Intellectuals at cleft when showing sympathy to the victim

The cultural span in the Bivolaru case
The „ALTITUDINI. CULTURĂ & SOCIETATE” magazine,
First year, 1st issue, March 2006
Page 48 – column “Ultima pagină”

By GABRIEL ANDREESCU

What may an intellectual feel when he finds out some of the ideas of Gregorian Bivolaru and his Yoga School, The Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA)? They may refer to some meditations of the yogis, to some topics of nationalism, moulded in the image of Romania – a genuine spiritual centre to be for the humankind. One may read about freemasonry, “a satanic world group […] attempting to get control over the whole world and even more”1. Such disclosures are quite far-fetched so much so the official web site of the Organisation refers to the “Criminal plan of the masonry to decrease the world population down to 1 billion people. The SIDA, SARS viruses are unveiled as secretly and deliberately made up in the laboratory in order to kill in near future as much persons as possible by secret contamination with viruses to trigger SIDA, SARS and AVIAR FLU”2. 

It’s quite surprising that GREGORIAN BIVOLARU’s group hardly stirred the interest of the historians writing about the transcendental meditation. There have been three researchers Doina Jela, Catalin Strat and Mihai Albu who skimmed over the CNSAS State archive, where they found documentation for the book “The Matter of the Transcendental Meditation” issued by the Humanitas Publishing House. No reference has been made there, however, to GREGORIAN BIVOLARU, although the file theme clearly pointed out that the most repressive actions had been displayed against the yoga groups and by no means against the institutional or cultural VIPs that the volume teems with. (A significant fact to notice in this respect is that out of all those implied in the Matter of the Transcendental Meditation, Gregorian Bivolaru was the only one sent to prison).

At March 18, the nation reacted to the media fuss around MISA and the spiritual leader GREGORIAN BIVOLARU. The intellectuals, fans of press, could watch the brutlity against plenty of innocent young people, taken out og their houses at gunpoint. Statements like “During the searching there have been found substances, which cannot be labelled as drugs, so far” (Cotidianul, March 22 2004).

The action was set off due to several notifications of the citizens, concerning prostitution and drugs traffiking in some suburbs neighbourhood of Bucharest. The authorities have displayed searching in the locations of unathorised erotic and pornographic video chat (Ziua, March 20, 2004).

Or, a lucid ad cautious intellectual could have immediately noticed the flagrant , inciting-calmnios tinge. This is basic education knowing that the Police is not allowed to enter a private location on the aberrant ground of “neighbourhood crimes”. Owning pornographic materials is no offence, and the private erotic dialogue by internet does not require any authorisation. How can a journalist utter any suspicions concerning “substances which cannot be labelled as drugs, so far”.

Getting aware of brutality

There have been just few to stand up in the cultural press against the brutal broadside on March 18, 2004. Yet, there were some voices who accused the unjustified passionate punishments. In a clever column issue din the 22 magazine, Rodica Culcer reffered to the attacks against MISA: “Here we are witnessing in facta huge Big Brother show, not like that one broadcast on the Prime TV, it would rather look like George Orwell’s in his 1984”. Against his conservative sensitiveness, H.-R. Patapievici also remarked in the same magazine: “I cannot find proper outrageous words to express my revolt versus the way the authorities treated Gregorian Bivolaru and the followers of the Movement for Spiritual Integration into the Absolute, MISA. […] In a legal state claiming major observance to the human respect, not one person, not one single group should be treated like this. Brutality, arbitrary, instigation, media manipulation…”3.

Self-collected, Ion Zubascu made his point about the facts stating the Gregorian Bivolaru smoke is just a sequence in a long series 4. The writter, editor at the Romania Libera placed the March 18 2004 events among other diversions set up by the secret services (“in the 14 years age of Romania ruled by the couple Iliescu-Teoctist”) in the difficult times for politics: the attacks of the terrorists in december 1989, the danger of the “hungarians attempting to seize power in Ardeal”, the Apocallipse of the “New Jerusalem”, the incredible diversion of “the putch at the Patriarchy”, the Jehova witnesses invasion and so on. Any common-sensed person shall immediately notice the ridiculously far-fetched theme of the media show waged in an obsessive manner against MISA and the spiritual leader Gregroian Bivolaru.

The name of Gregorian Bivolaru made a lasting topic

Gregrorian Bivolaru has been for more than ayear and a half under the media focus. Calumnies as much as the most minute information mushroomed. There has been plenty of time for the data and options concerning MISA lifestyle to be examined. This time did not weight on yet.  The random comments often deliberately malevolent did not turn into specialised investigations. In the cultural magazines, references have mostly been stated under the under the guise of some retoric cliches, namely in the Romania Libera , where Gregroian Bivolaru was reffered to as “the great yoga specialist, the Old Bivolaru of Sweden”, who will help us all “fight against smoking, anxiety, fisc waving one euro in one hand while holding some trick in the other…”5

The name of the latest was often used as a stigma. Andrei Plesu perkily called on this strange attitude6. At the opposite end we find the funny-indulgent attitude of Ioan Grosan, who exclaimed pro the judge Simona Lungu: “Now we have a cool sexy judge woman folk, and they quickly push her hands up! What did she do in fact (if she has done anything?) […] Now to put things straight, as far as I’ve seen the images broadcast in a gesture of stiff satisfaction on all TV stations (which are not some abbey stations at all), I couldn’t grasp fpr myself what makes the porno thing in those marterials. Erotic, well we may so, but pornoby no means!”7.

