Sunday, June 29, 2003		Books

Guru by Your Bedside
by S.D. Pandey. Penguin, New Delhi. Pages 268. Rs 250

IT is a tribute paid by the author to his guru Sri Madhava Ashish, a Briton, who came from England and joined the Mirtola ashram in Almora hills. From his guru the author learned how to quieten the restless mind by watching one’s thoughts, to recognise the androgynous nature of the psyche, to drop the egotistical dross, and to hold on to illuminating intuitions.

The subtitle tells us that the book contains "the teachings of a modern seer." Now "modern" is a problematic term and suggests a kind of surreptitious anxiety on the part of the author to ascribe to his guru a status distinct from the run-off-the-mill kind. We are told that many of the guru’s teachings, like the emphasis on spiritualising normal life and on fixing responsibility to define and seek one’s own bliss, made him different.

One can respect the author’s association with his guru and can be sure that he could get some kind of fulfilment by treading the path shown by his guru, but organising this experience in the form of a readable book needs a different kind of skill and insight. In "modern" times a well-informed and educated reader has a tendency to take kindly to programmed spiritual notions either because they provide us some new thoughts associated with spirituality (e.g. in Mark Balfour’s The Sign of the Serpent: Key to Life Energy) or present us the meditation-methods to realise that spirituality in practice (e.g. Lunchtime Enlightenment by Pragito Dove) and if the book doesn’t furnish us with either of the two things (as happens in the present case), then it should be at least eloquent enough to transmit as well as sustain spiritual inspiration.

However, the book does not fare well on any of these counts. The thoughts, even in the guru’s letters to the author, are not pursued well, personalities associated with the ashram remain sketchy (except Moti Rani whose actions the author has to justify repeatedly as essentially spiritual), and we miss the feeling that the story is told by a man who has has mystical experiences. We do have interesting facts and we agree that the dream-explicating sessions though amateurish) at the ashram are something of a welcome novelty.

But then we also suspect that a futile and losing battle is waged on a scriptural-ideologic al ground against C.G. Jung whose psychic construct and individuation process the author, either himself or through his guru, has failed to understand, though ironically some of the Jungian concepts of anima, ego, centre, and dream analysis are made use of at an elementary level. The adulatory reference to the occult powers of H.P. Blavatsky should also be taken with more than a grain of salt. We know that in June 1885 Richard Hodgson from the Society for Psychical Research discovered secret panels that the lady had used to enact her magic tricks.

The author himself says that the book is an exercise done perhaps for "clarifying" to himself some of the teachings of his guru. Let us take the statement at its face-value — it is a piece of work done primarily for self-gratification.