Swami Vishwananda

Swami Vishwananda or Paramahamsa Sri Swami Vishwananda (born in 1978 in Mauritius as Visham Komalram)[1]) is the leader of a particular brand of Hinduism personality cult marketed as Bhakti Marga. His business concept seems to be a carbon-copy of Sathya Sai Baba, namely spitting out golden eggs and giving out pendants to his devotees that he hid somewhere in his wide cloths before and pretends to 'materialize' for them.

Thank my various Gods!
 Hinduism 
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Sometimes, he acquires these artifacts by stealing them from Catholic churches. A Swiss judge found in 2007 that he had done so in at least 23 churches, mostly around 2001.[1] His followers see him as a personification of God. He allegedly took advantage of this devotion by secretly sexually molesting underage male followers[2] while preaching celibacy to all his devotees and amassing a fortune.

Religious practice

Vishwananda is celebrated as an Avatar, an incarnation of God, and advertised as effectively "the new Jesus". Sometimes, his disciples claim that Vishwananda is the only way to find enlightenment, other times they are a bit more humble and simply claim that it's the easiest, most feasible path to find it through him.

Meditative practice often consists of chanting songs in Hindi that more or less all go "Oh Vishwananda you are our savior, please guide us".

Luring in

In newcomer events where new followers are supposed to be attracted, it's claimed that Vishwananda has supernatural abilities, like spitting out golden eggs and 'manifesting' vibhuti (holy ash) on food and religious objects. In newcomer event presentations, quantum woo is used in what might be the most amateurish form. A video of the Chladni plate experimentFile:Wikipedia's W.svg is shown. It is then claimed, "as you can see, all matter consists of and is affected by vibrations, and therefore, by chanting 'OMM', we can create vibrations and transform the negative energy of the Holocaust into positive one."[3]

gollark: Well, sure, yes, and you could also edit the code to not contain sandboxing.
gollark: Counting attacks from someone who already controls the environment the code is running in is kind of pointless when considering RCEoR and most stuff.
gollark: Okay, sure.
gollark: I mean, patch the code of the thing you are installing.
gollark: Well, sure. But in that case you could also just patch the code to not sandbox it like that.

References
  1. http://www.ezw-berlin.de/downloads/Materialdienst_08_2013.pdf
  2. https://www.cultnews101.com/2015/03/swami-to-be-probed-over-claims-of-abuse.html
  3. Newspaper article in German, "Rheingau-Taunus: Om-Singen für die Opfer des Holocaust" Wiesbadener Kurier
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