You must meet him (a guru), a follower advised me. “He’s doing great work — and I’m part of that great work. We’ve uplifted hundreds in this village, thousands in that district, millions altogether. We’ve transformed convicts. We’ve changed lives, even souls. Meet him, write about us, give us publicity.”

I get to hear this monologue once a week or oftener. Couple of times, in my naivete, I even went out of my way to get some gyan, become a ‘better person’, learn to get in touch with my spirit. All in vain.

Be free, they say. Open your mind, your heart, your soul, they urge. Sincere in their speech, earnest in their urging, they want us to give up the baggage of past, desires for the future, live in the present. All the ideas we’ve grown up with, everything we’ve believed as true, impressions we’ve assimilated as reality — give them up, they mean nothing, zero, shunya. No more than illusions, maya, which have to be discarded at the altar of a greater truth, a truth we can’t see but they can show. Walk on this path, not that; towards this goal, not that; this truth, not that. Come to me.

I go, but since it’s a journalist they call and not an individual, I go with my questions — some of them rather rude — so that I can get interesting reactions and engage with the guru in his disturbed form. I get no answers. Asking us to go deep, the gurus I find have a depth that hardly moves beyond two or three questions. Anything beyond this and these religious/spiritual leaders are loath to answer.

... contd.