Is Sadhguru a Charlatan?

[Jirh]

7 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This is a no true scotsman fallacy.

Sadhguru is a real yogi. Yogis have a wide range of views and beliefs.

The only reason we even know about Sadhguru is because he jumped on the self-help train. His affiliation with self-help made him famous.

More traditional yogis haven't done that because they don't care about market reach. All they care about is tradition preservation and achieving total oneness through the yoga practices they inherited.

He may be a real yogi, but he's also New Age without doubts.

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Jirh said:

The only reason we even know about Sadhguru is because he jumped on the self-help train. His affiliation with self-help made him famous.

1) Plenty of yogis become famous.

2) Religion has always been about self-help. Self-help and spirituality are very connected. Separating them makes little sense.

[Jirh]

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

1) Plenty of yogis become famous.

Yes, but they don't achieve fame through affiliation with self-help. They achieve it through loyalty to tradition and religionmaxxing lol. That's the difference.

3 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

2) Religion has always been about self-help. Self-help and spirituality are very connected. Separating them makes little sense.

I agree 👍🏻

[Sugarcoat]

4 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

He is definitely New Age but his Hindu aesthetic makes it a bit less obvious. He has a standard atheistic take on traditional religions. "It's just beliefs, dogma, you have to go inwards".

Why you say aesthetics in way as if it’s not legitimately Hindu teachings themselves, not all of it but some originate from there? 
 

I feel Sadghuru caters a lot to audience when he speaks, maybe that’s why he doesn’t speak so “non dual”, because he takes into consideration how oeople are operating and what could actually have effect/be digestible to them. Yes I agree that take on religion is simplistic, but many people’s religiosity works like so for major part of it. It’s a teaching style when he is speaking to the masses ig.

Edited 2 hours ago by Sugarcoat

[Vido]

Sadguru in my opinion is like a Hindu Yogi. As a guy born in Hindu culture, you have a lot of beliefs that he carries like about temples, doing puja to remove like negative stuff caused by planets, etc.

I lost trust in him when he claims like he's trying to revive shiva and was born multiple times to do that. And all the drama that comes from it. He never in the interviews just gives the answer, he just kind of beats around and tells to join his yoga stuff.

You should watch his interview with Dr.K whos a smart guy and also studied yoga. When Sadguru gets called out for his stuff, he gets annoyed and ends the interview early. I was laughing so hard on how ridiculous his shit is. 

Guy is a great speaker tho, very captivating and has a hypnotic vibe. Could be a great cult leader if he chooses to HAHAHAHAH

[Sugarcoat]

7 hours ago, Jirh said:

@Sugarcoat He doesn't identify with any particular spiritual tradition, so he's automatically New Age by definition. Actualized.org is New Age too.

If you know a better category for them, let me know.

Maybe it’s the core definition. I looked it up and it seems to refer to the west in particular, what’s been growing here. I feel by the definition you wrote, too much can be included in that category so it looses the characteristics it has in society. One comparison I thought of is the word indie, it’s kinda like saying indie is simply independent, nothing more, is what I’m thinking. 
 

Regarding actualized.org I apply same logic.

Edited 2 hours ago by Sugarcoat

[Salvijus]

Sadhguru is a Hindu imo. But he would say Hinduism is not a belief/dogma based religion but a science. 

[Sugarcoat]

 

1 hour ago, Jirh said:

Maybe in part.

But he talks about so many topics, mostly from a self-help perspective.

A real yogi doesn't concern himself with self-help because he believes his culture already has all the answers for everything.

Maybe there is definition of a yogi that someone could deviate from, but it doesn’t make them less advanced, I’d say more rather in this case, including more in your spirituality. Self help is not devoid of spirituality, it doesn’t have to subtract from one’s spirituality 

Edited 1 hour ago by Sugarcoat

[Sugarcoat]

16 minutes ago, Salvijus said:

Sadhguru is a Hindu imo. But he would say Hinduism is not a belief/dogma based religion but a science. 

The masses might hold it like a religion in their mind, but the most advanced yogis, take a different approach, focused on direct experience with the Hindu framework in mind, I’m thinking. 
 

So it’s fair imo to categorize as you wrote he did, despite how masses might treat something, because they don’t have to define it, there are different angles from which to look at it. Same goes for Christianity! And the other major ones. You can be religious without being dogmatic, for example. There is nuance. 

Edited 1 hour ago by Sugarcoat

[LastThursday]

Is Sadhguru a charlatan? I don't know it depends on how you want to see it. It's hard to tell anything much about someone you've never met and just seen on the internet. Do you get something positive from what he says? If so then you may as well give him the benefit of the doubt.

There's a kind of obsession people have about someone being "legitimate" because then that gets you off the hook for using your own discernment and allows you to follow them blindly. No. Everyone's full of BS one way or the other, you just have to learn to pick out the good bits for yourself.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

Why you say aesthetics in way as if it’s not legitimately Hindu teachings themselves, not all of it but some originate from there? 

Because he is not literally a Hindu "bible-thumper", a literalist traditionalist. He is like a weird thing: a New Age Hindu/India supremacist or something like that, like I tried to explain above. He has contemporary non-dual / New Age background / cognition and lingo but he uses a lot of Hindu stuff, and he makes the claim that Hinduism is "spirituality" rather than religion. That's simply it. Take an Indian atheist from the 1980s/90s, make him have an awakening, and what you'll get is a Sadhguru-kind-of-guy.

Had he called himself religious (which he doesn't), he would be like a Rupert Sheldrake. He has a soft-spot for Christianity, he calls himself a Christian, he calls himself religious, but he has New Age roots and cognition. There is like a "dumb" kind of New Ager (the one who thinks New Age is not a religion) and the ones who think it is a religion. The dumbness just makes it obvious that they are New Age, but if your background is obviously postmodern, post-rational, atheist, individualist, even hippie, you'll also be New Age.

Edited 57 minutes ago by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

14 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Because he is not literally a Hindu "bible-thumper", a literalist traditionalist.

No serious yogi would be that way. That is a cartoon caricature.

Hinduism is eclectic and tolerant of religious diversity.