Guru

A guru (गुरू Sanskrit) is a teacher in Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. Based on a long line of philosophical understandings of the importance of knowledge, guru is seen in these religions as a sacred conduit, or a way to self-realization. In India and among people of Hindu, Buddhist, or Sikh belief, the title retains a hallowed meaning.

Guru in a Western culture context

As an alternative to established religions, some people in Europe and the USA who were not of East Indian extraction have looked up at spiritual guides and gurus from India to provide answers to the meaning of life and to achieve a more direct experience free from intellectualism and philosophy. Gurus from many denominations traveled to the Western Europe and the USA and established a following. One of the first to do so was Swami Vivekananda who addressed the World Parliament of Religions assembled in Chicago, Illinois in 1893.

Related Topics:
East India - Swami Vivekananda - World Parliament of Religions - Chicago, Illinois - 1893

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In particular during the 1960s and 1970s many gurus acquired groups of young followers in Western Europe and the USA. According to the American sociologist David G. Bromley this was partially due to the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act (United States) in 1965 which permitted Asian gurus entrance to the USA. {{ref|Bromley1989}} According to the Dutch Indologist Albertina Nugteren, the repeal was only one of several factors and a minor one compared with the two most important causes for the surge of all things 'Eastern': the post-war cross-cultural mobility and the general dissatisfaction with established Western values. {{ref|Nugteren1997}} In contrast to the situation in India, these foreign gurus were unusual, new and alien for European and American societies and led sometimes to opposition against groups. One example was ISKCON/Hare Krishna founded by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in 1966 that made demands on their followers that some considered strong.

Related Topics:
1960 - 1970 - David G. Bromley - Chinese Exclusion Act (United States) - 1965 - Opposition against groups - ISKCON/Hare Krishna - A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada - 1966

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According to the professor in sociology Stephen A. Kent at the University of Alberta and Kranenborg (1974), one of the reasons why in 1970s young people including hippies turned to gurus was because they found that drugs had opened them for the existence of the transcendental or because they wanted to get high without drugs. {{ref|Kranenborg1974}} {{ref|Kent2001}} According to Kent, another reason why this happened so often in the USA then, was because some anti-Vietnam war protesters and political activist became worn out or disillusioned in the possibilities to change society through political means and as an alternative turned to religious means. {{ref|Kent2001}} See also conversion to NRMs and cults, conversion to Indic religions, theories about joining cults.

Related Topics:
Sociology - Stephen A. Kent - University of Alberta - 1970 - Hippie - Vietnam war - Conversion to NRMs and cults - Conversion to Indic religions - Theories about joining cults

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Gurus who established a discipleship or that were the spiritual leader of notable organizations in Western countries include:

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• Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche a lama (Tibetan Buddhist religious teacher)
• Dalai Lama
• Jagadguru Kripaluji Maharaj, the founder of the Jagadguru Kripalu Parishat, which preaches Raganuga Bhakti, a form of selfless devotion and loving service to Krishna and Radha Rani
• Jiddu Krishnamurti groomed to be a world spiritual teacher by the Theosophical Society Adyar but publicly renounced this role in 1929
• Maharishi Mahesh Yogi now lives in the Netherlands
• Meher Baba who had conspicuous followers
• Muktananda
• Paramahansa Yogananda settled in the USA and wrote the book Autobiography of a Yogi
• Prabhupada who founded ISKCON/Hare Krisna in New York, an organization based on the Gaudiya Vaishnavism sect of Hinduism
• Prem Rawat, known as Guru Maharaj Ji until the 1980s. Note: Maharaji dropped the title "guru" from his name in 1980.
• Bhagwan/Osho/Rajneesh settled temporarily in the USA
• Sathya Sai Baba never went to Europe or the USA but acquired a substantial number of followers there
• Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev founder of Isha Foundation and the Isha Yoga Centre has a strong volunteer force in India, US and Lebanon
• Sri Aurobindo

According to Kranenborg (1984), Jesus fits the Hindu definition and characteristics of a guru. {{ref|Kranenborg1984}}

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Assessment and criticism by Western scholars and writers, Indologists, theologians and apostates

