Roger Delano Hinkins

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Roger Delano Hinkins (born September 24, 1934) is best known as the founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness where he is often referred to as John-Roger or simply J-R.

[edit] Biography

Born to a Mormon family in Rains, Utah on on September 24, 1934, Hinkins was raised in Utah and received a degree in psychology from the University of Utah in 1958 before moving to San Francisco to work as an insurance claims adjustor; he later taught English at Rosemead High School in a suburb of Los Angeles. In late 1963 Hinkins underwent gall-bladder surgery and a possible sedative overdose, which led to a nine-day coma and near-death experience in which he claimed to have been overshadowed by a "being" who called himself "John" and "The Beloved."

After this Hinkins took a correspondence course with the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, explored channeling and adopted the name John-Roger. Eckankar asserts that Hinkins joined in 1967 and was given a second-degree initiation by its founder Paul Twitchell in 1968 but this is disputed.[1] Hinkins was reportedly fired from his job at Rosemead High School for teaching self-hypnosis to his students, rather than the assigned subject. ^[1]

In 1971 Hinkins founded the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, a new religious movement based in California, United States.[2] where he is often referred to simply as J-R.

His official Web site[3] lists his education as including a 1958 Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from the University of Utah and a 1960 Secondary teaching credential as well other credentials such as a California "secondary life teaching credential" and post-graduate work at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Southern California and California State University, Los Angeles. He is also listed as the co-author with Peter McWilliams of the books Do It!, Life 101 and You Can't Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought.

In 1998 James R. Lewis, a respected scholar and recognized authority on nontraditional religious movements wrote a book "Seeking the Light" (Los Angeles: Mandeville Press, 1998), in which he concluded: "Given the lack of outward requirements, I have a difficult time imagining how the organization would go about operationalizing "destructiveness" even if the group's leadership decided it wanted MSIA to start acting like a destructive cult -- it would be like the Elks Club trying to transform itself into a destructive cult. There are, in other words, few arenas within which one could exercise abusive power unless one completely reorganized the group." (p.219.)

[edit] Criticisms

Hinkins has been criticized by a variety of people over the years, but David C. Lane and Peter McWilliams provide the most substantive body of criticism. The gist of Lane's criticism of Hinkins is that he uses spiritual teachings taken from Paul Twitchell's Eckankar, who took them from Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Lane also asserts that Hinkins burglarized his home on October 5, 1984 in retaliation for his opposition. [4] In his book Life 102: What to Do When Your Guru Sues You McWilliams asserts that Hinkins suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, possibly due to his 1963 coma. In Life 102 McWilliams chronicles his extended relationship with Hinkins, accusing him of various misrepresentations and hypocrisy, including a pattern of duplicitous and adulterous homosexual relationships, addiction to prescription drugs and various sorts of harassment against a long series of people, including children. McWilliams agreed to abandon the book's copyright to John-Roger to settle libel litigation over its contents, and later asked that the book be removed from circulation in a notarized letter[5], stating "the content of the book is no longer one with which I would like to have my name associated".[6]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• http://www.john-roger.com/