February 15, 2009

Reviewed By Brig A. R. Siddiqi
 

‘In our scientifically shaped mentality’, says the author, ‘the spiritual was believed to exist only as Fata Morgana — sort of an illusive mirage — of the native eye’ (consider its relevance to our own phantom ‘victories’ in Fata). The book challenges the wisdom of the hide-bound rationalist vis-à-vis the ‘resurgence of the romantic vision’. Its author, Sudhir Kakar argues that ‘in psychology, the romantic view of human life underlines the importance of the spiritual by conceiving life as a quest.’

There is clearly more of ‘mad’ than ‘divine’ in this aptly-titled and absorbing study. The book offers a unique case study of the psyche of ‘pop-sex Guru’ Rajneesh (also known as Osho), a relatively lesser known Drukpa Kunley, and Mahatma Gandhi.

While each of the three is a purveyor of spirituality, each offers his own brand of spirituality ranging from ‘Osho’s drugs-driven pop nirvana to Kunley’s abortive incestuous overture to his own mother and Mahatma Gandhi’s practical spirituality — an ingenious blend of ethics and practical politics.’

The ‘mad’ dominates the ‘divine’ quite irresistibly in the accounts of Osho and Kunley’s spiritual odysseys and practices. Gandhi’s spirituality, hardly ever doctrinaire, remains unapologetically pragmatic and largely free from dogmatic/theological formulations. He held fast to his Hindu faith without fetishising it. He would seem to unconsciously follow the ‘orthodox’ psychoanalytic view based on the postulate that ‘there is something as wrong with a person unable to hate as with the one unable to stop hating.’ It is, more or less, a reformulation of Jesus saying ‘Love thy enemy’. The enemy, before being loved and befriended, cannot but be an object of bitter hatred.

Bhagwan Rajneesh, who claimed to be the incarnation of God, had over 92 Rolls Royce cars which had been donated by his followers. In addition to an immense wealth of artifacts and a range object d’art, he also had hefty bank balance.

‘Rajneesh loved to shock media which in turn love to be shocked.’ Lurid stories circulated about his sprawling ashram in Pune which forced the Indian government to ban his outfit and order him to pack up. His next stop was a small town in Oregon in the US which was renamed Rajneeshpuram.

Oregon turned out to be a disaster. As the ‘unsympathetic environment of the American West pressed hard he tried to flee the country, was arrested while boarding the aircraft but was allowed to leave after pleading guilty to two felony charges’. He died in Pune in 1991 aged 59.

 

Sudhir Kakar argues that ‘in psychology, the romantic view of human life underlines the importance of the spiritual by conceiving life as a quest.’

 

His skillfully engineered halo of divinity notwithstanding, in practical terms Rajneesh was little more than a pimp and a procurer; in simpler words he was a charlatan. What he said in his defence, however, is that his had been an organised enterprise in full view of the world, an illusive, mystical make-believe world but with little mystery attached to it.

He was in the end neither mad nor divine, but a successful entrepreneur whose stock in trade was drugs and sex. A great admirer of Madame Noor Jehan he would ‘constantly listen to her songs, particularly one that opened with the lines: ‘Kabhi hum may tum may bhi piyar tha, tumhe yaad hou ya na yaad hou….’

What ever his shortcomings, the guru was more of a dazzling PR icon than the crazy Buddhist monk Drukpa Kunley who was referred to himself as the Divine Madman of the Dragon Lineage. It is said that at the behest of his old mother, Kunley went out to find himself a bride. In the marketplace he picked up a decrepit beggar woman who was bent over with age. Back home, his mother was shocked at the mere sight of the prospective bride and told him to take the woman back to the marketplace.

Kunley could be unashamedly scatological and full of filth when he chose to demonstrate his perverted metaphysics. On one occasion, while in the company of fellow priests, he grabbed a fistful of his own fart, opened the fist under their noses and innocently asked, ‘Which came first, the air or the smell?’What kind of saintly behaviour is that? And what kind of message is it suppose to convey to the average reader? Wouldn’t such examples reduce psychoanalytic studies to folklore; making them abhorrent to sober history?

Gandhi’s spirituality politics is a fine mix of the mundane and the ultra-mundane — an expression and expostulation of his ‘inner voice’ in everyday politics. He left an exhaustive record of his experiments with truth scattered over some 90-odd volumes detailing ‘contradictions indeed and his inner conflicts’.

The author says that ‘Gandhi’s spirituality is not set apart from the grime and tribulations of everyday life but a part of it’. To him, the ‘spiritual shortcoming of the leader is the cause of failure and setback in community enterprise’.

Indeed, Gandhi’s practical spirituality is more ‘relevant to the leading of our lives than the spiritual seeking of contemplative saints mediating on the divine in their monasteries, hermitages or caves’.

 

Mad and Divine
By Sudhir Kakar
Penguin Viking
ISBN 978-0-670-08160-8
178pp