Monday, March 22, 2010

Swamis, Gurus, Godmen

The "Swami Nithyananda Sex Scandal" is a major news item now-a-days. The poor Swamiji was unfortunate enough to have his LILA (divine play) with an actress captured on video, and watched by the public.

He is only the latest among a string of unfortunate Gurus and Swamis to get caught recently.

The newspapers as usual celebrate such sensational news. The responses are varied. The Guru's followers & well wishers would see it as a conspiracy by the enemies of truth. A few others who follow some other Guru or Mata would consider the culprit Swami as a fake Guru (their own Guru being the true one). The hard core atheist will consider it as another example of the evil called Religion.

But behind any fraud/crime by the so called Gurus or Babas,; what happens is nothing more than the act of a normal human being expressing his or her basal natures (be it lust, selfishness, greed, narcissism, or egoism). In that way the Gurus are no more evil than any average person. The real fault is not on the Guru who claimed to be enlightened or superhuman or divine, but with the followers who believed it.

What applies to Hindu Swamis would very well apply to many Christian faith healers, and to a lesser extent to some Muslim apologists and faith healers.

The number of such Gurus and Godmen all over India is staggering and would easily run into thousands. Only the most successful come on TVs and create web sites.

Does a Swami, Guru, Baba, Godman, Amma, or Faith Healer have to do something very seriously bad (like a sex scandal, murder, etc.) before we realize that they are nothing more than ordinary human beings (whatever be the spiritual state they claim, or whatever be the extra asanas they teach, or whatever direct contact they claim to have with God)?

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