Terms of use

What Ask Mahaguru is, what it is not, and what is expected of you.

Version 6. Wording is never edited once published — a change is a new version at a new address, so the words you agreed to stay readable at the link you agreed to them from.

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

Ask Mahaguru is operated by Mahaguru Foundation Australia Pty Ltd, 8 Plumegrass Avenue, Denham Court, NSW 2565, Australia ("we", "us", "the Foundation").

These terms apply to the Ask Mahaguru website at askmaha.guru, the Ask Mahaguru app for iPhone and iPad, and the Ask Mahaguru app for Android (together, "the Service"). They also apply to any feature we release in beta or preview form, including voice chat, unless a separate notice for that feature says otherwise.

By creating an account or using the Service you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

Our Privacy Policy explains how we handle information about you. Our Refund and Cancellation Policy explains cancellations and refunds. Both form part of these terms.

You can contact us at secretary@mahagurucenter.org.

2. What the Service is, and what it is not

The Service answers questions about the teachings of Mahaguru. Every answer is generated by an artificial intelligence system that first searches a collection of recorded teachings and then writes an answer from the passages it finds. No answer is written or reviewed by a person before you see it.

You are talking to an AI. The answers are not Mahaguru's own words, are not reviewed by Mahaguru or by any teacher, and must not be quoted or presented as though they were. An answer can be wrong, incomplete, or confidently mistaken. Where the teachings do not cover a question, the Service is designed to say so; treat an answer that goes further with suspicion.

The Service is not a substitute for a teacher, and it is not a relationship with one.

The Service does not give medical, psychological, legal, financial or other professional advice, and nothing it says should be relied on as such. If you are in crisis, or thinking about harming yourself or someone else, contact a crisis service or emergency services where you are. The Service may show you local helplines; those services are staffed by people, and the Service is not.

The Service is not a guide to Mahaguru Center. It does not provide information about events, fees, contacts or programmes, and any such information in an answer should not be relied on.

The Service is not affiliated with, and does not speak for, any organisation other than the Foundation.

3. Who may use the Service

You must be at least the minimum age that applies in your country to use the Service. The minimum age depends on where you live and is currently between 13 and 18 years. The Service asks for your birth year and country once, and refuses to answer if you are under the age that applies. We do not ask for, and do not want, your full date of birth.

You may create one account, and it is for your use alone. You may not share your sign-in with anyone, and you are responsible for everything done through your account. There is no anonymous way to use the Service, partly so that the teachings cannot be extracted in bulk by anyone who finds the address.

You may sign in with an email address, an Apple account, or a Google account. Signing in with Apple or Google is subject to their terms as well as ours.

4. Acceptable use

You must not:

extract, scrape, download or copy the body of teachings behind the Service, in bulk or systematically, by automation or otherwise, or attempt to reconstruct it from answers;

use bots, scripts or automated tools to send questions, or otherwise access the Service other than through the website and apps we provide;

attempt to bypass any usage limit, age check, consent step, access control or security measure;

present a generated answer as Mahaguru's own words, as a statement of Mahaguru Center, or as the position of any teacher;

use the Service to harm anyone, including yourself, or to harass, defame or threaten anyone;

use the Service for any unlawful purpose, or in a way that infringes anyone's rights;

reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to derive the source code of the apps, except where the law allows this despite these terms;

resell, sublicense or commercially exploit the Service or any answer without our written agreement.

We monitor usage patterns to detect extraction and abuse. One account issuing many broad and unrelated questions in quick succession looks nothing like a person asking about their life, and we may limit or suspend such accounts.

5. Plans, questions and limits

The Service is measured in questions. What you are entitled to depends on your plan, and what your plan includes is shown inside the Service at the time you use it. We describe the mechanism here rather than the numbers, because the numbers can change (see section 9).

A new account may be given a number of questions when it is created. That grant is made once per account. Those questions do not renew. Whether and when they expire is stated in the Service when they are given.

A paid plan gives you a number of questions for each period, together with whatever features the plan lists, such as more detailed answers or spoken answers. Questions in a period that you do not use are not carried into the next period.

Some accounts hold questions that do not expire: for example those given at sign-up, or any bought as a one-off pack when packs are on sale. A plan's periodic allowance is spent first; questions that do not expire are drawn on only once the period's allowance is used up. Questions that do not expire remain yours until you spend them, whatever happens to the plan they came with.

We may apply a daily cap on the number of questions an account can ask, and a service-wide cap that protects the Service as a whole. Both are shown or explained inside the Service. A cap applies whatever pays for a question.

If the Service accepts a question and then fails to produce any answer, the question is returned to your allowance or balance automatically where our systems can tell what paid for it. A question that produced an answer, even a partial or unsatisfactory one, is spent.

Voice chat (section 8) uses questions from your plan in the same way as typed questions. Each time a spoken turn causes the Service to search the teachings, one question is used. A greeting or small talk that involves no search does not use a question. A single spoken turn can use more than one question if the Service searches more than once to ground its answer.

6. Buying a plan

Who sells to you depends on where you buy.

