Gregorian Bivolaru - from jerk to an even bigger jerk through yoga

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Christopher Wallis (Hareesh Saurabh), renowned tantra scholar, practitioner, teacher and author of "Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition", published in 2016 an article with the title "How yoga can turn a jerk into an even bigger jerk".

Let's see what are its main ideas and underline their meaning in the MISA/Bivolaru context.

The scandals in the today's yoga/tantra scene usually relate to male teachers abusing of their power, mostly by taking sexual and/or financial advantage of their students.

Why is this so very common?

Some of you may remember that this topic was also discussed at length on the late ExMISA forum.

Wallis starts from the premise that at least some of these teachers had genuine spiritual realizations. 

Some ExMISA forum users started from a similar premise regarding MISA's guru, Gregorian Bivolaru. Others rather thought that he had no spiritual realizations, but in the beginnings he at least had good intentions. 

The big question in Wallis article is: "does the practice of yoga (broadly construed) inevitably and automatically lead you toward the stated goals of yoga, that is, awakening, self-realization, and liberation from delusion?"

There would be 2 answers to this:

1. The classical Hatha Yoga: practices "work regardless of the view or perspective on reality held by the practitioner, and therefore to speak of ‘yoga philosophy’ is missing the point."

2. The classical Tantra's view is diametrically opposite: "there must be alignment of View (darśana) and Practice (sādhanā) for the Fruit (phala) of yoga to appear. What this means is that the perspective on reality held by both the teacher and the student substantially affects the performance, and therefore the outcome, of the practice."

Wallis' opinion is, that the more than 500 years old perspective presented in the first answer was proved to be wrong by ample evidence accumulated since it was set up and concludes  that the practice of yoga does not necessarily automatically lead to awakening, self-realization, liberation from delusion or to "the beneficial and virtuous conduct that is one measure of that attainment."

"In fact, from the Tantrik perspective, the whole purpose of yoga can be characterized in one word as empowerment. But without aligned View, the classical tradition argues, such raw power amplifies the preexisting ego, and thus makes a jerk into a more powerful jerk, and makes a dangerous narcissist even more dangerous and narcissistic—just as it makes a kind person into a saint. This is why Tantra, in both Buddhist and Shaiva forms, offers ‘orientation to right View’ as the first and most fundamental practice."

So, in other words the effects of the yoga practice depend on the "client material" and the "guru material" (competence in "orientation to right View"). Yoga practice without this orientation won't make a saint out of a jerk or narcissist.

The "Six Realms" would be one of the most effective "View teachings", but it is practically forgotten nowadays.
This would explain why so many famous teachers are involved in scandals.
Wallis claims that these famous people "are exactly the ones most likely to suffer from the psychological condition traditionally called god-realm delusion, within which one can actually believe that having sex with a spiritually immature student is a form of empowerment that benefits the student, even if she doesn’t realize it at the time. Or they might suffer the lesser form of god-realm delusion, in which they know they're performing a potentially harmful action, but believe they’re too clever or special or ‘important to the mission’ to get caught."

To find out details about "the orientation to right View" and the "Six Realms" I guess we need to study Wallis' above mentioned book.

One of the examples of the god-realm delusion mentioned by Wallis in his article is none other than MISA's guru, Gregorian Bivolaru, "whose heinous crimes in the name of Tantric spirituality are yet to be fully revealed".

Genuine yoga/tantra teachers don't have to be perfect, but ""yukta", connected to the source of contentment within (and therefore free of avarice), and samāhita, self-possessed, relaxed, ‘together’ people".

But how to find out if a teacher is genuine or not?

The best way, and that was also the conclusion of the discussion on the ExMISA forum a few years ago, is to look at the teacher's conduct in his everyday life and with his students - this is the primary evidence of his attainment. 

In Gregorian Bivolaru's conferences and messages to his followers is a lot of evidence showing his lack of attainment. He insults his followers or outsiders with other opinions than his. 

Moreover, he founded MISA based on gross forgery, he lies that he would be certified yoga teacher, while his diplomas are not only fake, but they don't even certify him as yoga teacher. In 2016 in France he was arrested with a false passport on the name Nikolay Petrov and he claimed he would be Bulgarian. And there is much more...

In the end of his article Wallis explicitly warns his readers regarding MISA and its branches.
"Lastly, as long as I'm warning people about problematic teachers (by request), if any of my European readers encounter the allegedly Tantric group known as MISA or Nātha, please be aware that it is a dangerous cult, now thankfully falling apart. MISA was the most egregious example of using the actual spiritual teachings of nondual Shaiva Tantra to legitimate an extremely harmful cult environment. "

So, Christopher Wallis helped us not only to better understand MISA&Co, but also to realize that Gregorian Bivolaru developed from a jerk/dangerous narcissist into an even bigger jerk/dangerous narcissist through yoga.