We arrived there and were welcomed – as usual – in a great way. I arrived in the car with my team and there were people to open the doors, some to throw flowers, others to put a flower-mala around my neck and some to guide the way in. I was a guru, this was normal.
The organizers had rented a whole guest house for us, so that we all could live there together in different rooms. Prior to my program, this guest house had not had any air-conditioning rooms but for me they had installed air-conditioning so that I could stay there.
We were going to be there for the next ten days, giving one lecture of three hours every afternoon. It was organized on a large scale and there were every day 20000 people or more. You can imagine the amazing atmosphere when there are so many people who listen to your words, become emotional, go along with your flow and sing along in the Mantras, moving and dancing to the music! It was a great atmosphere and energy every day!
As there was only one lecture, we usually spent most of the remaining time at the guest house. Every day in the morning, there were two hours which were scheduled for meeting the public. During the lecture time, there were so many people so that not everybody had a chance to be close and to see me from nearby. Many people were sitting so far in the back, that they actually watched me on screens and TVs. All of them could come each day in those two hours to our guest house. There, in front of my room, was a big hall where I would sit and people would come close, touch my feet, ask for blessing and go by. Everybody got a maximum one minute, then the organizers would make them move on so that the next one could come. I gave a fruit to everyone, gave them blessing as they went by and maybe said a sentence or two to those whom I recognized from a previous program. Of the thousands who were in the lecture, hundreds came in those hours. After two hours I got up, went into the room and closed the doors. The public time was over.
Of course you somehow lose the feeling of your privacy a bit when you cannot go out of your room without being among all those people who are just waiting in front of your room to see you and meet you. They were however nearly always there, so the only thing what you can do is to put up the rule of only two hours public time and for the rest of the time you shut your door and sit inside.
Even when I felt like going out – and I had made it my habit to take a daily walk – there had to be about ten people of the organizers, walking around me to make way for me to walk. Everybody in town knew me, from the posters, from the lectures or because there was such a big crowd around me who all were trying to talk to me, to approach me or to touch me.
It was thus difficult to get out but I took my daily walk and we also had an invitation nearly every day to go to one of the main organizers or donors for breakfast. They were the ones who had made the program possible so they reserved the right for themselves to have some private time with me and my group. We all went to their homes, had breakfast or some juice there and met their family, friends and relatives. This was their chance to talk to me and get my blessing which was not possible when I was on stage. They all felt very honoured and the main donors gave big donations on such occasions which did not go to the organizer but were directly for the guru and his group. My musicians obviously loved to come to those visits because they all could earn something extra, some pocket money for everyone.
The organizers had made my program just like the last time that I had been there and they had planned to have nine days of daily lectures and after that one day on which I would give initiations. This day is normally very important to the guru because it gives people the chance to establish a personal relation with the guru. They choose the guru to be ‘their guru’, they decide that they will be his followers, so they will seek his blessing and follow his advice for the rest of their lives. They will always come to him, give donations to him, invite him to their home and maybe even organize programs for him if they are rich enough. And of course, it shows a big success of the program if hundreds of people receive their initiation as they had done in my programs before.
When we arrived in Rajasthan, the organizers told me that they had planned to keep the last day for initiations again, just like before. They wanted to confirm it so that they could announce in the afternoon lecture that people would have the possibility to take initiations on that day. I however told them not to announce that. I had decided not to do any initiation.
Everybody was obviously very surprised. Why not? There were so many people who had already expressed their interest, the organizers had a full list in their hands, just waiting to tell them when it would actually happen.
I, however, refused. No guru anymore!
Pictures of yesterday's birthday party and today's Holi celebration
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Dear Swami Ji,thank you once more for an interesting storey. I do not expect that you answer this personally, but just wished to say what is not clear for me from your story – as you do not speak about the time before the cave when you actually became a Guru I can not put together a picture how such a young person as you then were, can earn such a huge respect, audience and resonance. Apart from marketing and your jokes how to become a guru, what exactly makes people in India so convinced that somebody else is born Godlike? Is it because very few, like you, are born in a Brachman Family and enjoy special lifestyle, or because somebody does have special astrological chart or because somebody learns in an early age to talk from the stage about holy scriptures ore anything else? Or you first recieve permission from your Guru to take over this role?
Sorry for my curiosity, I myself wonder why it interests me. 🙂
Warm greetings to Ramona in her yesterdays birthday.
Dita
As I read this, it seems like the Indian counterpart of the evangelist culture in the US, where masses of people gather for blessings from someone who is assumed to be a religious leader. I wonder how modern this phenomenon is. In more traditional India, say 200 years ago, would we have seen anything like these mass gatherings for blessings and initiations? When I’ve read about many traditional guru-student relationships, my impression has been that they were often more personal and intimate and much less impersonal. I really think that in a meaningful guru-student relationship, the student would not be relating to the guru as a remote celebrity on a stage, or as someone to only see privately by official appointment, but it would be a personal relationship where the guru and student know each other very well. This is the only kind of guru-student relationship that I would consider to be authentic, and it’s the kind of relationship I had with the Kriya Yoga teacher who I sometimes call my guru. So my main question here is, was this the way guru roles were in traditional India, as remote celebrities on a stage to be seen privately only by appointment, or were they more like I described, as people who were known more personally?
Dear Dita,Thank you for your comment. In this blog i am writing the story of my life after the cave. Your question is related to the time before the cave. Maybe some time I will write about that, too.
In short, I can tell you about the tradition of gurus. When you are young, you have a guru from whom you learn, with whom you study, doing sadhana, which is practice. With your gained knowledge and wisdom you earn the restpect of others who would like to choose you as their guru.
It has nothing to do with their astrological chart. As I came from a religious family of gurus, I started talking about scriptures at the early age of 9 and later on I started preaching and people liked it.
Dear Deniz,Yes, here in India it is like this, in many religious centers or events there are masses of people who gather for a religious leader without any question for his qualification. I have seen people who claim to be religious leaders but have never studied religion in their lives. They may have inherited their post or were in some way able to get close to a guru or religious leader and thus became their successor.
You are right, I do not think that it was as commercialized as it is now in a time about 200 years ago. I also think gurus and their students had a closer and more personal relationship. There was the concept of Ashrams and Gurukuls, where a few students were studying under the guidance of the guru and gaining knowledge in many years. They had a closer personal relation and connection with their guru.
But as it developed in the modern time, with the help of technology, the business of gurus became modern and more commercial. Then their lectures and preaching become like a rock star’s concert for the masses and thus less personal. The gurus’ hunger for name, fame, power and money has helped them to develop in this way.
Additionally, with changes of modern life, the mindset of the ‘audience’ has changed. While students in earlier times devoted their whole life to religious studies and spent years with the guru, it is now a one-day event! It is a spectacle to have the guru in town, entertainment for a week, a break from the normal routine. Taking initiation is like meeting the rock star for an autograph.
Thank you Deniz for this interesting question, I am now thinking to write a full blog post about this.