Oneness University: Encyclopedia - Oneness University

Oneness University

Oneness University is not a university in the normal academic sense, but an India-based spiritual organisation, centred on the teachings of Sri Kalki Bhagavan and his wife Sri Padmavathi Amma.

The organisation's world headquarters are at Batthalavallam, Andhra Pradesh , seventy kilometres from the city of Chennai. All the Oneness University "campuses", and the Oneness Temple are based here. The organisation has no particular history or lineage before its founding in 2002 and, though it has adopted many Hindu cultural elements, it cannot be neatly identified with any of the schools of Hinduism.

Oneness University - Philosophy

The philosophy of the Oneness University or Golden Age Foundation is based on the non-dualistic teachings, experiences and examples of Sri Ramana Maharshi, with many examples from Buddhism (particularly Zen) thrown in. At the same time, the philosophy deviates from the non-dual or Advaita (not-two) vedanta philosophy in certain ways:

• Sri Kalki Bhagavan is declared to have descended from a separate cosmic consciousness, whereas humans have descended from a planetary consciousness. This allows for a dualistic devotional element in a philosophy that takes from the non-dual one.
• An emotional bond with Sri Kalki and his wife, Amma, is necessary to get grace. Although, on the face of it, the movement is secular and non-religious, but grace is supposed to only be the privilege of those devotees with a strong emotional bond to Amma and Bhagavan.
• Devotees are advised not to use positive thinking. However, the darshans and other rituals which are done to get grace, are a indirect form of positive thinking.

The above deviations from the non-dual philosophy are made in order to create a dependency on the cult. The strong emotional bond is built through darshans of Kalki and Amma. These private darshans range from INR 6000 for a few seconds, to INR 100000 for a few minutes.

The mission of Sri Kalki is to directly enlighten 64,000 disciples. Based on the 100th Monkey principle, this would result in the enlightenment of mankind as a whole. This work began in 1989. At present the organization claims 30 million devotees worldwide. However, as of summer 2005, it seems the number of people enlightened is about 45 only.

The Oneness University, was earlier called the Golden Age Foundation (a religious cult) but after running into problems with the courts over misuse of public funds, changed its name. The head of this movement earlier declared himself to be "Kalki", or the tenth avatar of Lord Vishnu, also has now renamed himself "Sri Bhagavan".

At this stage, the Oneness University is going through a great deal of controversy. Large funds, which were taken supposedly for rural development, and were thus tax-exempt have found their way into the private accounts of Sri Kalki Bhagavan and his close family members. The prestigious Indian magazine, India Today has been trying to throw light on financial irregularities (e.g. Cult in Crisis). However, with large sums of money at hand, it seems impossible to stop the growth of this cult.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Oneness University", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki