Since Maharaji first came to the West in 1971, tens of thousands of people have received Knowledge and become his students. Conversely, a large number of these same people along the way have decided to disassociate from him. That, of course, is their right. Their reasons have been many, everything from objecting to his lifestyle to an unsupportive spouse to the personality of some of Maharaji's representatives. I understand this phenomenon. It has happened to a number of my friends. Indeed, on a few occasions, it almost happened to me. At its core, I believe, the rejection of Maharaji by some of his students has a lot to do with what the more conventional religions would term "making God in our own image." We get an idea in our heads and then we compare reality to it. Psychologists refer to this as "projection." The result? Disappointment, disillusionment, and ultimately, anger.
Allow me to be more specific.
The year was 1983 and I was living in Los Angeles. Although I had enjoyed some wonderfully casual moments with Maharaji throughout the years, most of my contact with him had been at big programs, him on stage, me straining to see from the mezzanine, wondering how to get a better seat. Like most of his students I wanted "special" time with him, away from the crowds.
And so when a friend asked me to be a waiter at a party Maharaji was throwing for his neighbors I jumped at the chance. I rented the outfit. I shined my shoes. I showed up early. Nobody but my mother could have guessed I wasn't a waiter by profession.
And then, with a signal from the caterer, my adventure began silver tray of hors d'oeuvres in my hand spreading out with the rest of the waiters among the guests, each according to our designated areas.
The first thing I saw was Maharaji. Technically speaking, he wasn't in my zone, but since none of the other waiters were approaching him, I decided to fill the void. This was my chance, I reasoned especially since I hadn't talked to him for more than three years.
Maharaji pulled his head back, looked away, and extended his hand in a slow, downward motion as if to say, "Keep that thing away from me!"
I smiled and continued on my way, wondering if his refusal had any kind of cosmic significance. Was it me or the pizza puffs? Was he seeing some deep, ancient flaw in me? Was I hopelessly uncool? Fortunately, the day was too beautiful to obsess on my thoughts for long and so I kept moving until I located my area in the field behind his house.
From where I was now positioned, there were absolutely no sight lines to the party, no chance to see, I thought, Maharaji. The only things interesting to look at were the ocean and the sky.
And so it was. Every ten minutes or so a few guests would make their way back to my area, surprised to see a waiter standing in a field so far from the party.
It took about ten guests to empty my tray. After that I would head back to the waiters' shed for refills. This must have happened at least 20 times during the day and each time it did, Maharaji would somehow enter my field of vision standing, talking, eating, walking, and doing all the things a person normally does at a party. And though I could never predict what he was going to be doing when I saw him, I could predict the feeling I would have. "Jazzed" is how I would refer to it. Pumped. Buzzed. Blissed. I was a curious hybrid of boy seeing Santa and a Grateful Dead groupie with a lifetime backstage pass. "It's him," I would think to myself again and again. "Him!"
The Scene and the Unseen
This little scene played itself out several times during the day. But then something unexpected happened.
About the 20th time I saw him, I felt nothing. Zero. Nada. Zilch. An unwelcome sense of normalcy began to take me over. Seeing him was suddenly no big deal. I wasn't awed, I wasn't amazed. Neither was I captivated, astounded, excited, glad, grateful, inspired, delighted, or energized. I wasn't anything.
My concept of Maharaji was being deconstructed before my eyes. My "mental model" wasn't working. Something I had counted on for years that seeing him would always be "uplifting" was no longer operational. Was it him? Was it me? Was it both of us? Neither? Something else?
Conclusions 'R Us
One conclusion I could have easily drawn was that Maharaji was nothing special a Wizard of Oz made great only by my neurotic projections. Yes, if I wanted proof that he was all hype now I had it. But having received Knowledge from him 12 years earlier and experienced the many benefits of it in my life, I could not bail out at such a conclusion. Something else was clearly going on.
Looking back, my "buzzless" series of waitering moments at Maharaji's party felt like the unceremonial end of my extended honeymoon with him that formerly delightful time of spiritual romance in which I had been protected from (or blinded to) the moments in which one's "significant other" does not appear very extraordinary. In marriages, this either marks the beginning or the end of the painful acceptance of the apparent mundane the time when the husband no long seems heroic and the wife is no longer seen as "goddess."
It was confronting to admit it, but the part of my relationship to Maharaji that I had fabricated was becoming undone. Without knowing it, I had become a fan and a groupie in addition to being a student. Like my previous strategy in my personal life of creating short-term love affairs to keep me feeling studly, I had been orchestrating my relationship with Maharaji to provide well-timed payoffs. Did it work? Yes it did. But it went only so far.
I was not alone. Lots of Maharaji's students have set him up in this way. Ruled by the very human need to define, we turned him into many things: a superstar, a hero, an Avatar, an anthropomorphized version of our own private God projecting all kinds of images on him, not unlike small children do with their parents or teachers.
Inevitably, this leads to disappointment. Which leads to doubt. Which leads to anger. And it is this anger born from the gap between who he is and who we imagine him to be that is often the reason why some students of Maharaji eventually reject him. "He is not who I thought he was," they claim. And of course it is true, because, in many ways, it is impossible to know Maharaji (or anyone else for that matter) through the medium of thought.
Watching Our Own Movies
More relationships are ruined, I believe, by expectations than by anything else. Husbands do it to their wives. Wives do it to their husbands. Parents do it to their kids. The Master/Student relationship is no exception. Somehow we get it into our heads that a Master has to be a certain way. Casting directors in our own B movie, we patch together our favorite stereotypes and create a picture of how the Master should be, what he should do, what he should say and then proceed to compare everything to this picture.
Of course, we're going to be disappointed. How could it be any other way? The alternative? Live and let live. Be who you are and let Maharaji be who he is. Give up the addiction to having everyone and everything fit the Procrustean bed of your spiritualized imagination. If you're a student of Maharaji's, allow your experience of him to arise from the practice of Knowledge rather than your needy projections. If you are interested in receiving Knowledge, trust your instincts and take the next step. And if you're a disgruntled ex-student of Maharaji's, stop for a moment and ask yourself how your new mission to save the world from him compares to your previous commitment years ago (using Maharaji as your perfect poster boy) to save the world from itself.
Mitch Ditkoff
August 14, 2001