stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

154 STRIPPING THE GURUS
“You’re a hypocrite, a liar, and a prostitute,” Andrew said [to
Dvora] in cool measured cadence and he got up, and went to
his bed and lay back, and turned on the TV (Tarlo, 1997).
Such, allegedly, were Cohen’s applications of “skillful means”
toward the enlightenment of his followers.
It would be getting ahead of our story to disclose that Cohen’s
mother no longer considers herself to be enlightened. Nor does she
anymore regard herself as an “unvirgin” holy mother to the erstwhile
Messiah, Andrew.
The “messiah” epithet is actually not at all out of place here,
for the possibility was apparently actually floated, among Cohen’s
followers, that he may have been the reincarnation of the Buddha.
As Poonja himself declared: “The twentieth century is lucky to
have seen the Perfect Buddha reborn to live with them to Free [sic]
them from the miserable samsara” (Cohen, 1992). Not to be outdone,
disciples of Cohen reportedly also suggested that Andrew
may have been the reincarnation of Jesus Christ (Tarlo, 1997).
Ironically, the messiah-figure in Monty Python’s Life of Brian
also had the surname Cohen. The contemporary namesake wins in
quantity, however, counting around a thousand disciples—
although only about a hundred live in his sangha—to the fictional
Brian’s mere dozens.
Of course, as with guru-figures in general, we should hardly
be surprised to find it claimed that “respect was Andrew’s obsession.”
As he himself reportedly put it:
I am no longer an ordinary man leading an ordinary life. And
from now on, no one will spend time with me unless they
treat me with respect (in Tarlo, 1997).
As to the loyalty which the Antidangerfield guru evidently expected
from his followers, then, Andre van der Braak (2003) gives
the unsettling example of a committed student reportedly needing
to be willing “rather to be burned alive than betray Andrew.”
Interestingly, Poonja once stated his view of the guru-disciple
relationship to Andrew as, “Do not be attached to the teacher” (in
Cohen, 1989). Cohen’s own perspective in recent years, however,
has apparently grown to encompass exactly the polar opposite of
that position: