Off the Spiritual Deep End

sgcarney

Every year thousands of Westerners come to India looking for enlightenment, some don't come back. I'm an investigative journalist working on a chapter of a book where I am looking for stories about westerners who have gone off the deep end and gotten themselves in trouble with fake gurus and junk spirituality. The people who took a wrong turn on the path to enlightenment and ended up in bad places.

For instance, one person I'm writing about is an American who became an Aghori Sadhu on the burning ghats of Varanasii. Now he spends his time between eating the flesh of corpses and various insane asylums.

On a related, but not quite as extreme note, I'm also looking for tales of people who have gone on intense meditation retreats and had hallucinations. Like a student from Dharmsala in 2005 who ran screaming from the Vippassana center afraid that spiders were eating his brain.

The stories need to be true and verifiable.

If you don't want to post here please feel free to write to me at sgcarney AT gmail.com

Thanks

Scott Carney

karuna

PS Read Gita Mehta's Karma Cola if you've not already done so.