Monday

Sex and the Guru

With the internet raging with people wanting to search for sex video’s of the hapless Swami Nityananda having sex with a famous Tamil actress, you have to ask what this is all about ? While people express outrage all over India through acts of violence against him and his property, others desperately want to voyeur into the wanting to look at the act.

Why ? Watching a Guru having sex with with an overweight actress who’s face you cannot see is pleasurable ? What drives us ?

It is not possible to have a Guru unless YOU worship him or her. So in effect YOU create the Guru, YOU set the rules, YOU decide what the Guru practices in his or her daily life. And then when the Guru does not conform to YOUR expectations, and finally having created him, YOU destroy him.

We need to know that there is something beyond the mundane existence of our lines. We are scared of death. We are desperately afraid of that which we cannot comprehend of course, but mostly that which we can. Like failure or self loathing. Like disease and loss. We can comprehend these things, but are so mortally afraid of OURSELVES that we look for people who can take responsibility for our lives. And the first person that is willing to come out and say ” That’s my problem, and I will look after it” becomes your Guru. Unfortunately that is what more and more people are understanding ‘Faith’ as.

So a Guru has had sex. Who decided that he/she must not ? The Guru or you ? The Guru said it of course, but almost certainly in response to a need in you that if someone had to be ‘PURE’, then they must not have ‘SEX”. Why is Purity and SEX so closely related ? Why are we so afraid of sex, so filled with guilt about it that at the slightest provocation we are willing to destroy and revile other people over it on the one hand, and use it as tools of humiliation, conquest and rape on the other hand. I know a lot of people are going to be upset when I equate puritanical attitudes on sex with rape, but the provocations are fundamentally the same.

Some will say that a Guru must be above the 5 senses realm. But hey, it’s like saying that if he suffers pain and feels it, and dies of a heart attack or has cavities and has to have a tooth extracted, then he is a mere mortal and cannot be a Guru either. Why just sex and not hunger ? Why does no one object to the sheer luxury and wealth that surround our most successful Guru’s? A Guru is a realized soul, they will say without the slightest understanding of that actually meaning. I am not sure I do, but I can certainly say that merely changing your clothes into expensive designer ‘Guru Fashion”, being able to give long lectures that appease and assuage your guilt and fears, and not having sex does not mean realization.

I do not deny the existence and possibility of beings that have come to experience their Universal Selves. Who are now existing constantly in a full experience of their lack of individuality. But what’s sex got to or not got do with that? What do we know about that state to be able to say it is sex less ?

As I said, more often than not, we create the Guru, we make the rules, we ask for behaviour patterns based on our own sense of guilt and morality. And finally we Crucify the Guru for being Mortal. I am sorry, but they were always mortal in any case, but immortal only in our creation. So much so that while everyone else just dies, a Guru ‘decides to leave his/her earthly body/

So do I, mate !

About the writer: Shekhar Kapur is a noted film maker with international repute. One of the few Indian movie directors to make a career in the U.S., Shekhar Kapur has proved his filmmaking worth in both countries.