You Get Five Demerits

Posted on May 3, 2008 by Guest Contributor

This is too funny.

Sean Clarke of the Spiritual Science Research Foundation (whatever “Spiritual Science” means) has written a letter of protest again the new Mike Myers movie “The Love Guru.”

Clarke isn’t the only person upset with the movie (many Hindus are calling for protests), but he is quite possibly the craziest.

He says the movie denigrates gurus — we are supposed to laugh at them! Blasphemy, he says.

Try reading this with a straight face:

The trailer released by Paramount pictures shows utter disrespect for the deep spiritual significance of the Guru. It shows the Guru in a very poor light and encourages the audience to laugh at the Guru. I could not believe my eyes when the trailer revealed Mike Myers playing a Guru through a whole range of denigrating scenes, some of which are quite lurid, such as the Guru wearing a chastity belt, having an erection, involved in bar brawls, accepting money to playing cupid, etc. In the trailer the character Pitka is proclaimed as the second best Guru in India. Was this a calculated statement or was this pulled out of some juvenile script writer’s repertoire? For a country that has produced revered Gurus and Saints such as Swami Vivekanand, Ramkrushna Paramhansa and Yogi Arvind, does Paramount Pictures actually believe that Mike Meyer’s portrayal of a Guru will join the ranks of the most illustrious Saints/Guru’s of India? Was your research team / script writer not aware of the sanctity of the Guru prior to making the movie? Did they even consult leaders in Spirituality (apart from Mr. Deepak Chopra of course) if the script was potentially hurting?

I can’t tell if that last line is a knock on Chopra…

Of course Myers won’t achieve the ranks of the revered Gurus. He would never claim to have psychic powers.

That’s when Clarke shows us he’s off the deep end.

SSRF is an organisation dedicated to spiritual research. Through knowledge that we accessed from the Universal Mind and Intellect, we have published the spiritual repercussions about making a movie such as ‘The Love Guru’ and also watching it.

At a spiritual level, as per the science of Spirituality when we do good deeds, we earn merits and when we do bad deeds we incur demerits. That is, how we live our lives has consequences that we have to face in this life or the afterlife. To understand the results of this spiritual research better, let’s take an example of the possible demerits on a scale from 1 to 100 that a person would accrue if he were to murder an average person, a seeker and a Saint. The demerits accrued if an average person is murdered is equal to 30 units, if a seeker is murdered equal to 60 units, and if a Saint is murdered is equal to 100 units. The demerit earned when a person murders a Saint is the maximum possible. This is because a Saint affects society at large positively, at a spiritual level.

Who calculated these things, I wonder…

Clarke even presents a chart so you can understand “the sheer gravity of the spiritual consequences for people associated with a movie such as ‘The Love Guru’. The table shows what it would mean to them in context of these acts alone.”

You may want to hang it on your fridge.

            Act

Demerit

   Means

Making the movie, ‘The Love Guru’

30 units

2nd region of Hell for 1000 years

Watching it for entertainment without knowing the spiritual science/significance

2 units

Nether region (Bhuvaloka) for 100 yrs

Watching it for entertainment even after knowing the spiritual science/ significance

5 units

1st region of Hell for 100 yrs

Being a seeker of God/on the spiritual path, knowing about the Movie, but doing nothing to stop it

5 units

1st region of Hell for 100 yrs

Would anyone like to point out where the “nether region” is…?

By the way, don’t even *think* about questioning this notion of Hell. It’s spiritual science.

Clarke says the producers should do the following:

  1. Change the name of the movie
  2. Remove any form of denigration towards the Guru
  3. Apologise to the international spiritual community

In other words, don’t release the film.

Right…

And apologize? Even without this movie, the concepts of reincarnation, spiritual regions of Hell, and “demerits” are laughable. The movie isn’t making me take those beliefs any less seriously.

I just got 12 demerits for writing that.

(via Sepia Mutiny)


[tags]atheist, atheism[/tags]

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  • http://intrinsicallyknotted.wordpress.com Susan B.

    Now see what you’ve done? If you hadn’t posted this we all could have gotten away with only two demerits for watching it without knowing the spiritual significance. But now we know and we’ll get five demerits instead! You owe me three demerits! Or anti-demerits. Or whatever. Are demerits transferable?

  • http://friendlyatheist.com Hemant Mehta

    Are demerits transferable?

    Umm… sure. Just send them to PZ :) I’m sure he has a stockpile building up.

  • http://blog.lib.umn.edu/fole0091/epistaxis/ Epistaxis

    I saw a trailer for it before Iron Man. I think their prayers will be answered.

  • Alex

    I woke up early and thought I’d just read for a bit before catching some more zzz’s. Now I’m laughing so hard that I’m wide awake. I hadn’t really given much thought as to whether I was going to go to see the movie, but now that I know that demerits points are involved, I’ll not only have to go a.s.a.p., but try to get as many friends as possible to go also. I’m sure that should be good for a few additional demerits.

