Somebody asked me what you needed to become a guru. What is the qualification? I answered ‘Nowadays, actually nothing.’ and we started laughing. I told her that it was a name or an attribute that people gave to someone to honour him for his knowledge and wisdom. Of course, usually this meant that this person had studied a lot, had done much effort for his knowledge and to be at the point where he or she is now and additionally has gained experience, too.
I would like to repeat again that when I am making fun of ‘modern’ gurus, I do not intend to say that there has never been a great soul who should be honoured with this title. There were, there are and there will be great people whose words are full of wisdom and whose actions show that they live what they preach.
I can imagine however that a book for modern gurus might look like this:
How to Get Started with your Guru-Business – A Modern Guru’s Guide to Success
Every good guru’s business starts with a nicely chosen spiritual name. Anything that sounds like Sanskrit is fine. Additionally you need to take care of your get-up. A complete makeover of style and clothes is probably necessary. Preferred colours are saffron, orange and white. Hair needs to be long, a beard is helpful but optional, you can achieve your goals without, too. A big Rudraksh-Mala completes the outfit.
Once your outer appearance is done, start working on the background. Write down your spiritual biography. It doesn’t have to be fully true but should be close to the vitae of your worldly alter ego so that you don’t get confused. If you are under 30, feel free to subtract five to ten years from your age. If you are older than 30, add up to 20 years. And don’t worry, people will believe you look older than you are because of your extraordinarily fast development or they will think you look younger than you are because of your high energy. Words as ‘At this age I was guided to…’ and ‘A vision came upon me of…’ can underline the importance of your spiritual personality, so don’t forget to use them frequently.
Watch some videos or listen to some recordings of popular spiritual lectures, mix them together and thus create two or three speeches of approximately half an hour. This should be enough to get you started, at a later stage you can extend your repertoire.
Working on your skills of speech can be necessary though. However here, too, there are some basic tricks to get you started: Prepare at least one wise comment for each topic and situation that you can think of. Even questions to simple things as using the toilet have to be answered with pearls of wisdom. If explanations are required, make them mysterious and refer to past lives as well as other worlds and beings.
The next step is to gather a primary amount of disciples. Five to ten are enough for the beginning. Ask some of your friends, neighbours or, if necessary, find an unemployed person and pay a basic amount for washing your feet, listening to your lectures and promoting your acts of wisdom and miracles. Tell them to work on increasing the number of followers.
You can then begin charging money for your speeches, rituals or other activities. Always remember: even if you have millions of dollars in your account, you need to appear detached from the material world!
Now you are prepared and with these basic steps you can successfully start your guru-business. For tips on how to treat the question of celibacy, how to make miracles look realistic and how to keep former disciples from filing law-suits against you, buy and read our guide ‘Keeping up Success as a Guru – Complications and Solutions’.
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Why do you want a Guru to take charge over your Life? – 22 Jul 13
The tempting Offer of Gurus to free you of any Responsibility – 3 Apr 13
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The consciously cheating Guru fooling People for their Money – 31 Aug 12
The holy and mysterious Guru of Blessings – 30 Aug 12
Wonderful Humor and also thought-provoking…
I was just thinking of this: how do you become a Guru in the first place? who decides that someone is a Guru? anyway, now I know, they all read a book like this! :)and without their followers would they still be Gurus..?
You have a great sense of humour! I am learning from your blogs to question the personality of “gurus” and other highly religious folk. We(westerners)can get caught up in the spirituality of India and forget that lots of people are making big bucks off of our naivety. Although I have faith that there are many great teachers out there still. Maybe you can write a short story on “how to choose your guru”. I am sure it would be just as funny.
This guide sounds so true. A lot of Gurus are trying to be popular and successful. But maybe the ones, who don’t pay a lot of attention to these aspects are the “better” Gurus?
It’s that simple huh? But what a about a woman guru? What should we do to become a guru, the same list or should I try not to grow a beard?