http://www.globalserve.net/~sarlo/Ratings.htm
Sarlo's Guru Rating Service has become a fairly controversial website in the spiritual internet sub-culture. The webmaster, Sarlo, has listed and ranked a series of mostly obscure guru figures and rates them on a scale of 0-5 inexplicable looking symbols (stupas, maybe?)
Five stupa thingies = "unreserved recommendation, vast enough for everybody"
Four ½ = "vast enough for most, some reservations"
Four = "a great master, usually good flexibility, limited capacity"
Three ½ = "still first-rate but less flexibility or limited capacity"
Three = "no bullshit but limited in methods/capacity"
Two ½ = "limited, some handicaps, or maybe not yet full stature"
Two = "very limited, narrow approach or ideology, or still developing"
One ½ = "suspect but on balance positive"
One = "suspect"
½ = "bogus, may have some value, who knows"
Zero = "worse than bogus, no redeeming value"
My red flags are, in no particular order, big money, exploitive sex, hypocrisy, morality, absence of freedom, the master's death, hype, fanaticism, excessive devotion, delusions of grandeur, tradition and isolation from the rest of the world.
These are basically the same things that set-off my own BS meter, so I generally don't find myself in much conflict with Sarlo's personal judgements (though he does seem to cut a few truly worthy teachers short.)
Obviously, he has come under fire from people who feel their favorite religious figure has been judged unfairly, which may very well be the case in some parts, as a few teachers appear to be rated based on a cursory glance at their website. I don't much mind the emphasis on gut reaction, but it leaves gaps; it often pays to be tolerant of a guru's pretentiousness to see what he really has to say.
A more fundamental criticism has been aimed at the core premise of his website, being that Sarlo is admittedly not enlightened and has no accurate frame of reference to judge people who are most probably operating at a higher (or at least different) level of consciousness. This can be either a valid explanation for a spiritual teacher's sometimes subversive actions (subversive to the ego, that is) or an excuse for plain, old bad behavior, the line between the two is nearly impossible to tell and it's very likely that what starts out as the former becomes the latter when the holy fire dies a little.
I would say the main problem is how mired their behavior is in myriad subtlety and complexity; an awakened person has a clarity of perspective that allows them to easily see the rifts in a person's ego and use upsetting tactics to drive it apart, things like this can be frightening for the student who may not have known what s/he was getting into in the first place. Such experiences provide good fodder for people with anti-guru agendas (Sarlo is not one of these, but often draws on their material for some of his ratings.)
Despite the numerous flaws inherant in establishing hierarchies and judgements on people like this, Sarlo doesn't seem defensive about it, and tends to be very open about the criticisms he recieves; he posts quite a few of them up on the site and freely admits that his personal biases are a given, and in fact, makes the point that each rating is fully subject to change.
The categories Sarlo divides the guru listings are...
Rated:
Unrated:
So far Sarlo has not awarded any guru the full five stupas (they are stupas, right?); the highest rated teachers are Osho and Ramana Maharshi who come in at four ½.
To undermine his own inscrutability (which inevitably comes when you act like you know what you're talking about), Sarlo has rated himself...
Swami Deva Sarlo*
M b1946
½
Sarlo Disciple of Osho. In the biz by virtue of pronouncing judgment on others. Fake humility, detachment and humour hide ego of enormous proportion. Middle Path + belief system demolition = mediocre beyond belief. Mindfuck artist.
I find Sarlo's site more useful as entertainment than reference material; you could feasibly use it to help you pick a teacher, but keep in mind that most of his ratings aren't based on personal experience.
Spiritualteachers.org has, IMO, a better (if much smaller) ratings section; the webmaster has personal experience with some of the teachers he lists, as well as deeper research.