Course 101 for Aspiring Gurus

When you are on your way to become a guru (of any variety Zen, Osho, Baba etc etc. They come in multiple flavors and sizes but usually male) you have to know the subtleties of expression.

People get thrilled with nice explanations for what they are doing. Explanations that help them to overcome the feeling of guilt.

A good guru's primary job is the alleviation of guilt. Find what people are guilty/sad about and provide a neat explanation that removes that feeling while encouraging them to pursue the same activities with renewed vigor.

The other option of diverting the desciple's activities towards "better" things will usually result in failure. While this ideal may sound lofty, a good guru knows that you can almost never change the way a person behaves.

Let me explain this through a real life example.

Guruji comes from a religious family. She herself was not religious and she felt bad that she, an adult and a mother, was doing something wrong. She didn't explain all this to me. But I could sense it. 

So instead of advising her to do what her family expects her to do, I explained to her the evils of being religious and the goodness in being self centered (she felt guilty about being self centered). 

I gave her a nice book (http://calmisc.blogspot.com/2017/07/frisco-and-slug.html) to read on this subject. 

Now you can see what the effect was. Guruji has accepted me as her guru. (I will refrain from mentioning how she actively and joyously broke many dinner plates after I had had a few sessions with her.)

Fear, obligation and guilt are the things that an emotional blackmailer raises in a person to keep him under control (read the lovely book on Emotional Blackmail by Susan Forward ). 

The person being emotionally blackmailed hates it. And when you help remove those negative emotions, a person will accept you as a guru.

So when you telling a person to do something, are you commanding her to do what she was doing anyway or is she independently doing what you wanted her to do? Well while you started off with the former, because of the credibility established the latter will happen. This is the secret recipe of an Ellsworth Toohey.

Published on

4/6/11, 2:46 PM

India Standard Time