Someone asked me to create a list of people who I and others know to be at it, so I thought I'd see how manyIcould come up with in an hour. The list is based on books I've read or research I've been asked to do. Some of the below, such as Von Daniken have admitted that they falsified evidence or were a little creative with the truth, others have been well debunked. It's far from being an exhaustive list, as the names of fake gurus and religious personages of India, the UK and US run into hundreds. I'm happy to provide evidence and links for any of the below. C Castaneda T Mckenna J Krishnamurti U G Krishnamurti Yogananda Depak Chopra William Cooper - UFO hoaxer Blossom Goodchild - Federation of Light (we're still waiting for the alien invasion of 2008). Maharishi Mahesh Osho B Creme - Maitreya Sai Baba J Anodea JZ Knight - the Ramtha Cult, creators of 'What the Bleep' and 'Zeitgeist' Alan Watts Lobsang Rampa - Tibetan priest who wasn't. H P Blavatsky Annie Besant - Theosophy Col Olcott - Theosophy Ledbetter (inventor of Chakras as most in the west know them) - Theosophy A Churchwarden Levi Bob Lazar Edgar Cayce - "Lands will appear in the Atlantic as well as in the pacific. And Poseida will be among the first portions of Atlantis to rise again. Expect it in ‘68 or ‘69. Not so far away"! 40 years on and nothing.... Jean Dixon F Lenz Von Daniken Sitchin Tsarion Archarya S (Dorothy Murdoch, writer for Zeitgeist) Melchizedek (Bernie Perona - FOL/SG) R Hoagland J Mack Whitley Streiber Bud Hopkins Timothy Good Dr Lyal Watson Hancock Bauval R Sanitilli Ed Walters G Adamski B Meyers R Temple D Icke R Bigelow W G Carr - Inventor of the NWO and the Illuminati as we know it now. Protocols of the Elders of Zion - Russian anti-jewish pamphlet. Wilhelm Riech - Orgone B Kaysing - 'We didn't go to the Moon!' hoaxer. D Kreiger -Theraputic Touch Rupert Sheldrake G M Scallion - 2012 J Callerman - 2012 JM Jenkins - 2012 Dannion Brinkley - 2012 scammer Carlos Barrios - 2012 N A Tapp - Indigo Children Nassim Haramein - 'physics' Jordan Maxwell Pierre Plantard - Rennes le Chateau N Corbu - Rennes le Chateau P Nithyananda Maheshwaranada Shoko Asahara Osel Tenzin Paramahansa David Berg P Smyth - Pyramid myths Gurdijeff R Steiner (purely by association) Lori Toye A Crowley Erikson (hypnosis) Fox Sisters (inventors of Spiritualism) Dr Emoto T Leary - primarily for his massive misunderstanding of Tibetan Buddhism and psychology Strassman - Author of DMT myths. M Manning David Wilcock Ignateus Donnelly B S Rajneesh U Geller - but a clever showman Ley Lines (invented in the 20's) Reiki - Based on Buddist symbols that don't exist. Miracle water FOL/Sacred Geometry Reptilians Greys - an archetype not present in UFOlogy until around 40 years ago. Modern Druids The Pyramid Inch When time ran out I did a quick google and came up with a short list of US fakes: Benny Hinn, T.D. Jakes, Robert Schuller, Marilyn Hickey, Paul and Jan Crouch, Rod Parsley, R.W. Shambach, Carlton Pearson, John Avanzinni, Kenneth & Gloria Copeland, John Hagee, Jessie Duplantis, Oral Roberts, Richard Roberts, Kenneth Hagin Sr., Kenneth Hagin Jr., Frederick Price, Creflo Dollar, Rodney Howard Browne, Jack Van Impe, Rinehard Bonnke, Joyce Meyer, Morris \tCerullo, John Kilpatrick, Clarence McClendon, Rick Joyner, Hal Lindsey, Charles Capps, Robert Tilton. Ellen G. White, Joseph Smith, Kim Clement, Mark Charonna, Juanita Bynum, Brigham Young, Benny Hinn, Kenneth Copeland, Jack Van Impe, John Kilpatrick. Please feel free to add your own MelT Added by request: Warren Jeffs
I know... Long story or abridged version? Short is that he was a pawn of Theosophy, one of Leadbeater's 'boys'. The intent was to take him and Theosophy via Hindu mysticism combined with christianity to the USA. Once there and accepted he would have given Theosophy the validity that Blavatsky wanted there and millions in revenue. I know that he later cut all ties with them, but as a teacher in his own right he had nothing of particular value to say that hadn't been said before - and he was terrible at expressing what he did say. Even his later enlightenment was anything but, sadly. His instructions on meditation are a pontless mire...I really wish it weren't the case. The idea of him is inspiring, the reality is less so. He said: "...Truth is a pathless land". Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophical knowledge or psychological technique..." Which is untrue. Meditative traditions take people to enlightenment on a regular basis. I always get the sense that he was a little bitter that he could never live up to being the person that Theosophy - and he - had wanted. However, I do of course love his rejection of authority MelT Edit: I keep coming back to this post and wondering if I'mbeing fair. To call K a hoaxer and a liar IS too strong, it was an unfortunately strong OP title. Should he be on the list as someone who was pretending to a position he didn't deserve? I believe so. His greatest appeal was the message that anyone could reach enlightenment without teachers or understanding, but by simply perforrming self-inquiry. Anyone really can become enlightened without having meditated a day in their lives - but there's a difference between this accidental falling over realisation and trying to find it in meditation. His words can be misleading and lead people away from understanding in the enlightenment sense.
zomg!!!!! Melt!! You have pi posts! if you post again it will be rounded to the nearest decimal Congratulations. And thanks for this reference...I was interested in T Mckenna for a while until i found out about his trip to the amazon and the I ching business...kinda lost credibility there lol
William Cooper - UFO hoaxer wait what? granted I haven't looked up a whole lot of stuff on him but what I have heard he didn't believe in aliens or UFO's but thought the idea of their threat was going to be used by the governments. Any links? The other one I'm curious about is Edgar Cayce. I know he had a few bad "predictions" but there never really saw any wrong one's other than the stuff about Atlantis. Also you missed my fav's David Ike and Alex Jones!! although Alex doesn't really do much other than repeat what others say on his show.