    I wonder how many demerits one gets for lacking a sense of humour and making claims about things one couldn’t possibly know anything about?

    Cheers everyone!

  • http://www.otmatheist.com/ hoverFrog

    Isn’t “spiritual science” an oxymoron?

    I’ll take demerits from people in exchange for cold, hard cash. I’m spirtually generous like that.

  • mikespeir

    Even so, it’s better than the Christian Hell. Doesn’t last as long. (Does that earn me some merits? Hope, hope.)

  • http://cockingasnook.wordpress.com/ Nance Confer

    Still, this is one mean god! Damn! One stinking movie and I have to go to hell for 100 years? Adding up all the stupid movies I’ve seen. . . damn!

    Nance

  • Lom

    The movie is set to come out in august, which gives me easily enough time to prevent its release. At maximum I’d have to kill what – 5 people? That’s only 150 demerits. Considering I’m saving thousands of people from watching it, surely I’d at least be a good couple of thousand merits in the clear?

  • cipher

    Even the arithmetic is wrong – 80% + 10% = 100%? I guess this is what happens when you fail math; you get to be a “spiritual guide”.

    I notice he says that if you commit suicide, you go to the lowest region for 60,000 years. These guys almost always go nuts over suicide; in this regard, they’re like the authorities of the “legitimate” religions. It says a lot about their own internal issues.

  • Xeonicus

    I really want the Spiritual Science Research Foundation to be a parody site, but I’m saddened by the fact that it’s not.

    Did anyone read their article on human cloning? Crazy. They make it sound like scientists actively want to create armies of human clones to create the perfect human. *mind boggle* They even offer “scientific” research data received from a divine source that argues how inferior clones are to normal humans.

  • Mark

    I’d like to buy a vowel.

    No, wait, that’s a different game.

  • Vincent

    If you want some more laughs, go to IMDB.com and do a movie title search for “Guru” and see what you find.
    There are tons of movies with Guru in the title, including 7 just called “Guru”.
    Gurus in the synopses are described as anything from “the biggest tycoon in Indian history” to a guy who will “become ‘The Guru’ by sleeping with seven women in the next seven days”, to “the schizophrenic chaplain of a Central European prison”.

    Titles include “Guru Wayne”, “the Love Guru” and “the Guru of Sex”

    Seems Gurus have a long tradition of being the butt of movie jokes.

  • http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/ miller

    I’m interested to learn that murdering a seeker is twice as bad as murdering an average person, which is apparently just as bad as making a comedy about gurus.

  • http://skepticsplay.blogspot.com/ miller

    Apparently, Deepak Chopra supports the movie. I don’t know if that’s good or bad.

  • Einmaliger

    He’s right, making such a movie costs 30 units (only 25 if you have the “priest class” or a holy symbol of level 2 or higher), but he seems to forget that the makers of the movie recently unlocked a secret bonus level where you can buy back up to 100 units plus you get a power-up that gives you unlimited ammo in the netherworld map 4 and 7.

  • http://mygoddlessdrama.blogspot.com/ Stacy

    I think Mike Meyers will end up in the seventh circle of Hell just by default for making such a ridiculous movie. The trailer looked like a bad Honda Oddysey commercial outtake.

  • Jen

    I think Mike Myers will go to Hell simply for being himself, and for making some of the worst movies ever. Thanks, btw, Mike, for ruining Dr Suess.

  • Karen

    I’ve heard of the “nether regions” but I don’t think that’s what they’re talking about …

  • http://www.embiggenbooks.com Mr Embiggen

    Thank you for this info. I now plan to watch the movie precisely 46.3756 times. Or hopefully until I believe that Mike Myers is a guru – that should really earn some serious demerits. Then I need to find me a seeker and to quote Monty Python, I will fart in his general direction.

  • Randall

    I really think that sending people to Hell, for any length of time, for watching a Mike Myers movie is unfair. I mean, come on! These people have just watched a Mike Myers movie! How much more suffering do they have to take?

  • Siamang

    That sounds a lot like Father Guido Sarducci’s old routine about how sins are tabulated in the afterlife.

    Life is a job. You get $14.50 a day, but after you die, you have to pay for your sins. Stealing a hubcap is around $100. Masterbation is 35 cents (it doesn’t seem like much, but it adds up). If there’s money left when you subtract what you owe from what you’ve earned, you can go to heaven. If not, you have to go back to work (sort of like reincarnation – many nuns are Mafia guys working it off).

  • Allytude

    Laughing about the “nether regions” = more demerits…
    Imagining the nether regions….. priceless demerits…

    For the rest there is master card- sorry it kind of builds up like that