Indian doctor Jayant Balaji Athavale heads a dotty outfit called the Spiritual Science Research Foundation (SSRF)

SSRF’s aim, according to its website, ‘is to educate society on the spiritual dimension and how it affects our lives. We conduct research and convey knowledge about the spiritual dimension to help people understand it, advise those who are curious to experience it for themselves, and guide those who have intense desire for spiritual growth and God-realisation towards achieving their goal.’

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The man who heads SSRF is ‘His Holiness’ Dr Jayant Balaji Athavale, 78, once an atheist but now a guru. He is also the founder of an Indian right wing organisation called Sanatan Sanstha,

Among SSRF’s research is a study into the causes of homosexuality, which shows that that people become gay when they are possessed by ghosts.

I did some digging into the SSRF after I received an email today with a link to a Yahoo! report written by Josh Milton and headed “Completely legitimate scientific study claims 85% of gay people are possessed by ghosts.”

According to the report, gay ghosts are “murderous”, say “bad words”  and enjoy being “nude among others”.

Fabulous!

Now here the spooky thing. The link provided by Milton to SSRF’s research regarding gays and ghosts has been spirited away, and no longer works.

But thanks to a valuable resource called Wayback Machine, I found an archived article entitled “Symptoms of Ghost Affecting or Possessing a Person.”

This informs me that while “about 30 percent of the world’s population is possessed by ghosts,” LGBT folk are more likely to be spook magnets.

The main reason behind the gay orientation of some men is that they are possessed by female ghosts. It is the female ghost in them that is attracted to other men.

Conversely the attraction to females experienced by some lesbians is due to the presence of male ghosts in them. The ghost’s consciousness overpowers the person’s normal behaviour to produce the homosexual attraction. Spiritual research has shown that the cause for homosexual preferences lie predominantly in the spiritual realm.

Physical causes (5%): Due to hormonal changes.

Psychological causes (10%): Having an experience with a person of the same sex as a teenager or young adult that was pleasurable and therefore wanting to experience it again.

Spiritual causes (85%): Mainly ghosts.

The ‘good’ news is that these phantoms can be banished if the afflicted do a series of spiritual ghost-buster exercises, including chanting. Details and a chart are helpfully provided.

SSRS warns that among the many negative effects of ghost possession is “reduction of faith in God” and the “desire to strangle someone.”

Being an atheist and gay, SSRS researchers would classify me as being doubly possessed – and right now I  have an irresistible urge to strangle Dr Athavale and SSRS’s editor Sean Clarke.

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