The Sarah Landry Series : Part. 2

Prostituting Hinduism For Name and Fame

FREE YOURSELF: A Franchise of Plagiarism

Sarah Landry has always taken great pride in her prowess as a writer and motivational speaker. True to her agenda to appropriate and discredit the original teachings of Sanatana Hindu Dharma from HDH’s teachings, she attended the 21 Inner Awakening Program at the end of 2009. This was her first program, and first proper introduction to HDH and His teachings. After the episode of her ban from the Sangha, Sudevi, as she was called in those days, continued to make videos where she parroted the teachings of HDH. This seemed strange for a person who had been banned from the very place where she was lifting these teachings from. However, she was simply continuing to make videos on her channel for gaining a following of her own, by straight plagiarism of His Divine Holiness’ teachings. 

This was exposed further on coming upon her website-blog from 2013 – around the same time that she had made herself the face for Jesus-Yoga and the Christian ‘One In God’ Movement. As seen in the pictures below, she has explicitly stated the scope of her ‘FREE YOURSELF’ program. 

The structure and content of the program is heavily plagiarised from that of His Divine Holiness. The concept of eating ‘Sattvic food’, as well as a complete plagiarism of His Divine Holiness’ teachings of Completion (as seen on the blog – ‘“meditations to separate the true self from the persona built up’). Another theme copied from the programs of His Divine Holiness is that of ‘preparatory’ exercises which prepare the participants for a final initiation. Here, we see a complete plagiarism of His Divine Holiness’ completion technique where she describes the final process of her program – 

“Three powerful process are conducted one after another, first looking within, next undoing judgements and preconceived ideas of reality, and finally, an initiation into the Thoughtless State.”

The same words have been used by His Divine Holiness in a discourse on 25th July, 2013, where he explains the technique for instant completion:

“Listen, with this one idea that cognition can be changed, pen down all the incompletions and look in..”

“Conscious seeing means, seeing from your inner space – your consciousness. It is seeing with awareness – seeing before your thoughts have influenced your understanding and experience. It is seeing the existential reality as it is, without judgement.”

“Perception is the way in which our pre-conditioned patterns respond to the facts — to the events we encounter.”

Most shocking is the outright plagiarism of an initiation and meditation technique created and made popular by His Divine Holiness – the Unclutching initiation. To “unclutch” (a word coined by HDH) means to be in a space of restful awareness and a space of no thoughts – the same “thoughtless state” that Sarah refers to. 

An excerpt from HDH’s book titled ‘Follow me IN!’ where he expands upon unclutching, and how it leads one to a thoughtless awareness. 

Moreover, she offers ‘energised items’ to the participants. This is one more concept from Hinduism, lifted straight from HDH’s own website. A screenshot from Sarah’s blog page about the program, as well as HDH’s official webpage for the Life Bliss Galleria is posted below:

A screenshot from Sarah’s Blog page for the FREE YOURSELF program

Source: http://www.nithyananda.org/ashram/life-bliss-galleria#gsc.tab=0 

 The outright plagiarism from Hinduism is only phase 1 of the well-known U-Turn theory. At this stage, we see how Sarah makes the indigenous teachings from Sanatana Hiindu Dharma as her own, not giving credit to the Guru who taught her. Hindus believe that knowledge is free. Copyrighting is not a part of Hindu vocabulary. The more people that spread the teachings of Hinduism, the better. To avoid dilution, it is an unsaid rule that one’s Guru always be given credit where credit is due. It ensures that the technique, knowledge or initiation pass on from Guru to Disciple without any corruption or pollution. 

However, stealing, diluting, discrediting and destroying these teachings is intolerable. The openness of Hindus has been exploited time and again by foreign invaders and thieves. Sarah has proven that such tactics are still very much in practice in the continuous robbery of Hindu wisdom and heritage.