The Vastness of the Void

[Raimundo]

Thinking of the ones who have spent the last 30 years or so being constantly driven to "Please the Guru", I can't imagine the size of the Void that will now fill their lives. Can you?

[RandomStu]

Thinking of the ones who have spent the last 30 years or so being constantly driven to "Please the Guru", I can't imagine the size of the Void that will now fill their lives. Can you?

It so happens that I was with Swami Muktananda in his ashram in India when he died. The difference was that Mukt had formally and clearly named his successors in the months prior. After Mukt died, it seemed to me that the devotees glommed on to the successors. That is, there was all this "following" energy that they had to point *somewhere*, and the successors were a convenient screen to project those hopes and desires on.

Watching the whole thing unfold, seeing how the guru/devotee thing was a creation of the needs, wants, and habits of the devotees... is what ultimately got me to leave India and the ashram life and mind-set. (OK, it took a year before I actually left, but that's just because I like to thoroughly wear out my welcome, better to avoid regrets.) So I think if you've been dependent on a guru/god/father-figure for decades, the death of the icon can be a great occasion for waking up. In Mukt's org, though, it did take years for the effect to reach much of the masses of devotees, and certainly many of the devotees just changed the object of their following, rather than the following mindset itself.

Stuart
http://stuart-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/
http://home.comcast.net/~sresnick2/booboo.htm