A purchase made inside the iPhone or iPad app is sold by Apple. Apple is the merchant of record, is the seller named on your receipt, and accounts for tax. Apple's terms apply to that purchase alongside these terms.

A purchase made on our website is sold by Paddle.com Market Ltd ("Paddle"), which acts as merchant of record and reseller. Paddle's terms apply to that purchase alongside these terms. Paddle accounts for any sales tax, VAT or GST due where you live.

The Android app does not currently sell anything. A plan bought on our website or in the iPhone or iPad app is available in the Android app once you sign in with the same account.

In every case the Foundation supplies the product to the seller, and the seller sells it to you. Your card details are held by the seller and never reach us. Your receipt comes from the seller.

Price. The price of a plan is the price shown to you at the point of purchase, in the currency shown there, and includes any tax the seller is required to collect unless the checkout says otherwise. We do not publish prices in these terms. Prices may differ between countries and between the website and the app.

Automatic renewal. A subscription renews automatically at the end of each period, at the price shown to you when you bought it or as later changed under section 9, until you cancel it. The renewal period is shown before you buy.

What you buy belongs to your account. A plan is attached to your Ask Mahaguru account, not to a device or to the store account you bought it through. It is in force on every device where you sign in with the same account. A purchase can be attached to one Ask Mahaguru account only; if you buy with one account, it cannot be moved to another by you.

One subscription at a time. Do not buy a second subscription while one is in force. The Service tries to prevent this, but it cannot always tell. If you buy twice, contact us and the seller; the second purchase is subject to the seller's refund policy.

7. Intellectual property

The teachings. The recorded teachings, transcripts, translations and the collection built from them belong to the Foundation or its licensors and are protected by copyright and other laws. Nothing in these terms gives you any right in them beyond the answers the Service provides to you.

The Service. The software, design, names and logos of Ask Mahaguru belong to the Foundation or its licensors. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable licence to use the apps and website for your own non-commercial use in accordance with these terms.

Answers. You may keep and use the answers you receive for your personal, non-commercial purposes, including sharing them with others, provided you make clear that they are AI-generated answers from Ask Mahaguru and not Mahaguru's own words. We do not claim ownership of an answer as such, but the underlying teachings remain protected, and the restrictions in section 4 apply.

Your questions. You keep whatever rights you have in the questions you ask and the feedback you give. You grant us a licence to store, process and use them to provide and improve the Service as described in the Privacy Policy, including to send them to the AI providers named there. Where feedback comments are used to improve the Service, that use is governed by the consent described in the Privacy Policy.

Feedback about the Service. If you send us suggestions about the Service, we may use them without obligation to you.

8. Beta and preview features, including voice chat

We may make features available before they are finished, and label them beta, preview or similar. A beta feature may be limited to selected accounts, may change or be withdrawn without notice, may be less reliable than the rest of the Service, and may carry limits of its own.

Voice chat is currently a beta feature, available only to accounts we have enabled for it. When you use voice chat, your voice is sent live to Google to be understood and answered, and the conversation is spoken back to you. No recording of your voice is kept by us. A written record of what you asked and the answer you were given is saved to your conversation history, as described in the Privacy Policy. Voice chat uses questions from your plan as described in section 5.

Voice chat is designed to answer only from the teachings and to hand back to the on-screen crisis resources where it detects distress, but its safety checks run on the written transcript after each turn, not on the live audio. It is not an emergency service and must not be relied on in a crisis.

9. Changes to plans, features and prices

The Service is new, and what plans include, what features exist, and what they cost are all expected to change.

What a plan includes. We may change what a plan includes: how many questions it gives, whether and when they expire, which features come with it, and which caps apply. We will tell you before a change through the Service, and the notice will say what is changing and when.

For a free plan, a change takes effect from the date in the notice. Questions already on your account are not taken away: a reduction applies to what is given from then on, not to what you already hold.

For a paid plan, a change never applies to a period you have already paid for. It takes effect at your next renewal, and you will be told before that renewal. If you do not want to continue on the new terms, cancel before the renewal and you will not be charged for it. You keep what you paid for until the current period ends.

Prices. We may change the price of a plan. A price change never applies to a period you have already paid for. For a subscription bought through our website, we will give you notice of at least 30 days before a price change takes effect, and you may cancel before it does; if you do not cancel, the new price applies from your next renewal after the notice period. For a subscription bought through Apple, Apple's own price-change process applies, which may require your express agreement before a higher price is charged.

Features. We may add, change, limit or remove features of the Service at any time, including AI models, voices, languages and answer styles. Where a removal materially reduces what a paid plan includes during a period you have paid for, you may cancel and ask the seller for a proportionate refund of that period.

Nothing here takes away questions you have already bought. Those remain yours until you spend them, whatever happens to the plan they came with.

10. Renewing and cancelling

A subscription renews automatically until you cancel it.

You cancel where you bought.

A subscription bought in the iPhone or iPad app is cancelled in the Settings app on your device, under your Apple Account. We cannot cancel it for you, and no button inside our app can. The app sends you to the right place.

