Initial euphoria and Sanatan Sanstha

Sanatan Sanstha creates a sense of euphoria

The initial days at Sanatan Sanstha creates a sense of euphoria within me. I feel a sense of belonging; a sense of belonging and a supreme sense of Anand or bliss. I am aware that I am missing something; missing the company of my family but I have no time to dwell on it. The sanstha does not give me time to dwell on it. The thought enters my mind but whenever I think about it; I start thinking about sewa, my guru Dr Jayant Athavale and the other sadhaks. Just a couple of weeks at Sanatan Ashram Ponda has been enough to program my mind so much that I cannot even think independently. I realise this later, much later and the realization is brought about by a big tragedy. I will take you through the tragedy at a later stage.

Tears still well up in my eyes even today as I write about that period. How could I do it? How could I lose control of my mind? What did they seek to achieve through mind control? I shudder to even think what could have happened had I not escaped in time.

Broken Dreams and Broken Relationships.

Attachment with Sanatan Sanstha

The attachment with Sanatan Sanstha is so strong that I need their permission to even breathe. I do not think that this is a bad thing, after all, my Guru, Dr Jayant Athavale is to lead me on the correct path and I should surrender myself to him.

The attachment also means that I open up about my inner most feelings and thoughts with the sadhaks. This is done very skilfully. After all, they are experts in mind control. Slowly but surely, in a matter of days, I have narrated my life history and have opened up about my relationships. I have shared my innermost feelings and my deepest fears. I have shared such experiences in my earlier posts.

The sanstha now turns my positive memories into negative ones. Each of my experiences are made out to be bad ones and it is instilled that my family was never mine in the first place. I was just an instrument in their hands and they used me – my family, to fulfil their physical needs. My parents, my husband and my daughter are all selfish. They do not understand me and don’t want to understand me. Sanatan Sanstha stops just short of calling them shaitans, demons and devils. I cannot tolerate this nomenclature but I accept their reasoning.

I also share several other details with Sanatan Sanstha, most of them not connected with spirituality. I have forgotten the advice given by my rakshak and in my haste to please my masters, I have opened  my family to unforeseen dangers. I am in no condition to gauge this. My mind is now controlled by the sanstha, I follow the path laid out by Dr Jayant Athavale. I am not free, I am a zombie.

Attack against Hindu Dharma and Sanatan Sanstha

Evil spirits attacking us

The die is cast; the actors are ready and the main character is me. Sanatan Sanstha has identified a gullible candidate. I start believing that everyone is attacking Hindu Dharma, everyone is after Sanatan Dharma. Small incidents; say a person attacked in a remote place, is made out to be a part of a conspiracy. I do not question them, others in the group do not question them.  Their newsletters are full of such stories. This is spiritual human psychology at its play, the one propagated by Dr. Jayant Athavale. Who are they? You may question them; they will tell you THEY are everyone who does not believe in Sanatan Sanstha. They are evil spirits; evil spirits that chase you when you try to do meditation - they call it Naamjap, evil spirits chase you when you go about your daily work. These evil spirits try to disturb you because they know you are doing something good. I used to yawn when meditating, I was told that this is again the work of evil spirits, they are trying to disturb you, do not get disturbed, our guru; Dr. Jayant Athavale, will protect you.

Santan Sanstha and Social Acceptance theory:

There is a concept in psychology, it is called the social acceptance theory. We look around us before deciding on a course of action. If others are doing something, we tend to follow them, even if we know it is wrong. The scientific reasoning is too detailed to be understood. But Sanatan Sanstha uses this theory in captivating their audience. All of us – the seekers as we were called, used to be asked about our thoughts while doing naamjap. Some of the experiences, there were always a couple of them during all discussions, were out of the world and all were focussed around Dr. Jayant Athavale. A sadhak would say that she felt that Guruji (he is referred as ParamPujya – PP in short) came on a garuda and took her away so she could fly away from her troubles. Others would not join in with more and more outrageous stories. Initially, I would give a lame story and everyone would give me a black eye, but through experience and with a need to belong to this group, I also concocted such experiences.

I started lying. The main point is that I started telling lies.

Lying is Good if the objective is good:

This is the mantra of Sanatan Sanstha, if you lie for doing work of the sanstha, it is not a lie. Nothing bad will happen. Dr. Jayant Athavale is there to protect you.

Broken dreams and broken relationships. 

I started lying to my family. Small lies, insignificant lies, needless lies. An important laxman rekha was crossed, the sanstha made me cross the rekha. The explanation to justify such lies was also implanted in my mind. Remember auto-suggestion therapy. Slowly and steadily, I was made to change my beliefs. Till this time, I never used to tell lies to my husband. Now, I lied to him because I felt that he was opposing me, he was part of the evil system, Sanatan Sanstha made a devil out of me. I broke the trust of my family, not once, not twice but repeatedly. Day in and day out.

The evil spirits had taken control, Sanatan Sanstha had taken control of my mind. All in the name of spirituality, all in the name of God.

Why did Sanatan Sanstha attract me so much?

Sanatan Sanstha and Attraction

You must be wondering why would anybody be affected so much by Sanatan Sanstha. The “offering” that the sanstha puts in front of people is very appealing and put in a simplistic manner. They cloak the wordings to sound scientific. There is a beautiful concoction of Hindu Dharma and science and ordinary things are given a very spiritual meaning. They publish dailies, weeklies and even monthly newsletters. The articles are all about the daily news and about spirituality. The language is simplistic and easy to understand.

So what is the rub?

I always considered myself apart from the hoi-poi, the ordinary people who go about their daily activities without any thought of spiritual upliftment. The constant attacks on Hinduism used to affect me deeply. I always had an urge to do something about it but felt helpless. My family used to laugh at all these feelings. They would never support me, I used to feel. They never understood me. Oh! How wrong I was…

Sanatan Sanstha looks around for such people, people like me who are gullible, who are carried away by good words and who feel that the world does not understand them. Why only Sanatan, there are thousands of such organisations. They do the same thing. Why is Sanatan different from them? Why do people hate Sanatan so much?

I don’t know about others, but ask me and I will say that I hate Sanatan Sanstha because of what it did to me. How it duped me with the sweet words and the promise of Mooksh. How it utilised my feelings and played around with me.

Was I thinking rationally?

The question that arises is, was I ever thinking rationally? Why was I affected so much that I left my house, my family and all my relationship behind me and ran away? Was I hypnotised? Was I drugged? What happened?

The answer lies in psychology, pure human psychology. And Dr. Jayant Athavale has used this as a powerful weapon, a weapon through which he can control the minds of people. Make them do anything that he wants to do, when he wants to do and in the manner, that he desires. People say that he uses a branch of hypnosis; called Ericksonian Hypnosis. But I also know that a person cannot be hypnotised without his or her permission. Jayant Athavale can hypnotise one person at a time, how can he hypnotise so many of them?

The truth is somewhere in between. Sanatan Sanstha uses a powerful blend of psychological methods to capture the minds. The mind control techniques rely on a powerful tool of psychology called Auto Suggestion. The so called sadhaks first identify the individuals who can be diverted, converted and then controlled. Trust me, I was there, I was controlled by them. I was converted by them.

The methods are so simple but so powerful that we accept them without any questions. We accept them and follow them and use them in our daily life. Till one day, we lose control over our lives. We give our control to Sanatan Sanstha.

They win….

We lose, we lose ourselves and hand over ourselves to them.