One persons description of attempted recruitment into Isha Yoga

Quote

When costs are high, you find buyers in the desperate.

My closest brush with a guru came in 2008, as I suffered severe anxiety after the illness and death of my mom. Seeing anonymous people on a train sent me into a state, a spiral about how we were all on a ride toward a terrible end: get sick and die. One train ride, the sight of a sad-looking man made me bend over and puke, like some darkly comic children’s doll, string pulled.

A friend suggested I look into Isha Yoga, the global organization run by Vasudev. In a Delhi cafe, I met an employee of his to decide if I should join the movement, a girl of Indian heritage from Detroit. In a voice stripped of cadence, she told me she and her mother dropped everything to move into an Isha ashram.

The two women had been plagued by depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts in the States — no more.

Later, a boyfriend I’d brought to the meeting went over the details of it with me: the lameness of the actual pitch, which centered on a video clip of Vasudev telling a joke about a crow, the principal allure of which was his technique of repeating lines over and over until you think of nothing else; the handing of the keys of the lives of two women to a man; the similarities between my position and theirs — also strung out on meds, depressed, occasionally suicidal. I changed my mind, I didn’t want this cure anymore.

Even as my friend, the one who’d recommended Isha, swore by the results, the changes in her struck me as more worrying than hopeful — she’d acquired habits she claimed made her feel stronger, of breathing, meditation, and dietary changes, but she seemed to soften at the core, drawing ever nearer to the guru, quoting him at all times, feeling unwell at the slightest deviation from his prescriptions. He seemed to hold her strength, not her.

Quote

But on my latest trip to India this year, I found a new tenor in the conversation around Jaggi Vasudev.

I was Narayan, disappointed by fellow Indians falling for the sham. A family friend with whom I once spent pleasurable hours mocking the hypocrisy of the Isha godfather now told me he’s come around to, as he put it, “a great speaker.” An aunt said the same, that his oratory skills can’t be denied, if you see him go at it on TV. I wondered at my judgment. Had I been wrong, a know-it-all kid?

Later, at the airport, a copy of Cosmopolitan stopped my 180; in it, a profile of Vasudev centered on the motorcycles, his actual words void of anything beyond a self-promotional zeal, no hint of interest in enabling the independent functioning of fellow human systems, so much as a celebration of their dependency on him.

I tore out the story, thinking I might write about him, then threw it away when the sight of it brought only anger, at the thought of the women I’ve seen swallowed into his empire.

Quote

In ancient times, the guru worked mainly for shishyas, or students, imparting knowledge, serving the people around him. Mega-gurus like Osho are just the opposite, taking rather than giving. Still, one deduces from Wild Wild Country’s reluctance to question the implications of his legacy, Osho is exempt from reproach, no matter the lack of depth his actual filmed speeches reveal. A student of the hypnotic induction used by cults, Rajneesh perfected “the art of being vague, while pretending you are being profound,” as one critic noted in an epic, damning New Republic analysis of Osho’s empire. In this ability to elide critique, he paved the way for what one might call “having it both ways” gurus, from Sri Sai Baba, whose closed chambers held nearly 100 secret kilos of gold found after his death, to arguably the most powerful guru in India today, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev.

These gurus twist the notion of divinity to serve material ends, dismissing the concept of god even as they situate themselves as living gods. They do so through various means — Sai Baba was known to produce gold watches through sleight of hand, a masterstroke that guaranteed followers, as well as debunkers. Osho introduced a different kind of magic trick, continued by Vasudev today. Call it “simple psychological projection,” a phrase he himself used, contemptuously, to belittle belief in god.

Arguably no religious tradition enshrines the act of projection as Hinduism does. Hindus see meaning in a slab of stone. Priests spend their days tending to these mute icons, washing them, dressing them, offering them food. In return, the idols technically do nothing, though the faithful would argue the work they do occurs at the cellular level — of a life, mind, soul, planet.