{"id":9045,"date":"2013-01-23T13:19:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-23T13:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/01\/23\/rasputin\/"},"modified":"2013-01-23T13:19:48","modified_gmt":"2013-01-23T13:19:48","slug":"rasputin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/01\/23\/rasputin\/","title":{"rendered":"Rasputin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The tale of how this semi-literate Siberian peasant insinuated himself into the highest precincts of throne and&#0160;altar in imperial Russia is told by Joseph T. Furhmann in <em>Rasputin: The Untold Sto<\/em>ry (John Wiley &amp; Sons, 2013).&#0160; It held my attention to the last page.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Contrary to popular belief,&#0160;Rasputin wasn&#39;t a monk and, though hard to kill, was dead by the time he was dumped into the icy Neva.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">If a &#39;holy man&#39; takes money or sex from his disciples, that is a reliable sign that he is a fraud.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">I am reminded of the famous and rather more recent cases of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apologeticsindex.org\/b40.html\">Rajneesh<\/a> and Chogyam<br \/>\nTrungpa. According to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cuke.com\/comments\/spiker.html\">one report<\/a>, &quot;. . . Trungpa slept with a different woman every night in order to transmit the teaching to them. L. intimated that it was really a hardship for Trungpa to do this, but it was his duty in order to spread the dharma.&quot;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify; display: block;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">With apologies to the shade of Jack Kerouac, you could say that that gives new meaning to &#39;dharma bum.&#39;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/arts\/books\/2012\/11\/27\/book-review-rasputin-the-untold-story-joseph-fuhrmann\/47OuAkshSayvrmeEzF8G1N\/story.html\" target=\"_self\">Here<\/a> is a review of the Fuhrmann book.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The tale of how this semi-literate Siberian peasant insinuated himself into the highest precincts of throne and&#0160;altar in imperial Russia is told by Joseph T. Furhmann in Rasputin: The Untold Story (John Wiley &amp; Sons, 2013).&#0160; It held my attention to the last page. Contrary to popular belief,&#0160;Rasputin wasn&#39;t a monk and, though hard to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2013\/01\/23\/rasputin\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Rasputin&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-questers-and-other-oddballs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9045\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}