attain, the body is a limitation. It is not complete liberation. When someone leaves their body in full awareness, then we call this Mahasamadhi because he or she has shed the body.
Right now, there is you and the other; it is a certain level of reality. In a samadhi state, you go beyond that discrimination and in your experience you are able to see the oneness of the existence.
Mahasamadhi means you not only see it that way, you have become that way totally – discrimination is finished. That means individual existence is finished. Who you are does not exist anymore. The life that is functioning as an individual life right now becomes absolutely universal or cosmic or boundless. To put it in traditional terms, you become one with God or one with everything.
He seems to be talking about shedding the body here. He also talks about "yoga".
(5) Religious Practices and Devotion.He says all religion is seeking the same thing and often quotes Christianity as well as Gautama Siddharta. In that aspect, I would think that he believes that religious practices are obsolete. One issue I have with him though, is that sometimes he tells a story about Gautama, but the story is a little different. But he does get the gist of the story across.
He explained what he calls the guru is the divine, hence devotion means surrendering to it.
He also talked about the Guru-Student transmission in India. He says that it was developed by the various yogis for direct transmission of knowledge, rather than writing down in words, which cause distortions due to cultural changes and unenlightened beings who distort the original meanings, particularly non-cultivating scholars. For example, the pronunciation of mantras as such "aum" as well as other forms of knowledge.
He also says that he has never read any religious scripture prior to experiencing enlightenment. Since he says that he was enlightened in a previous lifetime and that he was here just to complete the Dhyanalinga, if this was put in a Buddhist context, we could possibly call that a Once-returner?
The way he describes it though, is that he mastered his chakras and consciously chose his birth 80 years after his previous life with a different personality, so that he could fulfil his teacher's wish.
Lastly, he likes to express himself in poetry, because he believes it as the best way to express his experiences. I find this so strange, since I know Jhanananda himself is a poet and so were some of the other enlightened masters in literature, etc. The Bible itself were stories and parables, the Bhagavad Gita was a song, etc.
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(6) Other observations.There are pictures of him on a motorbike. However, I do not think that classifies him as inauthentic, as he is still human and requires a mode of transport.
He often uses stories of Gautama Siddharta, the Bible and Patanjali as anecdotes to bring out points.
If I were to compare him to a real fraud, such as Swami Nithyananda, who uses money from donations to make a "golden seat" for himself, and has been repeatedly exposed with sexual fraud, then I can say, from observation, that Jaggi seems to be a person that is uninterested in public opinion, luxury and narcissism.
He advocates a type of basic meditation to get beginners started, known as kriya yoga - Where one disidentifies with the body and mind (the principle of anatman in Buddhism). Then, one does the "seed sound AUM", as described in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
In his videos, I see that he often asks people to be aware of 4 things that are not the self: Body, emotions, thoughts and life energy. In my opinion, this seems similar to the four frames of reference.
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This is my analysis, which is limited. I hope more experienced people can evaluate his material. I do not know about the OP's actual experience, but from seeing the material, to me at least, he feels quite genuine, although I do prefer listening from a Buddhist context, rather than a yogic context, as terms like Shiva, etc do not mean things for me.
One thing that I find is that he tends to try to use very simple language to explain things, so sometimes the concepts feel "dumbed down" for understanding.