A subscription bought on our website is cancelled from your account screen, which opens the billing portal that holds your invoices and card details.

Cancelling stops the next payment. It does not end the plan immediately: you keep it until the period you have already paid for runs out.

Questions that do not expire are unaffected by cancelling. They stay on your account, and you can still spend them after the plan has ended.

11. Refunds

Refunds are the seller's to give, under the seller's policy, and our Refund and Cancellation Policy describes those policies rather than promising one of our own. In summary:

For a purchase made in the iPhone or iPad app, ask Apple. Apple decides, and we are told afterwards. We cannot grant, refuse or reverse an Apple refund.

For a purchase made on our website, Paddle's refund policy applies, including the statutory withdrawal rights that apply where you live.

A refund takes back what the payment added to your account. Where that was questions that do not expire and you have already used some, your balance can go below zero. You are never charged for that; you simply have nothing left to spend until you buy again.

Nothing in this section limits any right you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that cannot be excluded. If something is broken and that is why you want your money back, write to us first. We would rather fix it.

12. Availability and changes to the Service

We aim to keep the Service available, but we do not promise that it will be uninterrupted, error-free or available at any particular time. The Service depends on third-party providers, including AI model providers, hosting providers and app stores, and an outage at any of them can make the Service unavailable.

Generation of an answer happens on our servers and is not tied to your device staying connected. If you close the app mid-answer, the answer is normally waiting when you return.

We may change, suspend or discontinue the Service or any part of it. If we discontinue the Service entirely, we will give reasonable notice through the Service, and the rules in section 9 about periods already paid for apply.

13. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close your account if you breach these terms, if we are required to by law, or if we reasonably believe your account is being used to extract the teachings or to harm the Service or others. Where practical we will tell you why.

You may close your account at any time from inside the Service. Deletion is queued for a short period so a mistaken request can be undone, and then everything held against the account is removed, as described in the Privacy Policy.

Closing your account does not cancel a subscription bought through Apple. You must cancel that yourself in your device's Settings, or Apple will keep charging you. A subscription bought through our website is cancelled by us when the deletion runs.

Sections 4, 7, 14, 15, 16 and 17 survive termination.

14. Disclaimers

The Service and its answers are provided as they are. Answers are generated automatically from a translated record of oral teachings, and we do not warrant that any answer is accurate, complete, current or suitable for any purpose. You use answers at your own judgement.

To the extent the law allows, we exclude all warranties, conditions and guarantees not expressly stated in these terms.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy that cannot lawfully be excluded, including the consumer guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law and the statutory rights of consumers in the European Union, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Where a law allows us to limit our liability for breach of such a guarantee, our liability is limited, at our option, to supplying the Service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

15. Liability

To the extent the law allows:

we are not liable for any loss that was not a reasonably foreseeable result of our breach of these terms;

we are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, loss of data, or loss arising from your reliance on an answer;

our total liability to you in connection with the Service in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the amount you paid for the Service in that period and AUD 100.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

16. Your responsibility to us

You are responsible for your use of the Service and for any loss we suffer as a direct result of your breach of section 4.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and you and we submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts there. If you live outside Australia, you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protection law of the country where you live, and nothing in this section takes away your right to bring a claim in your local courts where the law gives you that right.

If you have a complaint, write to us first at secretary@mahagurucenter.org and we will try to resolve it with you.

18. Additional terms for the App Store version

If you use the Service through the iPhone or iPad app, the following also applies.

These terms are between you and the Foundation, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for the app or its content, and has no obligation to provide maintenance or support for it.

The licence in section 7 is limited to use of the app on Apple-branded devices that you own or control, as permitted by the App Store terms.

To the extent any warranty applies and is not disclaimed, and the app fails to conform to it, you may notify Apple and Apple may refund the purchase price of the app to you. Apple has no other warranty obligation for the app. The app is free to download; purchases inside it are governed by sections 6, 10 and 11.

The Foundation, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim relating to the app, including product liability claims, claims that the app fails to conform to a legal or regulatory requirement, and consumer protection claims.

The Foundation, not Apple, is responsible for the investigation, defence and settlement of any claim that the app infringes a third party's intellectual property rights.

You represent that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a terrorist-supporting country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.

You must comply with any applicable third-party terms when using the app.

Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms and may enforce them against you.

19. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. If a change is material, you will be asked to accept the new version before continuing to use the Service. Older versions stay published at their own address, so you can always read the version you actually agreed to. The version you accepted, and when, is recorded against your account.

20. General

If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. These terms, with the Privacy Policy and the Refund and Cancellation Policy, are the whole agreement between you and us about the Service. We may transfer our rights under these terms to a successor operator of the Service; you may not transfer yours. Our failure to enforce a term is not a waiver of it. Notices to you may be given through the Service or to the email address on your account.

These terms are written in English. Where a translation is provided, the English version prevails in case of conflict.

Known gaps

Listed rather than papered over. Each one needs a decision from someone qualified to make it, and a plausible-looking clause nobody wrote on purpose would be worse than the blank.