Only Luna Tarlo and her son can know whether her story is an
accurate rendering. But she does trace a topography of seduction and
betrayal described by many American disciples of gurus. Something happens
to that venerable, ancient tradition of teacher and seeker when it hits
our shores. It mutates. There's simply too intoxicating a liquor of
freedom and power here to keep it intact.
A while back, when I decided to write about this topic, we were a
country mesmerized and deeply baffled by Heaven's Gate. In that tragedy
we heard the eerie echoes of Waco, and of the massacre at Guyana, when
Jim Jones' 900 devotees drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.
Each of these stories is a message from a bottle from the heart of
America. It may not be our gurus who are ultimately at fault, but the
alchemy our society works on them. Our primal themes have always been
writ large: God, freedom, power, possibility from sea to shining sea. We
were founded by bands of the persecuted in search of religious freedom.
"Spirituality in America has always consisted of large and small groups
of spiritual communities permitted to live side by side," explains Eugene
Taylor, Ph.D., author of The Psychology of Spiritual Healing. "That
freedom is protected by the constitution and unprecedented in the history
of any other culture."
But freedom has its discontents and dangers, because we also free
up the devil--and, paradoxically--our need for boundary and authority.
"Who are we now that we're free?" asks Mark Edmundson, an English
professor at the University of Virginia and author of Nightmare on Main
Street. "Angels perhaps, but maybe sadists, too. As a culture we've
become nearly as obsessed by angels as by Gothic images of the serial
killer. In fact, one often creates the need for the other." We've found
both in our religious gurus.
One of the deeper ironies of a life committed to a spiritual
teacher is that, though you may flee ten thousand attachments, you end up
surrendering your entire existence to a single man or woman In the most
extreme cases. that surrender leads to absolute powerlessness and death.
"There isn't any power more absolute than the power of a `spiritually
enlightened' human being over his disciples," points out Joel Kramer,
co-author with his wife, Diana Alstad, of The Guru Papers. "That is as
absolute as you can get on a psychological level." To Kramer and Alstad,
gurus preach freedom but wear the mask of authoritarian power. "Gurus are
actually a metaphor," says Kramer, "for any human being or system that
establishes itself as fundamentally unchallengeable, presuming to know
what's best for others. And that kind of authoritarianism is everywhere
in our society."
Yet if gurus are contradictory straw men dancing to our own epic
tale of good and evil, freedom and punishment, selfishness and surrender,
it's because we are contradictory, too. As Eugene Taylor puts it: "The
power, danger, and possibility of gurus lies in our projection. A simple
human being can inspire you to spiritual ecstasy because of what you
believe him to be Or you can end up totally bamboozled." We have met the
guru, and he is us.
Just who is that, anyway?
"It's anybody who has ever been vulnerable, lonely, and searching,"
says New York psychotherapist Daniel Shaw, CSW "For me, following a guru
was a way of relieving all my depression and emptiness."
For 12 years, Shaw was an ardent disciple of Gurumayi
Chidvilasananda, an Indian beauty who inherited the spiritual path called
Siddha Yoga (SYDA) from her guru, Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, nicknamed
Baba. (Most gurus are crowned by the lineage they lay claim to. It's a
rare one who's born full-blown out of nowhere.)
In 1981, when Shaw joined SYDA, he was a struggling New York actor.
"I was enraged at my failure to achieve what I had wanted. I ended up
trying to annihilate all that I had been, devalue everyone I'd known,
take a new spiritual name and identity," he admits. "The idea that I
could be the pure, devoted servant of a great master was very
intoxicating." In addition, he had a sudden, fully formed, "loving"
community. As Alstad and Kramer note, "Community is very hard to get in
this world, and it's a powerful enticement to followers."
SYDA's claim to spiritual fame is an ecstatic state known as
"shaktipat", a cosmic body orgasm that one experiences after connecting
with the guru. Shaw remembers "a crescendo of sensation that goes from
your toes to your head again and again in waves. It provided a kind of
addictive substance, a kind of heroin, that seemed to completely allay
all anxiety." Shaktipat is not unique to SYDA--many spiritual traditions
honor ecstatic awakening. Perhaps its most striking image is
Michelangelo's statue of Saint Teresa, stabbed through the heart by an
angel and collapsing in his arms in agonized bliss.
For Shaw, the experience of shaktipat "was magical proof" of his
guru's power, and he began a somewhat tortured apprenticeship. "Now I
view what I went through as a dissociative phenomenon. In my private life
I was depressed, exhausted, and quite unwell most of the time. But when I
was at SYDA I literally put on a happy face." Like gunshots on window
glass, he managed to overlook the scandals that have marked SYDA's
history.
Tags:
abuse of power,
adoration,
America,
andrew cohen,
bleached blonde hair,
dalai lama of tibet,
Deepak Chopra,
disciples,
endless fall,
endless search,
gothic horror,
guitar strings,
gurus,
holy paradox,
horror flick,
isolation,
marshall applewhite,
moksha,
mother of god,
o j simpson,
son andrew,
thick dark hair,
touched by an angel,
wet morning