Why Alan Watts? I was under the assumption that he just gave his interpretation of eastern mysticism to a western audience. I feel like I can gain pieces of wisdom by listening to some of his lectures.
I hoped this would raise some questions I was under pressure on the hour and didn't come up with Wilcox, I'll add him. There's also...damn...Donnelly, the guy who co-reinvented Atlantis. And Lazar..I'll keep adding - and subtracting if I am being unfair: I'll answer as briefly as I can: 1) Cayce never made an accurate prediction, but did make a lot of wrong ones. For example, he said that the US would invent a Death Ray in 1958. A nice one is htat he sid that 1933, a year of extreme hardship and the Great Depression, would be a good year. Atlantis was his big thing, not a word to back him up. Edgar Cayce Readings and Skeptic Randi 2) William Cooper. "Cooper's veracity about his career in the Navy and his access to secret documents has been questioned publicly on ***.alien.visitor, as have other aspects of his personality. Cooper ran williamcooper.com, a site which promoted his many rants, including an autobiographical page that might be of interest to certain mental health professionals. Cooper's "investigations" uncovered the usual conspiracies, although he also included some of the new ones such as the conspiracy to use AIDS to thin out the population of blacks, Hispanics and homosexuals, a notion he put forth in a book called Behold a Pale Horse. What Cooper lacked in hard evidence he oversupplied in detail and imagination. "...Cooper later acknowledged that his UFO beliefs had been misguided, stating, "For many years I sincerely believed that an extraterrestrial threat existed and that it was the most important driving force behind world events. I was wrong and for that I most deeply and humbly apologize..." 3) Strassman for misrepresenting both the effects of DMT and it's spiritual links. He said that the pineal developed at 49 days and that a person 'began' at that point. He said that in Tibetan Buddhism the death Bardo was also 49 days long, and then goes on to create a convolute idea of why this should be anything to do with DMT. The Death bardo has no set number, it can be up to 49 days, but even that is in a way simply symbolic. He said that we believe in reincarnation, we don't, it isn't the way he says. He also quotes Descartes as having said that the pineal was the seat of the soul. Descartes was basing this on the idea that the pineal was the only non-symetrical structure in the brain. He was wrong. The pineal isn't the seat of the 'third eye' either, as the third eye is an invention of Theosophy, it doesn't exist in any eastern tradition. Enough on this one? 4) Alan Watts....ooohhhh Alan Watts. Well, his image - that of a spiritual Zen warrior - was a bit of a lie. He lasted very little time in Zen meditation and left, though he was a great appreciator of Zen style and art. With hardly any understanding he had the gall to write 'The Way of Zen'... He was a Theosphist. Theosophy is the one of the causes of the thinking that led to the Holocaust and brought to you countless useless myths and lies about spirituality. Most of it was made up by one of it's co-founders, known fraud HP Blavatsky. Pages of invented spirituality that Watts rehashed and spoke. The third-eye, man evolving spiritually, the silver cord in OBE's, Blavatsky's cohort Leadbeater gave us the western occult system and a totally ficititious understanding of chakras that's still common today. I could talk for hours about Theosophy, nothing good has ever come from it. But, the reason he's on the list is based on what you said, "I was under the assumption that he just gave his interpretation of eastern mysticism to a western audience..." People think he's simplifying esoteric texts from Buddhism, Hinduism and the Tao so that people in the west can understand them. He hardly had a grasp of the ideas he spoke about and frequently got things wrong. His take on Sunyata for instance was wrong enough to block most meditators for years. His knowledge of the east was also badly tainted by what he had taken from Theosophy. He did a good line in telling people what they wanted to hear, but bringing east to west he was not. I'm particularly interested in helping make sure that people aren't led astray with things that might stop them from becoming realised, Alan Watts is to be taken with a pinch of salt. "... His lectures and books gave him far-reaching influence on the American intelligentsia of the 1950s–1970s, but he was often seen as an outsider in academia. When questioned sharply by students during his talk at University of California Santa Cruz in 1970, Watts responded that he was not an academic philosopher but rather "a philosophical entertainer." Watts has been criticized by Buddhists such as Roshi Philip Kapleau, John Daido Loori, and D. T. Suzuki for allegedly misinterpreting several key concepts of Zen Buddhism...." MelT
I forget the guys' name but he hoaxed about Nibiru. He had no knowledge of the Sumerians at all and I even believe he emitted to falsifiable Nibiru but I could be wrong on the last part.
Terrance McKenna fanboys are going to break your kneecaps in with a bat. Anyone with a brain can see he's full of shit though.
I dont think he was an 'on purpose' kind of fake guru.......I wouldve expected therefore for you to have had Ram Dass on your list MELT
Sooo Melt, who IS telling the truth??? lol It seams like every single person who speaks about ufo's or paranormal experiences is a hoaxer. Are there any that are being honest??
Most of the ones on your list I would agree with, but Alan Watts and Terence McKenna are two I would like *proof* for... links or something? Edit: nevermind I read your earlier post on Watts
No time, the hour was up. I will put im in though. McKenna did what he did on purpose unfortunately. Many people tried to tell him that he had spirituality and physics wrong, but he was making good book sales, why change? MelT