How to rate a guru?
In the wake of scandals surrounding the Bhagwan and Hare Krishna religions in the States, the Institute for Social Inventions is compiling a list of questions that a would-be disciple could ask before joining up with a guru or new cult. The total of 'yes' answers to questions such as the following could provide a rough-and-ready comparative 'rating' of gurus:
(1) Is what the guru offers free?
(2) Is the guru relatively poor? - ie not having personal control (or control in practice) over more wealth than is needed for him or her to live in normal comfort and dignity?
(3) Is it unnecessary to join the organisation in order to have access to the teachings (are there books, tapes, open meetings, etc that transmit the knowledge needed)?
(4) Is it easy to leave the guru; are ex-disciples treated satisfactorily; and are 'opponents' of the guru treated fairly?
'Is there respect for quality in the work of the guru's organisation (no ugly architecture for instance)?'
(5) Does the guru refrain from sexual involvement with the disciples?
(6) Is free contact allowed with families and friends?
(7) Is there respect for quality in the work of the guru's organisation (no ugly architecture for instance)?
(8) Are the guru's words in harmony with past spiritual insights, such as contained in Huxley's 'Perennial Philosophy' anthology?
(9) Is the organisation non-authoritarian - are there signs of democracy, for instance, or of questioning and debate and thinking for oneself being welcomed?
(10) Is the guru's legitimacy anchored in a tradition that points back to previous gurus, rather than the guru claiming to be the sole arbiter of his or her legitimacy?
(11) Does the guru avoid claiming to be a perfect master, offering the only route to enlightenment? Is he open about his own 'feet of clay', if he has them?
(12) Does the guru recognise that his or her authority is 'phase-specific', eg lasting only long enough to bring you up to his or her level of understanding?
(13) Does the guru's organisation, in its methods and in all aspects of its daily regime, successfully avoid psychologically coercive or brainwashing-style techniques?
(14) Do the guru's or organisation's replies to these questions agree with evidence from other sources? - for instance, ask the Cult Information Centre for their perspective (Ian Haworth, BCM Cults, London WC1N 3XX, tel 020 8651 3322).
(15) Does the guru have less than 1,000 signed-up disciples? (Gurus with large followings seem to be more prone to succumb to the temptations of power.)
'Guru Quotient' ratings table
Percentaging the positive answers to these questions - based on the available literature, with additional information from present and past disciples (and answering the questions as if all the gurus rated were still alive) - produces the following very approximate table:
- Bhagwan (Osho) 17 (out of 100);
- Maharishi 23;
- Leonard Orr of the Rebirthing movement 53;
- Swami Bhaktivedanta of the Hare Krishna movement 60;
- Krishnamurti 73;
- Stephen Gaskin (from the Tennessee farm commune) 77.
These ratings do not of course necessarily reflect what a disciple can learn from a particular guru, they are more an indication of how 'safe' the guru is. Potential disciples would be well advised to steer clear of becoming organisationally involved with 'low GQ' gurus. It is after all a very basic check-list: almost all traditional gurus for the last three thousand years would have had little difficulty in scoring in the 70s and above.
Please send improved checklist questions (or examples of trying out the
test on a guru that you know) to 'Guru Quotients', c/o the Institute for Social
Inventions, 6 Blackstock Mews, Blackstock Road, London N4 2BT (tel 020 7359
8391; fax 020 7354 3831).
Bhagwan's low Guru Rating queried
Swami Anand Subhuti
In the above table, Bhagwan's rough-and-ready GQ (Guru Quotient) came out at 17 out of 100. Swami Anand Subhuti writes in response from Bhagwan (Osho)'s commune in Poona, India.
Your advice on how to rate a guru contains a fatal flaw which invalidates your conclusions.
The reasons why people seek gurus and spiritual masters in the first place is because they have become disillusioned with Christianity and its bankrupt system of belief and morality.
It does not make any sense to use Christian criteria to judge a non-Christian guru. Yet your checklist is filled with old, rotten Christian ideas.
Why should a guru be 'relatively poor'? Just because Jesus Christ exalted poverty? What is wrong with being rich? Has the Christian idea of 'blessed are the poor' helped humanity in any way over the last 2,000 years?
Why should a guru's teachings be free? Is he supposed to be running a different version of the Salvation Army?
Why should he abstain from sexual involvement with his disciples? Because Christian saints are supposed to be celibate? Because of the perverted Christian idea that the spirit is holy but the pleasures of the flesh are evil?
The fact that Krishnamurti scored high on this test is a condemnation of him, not a compliment. And the fact that my own spiritual master, Osho (Bhagwan), rated low comes as a blessed relief. Christianity has done immense harm to millions of people. Nobody in their right mind wants to find another Jesus Christ.
Swami Anand Subhuti, Osho Commune International, 17 Koregaon Park, Pune 411 001, MS, India.
Editorial comment
The guru ratings give a good indication of whether it is relatively safe to become organisationally involved with the guru. I do not think that many of the neighbours of the Bhagwan's commune in the States who were threatened with poisoning, or those members of the commune who were nearly murdered, would argue that Bhagwan's leadership had proved particularly safe or even wise. The biography of him by one of his closest followers makes sorry reading indeed.
Subhuti asks why Bhagwan or any other guru should 'abstain from sexual involvement with his disciples'. Recent history seems to show that gurus such as Bhagwan who get sexually involved with their disciples go seriously astray in the end. It is a bit like a therapist making love with a client; there are so many transference issues involved that it may seem like a free choice without coercion for the client, but is most unlikely to be so in fact.
And what is wrong with Bhagwan being super-rich with his huge fleet of Rolls Royces? Firstly, gurus show no signs of being immune to the rule that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely; and secondly, a guru sets an example to his or her disciples, and the planet needs examples of conspicuous consumption as much as it needs a hole in the ozone layer.
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