How To Be A Genuine Fake: Kumare & The Guru Complex
Being a guru is a tough business. And, despite the desperate, heretical claims of those guru’d, it is a business.
It’s challenging enough to make a crew of people believe that the creator you invented threw a couple extra chromosomes into your bag. In some ways, however, that is actually the easy part—mix up psychology and sociology and toss in misguided sincerity. What’s truly hard is how to save face after your scandal breaks. If there’s one thing we can be pretty sure about, there will be a scandal.
This year alone we’ve had a ringleader who couldn’t resist sleeping with married students in a faux-Tantric coven and a Princeton-educated monk who drives adherents to their own death, while the ex-husband of that widow shed his Buddhist robes for Armani suits and Russian models. As media outlets go, these sorts of stories are likely to generate a lot more mainstream press coverage than the benefits of yoga, though to be fair, there has been an uptick in that as well. Like I said, it’s tough being a guru.
The question I’m left to ponder is: Do these teachers consciously enter the guru business from the start, or does this evolve under as circumstances shift? Can they pinpoint the exact moment when they go from being a character to a caricature?
Vikram Gandhi dove right into the business. His guru pursuits included, from inception, creating a documentary. That wonderful film, titled after his invented namesake, Kumaré, entertains the complexities and nuances of just what it takes to run your own cult.
From the outset I was hooked. Vikram and I share subtle similarities: both children of the Jersey suburbs, attaining degrees in Religion out of curiosity more than faith, eventually casting the faith aspect aside, turning to yoga to work out the details, finding paths informed by conventions though with a twist. Obviously the differences are greater. While his grandmother intentionally started fires doing puja at her altar, mine was more likely to set fire while stewing up chicken paprikash. Still, the man one-upped me by not only dreaming up the idea of founding a cult, but actually doing it.
Throughout this brilliantly made film—not only was the subject matter intriguing, the editing and sound, as well as the social media campaign, are top-notch—Kumaré dazzles audiences (sometimes of two, up to fifteen) with invented chants in an Indian accent (which he pulls up at will from ancestry), guitar hero yoga postures and an impeccable ability to make nonsense sound cosmically important. His journey from Union Square yoga hotspots to the Arizona desert is a lesson in the suspension of disbelief, one that newly acquired adherents are eager to sign up for.
What really makes this film, however, is Gandhi’s honesty. From the beginning he told his students that he is not who he is, that Kumaré is an illusion and the ‘real guru is inside each and every one of you.’ Unlike the aforementioned gurus who capitalize on such jargon in a never-ending power struggle between teacher and taught, Kumaré is serious about what he says, regardless of whether anyone actually believes him.
In the end Gandhi comes clean, shaving his beard and locks during ‘The Reveal.’ The expectable occurs: some are blown away, some go away, some remain friends with the man who taught them so much. And teach he did: we watch Gandhi’s reactions to the fact that peoples’ lives are actually in his hands, that his whole schtick is bullshit bubbles to the surface. Yet because he recognizes it for what it is, it profoundly affects him. He really cares about these people and wishes them no harm. They care about him, too.
The tradition of masking involves an initiate donning the face of a god and acting the role in his or her cultural mythology. Once the mask is put on, the individual ceases to exist; he becomes the god. The difference between a Kumaré and a Friend, for example, is that the former recognizes that the mask must come off. How he takes the information learned while in deity mode is how he will then function in society.
In the shamanic traditions, this is called returning with a ‘gift.’ Dress-up time is nice to visit, but you can’t live there. The gift is worthless if it has no meaning for the world around you. Kumaré wears a beautiful mask on his continental journey. Fortunately he remembers to take it off, benefitting seekers on the varied paths available to us, as well as would-be gurus who might not realize they’re suffocating inside of that shell.
great piece derek.
So sad, the sarcastic “wit” & smug skepticism that drip from these articles and plague our culture at large…. No doubt the West has seen its fair share of charlatans & fat cat gurus/lamas, and so a high degree of discernment when seeking a teacher is not just warranted, but ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. But why do we looove to focus only on the bad apples when there are, in fact, true wisdom traditions with authentic gurus/lamas still extant today? Is it that we’re scared to death of what they offer us: real vertical growth & permanent change? Are we so against admitting that- for the vast majority of us- the human journey from ignorance to enlightenment REQUIRES.. 1) a ton of hard work, and 2) another human being who’s been there, a living guide who can steer us through the morass of our own entitled sensibilities and tendencies for self-delusional fantasy? So much so that we’d like to believe the authentic teachers are all dead now, quaint relics of some bygone era? Seems the fact that the authentic Dharma teachings are now more available than ever has somehow become a part of the problem…. Call it a problem of affluence & abundance.