• David C. Lane proposes a checklist consisting of seven points to assess gurus in his book Exposing Cults: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the Mystical. {{ref|Lane1984}} One of his points is that spiritual teachers should have a high standard of moral conduct and that followers of gurus should interpret the behavior of a spiritual teacher following Ockham's razor, using common sense, and not naively use mystical explanations unnecessarily to explain away immoral behavior. Another point Lane makes is that the bigger the claims they make, such as the claims to be God, the bigger the chance that he is unreliable. His fifth point is that self-proclaimed gurus are likely to be more unreliable than gurus with a legitimate lineage.
• Highlighting what he sees as the difficulty in understanding the guru from Eastern tradition in Western society, Georg Feuerstein writes in the article Understanding the Guru from his book The Deeper Dimention of Yoga: Theory and practice:"The traditional role of the guru, or spiritual teacher, is not widely understood in the West, even by those professing to practice Yoga or some other Eastern tradition entailing discipleship. Spiritual teachers, by their very nature, swim against the stream of conventional values and pursuits. They are not interested in acquiring and accumulating material wealth or in competing in the marketplace, or in pleasing egos. They are not even about morality. Typically, their message is of a radical nature, asking that we live consciously, inspect our motives, transcend our egoic passions, overcome our intellectual blindness, live peacefully with our fellow humans, and, finally, realize the deepest core of human nature, the Spirit. For those wishing to devote their time and energy to the pursuit of conventional life, this kind of message is revolutionary, subversive, and profoundly disturbing." {{ref|Feuerstein2003}}
• Anthony Storr argues in his book Feet of Clay: A Study of Gurus that gurus (in new additional meaning of the word in the West) share common character traits (e.g. being loners) and that some suffer from a mild form of schizophrenia. He argues that gurus who are authoritarian, paranoid, eloquent, or interfere in the private lives of their followers are the ones who are more likely to be unreliable and dangerous and further refers to Eileen Barker's checklist to recognize false gurus. Storr contends that some of them claim special spiritual insights based on personal revelation, offering new ways of spiritual development and paths to salvation. His criticism of gurus include that there is a considerable risk that gurus exploit their followers due to the big authority that have, though he acknowledges the existence of morally superior teachers who refrain from doing so. He holds the view that the idionsyncratic belief systems that some gurus promote were developed during a period of psychosis to make sense of their own minds and perceptions, and that these belief systems persist after the psychosis has gone away. Storr applies the term "guru" to figures as diverse as Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Gurdjieff, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jim Jones and David Koresh. {{ref|Storr1996}} Koenraad Elst criticized Storr's book for its avoidance of the term prophet instead of guru for several people that Storr treats and asserts that this is possibly due to Storr's pro-Western and pro-Christian cultural bias.
• Rob Preece, in The Noble Imperfection, writes that while the teacher/disciple relationship can be an invaluable and fruitful experience, the process of relating to spiritual teachers also has its hazards. These are the result of naiveté amongst Westerners as to the nature of the guru/devotee relationship and the consequence of a lack of understanding on the part of Eastern teachers as to the nature of Western psychological makeup. Preece introduces the notion of transference to explain the manner in which the guru/disciple relationship develops from a more Western psychological perspective. He writes: "In its simplest sense transference occurs when unconsciously a person endows another with an attribute that actually is projected from within themselves." In developing this concept, Preece writes that when we transfer an inner quality onto another person we may be giving that person a power over us as a consequence of the projection, carrying the potential for great insight and inspiration, but also the potential for great danger: "In giving this power over to someone else they have a certain hold and influence over us it is hard to resist, while we become enthralled or spellbound by the power of the archetype".{{ref|ref_preece}}
• Some gurus have been perceived by the media and by critical ex-followers to be abusing their status and to be either charlatans, self-deceived, businessmen pretending to be saints, cult leaders or a combination of these. See also allegations by critical ex-followers. According to Susan Palmer, the word has acquired very negative connotations in France. {{ref|Palmer2004}}
• The psychiatrist Alexander Deutsch performed a long lasting observation of a small cult called The Family (not to be confused with The Family/Children of God) founded by an American guru called Baba or Jeff in New York in 1972 who increasingly showed schizophrenic behavior. Deutsch observed that his mostly Jewish followers interpreted the guru's pathological mood swings as expressions of different Hindu deities and interpreted his madness as holy madness and his cruel deeds as punishments that they had earned. After the guru had dissolved the cult in 1976 his mental disorder was confirmed by Jeff's retrospective accounts to an author. {{ref|Deutsch1975}} {{ref|Deutsch1980}}Deutsch also visited the ashram of the guru Sathya Sai Baba in India and noted there that a group of young followers interpreted disconfirming events as tests of faith engineered by the guru or as the guru's divine play, just as Krishna's leelas. {{ref|Deutsch1989}}
• Jan van der Lans wrote in a book about followers of gurus commissioned by the Netherlands based Catholic Study Center for Mental Health about dangers that exist when the personal contact between the guru and the disciple is absent, such as an increased chance of idealization of the guru by the student (myth making and deification), and an increase of the chance of false mysticism. He further argues that the deification of a guru is a traditional element of Eastern spirituality, but detached from the Eastern cultural element and copied by Westerners, the distinction between the person of the guru and that what he symbolizes can be lost, resulting in the relationship between the guru and disciple degenerating into a boundless, uncritical personality cult. {{ref|Lans1996}}
• In his Encyclopedic Dictionary of Yoga (1990), Feuerstein writes that the importation of yoga to the West has raised questions upon the appropriateness of the spiritual discipleship and the legitimacy of spiritual authority. {{ref|Feuerstein1990}}
• The authors Diana Alstadt and Joel Kramer reject in their 1993 book The Guru Papers the guru-disciple system because of what they see as its structural defects that include the authoritarian control of the guru over the disciple that is increased by the guru's encouragement of surrender to him and assert that the gurus are likely to be hypocrites, because to attract and maintain followers, gurus must present themselves as purer and better than ordinary people and other gurus. {{ref|Kramer1993}}

Other uses of the word 'Guru'

The term guru has also passed into an even wider metaphorical use. In hacker culture, a guru is an expert of legendary proportions. Nearly synonymous with "wizard", but additionally implies a history of being a knowledge resource for others. Less often, used (with a qualifer) for other experts on other systems, as in VMS guru. (The definition is from Jargon file.)

Related Topics:
Metaphor - Hacker culture - Wizard - VMS - Jargon file

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• There is a 1990s alternative rapper named Guru (Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal).
• There is also a 2002 movie titled The Guru.