Here’s a post from my Holy Smoke blog over at Telegraph.co.uk.
Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty has joined a strange movement calling itself the “Oneness University” that predicts shocking natural calamities in the run up to 2012, the date for the end of the world supposedly predicted by the ancient Maya.
Did you notice these weird remarks in Shilpa’s Telegraph interview about her “spiritual” approach to finance?
I belong to a movement called the Oneness University who expect things in the financial environment to get worse before 2012. It’s very logical - the world is overpopulated and we suffer things like global warming and poverty as a result. The only way to achieve balance is to let nature take its course through natural calamities.
How many people will die in those natural calamities, I wonder? Someone should ask Shilpa.
I checked out the Oneness University, based in Stockholm and India, which claims 15 million followers worldwide and tells recruits that “you will experience miracles” if you sign up to its courses and chant a four-line mantra.
The group’s leaders are a man called Sri Bhagavan and a woman called Sri Amma. Their spiritual centre is “the Golden City” in southern India. This is from the movement’s Australian website:
At the foot of majestic hills in Southern India, just north of Chennai, at a place called the Golden City, a global miracle is unfolding, reaching out to every corner of the earth. People from all walks of life, from all over the world, are taking part in a global phenomenon that appears destined to radically transform mankind for the better, bringing all of humanity into a new Golden Age within a remarkably short period of time.
But all is not sweetness and light. As the former Celebrity Big Brother star says, the Oneness movement hints at terrible calamities before 2012, which will not be the end of the world full stop, but the end of the world as we know it, to be followed by the arrival of a new civilisation for the enlightened.
In 2012, says Sri Bhagavan, the earth’s core will stop rotating for a time - apparently it has already slowed down. Readers should therefore note that time is running out. They need to prepare for this apocalyptic event. Fortunately, help is at hand. You can obtain something called the Oneness Blessing:
The Oneness Blessing as given under the auspices of Oneness University is a transfer of energy that leads to a neural-biological restructuring in the human organism eventually dissolving of the sense of separation from the rest of life.
Shilpa Shetty, as one of the movement’s high-profile advocates, has received this blessing. Neural-biological restructuring? No wonder she looks so good.
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9 responses
Damian
Why are you highlighting this rubbish ? I was impressed by your book because you challenged real issues that could make a difference in the UK if they took hold. But posts like this seem like a dumming down of your vision.
Well, if they really had 15 million followers (yeah right), it would be a cause for concern, given that they’re basically an apocalyptic cult.
As it is I think it’s just a chance to laugh at someone who was on Big Brother. Which I’m all in favor of.
India is the breeding ground of a simply horrifying number of counterknowledge cults - indeed, I argue that the whole of the BJP, the main opposition party, is one. The immense spiritual and intellectual strain of moving from feudalism - most Indians still live in villages where the caste system is unquestioned and local lords are called “kings” - to industrial urbanization, and from popular polytheism to high scientific modernity, is provoking an enormous and potentially disastrous dislocation. I notice that the names of the supposed leaders of this cult are nothing more than Indian names for God and the Mother Goddess; in other words, we are talking about a Hindu movement with apocalyptic and scientific trappings. Given what similar movements have done and are doing - any of you notice the massacres of Christians in Orissa? - I think they are more than worth worrying about, whether their membership is 15 or 15 million.
there is an app for iphone called
APOCALYPSE 2012 : The countdown
It’s really cute! and cost only 99 cents, it’s such a great idea… count down to the apocalypsis!!!
oneness university is a cult group
All of you guys are so lame…let whoever join whatever they want. stop complaining like a bunch of children -Jeez
No one is trying to stop anyone from joining- we’re just saying that it’s ridiculous.
If your mind is too open, it’ll fall right out.
Yeah but at the same time, just cos u dont approve of it dont mean its ridiculous. Dont knock it till u try it…
Peace
THE CULT OF EFFIN ONENESS IS ACTUALLY THE WORSHIP OF SATURN..EVERY RELIGION’S ROOTS CAN BE TRACED BACK TO THE WORSHIP OF THIS PLANET..IT USED TO BE FAR BIGGER IN THE SKY LIKE A SECOND SUN..ALL THE SUN SYMBOLISM YOU SEE ACTUALLY REPRESENTS SATURN SO DONT GET IT CONFUSED WITH OUR SUN THAT PROVIDES WARMTH AND LIGHT.