What do you think?
Rate this book
Is Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev a Conman?
A detailed in-depth critique of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev. It only includes real criticisms based on his talks and no false allegations are made.
I don’t think that labeling any person with just one word is appropriate.Because any human being acts in different ways in his entire lifetime, sometimes he is a saint, sometimes he is just a regular guy and sometimes he is a conman…
I think the best question to ask would be ‘Is he enlightened?’. Because he claims that he is enlightened and he is also offering his programs to help people towards their own enlightenment.
This book is a honest attempt to question his claim of enlightenment with completely valid arguments.
I don’t think that labeling any person with just one word is appropriate.Because any human being acts in different ways in his entire lifetime, sometimes he is a saint, sometimes he is just a regular guy and sometimes he is a conman…
I think the best question to ask would be ‘Is he enlightened?’. Because he claims that he is enlightened and he is also offering his programs to help people towards their own enlightenment.
This book is a honest attempt to question his claim of enlightenment with completely valid arguments.
100 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 29, 2017
1 person is currently reading
23 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 27, 2019
I saw a good quote attributed to a Vasudev, tried to confirm the source and found this book on Academia and downloaded it. Shanmugam is all over the place with this. Part of it is likely because it is a collection of Quora answers and blog posts (there are links embedded in the PDF, which is a plus and minus - sometimes a swipe jumps off when I didn’t want to follow.) Another, I think is cultural. I think he thinks a bit differently and that is probably cultural.
Shanmugam praises the guy guy he critiques - he was a student it seems. And he is baldly honest in his assessments. When Sadhguru (he insists people call him that, according to Shanmugam) commented on Freud saying psychologists only studied sick people but not meditators, S. (I’m going to abbreviate) observes that his guru is wrong and explains why, and also that he thinks Sadhguru never updated his information that he got from someone else, Osho.
S. cites many examples of errors on the part of his guru that he knows can only have come from Osho, because Osho makes the same mistakes (though later owned up to at least some of them.) Many examples later, S. establishes that Sadhguru has poached more than a bit of his sayings and stories from Osho without checking them and has passed them off as his own. S. checked.
S. looked at some of Sadhguru’s pseudoscience (the laughable homeopathic “water memory” is one of many) and unravels them fairly well. On actual science, S. Makes some good observations, at least semantically. Sadhguru made some asinine comments respecting the Higgs Boson and S. says one is a “careless statement.”
A common objection to science S. Says is used is “Science doesn’t have all the answers.” He agrees but with the caveat that just because science doesn’t have an answer, that doesn’t mean people should go off believing a spiritual authority. I’ll agree with the rebuttal but not the original argument. 1) Science is not an answer repository - it is a method. And 2) I embrace a pair of statements from author James Morrow’s novel Only Begotten Daughter: Science does have all the answers. We just don’t have all the science.
S. makes a good observation when he cautions, “When you talk to the skeptics, it is very important to not talk about things which sound like woo woo or which are ambiguous.”
The format of the pdf I got was challenging - not always clear whose voice was speaking - Sadhguru’s, S.’s or someone else asking a question. I’ll guess that has to do with packaging Quora questions and answers with different blog posts. And the flow is mildly turbulent in skipping from question/answer to topic/rebuttal to question and maybe answer, back to a previous topic. I did get another jumping off point from this is a link to an Indian humanist site. More rabbit holes!
And the original quote? I haven’t confirmed he said it, but based on this I suspect he did say it in one way or another:
Shanmugam praises the guy guy he critiques - he was a student it seems. And he is baldly honest in his assessments. When Sadhguru (he insists people call him that, according to Shanmugam) commented on Freud saying psychologists only studied sick people but not meditators, S. (I’m going to abbreviate) observes that his guru is wrong and explains why, and also that he thinks Sadhguru never updated his information that he got from someone else, Osho.
S. cites many examples of errors on the part of his guru that he knows can only have come from Osho, because Osho makes the same mistakes (though later owned up to at least some of them.) Many examples later, S. establishes that Sadhguru has poached more than a bit of his sayings and stories from Osho without checking them and has passed them off as his own. S. checked.
S. looked at some of Sadhguru’s pseudoscience (the laughable homeopathic “water memory” is one of many) and unravels them fairly well. On actual science, S. Makes some good observations, at least semantically. Sadhguru made some asinine comments respecting the Higgs Boson and S. says one is a “careless statement.”
I am not calling it ‘careless’ because he doesn’t know about science and I don’t expect that he should. I am calling it ‘careless’ because he ridicules science and calls it dumb in spite of having no idea how it works.This is an important distinction to take the ad hominem out of the rebuttal. And S. Calls out Sadhguru and similar with:
When an authority figure makes such a statement in public [calling science dumb], it creates unnecessary prejudice against science among his fans and followers.Spot on...witness the 2016 US presidency election winner and *his* followers.
A common objection to science S. Says is used is “Science doesn’t have all the answers.” He agrees but with the caveat that just because science doesn’t have an answer, that doesn’t mean people should go off believing a spiritual authority. I’ll agree with the rebuttal but not the original argument. 1) Science is not an answer repository - it is a method. And 2) I embrace a pair of statements from author James Morrow’s novel Only Begotten Daughter: Science does have all the answers. We just don’t have all the science.
S. makes a good observation when he cautions, “When you talk to the skeptics, it is very important to not talk about things which sound like woo woo or which are ambiguous.”
The format of the pdf I got was challenging - not always clear whose voice was speaking - Sadhguru’s, S.’s or someone else asking a question. I’ll guess that has to do with packaging Quora questions and answers with different blog posts. And the flow is mildly turbulent in skipping from question/answer to topic/rebuttal to question and maybe answer, back to a previous topic. I did get another jumping off point from this is a link to an Indian humanist site. More rabbit holes!
And the original quote? I haven’t confirmed he said it, but based on this I suspect he did say it in one way or another:
The sign of intelligence is that you are constantly wondering. Idiots are always dead sure about every damn thing they are doing in their life.I also suspect having read this that he might fall into the latter category.
Displaying 1 of 1 review