re: #46 Charles Johnson

GROWING UP CULT: A MEMOIR OF LIFE WITH SRI CHINMOY

So what’s the difference between a guru and a cult leader? Lots. A guru is a simply a teacher, anyone who helps an aspirant remove the veil of ignorance. But when Indian teachers first came to the West and asked their students to trust them, to revere them—and even to serve them—the ground was prepared for a cultural confusion that is still being untangled.

Jayanti Tamm, author of Cartwheels in a Sari, grew up in the inner circle of Sri Chinmoy, a popular Bengali teacher who came to New York City in the ’60s and developed a strong following. Her parents conceived her in violation of the community’s celibacy rules, but the guru, rather than rejecting her, dubbed her “Chosen One” and she became a cherished favorite.

Chinmoy, an orphan, had himself grown up in a religious community, the ashram of Sri Aurobindo. The religious life he required of his followers (including practicing abstinence from sex, vegetarianism, and poverty) was conventional enough as far as monastic rules went, not a sign of cultishness; and many of Chinmoy’s devotees never experienced the group this way.

But the role of guru carries risks; for the soul of the teacher as much as for the student. It is apparently all too easy to succumb to a particularly virulent form of narcissistic disorder when people are throwing rose petals at you all day. And when a teacher loses his bearings, the signs are hard to miss.

religiondispatches.org