(I was gonna post this to the general spirituality board, but it's saying only administrators can post there.)

So the other day I found out about this guy, Steven Sadleir, who leads these workshops to help people raise their LoC. For only $1500, you can call in to his weekly conference call for where he basically sends you energy and raises your LoC.

From this page, I quote:

As a Shaktipat Master from the lineage of Sri Sri Sri Shivabalayogi Maharaj, Steven transmits a life force energy, or spiritual energy, that can be felt by anyone, anytime, anywhere. During the weekly one hour teleconferenced Self-Realization classes Steven will transmit this Shakti which the students can easily tune into and are led into increasingly higher states of consciousness and samadhi. The students are "recalibrated" into higher states of awareness each week until they are fully realized and enlightened. It's easy, effortless and enjoyable. We get high as a kite on God. We enter the Kingdom.

Does that strike anyone else as odd? You know, "just send me money and I'll make you enlightened!"

Wanting to see how people run spiritual businesses and earn money doing it, I checked out his sample call where he led us in a guided meditation and sent us his energy. He mentioned that he's lectured with Hawkins and even uses his map of consciousness to denote where people are. On the call he said that he lifts people up to the 500's and even the 600's.

Again, quoting from his workshop information page,

By the End of the Course You Will:

* Enter into a higher state of consciousness and feel more love, peace and joy. Your calibrated level of consciousness will enter the 500's.

The words he says sound good, he's into Advaita, self-inquiry, and has studied under many enlightened gurus, but what's the deal with raising people's consciousness for them? I've shot a few emails back and forth with this company asking if they were actually claiming to raise people's consciousness for them, something Hawkins has specifically warned against, but I didn't get a straight answer from them in any of the emails.

I'm all for helping to raise mass consciousness and am a fan of Hawkins' teachings, but something feels off about this.

There's certainly something to say about being in the presence of the guru, no doubt about it, but still...

Is it just me or does this sound a little too good to be true?

It does sound too good to be true--hell, it was too good to be true when we were doing it with Miykael on late-nite AIM chats and whatnot. :p 5 minutes of TAT = 100 point LoC increase. xD

I've heard of guys like Mantak Chia, Taoist masters, giving their students energy so that the student knows what it feels like and what to look for, but he explicitly states that he's careful not to allow a dependent relationship to develop.

This Shaktipat thing seems like a major interference with people's Karma--plus the monetary aspect of it seems weird. Why doesn't the guy just sit on a street corner and bless everyone who walks by? At least in that case it would be letting God decide whose karma brings them to the right street corner at the right time.

But that's just me, using the mind to guess what an enlightened guy might do. :shrug

I do think it's really cool that this guy uses the Hawkins LoC scale though, I love seeing that thing around.

Plus, on his website he's posing like, "I'm sending you energy," kinda like Yogiraj poses on his website like, "I'm a Himalayan yogi," while Dr. Hawkins on Veritaspub.com poses like, "Hi."