First of all, Muktananda was widely rumored to be a pedophile,
initiating young girls in sex--apparently choosing them from a six-bed
dormitory called the Princess Dorm. One young woman reported that the
guru inserted his penis inside her, without an erection or ejaculation,
and remained that way for an hour and a half, joking and talking, while
she lay in a state of ecstasy.
Shortly before Muktananda died in 1982, he appointed a brother and
sister (whom he had raised) as his successors. Both were children of an
admirer of the swami's. Within three years, the sister, Gurumayi, took
control of the organization, and in 1985 announced that her brother,
Swami Nityananda, was stepping down. Nityananda, told the New Yorker
magazine that before being forced out, his sister ordered him to be caned
for three hours by four women followers with whom he'd had consensual
sex. Gurumayi, in later reports, said the cane was a small walking stick,
and that he was only slapped with it a few times.
Other rumors have followed in the wake of that disruption:
ax-devotees suggest that Gurumayi has had her cheekbones, chin, and nose
enhanced by plastic surgery; that although she claimed celibacy, she'd
had a love affair with George Afif, an upper echelon SYDA member; and
that she issued a 1990 edict to fire all gay and lesbian yoga teachers at
SYDA ashrams around the country. One former follower says that when he
tearfully questioned Gurumayi about her ouster of her brother, she walked
away, and that evening publicly announced that she was offering a new
course in "delusion" in honor of the questioner.
If the response sounds defensive and hostile, it may well be.
According to British psychiatrist Anthony Storr, author of Feet of Clay:
Saints, Sinners, and Madmen, even though gurus may feel divinely
inspired, "they are not as certain as they look. They need disciples to
help them believe in their own revelations. Gurus tend to be intolerant
of any kind of criticism, believing that anything less than total
agreement is equivalent to hostility." And the gurus make sure to
maintain that absolute adoration. When Amrit Desai, the now dishonored
"guru" of the holistic facility called Kripalu, in Lenox, Massachusetts,
was questioned about a new policy of silence at all meals, a poster went
up in the dining room: "Never wound the heart of the guru." Most
disciples signed their names to it.
It sounds as if these gurus are half mad, and maybe they are. When
Storr examined the lives of ten gurus, he found that each had suffered a
"dark night of the soul", an episode akin to a manic-depressive or
psychotic illness, which ultimately seemed to resolve itself though
revelations and religious insights. Take David Koresh: Storr notes that
at age nineteen, his sixteen-year-old girlfriend got pregnant but refused
to live with him. "He began to suffer from mood swings of pathological
intensity, sometimes believing himself to be uniquely evil, sometimes
thinking that he was especially favored by God."
MAD OR BAD OR SAD?
Yet gurus are not actually insane, says Storr. They may be frankly
delusional in their beliefs about God and the universe and their exalted
role in it, "yet they function very well as long as they have people who
believe in them." Storr cites the intricate, many-tiered cosmologies of
gurus such as Georgei Ivanovitch Gurdjieff or Rudolf Steiner. "Gurdjieff
stated that he'd invented a way to increase the visibility of the planets
and the sun. Steiner invented his own history of the universe." These
men, and other gurus, says Storr, were narcissistic, isolated, and
arrogant, but they did not suffer from the thought disorders prevalent in
schizophrenia or actual psychosis--buffered as they were by adoring
disciples.
The cost of that adoration is, oddly enough, isolation. Kramer and
Alstad note that gurus are deprived of real relational intimacy, and thus
try to fill the need for genuine closeness with more and more followers:
"The role of guru is a gradual entrapment. Power is seductive, and they
don't realize what they're giving up--humanity, a normal life of
horizontal rather than vertical relationships. When people succumb to the
temptation to be a guru, they are often destroyed as human
beings.'
As for the loving disciples, they reach out for certainty and
transcendental meaning, but are asked to give unconditional love and
selfless surrender in return. That's particularly hard for Americans,
bred on independence. "That kind of idealism doesn't leave room for the
needs of the self," says Alstad. "The guru blocks feedback. You need a
way for dealing with issues of power, control, and self-centeredness, all
of which arise in long-term relationships, even those with a guru." The
disciple cannot surrender his human needs forever. Neither can the guru
live up to his presumed divinity. Luna Tarlo echoes this in her own
experience. "My son must be living under terrible tension," she says. "He
has to maintain that he's enlightened all the time. I don't know what
happens when he goes to bed at night."
Tags:
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adoration,
America,
andrew cohen,
bleached blonde hair,
dalai lama of tibet,
Deepak Chopra,
disciples,
endless fall,
endless search,
gothic horror,
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isolation,
marshall applewhite,
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o j simpson,
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thick dark hair,
touched by an angel,
wet morning
