Gurus differ widely from each other in a variety of ways, but most claim the possession of special spiritual insight based on personal revelation. Gurus promise their followers new ways of self-development, new ways to salvation. Since there are no schools for gurus, and no recognised qualifications for becoming one, they are, like politicians, originally self-selected. Anyone can become a guru if he or she has the hubris to claim special spiritual gifts. Both recent and earlier history demonstrate that many gurus are, or become, unscrupulous wielders of power who exploit their followers in a variety of ways. Yet there are also gurus whose holiness, lack of personal ambition, and integrity are beyond question. Jesus, Muhammad and the Buddha were gurus who are still venerated and whose teachings have changed the lives of millions of people.
I have a guru story.
It was more than 30 years ago. A group of friends and acquaintances was suddenly entranced by a spiritual teacher who ran immersive three-day seminars. It was like a fast-spreading virus; first this one, and then a couple more, and soon it seemed as if a whole circle of friends were raving about this person and their work. So much so that it seemed to them urgent and essential that the people they cared about should sign up as well. So under intense pressure I went along to several introductory sessions.
My memory is that this teacher spoke well and persuasively and at length, assuring listeners that they held the secret to a better, happier, more fulfilled life. They answered questions, they spoke passionately, they shared their own personal story and foretold growth and spiritual development for participants.
I didn’t sign up.
Was this person charismatic? Were they a guru?
They must have been, with so many men and women willing to surrender themselves, to accept unquestioningly another person’s ideas, rules and instructions – and to pay a lot of money. My friends and acquaintances went on to form small groups and workshops where they compulsively discussed their progress. No outsiders allowed. The dynamics of the work was secret. I felt excluded and found myself perplexed and unhappy; obviously, I was totally screwed up and needed to engage in this kind of drastic self-repair…but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. There was something in me that mistrusted that certainty. Perhaps it was my dear old Dad’s maxim, that you should never trust anyone who believes their own PR.
It was an intense, strange few months. But the fever passed, and eventually the whole thing petered out. Luckily it was all quite harmless, and might even have helped some of the believers. Reading Anthony Storr’s book brought that episode quite vividly back to me.
Storr starts with Jim Jones and David Koresh. A refresher: Jim Jones was the cult leader who ordered the 1978 suicide and/or murder – via poisoned Kool-Aid – of over 900 people including 260 children in Jonestown, Guyana. And in 1993, at Koresh’s order, 86 people, including 22 children, were either shot or burned to death at Ranch Apocalypse, in Waco, Texas. It’s with these two monsters that Storr starts his book.
Both men inspired fanatical worship, yet they were physically cruel, imposing vicious punishments on cult members who displeased them. They were sexually exploitative of men, women and (in Koresh’s case) children. They undermined their disciples’ family bonds, imposed seemingly arbitrary rules and orders and sought to control every aspect of their follower’s lives. As Storr shows, they were paranoid, obsessional, ‘hovered on the brink of insanity for a considerable part of their lives, and…ended up as demonstrably psychotic’.
Storr’s next two guru stories are less dramatic, less tragic, but still dark. Gurdjieff and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, both self-proclaimed gurus, had – at least in the beginning – something of value to teach to some of their adherents, but their absolute certainty that they ‘knew’ led to grossly inflated egos. They controlled and exploited their adherents, demanding what amounted to worship and unquestioning obedience to even the most ludicrous demands or instructions. Gurdjieff’s elaborate bogus cosmology and techniques for ‘awakening’ seem devised by an accomplished con man; Rajneesh became authoritarian, greedy and corrupt, and the unravelling of his organization was spectacular and bizarre.
I was surprised at the next group of gurus. They’re not confidence tricksters, not mad or cruel. Rudolf Steiner was a humble-seeming man whose ‘idiosyncratic and incredible’ theory of spiritual science is still influential today (at least in education and farming). Yet, as Storr writes, this ‘mild, gentle, good, kindly man had, at some level of his personality, an unshakeable conviction that he ‘knew’. It was this utter certainty, so characteristic of gurus, which brought him followers, and made it possible for his disciples to…embrace his teaching as a philosophy of life.’
Certainty is hugely seductive, and certainty is offered by all successful leaders: it is an important part of their charisma.
Other figures discussed in the book include Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Ignatius of Loyola (the founder of the Jesuits) and Jesus. Storr, as a distinguished psychiatrist, writes of gurus in terms of mental illnesses such a schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and personality disorders like narcissism. As for the disciples and followers? He theorizes that our human ability to ‘go on learning is adaptive, but remaining teachable into adult life demands the retention of some characteristics of childhood, amongst which is a tendency to overestimate the teacher.’ He also refers to the psychoanalytic explanation, that the person who submits to a guru is searching for a father, a figure who will protect and guide. A figure who has the answers.
I could write on and on, but it’s enough to say that this is a fascinating, absorbing book, well worth searching out, and its usefulness and interest not confined to spiritual con artists, cranks and madmen. Watching the parade of political strong-men on the daily news, I’m wishing Storr was still alive. There’s another book there.