Thank you for your comments, Brendan. I understand what you mean regarding finding a teacher, and I am certain there are ‘real’ teachers out there. In fact, I had one who, for a number of years, helped me grow exponentially. Yet he would never allow me to call him a guru. He was exactly what you mentioned: someone who was there, and helped me to move towards where I was going. But I’m not sure what your capitalizing of the word requires represents. That seems like a great deal of smugness in itself, implying that you yourself know the exact journey every one of us has to take and what shall be required of us to get there.
I do have a few questions for clarification.
1. How can any change be permanent?
2. Where did you get the idea that I was suggesting that ‘real teachers were a thing of the past? I did bring up the topic of masking in a mythological sense (and masking does still exist). I’m not romanticizing the past here. In fact, I have a hard time believing that any teacher was as powerful as any book suggests. Part of why the five of us started this website was to move away from that romanticizing of history, as if some former time was perfect. With the advances in science, technology and medicine, I’d say we live in a better time than during, say, the Axial Age. (You can call it a problem of affluence.) Where did you get the idea that I am suggesting that the real teachers are dead?
3. Who decided what dharma is authentic? And who decides who ‘gets’ it? How is widespread teaching a bad thing? Is it better to have a few who ‘get’ it, keeping the teachings secret? Really? That sounds like a statement from someone who ‘gets’ it and is too selfish to share. Or, just doesn’t really get it.
what about the possibility that “the human journey from ignorance to enlightenment” that requires the guidance of one in on the secret is 1) an incorrectly literalized metaphor, or 2) perhaps just a time-honored scam or 3) an outdated dualist mythology based in a rejection of our humanity and a fantasy about otherworldly salvation?
Sounds like a smart one, your teacher. The great ones- whatever we call them- all seem to agree that being a spiritual teacher can itself be perhaps the greatest ego trap, and that remaining a student as well- which is to say open to growth in any and all circumstances- is vital for the duration, regardless of the depth of one’s spiritual attainment or the size of one’s student body. Our authentic teachers constantly model this for us.
The yoga sastra (corpus) says it is possible to receive saktipata (the descent of divine grace) directly from source itself, and so we must allow for this possibility. The problem today is that these texts are so available, many have taken it upon themselves to do the interpreting for us, a task that for thousands of years was reserved for practitioners who had achieved a certain degree of mastery over a given practice or text, and been granted the spiritual authority by their own preceptors to speak on it. We seem to have decided, rather, that direct realization is the rule and not the exception, that teachers are more or less expendable, and that we can all just relax and a whole new octave of being will simply dawn. As a result, we’re now left with a very superficial understanding of the profundity of the path of dharma and the work necessary to digest our karmas and recognize and stabilize an integrated experience of our essential nature.
Point is, we may believe we know where we’re going, but: 1. Until we’re no longer acting from the base of our karmic compulsions, we simply are- and we and, most likely, others are suffering for it. And 2. Why reinvent the wheel? Why spend 54 million more lifetimes in samsara when we could take instruction from one who’s steeped in the means for extraction? When we could enter the stream of whatever hoary spiritual tradition and unbroken lineage of masters who will transmit for us the reality of where we actually are going- and not the fantasy version in our heads- plus a proven a-to-z system for how to get ourselves there?
The smugness, Derek, is the rugged individualism that underlies many of your questions, and that’s so rife in our culture. We’ve learned in 200 short years of American history that we can pick ourselves up by the bootstraps on almost any occasion and achieve at will. It’s simply not so in spiritual work. Right? At some point, we must come to realize that the worthwhile fruits which come through yoga, meditation, or whatever other method we’re practicing, are nothing but the very realization of our beneficent teachers. I mean this very literally… and when we grasp it, humility and devotion can arise and the path beautifully unfold.
