stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

460 STRIPPING THE GURUS
spectfully, in far less interesting ways, in Wilber’s early (e.g., 1982,
1983) writings.
At least kw never contributed childishly gushing forewords for
any of Schuon’s books, though. That would be tough to live down.
Should the aforementioned male/female numerical discrepancy
in guru-dom still irk, however, consider the revered Bengali
mystic Ananda Moyi Ma, who herself claimed to be an avatar, or
direct incarnation of the Divine Mother. Indeed, after meeting her
in 1936, Yogananda (1946) expressed his evaluation of her degree
of spiritual advancement thusly:
I had found many men of God-realization in India, but never
before had I met such an exalted woman saint.
Arthur Koestler (1960), however, added the following information
regarding Ananda’s character:
[F]rom the age of twenty-eight onward, for an undefined
number of years, she was unable to feed herself. “Whenever
she tried to carry food to Her mouth, Her grasp slackened
and a large part of the food slipped through Her fingers”....
There were ... occasions when, at the sight of an Untouchable
eating rice, or a dog devouring garbage, she would
begin to cry plaintively, “I want to eat, I want to eat.” On yet
other occasions, she had fits of ravenous overeating....
She was prone to weeping, and to laughing fits which often
lasted over an hour. She liked to tease her devotees and
to display a kittenish behavior, though sometimes her playfulness
could more appropriately be called cruelty. When
[one of her closest followers] was ill, she did not visit him for
several months, and on certain occasions during his convalescence
she expressly forbade that food be sent to him.
Ma herself was nevertheless credited with having profound
healing abilities, as Yogananda’s (1946) niece relates:
At the entreaty of a disciple, Ananda Moyi Ma went to the
home of a dying man. She stood by his bedside; as her hand
touched his forehead, his death-rattle ceased. The disease
vanished at once; to the man’s glad astonishment, he was
well.