31 VOLUME 9 |ISSUE 1 |2018
Reports From Austria
Friedrich Griess
Esotericism
The municipality of Gerasdorf equips
kindergartens, schools, and the town
hall with stickers designed to protect
against electromagnetic radiation. The
producer Waveex offered 120 stickers,
with an ordinary price of 24,90 Euro, at
no cost.
Lower Australian International Schools
(LAIS) and the Anastasia movement,
based on the books of Wladimir Megre,
are also popular in Austria, though they
are heavily criticized by pedagogic
experts.
Fiat Lux
The founder of Fiat Lux, Erika
Bertschinger-Eicke, alias “Uriella,” now
88 and obviously seriously ill, sold her
house in Müllnern (Carinthia).
Scientology
Wilfried Handl has been a Scientologist
for 28 years, during which he was
director of Scientology in Austria for
2 years. Around the year 2000, he left
Scientology and since then has been
serving as a consultant. He has written
several books and has created a blog at
https://wilfriedhandl.org
Report From
France and French-
Speaking Countries
Catherine Perry
Buddhism (France and Belgium)
The renowned Tibetan lama Sogyal
Rinpoche, founder of Rigpa, an
international network of 130
centers and groups that present the
Buddha’s teachings in the West, is
now “disgraced,” as the Dalai Lama
stated on August 1, 2017 (Dalai Lama,
2017). According to a Rigpa press
release, Sogyal, 70, officially retired on
August 11, 2017. A tireless advocate
of Buddhism in the West and author
of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
(1992), which sold 2.8 million copies
worldwide, he also founded the West’s
largest Tibetan Buddhist temple, Lerab
Ling, at Roqueredonde in southern
France. The Dalai Lama formally
inaugurated this temple on August 22,
2008, in the presence of Carla Bruni
Sarkozy, then France’s first lady, and
other dignitaries, including French
Minister of Foreign and European
Affairs Bernard Kouchner.
For years before his resignation,
scandals surrounded Sogyal but hardly
anyone, it seems, took notice, not even
in August 2016, when he punched a
nun in the stomach in front of more
than a thousand students gathered
at Lerab Ling to hear him preach.
Previously, in 2015, the President
of Rigpa France, Olivier Raurich,
had resigned. As he explained in an
interview to the French magazine
Marianne, “[he] had come for teachings
on humility, love, truth, and trust, and
[he] found [him]self in a quasi-Stalinist
environment and permanent double-
talk” (Brown, 2017).
Furthermore, in September 2016,
the French anthropologist Marion
Dapsance had published a book
entitled Les Dévots du bouddhisme
[The Devotees of Buddhism], in which
she denounced abusive behavior
that she had witnessed personally
during 2 years spent at Lerab Ling.
Several scholars of Buddhism in France
dismissed her study, which stirred
intense controversy among French
Buddhists (Lesegretain, Jan. 30, 2017).
It was only in July 2017, when a group
of eight current and former followers
wrote a letter to Sogyal accusing him
of sexual, financial, and other abuses,
and sent a copy of this letter to the
Dalai Lama, that Sogyal had to resign
from the position of spiritual leader,
although he did not admit to the truth
of any of the allegations. This letter
obliged the distinguished French
Buddhist monk and neuroscientist
Matthieu Ricard to take a position on
the matter, judging the comportment
of Sogyal to be “inadmissible”
(Ricard, 2017), while the Buddhist
Union of France decided to exclude
Rigpa. Daniel Sisco, President of the
Association des Familles et Individus
Victimes de Sectes [Association of
Families and Individuals Victims of
Cults], ADFI Paris IDF, pointed out how
challenging it can be “to assemble
proofs in the domain of psychological
domination ...because it is the word of
one person against another[,] ...but this
can change when five or ten people
say the same thing about an individual”
(Evenou, 2017). In 2016, ADFI Paris
Correspondents
,
Reports
Reports From Austria
Friedrich Griess
Esotericism
The municipality of Gerasdorf equips
kindergartens, schools, and the town
hall with stickers designed to protect
against electromagnetic radiation. The
producer Waveex offered 120 stickers,
with an ordinary price of 24,90 Euro, at
no cost.
Lower Australian International Schools
(LAIS) and the Anastasia movement,
based on the books of Wladimir Megre,
are also popular in Austria, though they
are heavily criticized by pedagogic
experts.
Fiat Lux
The founder of Fiat Lux, Erika
Bertschinger-Eicke, alias “Uriella,” now
88 and obviously seriously ill, sold her
house in Müllnern (Carinthia).
Scientology
Wilfried Handl has been a Scientologist
for 28 years, during which he was
director of Scientology in Austria for
2 years. Around the year 2000, he left
Scientology and since then has been
serving as a consultant. He has written
several books and has created a blog at
https://wilfriedhandl.org
Report From
France and French-
Speaking Countries
Catherine Perry
Buddhism (France and Belgium)
The renowned Tibetan lama Sogyal
Rinpoche, founder of Rigpa, an
international network of 130
centers and groups that present the
Buddha’s teachings in the West, is
now “disgraced,” as the Dalai Lama
stated on August 1, 2017 (Dalai Lama,
2017). According to a Rigpa press
release, Sogyal, 70, officially retired on
August 11, 2017. A tireless advocate
of Buddhism in the West and author
of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying
(1992), which sold 2.8 million copies
worldwide, he also founded the West’s
largest Tibetan Buddhist temple, Lerab
Ling, at Roqueredonde in southern
France. The Dalai Lama formally
inaugurated this temple on August 22,
2008, in the presence of Carla Bruni
Sarkozy, then France’s first lady, and
other dignitaries, including French
Minister of Foreign and European
Affairs Bernard Kouchner.
For years before his resignation,
scandals surrounded Sogyal but hardly
anyone, it seems, took notice, not even
in August 2016, when he punched a
nun in the stomach in front of more
than a thousand students gathered
at Lerab Ling to hear him preach.
Previously, in 2015, the President
of Rigpa France, Olivier Raurich,
had resigned. As he explained in an
interview to the French magazine
Marianne, “[he] had come for teachings
on humility, love, truth, and trust, and
[he] found [him]self in a quasi-Stalinist
environment and permanent double-
talk” (Brown, 2017).
Furthermore, in September 2016,
the French anthropologist Marion
Dapsance had published a book
entitled Les Dévots du bouddhisme
[The Devotees of Buddhism], in which
she denounced abusive behavior
that she had witnessed personally
during 2 years spent at Lerab Ling.
Several scholars of Buddhism in France
dismissed her study, which stirred
intense controversy among French
Buddhists (Lesegretain, Jan. 30, 2017).
It was only in July 2017, when a group
of eight current and former followers
wrote a letter to Sogyal accusing him
of sexual, financial, and other abuses,
and sent a copy of this letter to the
Dalai Lama, that Sogyal had to resign
from the position of spiritual leader,
although he did not admit to the truth
of any of the allegations. This letter
obliged the distinguished French
Buddhist monk and neuroscientist
Matthieu Ricard to take a position on
the matter, judging the comportment
of Sogyal to be “inadmissible”
(Ricard, 2017), while the Buddhist
Union of France decided to exclude
Rigpa. Daniel Sisco, President of the
Association des Familles et Individus
Victimes de Sectes [Association of
Families and Individuals Victims of
Cults], ADFI Paris IDF, pointed out how
challenging it can be “to assemble
proofs in the domain of psychological
domination ...because it is the word of
one person against another[,] ...but this
can change when five or ten people
say the same thing about an individual”
(Evenou, 2017). In 2016, ADFI Paris
Correspondents
,
Reports