Until that time, we all think we know everything already, don’t we? We all think we’re doing the creating. How dangerous is that! The true wish to grow can not easily be contacted from this hemmed in point of view. We must see another possibility modeled in our teachers. And because they deeply get that all that’s guaranteed in the chaos is the very nature of change itself, we can start to relax our tightness and our smug self-certainty. Our teachers serve as our very inspiration to grow. This is what the mythologies and hagiographies of our spiritual ancestors point to: not that they were perfected beings (whatever that means) themselves, but that out of the muck of their humanity they rose to alchemically transform themselves, and so can we. Whatever our teachers call themselves or whatever views to which they would have us subscribe is secondary. The key is to link up with the one who has what we want and approach them with sincerity.
Hey Brendan, thanks for your reply. Before I ask a few questions, I want to make clear that I’m not debating the value of teachers. In fact, I think we treat teachers horribly in this country – the last two years of attacks on teachers’ rights in Wisconsin, New Jersey and elsewhere show our relationship to those who teach as a career. It’s shameful that we honor private business more than public knowledge, and that could definitely play into your cultural assertion about individualism. I also can appreciate your commentary about a teacher’s importance in helping us understand themselves better. To use just one example, in traditional Sufism, an adept mimics his teacher’s every move, even if he does not ethically agree with it, for a number of years in complete faith before the ‘realization of Self’ occurs and he no longer needs the teacher – they are then considered equals. While I might not agree with this methodology, I do know this form of learning has long been a part of our species.
There is a difference between teachers and gurus, however, at least in the context of what we’re discussing in our Kumare reviews. Where I get caught up is in the specificities of your argument. For example, your conjuring of saktipata – I have a few friends who mentioned experiencing such from Michael Roach, not exactly a shining light in the world. As you are probably aware, since you have evoked traditional yoga studies, that a student was not allowed to begin the study of yoga until he exhibited a firm grasp of the yamas and niyamas (talk about something that is rarely discussed in the wide dissemination of yoga). I have a hard time believing that someone (not limited to Roach) who cannot display ethical integrity is ‘tapped in’ to bestow grace upon others. (I also think the idea of divine descent is nonsense and the ‘feeling’ of it can probably be tested physiologically, but that’s another story.)
The entire notion of rebirth also bothers me (I touch upon it briefly in my latest post on the Imagination) and, as I did not discuss in that essay, usually stems from the fear of death. Just because genes are passed, and knowledge can last for millennia thanks for our oral traditions and, later, writing, does not mean that an individual soul keeps skipping along the pond for generations. As far as I’m aware, there has been on tested, verifiable evidence of this, but I am open to it if such an example arises.
My question(s) to you is this, however: What would you say if this was a debate about the imminent and forthcoming Rapture? What if I spent my entire life in the belief that Jesus was going to return and carry me off, and I was convinced as this as you are that we’ve spent 54 million lifetimes here? Where does the debate go then? Or, say, I am convinced that by doing service to the Muslim faith that I’ll have a host of virgins waiting for me upon my death? I’m not asking this from an intellectual standpoint – there are people whose entire emotional investment in life revolves around these examples. What makes your assumption of enlightenment right and theirs wrong? And if you are correct, what’s the prize at the award ceremony, so that you don’t have to spend another 54 million here toiling around in ignorance? Who granted this specific lineage of thought of a specific divine descent clearance while confusing all those billions of other people?
Brendan,
Great dialogue here.
I’m curious.
What do you mean by “the descent of divine grace”?
Specifically….and you.
thanks
wow brendan it sounds like you are convinced of some pretty intricate metaphysics regarding karma, rebirth, gurus and the meaning of life. what if all of that is merely make believe?
According to the tradition of non-dual Tantrik Yoga I’m training in, Philip, saktipata, or grace, is a force of energy that’s perennially available to us and whose sole purpose is to effect an awakening in us of our true nature and the nature of things as they really are. It’s that natural force by which we discover a true wish to grow. In less secular terms, saktipata makes us want god more. In doing so, it fundamentally and irreversibly changes us. Whereas the phenomenon of the bop on the head with a peacock feather by the teacher, say, and the herkey-jerkey that sometimes ensues for the student afterwards is, at worst, a contrived and learned, or conditioned, behavior, and, at best, a spiritual experience. Such spiritual experiences have a funny way of making us more self-absorbed, of reifying our self-stories, when we’d do better to just forget them. Because many times after having such experiences, we wake up the next day the same old jerks.
