The Guru comes not to show us God but to show us that which is Maya, hence saving us. If we can see through the veil, we will know that we are one with him. Then the dust settles. No more journeys. No more discoveries. Contentment, Peace, Just Being—all that is our true nature sets in, or rather, we settle in it. I am glad that Tavayogi pointed out Maya, the very first day after walking out of this novice's home. I am glad that Lord Muruga and Agathiyar pointed it out at the height of my zealousness. In a world where spiritual men seem to recruit more followers and get a high with having them around, it takes a great man to tell us in the face, as in the former, and admit, as in the latter, that it is all Maya and immediately break all bonds and attachments even to them. If Tavayogi pointed me to Agathiyar and stepped back, Agathiyar asked that I let go of him, too, asking how else we shall become one.
American movie maker, Vikram Gandhi, tells a similar story that resonated these truths in me.
"This is the story of the biggest lie I've ever told and the greatest truth I've ever experienced. It's about the time I pretended to be a wise Guru from the East and started a following of real people in the West. This is the story of "Kumare".
Why did he make the film "Kumare"? It was an offspring of a question about why we needed religion in the first place. He told himself that,
"Maybe this was all just a bunch of nonsense somebody made up a long time ago. Despite my growing skepticism, I remember watching my grandmother perform morning prayers and seeing this great sense of calm sweep over her. That feeling must have come from somewhere. I studied religion in college, hoping to find spiritual answers, but it backfired. I only became more of a skeptic. By the time I was an adult and ready to leave my religion behind, America was embracing the very same tradition, I was trying to escape. Yoga had become the answer to all of our Western problems. For me, it's like it shut down my inner voice, like you should do that, you should do this. The Messengers of these movements, which was a 5 billion a year industry, called themselves gurus. They dressed like Indian monks and swamis, and drew their credibility from thousands of years of Indian spirituality. Whether they had a claim to it or not, I wanted to know if these spiritual leaders were for real or just full of it. So I started to make a documentary about them."
"These people insisted they were somehow different than everyone else in some inexplicable way, but none of them seemed any different to me. I traveled to India hoping to find a true spiritual teacher that I could believe in, but the Indian gurus were just as phony as the ones I had found in America. A lot of the gurus I met claim to be more authentic than other gurus. I guess my problem wasn't with spirituality; it was just with spiritual leaders. Why did we need them?"
"I wanted to prove to others who are looking for answers that no one is more spiritual than anyone else. That spiritual leaders are just illusions, and we are the ones who decide who and what is real. So I thought, what if I became a spiritual leader? If I could do it, wouldn't it prove that anyone could? With a few cosmetic changes, I could easily look like a guru. So I let my hair grow out and my beard. I started practicing yoga and meditation every day. I felt the effects almost immediately. Now all I needed was to imitate my grandmother's voice. At first, it was fun. It was a prank. I wanted to try out my disguise in a more formalized setting, so I got my friend to book my Guru Alter Ego as a guest teacher at a local yoga studio, and I created a series of made-up chants, and I taught nonsense rituals and yoga moves people seem to like. I asked if people could find the same peace from a made-up religion that they found in a real one. I began writing down the basics of a Kumar philosophy. As a guru, all I would teach people was that I was an illusion. I just started to imagine I had this blue light, this pure love inside me, and I would just shoot it onto them. I kept inventing my own spiritual jargon, and what I was saying often made little sense."
Seeing followers happy at another's center, Vikram asks himself,
"Everyone seemed genuinely happy. Is this how Cults get people to join them by showing them how happy they are?"
What do his followers say of him? A follower says, "I consider Kumare to be a living embodiment of the Divine, he's helped me remember that it's the illusion that we're separate from God, and that a guru, is no more closer to God than we are."
Another said that "Kumare was a mirror, a tool that allowed people to look inside themselves."
Yet another says, "He says he doesn't teach anything, but that's not true, cuz if you can teach someone how to think, then you really are you are a true teacher."
Vikram says that "In the time I had left with my students, I wanted to teach them that they could help themselves and that they never needed a guru in the first place." When he finally decides to unveil himself to his followers, he finds it hard to do so. He rehearses the words that he would say, but gives up. "I am not who you think that I am. My name is Vikram, and I am from New Jersey. I am a big liar who has fooled you to make you feel like an idiot." Eventually, he gets to only say this much, "I am not who you think that I am, but I am only just a very simple man who had an idea, a dream to show every person that I meet that they have some power for self-transformation, for happiness inside." He admits that, "I could not unveil as I stood in that Circle holding everyone's hands. I realized I had connected more deeply with people as Kumare than I ever had as Vikram."
Finally, he brings himself to reveal himself first through a video he made and then, to the astonishment of many and also disappointment of some, appears before them in his true form. He addresses them all as gurus and unveils himself.
"Hello gurus, by now you must understand my teaching that the external Guru is an illusion, that you only exist to help you find the truth that the guru is inside of you. In many ways, I am the same as you. I was born here in the USA and grew up in New Jersey. I am a US citizen. As a young man, I reflected and realized that my identity was an illusion. My curiosity brought me to meet many swamis and sadhus, and priests, and saints, and gurus, but none of them would say one thing that I truly believed: that you don't need them, you don't need anyone outside of yourself to make you happy. So I said if I were to become a guru, that I would teach this one thing that the guru you are looking for is inside of you. So this is the basis of the Kumare teaching, a teaching that I created. I am the first Kumare, but I hope that I am not the last."