A Modern Spiritual Guru

 The Modern Spiritual Guru:

A lesson he didn’t imagine we would learn from him:

In the USA for the past several months or more one of the biggest scandals has been about a certain individual who owned an island in the Caribbean and allegedly enslaved minor girls to provide sexual “services” to the rich and powerful around the globe. He was subsequently convicted and later found dead in his prison cell. One of his accomplices remains in prison. Several files from the investigation into the scandal are being released piecemeal and making headlines on a nearly daily basis. 

The latest of the releases involves explicit exchange of messages from a renowned spiritual guru of Indian origin but based in the USA for most of his life. He has created an empire out of the popularity of his “ teachings” about consciousness, meditation etc. 

I heard about him nearly 2 decades back. I have seen clips of his interviews now and then, never read any of his books, never attended his retreats, never impressed with his persona or ever trusted him as a genuinely spiritual man. My earliest memories regarding the reason to not trust him was the fact that “Prasad” was “sold” to people who visited his meditation center. It was an obvious sign that his brand of spirituality was a business. Business in the name of God. Tukaram Maharaj would shred him to pieces if he was alive today !

I may have avoided this popular “ teacher” of transcendental meditation and “ higher consciousness “ but thousands of other people globally were not as sceptical to see through him and precisely that’s why he had become rich and influential. Smooth talking gurus with exotic talking points have a natural flair for drawing people towards them. In the modern age, “followers” do not question the lifestyle of these gurus. They don’t question their bank accounts. They are not interested in the details of their pastimes. Adulation has a conjoined twin whose name is blindfolding. Once you allow one to enter your home, the other can’t be left out. There are many examples of cults in history and in modern times where once a leader impresses their ideas upon the masses, they can get away with murder. The followers do the job of defending you from absolutely anything that normally would count as an offense or crime. You just glide around invincible.

Until that invincibility comes crashing down from unforeseen circumstances.

That is precisely what happed to this spiritual guru whose involvement with the convicted sexual predator has recently come to light. 

Amongst many of his statements that are made public from those files, one stands out more than the others. 

“God is a construct. Cute girls are real.”

The smart ones would get a perfect picture of the real face behind these words. For less intelligent ones like me I’m going to break it down to help me understand.

God is a construct!

Where is this coming from? 

Does this person’s philosophy identify higher consciousness as something non-synonymous with God? Or has he talked of God as being synonymous with the pure consciousness?

I haven’t read his teachings, as I admitted earlier, to know the case. 

If he follows the former line of thought, considering God as a construct makes sense. 

If he has aligned publicly with the latter concept then essentially he has led his followers to believe in God and privately singing a different tune. 

In either case, when taken in the context of who he was talking to and when and in connection to what, it is clear that God means nothing to him. He does not seem to acknowledge the power of God or the laws that govern the kingdom of God, because God is, in his words, simply a construct. The sentence that follows this one says the same thing differently as it implies that God is not real. There is nothing to be afraid or ashamed about. Any behavior is permissible because no one is watching over us. Including an adult man touching and enjoying cute (underage) girls !

There is a reason why the younger generation of smart and good people have no faith in God and people who talk about God. These are the people who have fairly clear concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. And they make conscious choices to be on the side of good and right, avoid doing what is evil or wrong. They are smart enough to identify the hypocrisy in the behavior of people who speak of God and religion and spirituality. 

Hypocrisy, I am beginning to see, is a far greater evil, than being obviously evil. It is like hiding a dagger inside the cloak. Deliberately leading trusting people to an isolated place and robbing them. 

It brings me back to the definition of who is a man of God? What is the hallmark of a guru? What is the definition of a saint? What are the qualifications of a person who is self realized?

There are many many pointers laid down since time immemorial by the scripture as well as saint writings. 

Personal conduct: Vivek and Vairagya. Behaving with good discernment of right and wrong. Dispassion towards pleasures. Behaving with integrity. 

With a few exceptions in mythology like King Janak, the people of self realization or sainthood or spiritual teachers lived a life of simplicity, frugality, often even poverty. They didn’t have possessions. Less was always more for them.

Saints like Sant Dnyaaneshwar or Sant Tukaram or Samarth Ramdas are not part of mythology. Their biographies constitute part of recent history. There are documented instances in their lives where they turned away wealth and luxury and sexual temptations and practiced what they preached, preached what they practiced and experienced firsthand. 

Their declarations are unambiguous about the reality of God consciousness and lack of absolute reality of the visible world. Even after technically having attained to the level of God consciousness themselves, they remained surrendered in thought and actions to the higher power. They obeyed the laws of the kingdom of God, never acting as if they are above the law. They shied away from sinful deeds. They did not take credit for good deeds.  They never used their popularity for personal advantage. 

The tragedy of the lives of the modern spiritual gurus is not so much in how they end up in their own lives, and also not so much about the disillusionment they bring upon their followers. It is the harm they cause to weaken the message and lifelong work of the real saints and real gurus. It is similar to the erosion of faith caused by bad doctors towards the medical profession at large. Or by anecdotal examples of cruelty of law enforcement officers making the entire community of this sector look bad in the eyes of the public they are meant to protect and serve. This damage is hard to undo. 

Today there are volumes of literature left behind by enlightened people. Bad people lift the words out of these revered works and use it with perverse intentions. Good people hesitate to believe the truth in those texts at face value. And most don’t want to give their precious time to verify the truth if at all there is any. 

Either way, they all live in illusion. And don’t realize it. The only people who discover the illusion are those who give their time and energy to find the truth themselves. And when the truth about the world and about one’s self is unequivocally revealed, God is not a construct and cute girls are not real. Temptation is real, however, when it makes you fall. God is the seat of enjoyment and other things are not. Morality and laws are to be followed even when nobody is watching. Independent thinking does not part ways with reason even while it remains friends with faith. Humility prompts to keep learning until the last breath; even from the deluded people about what not to do.

It was both a great day and sad day for the spiritually inclined community to become aware of this famous man’s closeted reality. It should prompt each one for a more thorough search of themselves. I am no exception to that. 

Am I living how I am thinking?

Am I thinking how I am talking?

Am I treating the unreal as I ought to?

Am I trying harder to stay stationed in reality?

How serious am I to abandon all unreality and embrace reality?

These questions need to be answered on a daily basis.

 Am I answering them?

Or waiting to be questioned by someone else one day and then be unable to answer?