To be clear, saktipata can not be conferred on us by another. Rather, let’s think of it as a quantity of energy awake in our teachers (hopefully) and the line of masters which they represent that’s available for us to meet. But this meeting can occur only through our own self-effort. The energy of the universe wants to pour through us. But we are, in the words of one of my spiritual predecessors, glass coke bottles walking around with our tops securely on. A spiritual teacher’s purpose, their whole reason for being, is to clue their students into the nature of reality and to instruct them on how to pop their tops.
Personally, I know nothing about Geshe Michael Roach, his teachings or his community. All I can offer there is that my heart goes out to everyone involved in whatever took place in the desert this spring. But, as a practitioner of Tantrik Yoga, I do know that Patanjali’s eightfold “path,” had I stuck to following it years ago, would still have me frustrated and failing to keep the five abstentions (yama), my hopes and dreams of ever making it onto a yoga mat for yogasana instruction receding along a perpetually distant horizon. It’s a blessing in disguise, actually, because I can’t see the value of kaivalya (independence; solitariness) now in trying to be a good husband and father, or in making a meaningful contribution to the world.
Derek, I too had a very hard time swallowing the notion of rebirth, and until I started to “get it” through deeper stages of contemplation and meditation, I simply regarded it as a metaphor. Rather than get hung up on my “54 million more lifetimes of samsara,” how about we just say we can be thankful for our teachers because they save us alot of time and effort?
Julian, I wonder, are you confusing mass religion and religious beliefs with what we’re discussing here, which is dharma? The whole point of the path of yoga sadhana- whatever the school- is to discover for ourselves, through direct experience, the fruition of that path. Last I checked, outside of their minority mystic branches, which we know little about, the big religions don’t have this. Vasugupta’s Siva Sutras remind us that knowledge is bondage: Jnanam bandhah. My convictions are born through the wisdom shared with me by my teachers and confirmed by my experience in sadhana. Had I wanted to remain part of a tradition asking of me mere blind acceptance of moral dictums, I would’ve stayed with the church of my youth.
Truth is, intellectual know-how takes place within duality and, in my experience, is therefore the booby prize of the universe. It may be very useful when making daily decisions in the world (Do I want 2% or whole milk? Can I go right on red at the next light?), but that’s about it. We live in a psychological time where we’ve practically deified our conceptions and mental constructs of reality. On top of that, we’ve made political correctness our cultural swan song to the point that everyone’s opinion must have equal airtime. What if I’m just batshit crazy? Should you all suffer my projected reality? Absolutely not. Bottom line, my experience constantly bears out that the absolute formless ground of the greater majority of the universe is unknowable and continually shows up as a reminder every time things don’t go according to my plans or expectations. This, Philip, is grace; many would have us call it “a problem.”
We live in seriously weird times when many of us have taken on an apparent spiritual façade, where we want to be seen by others as “down” with spiritual work, “down” with yoga, because it’s, like, cool, or fun, or something. Fact is, we are often sadly too proud today to make use of an authentic spiritual teacher or whatever soteriological path they offer. And until we’re finally ready to drop our attachment to our individuality and, through recognizing that we continue to suffer, actually desire to be linked up with some greater reality than ourselves, why bother with spiritual work at all? Why put ourselves through the discomfort of pretending? Let’s just all go buy skateboards and start skate blogs.
In the end, what makes another’s assumption of enlightenment wrong and mine right, you ask? I have no idea. Who ever said that theirs was wrong? Theirs may be wrong for me and right for them, and mine right for me and wrong for them. But who really cares? In the dharma, we do not proselytize. These are one person’s opinions born out by their teacher’s teachings and their own experience in sadhana and in life. You- and your readers- can choose to take or leave them. Either way, we can still be friends.
Brendan,
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate you defining the word grace for me and…I guess you’re saying it is some kind of metaphor for uncertainty. Right?
However…I actually asked you specifically what “you” meant by “divine grace”. In your lengthy answer you forgot that word…divine? Is that a metaphor as well? What does that mean? Again…”the descent of divine grace”? Please explain this to me.
Also..curious as I want to “grow”. What do you mean by saktipata…makes us want god more? What/who god is this… that one would make us want he/she more and why and how do you know this?
Thanks Brendan Lynch.