John-Roger Hinkins
John-Roger Hinkins was an American author, public speaker, and founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, as well as several other New Age, spiritual, and self-help organizations.
Biography
Early life and education
Hinkins was born on September 24, 1934, and raised in the small mining town of Rains, Utah. He was brought up in the Mormon faith, As a youth, he attended the local LDS church's Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association and occasionally gave inspirational "three-minute talks." Hinkins described his childhood as "typical," distinguished only by an early belief that he could spot auras, colorful fields that some people believe surround the human body. After graduating from high school, Hinkins attended the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he earned a degree in psychology in 1958. While in college, he worked as a night orderly in the psychiatric hospital ward of a Salt Lake City hospital. He then moved to San Francisco to work as an insurance claims adjuster.He received a Secondary Life Teaching Credential from the State of California, and performed post-graduate work at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California and California State University, Los Angeles. He then began teaching English at Rosemead High School in a suburb of Los Angeles.
"Mystical Traveler Consciousness"
Hinkins relates having had a near-death experience while undergoing surgery for a kidney stone in late 1963, after which he fell into a nine-day coma. After this experience, Hinkins says he became aware of another "spiritual personality" that had superseded or merged with his previous personality. He began to refer to himself as "John-Roger."Hinkins termed this new consciousness the "Mystical Traveler Consciousness." According to Hinkins, he was chosen to "anchor" the consciousness on this planet, and was passed the "keys" to do so by the previous receptor of the consciousness, Sawan Singh, the Radhasoami Satsang Beas master who died in 1948, while he was on the "inner spiritual planes." According to Hinkins, he held the "keys" to the consciousness from December 1963 until December 1988, when they were passed to John Morton, the subsequent spiritual director of Hinkins's organization MSIA.
Hinkins maintained that humans are locked in an eternal cycle of reincarnation and karma, and can only escape by ascending from Earth's negative realms into "a totally positive state of being" called "soul consciousness." This, according to his teachings, is nearly impossible without the assistance of the Mystical Traveler Consciousness he believes he embodies. He has written that "Initiates of the Mystical Traveler Consciousness are those that I am specifically taking home to God."
Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness (MSIA)
In 1968, five years after his coma, Hinkins began to hold seminars as an independent spiritual teacher in homes of friends in Santa Barbara and Thousand Oaks. The demand for his seminars grew, until in 1971, Hinkins resigned from his job as a high school English teacher and formally incorporated the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.MSIA is a nondenominational and ecumenical church, the stated purpose of which is to teach "Soul Transcendence — becoming aware of yourself as a Soul and as one with God, not as a theory but as a living reality." As of 2004 MSIA had participants in over 30 countries, with its largest following in the United States, Australia, Colombia, Brazil, and Nigeria respectively. The church was estimated in 1993 to have 4500 members.
Controversy has surrounded MSIA: it has been accused of being a cult by some former members and by the Cult Awareness and Information Centre, and claims have been made that Hinkins had unethical sexual relationships with members.
MSIA has also been accused of being an "offshoot" of the organization Lifespring, a private, for-profit, New Age/human potential training company founded in 1974. According to Nan Kathryn Fuchs, a long-time devoted member of MSIA and a minister who served on the Ministerial Board for a number of years, Hinkins' teachings changed substantially in tone when Russell Bishop introduced his version of Lifespring Training to a group of MSIA ministers and John-Roger adopted the method, calling it "Insight Training Seminars." Russell Bishop ran the new Insight Seminars.
Regarding this time, Nan Fuchs wrote, "As the money began to roll in, John-Roger became more inaccessible, and his aphorisms changed from 'Help yourself so you can help others' to 'Use everything to your advantage.' He certainly has."
Other organizations founded
In addition to MSIA, Hinkins has founded several other non-profit organizations. In 1976, he founded Koh-e-nor University, later renamed the University of Santa Monica, a private, now-unaccredited institution which for several years offered a master's degree in Spiritual Psychology. Prior to his death, Hinkins served as the chancellor of the University.In 1977 Hinkins founded the Peace Theological Seminary & College of Philosophy. An educational non-profit organization, PTS offers undergraduate workshops, courses and retreats, and postgraduate programs centered on the teachings of MSIA. The school, an ecumenical and non-denominational, offered Masters and Doctorate degrees in Spiritual Science. Hinkins received his doctorate in Spiritual Science from this organization, and was its president.
In 1978 Hinkins created the Insight organization with friend and fellow MSIA Minister Russell Bishop. Insight Seminars is an international non-profit educational organization headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Hinkins served as Insight Seminars' chairman of the board.
In 1979, Hinkins founded the Heartfelt Foundation, a volunteer-driven, 501 non-profit organization dedicated to serving and assisting people in any form of need.
In 1982, Hinkins founded the Institute for Individual and World Peace, a volunteer-driven 501 non-profit organization dedicated to studying, identifying, and presenting the processes that lead to peace.
Author and filmmaker
Hinkins is the author of over 55 books, including The Rest of Your Life, Timeless Wisdoms. He has given more than 6000 seminars over the last forty years, most of which have been recorded either in audio or video format by NOW Productions. Hinkins also produced his own national cable TV show, That Which Is.In 1988, Hinkins partnered with actor Jsu Garcia to create 'Scott J-R Productions', a film production company committed to creating "spirit-filled" films. Their first full-length feature was My Little Havana, followed by Spiritual Warriors, based on Hinkins' book Spiritual Warrior: The Art of Spiritual Living.
Notable followers and associates
Several well-known individuals and public figures have worked with, or, with varying levels of dedication, have been associated with Hinkins since the 1970s. The most prominent of these is Arianna Huffington. Other notable students of Hinkins are the Beach Boys' Carl Wilson; actress Jaime King-Newman; actress Sally Kirkland, an MSIA minister since 1975; actress Leigh Taylor-Young, also an MSIA minister since 1975; actor Jsu Garcia; and author and management consultant David Allen. Author Peter McWilliams was also an MSIA minister but later repudiated MSIA and made a series of personal allegations against Hinkins in his book ''Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You.''Accusations of cultism, criminal conduct and abuse
In the 1980s and early 1990s, several former members of MSIA accused Hinkins of various crimes and abuses, including high-tech charlatanism, the sexual coercion of young male staffers, brainwashing and intimidation, and plagiarism. These allegations, as well as the revelation of the high-profile Arianna Huffington's association with the group, led to a series of investigations by publications such as People, Playboy, the Los Angeles Times and Vanity Fair. MSIA began to be referred to by some elements of the media as a cult. Cult expert and psychologist Steven Hassan, when asked by ABC News Nightline's Ted Koppel if MSIA qualified as a cult, responded:Charlatanism
Dissidents in the organization say Hinkins employed covert listening devices at MSIA's Santa Monica headquarters to support his claim of possessing extrasensory perception. One disenchanted member claimed "What people thought was J-R's clairvoyance was just his cunning and deceitful information gathering."Former MSIA member Terry O'Shaughnessy described to the Los Angeles Times how, in the course of installing sound equipment he and a co-worker found tiny microphones hidden in every room of the Insight headquarters. He later discovered that the microphones all fed into a switch arrangement in John-Roger's personal office, and learned they had been installed by members of John-Roger's personal staff.
O'Shaughnessy's wife, Susan, recounted that former MSIA member Michael Hesse told her he had installed recording devices on the telephones at the Insight headquarters. "I realized that so much of what I thought was psychic power was good old electronics," she said.
Insight facilitators reported that John-Roger monitored Insight training seminars via remote controlled video cameras connected to his private office.