The radiographic vision also emerges at Mircea Cartarescu. The only guru of the nation, was the sarcastic tone of Cartarescu editorial in Jurnalul National, is now wandering at ease in sweden, far from the “rather short arm (and hardly clean, to give it straight from the shoulder) of the Romanian justice”8. Stuck to mentalities, the writer assessed  within “the myth of Bivolaru the obsessivly funny appearance of some queer sexual demon, restlessly corrupting young souls”. There he clearly remarks away from our need of ethics or of any compassion for the so-called “deluded souls” the very insatiable long after obscene and sensational of the perverse mind that are mostly after the stimulus that they should blame in hypocrisy later on.

Radu Calin Cristea9 issues an objective standpoint. The MISA members doubtlessly are the innocent victims of some mean treatments, who were camera recorded and immediately delivered by several televisions utterly accidentally in the neighbourhood, at the given locations, early in the morning, right? The facts actually are some security-police action, in the old Stalinist style”. Also in a strong dislike tone, close to cruelty Radu Calin Cristea refers to the “rather foolish aura” of Bivolaru “his hands up”, whom he describes like some “animal in a funny exotice guise”, whom everybody chases I don’t know why.

Character, spirit, intellect

The first thing to shock us aboce all should be the sadist perkiness, sometimes cruel in which some people refer to gregorian Bivolaru. All commenters, including the honourable ones, refer to Gregorian Bivolaru in deliberately disparaging words. This concerns not only his intellectual products (which are not at all scarce) and which the intellectuals are literally bound to assess, but also this man they have never met in their lives. What is that justifies the superiority the critique display so self-collected and the contempt they evince quite steadily

As a child, Gregorian Bivolaru discovered – in practicing yoga – a gift meant to draw him away from the world rather than push him closer to it. The high-school education points to an unsuccessful intellectual career. His gift, however, which he definitely defended and lived for, made him a yoga instructor by the 70s. He devoted himself to this extremely tough discilpline and he kept endevouring in this respect against all odds, till he succeeded to found a school for his disciples. In the 70s he was constantly under the Secret Services surveillance as holding his courses. In 1981 he was forbidden to teach yoga. Facing with lot of courage this prohibition, he kept looking for new books for his esoteric library, he kept in touch with his disciples still eager to meet him, which he incognito did, against all specific threatenings. In 1984 he was arrested during such a meeting, he was brutaly beaten for days, his teeth were broken, he was put to jail in dreadful conditions. He ran away as a so-called file was being “forged” for him on grounds of plotting against the State security and against dictator Ceausescu. He was caught back and sent to jail for this offence for one year and a half. After he got out of prison, he resumed his connection to his disciples who were looking for his advice. In july 1989, he was again put to jail, fiercely aggressed and tortured during the Security detention, and eventually sent as a mad man to the psychiatric disorders asylum in Poiana Mare. There was no moment for him to give in to the dreadful regime of terror he was repeatedly inflicted. All this time, including the retention in the psychiatric asylum (where he was subjected to a devasting and cumpulsory diet), he manage to stay the cal and generous supporte of some tens of persons who kept practicing yoga secretly, he was the back up for his intimates, also chased for practicing yoga, as he was, though it was him who underwent the worse.

Away from being one of the outspoken contestors of the communism, Gregorian Bivolaru remains one of the most perseverant and undefeatable opposers of this regime. Assessing people acording to their deeds versus the character they evince, Bivolaru is one of the rare exceptions in a herd of human frailty. Considering the path of his existence, the jerky and almost uninterrupted series of imprecations voiced by bunches of opportunists and high-quality persons as well, – we quoated above! – against such an uncommon person is an amasing fact. The contemptuous words assigned to Gregorian Bivolaru question the very interest for the human nature complexity as far as those shaping the public opinion are concerned.

This measures the completely unrelevant value of the character in the romanian society. It obviously renders the degree of cruelty that this society has reached.  For allowing again Gegorian Bivolaru to become the pray of the public opinion and institutions, greedy for scapegoats, no matter his former status of  the communist repression victim, which he literarly subsisted in blood, is a huge injustice. It stands as an unbearable shame for today romanian society to show sympathy to the old torturers who had formerly beaten his bones. As for the audience, instead of looking for the butchers chasing him and his collegues, i.e. former prosecutors and secret services agents hidden in the institutions currently punishing MISA and try to disclose them, the press readers and TV viewers are actually applauding the butchers scenario, insistently reiterated for 15 years.

1. Gregorian Bivolaru, the  Freemasonry. The unveiled mysteries of a huge world satanic conspiracy, Shambala Publishing House, Bucureşti, 1995, p.9
2. yogaesoteric.net
3. H.-R. Patapievici, Religion and Politics, the 22 magazine.
4. Ion Zubaşcu, „The smoking bomb” Gregorian Bivolaru, a stage in a long series only, in România Liberă newspaper.
5. Răzvan Petrescu, The oaktree, exttreme emergency, in România literară magazine, Nr. 47/30 November-6 December 2005 edition.
6. Check Bogdan Ciubuc, Andrei Pleşu has prayed to Nicolae Ceauşescu, in Evenimentul Zilei newspaper, September 4, 2004 edition.
7. Ioan Groşan, That’s her, all right! So what?, in Ziua newspaper, November 3, 2004 edition.
8. Mircea Cărtărescu, The Guru’s orgies, in Jurnalul Naţional newspaper, October 25 2005 edition.
9. Ibidem.
10. Radu Călin Cristea, the Swedish Bivolaru, in Averea newspaper, January 12, 2006 edition.

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