The Gura

Posted on December 18, 2002 in Hypocrites Morals & Ethics Silicon Valley

Some years ago, a housemate brought me to meet her gura up in Oakland. I guess the place was a converted supermarket or possibly a one story department store for it was large and spacious.

The followers sat down on wall to wall maroon carpeting, except for the new people such as myself who were herded off to an area where we could see the gura better. She was the chosen successor of Swami Muktananda of who I had been warned before my visit, but not by name: a professor of mine had mentioned a friend who’d had a falling out with her religious group because her spiritual mentor expected comely female followers to have sex with him. The lech was dead by the time I was lured into the edges of his circle, but the attractive young Indian woman with dark eyes mounted a dais, spoke to us about the goodness of having her presence send out her spirit to us, and then had us newbies line up for her blessing. I should say that it was a blessing with a required donation. We were to squat on all fours and drop a donation. I did as the others did out of anthropological curiosity. I was out of work at the time and all I had was a crumpled dollar bill to give. I remember the crowd of white-draped queue-balls giggling at the state of the bill and my akwardness.

I never went back.

I never caught on until later that I was being sized up for two things: the size of my discretionary income and my sexual attractiveness. I failed at both that night. When I look back now, I think how typical of so many religions which demand that we focus on a leader figure, be it a pope, a preacher, a guru, a pastor, or the relics of a saint or a book. I felt like I’d been lined up as I had in Catholic school when the Bishop came and we were expected to kiss his ring. The seeds of my agnosticism were already sown by this point, though coward that I was I couldn’t speak up to it.

As we left, my friend bought herself a new picture of the departed Baba to put in her bedroom. Perhaps she’d been a lover of his. The offer of Sidda-Hood was never set before me again: perhaps I was too imperfect for the gura’s tastes.

The religion teaches that redemption comes from contact with someone who is redeemed: you sit near a guru or gura and the goodness is supposed to flow into you. A former member of this cult writes:

Muktananda’s claim of “perfection” (Siddha-hood) was based on the notion that a person who has become enlightened has thereby also become “perfect” and absolutely free of human weakness. This is nonsense; it is a myth perpetrated by dishonest men who wish to receive the reverence and adoration due God alone.

The late swami and his chosen successor evidentally felt that through them one could become skin-close with the Divine.

I wonder who got the honor of screwing the gura that night? Ah me. I was too ignorant to look around and ponder who had the best chance.