Now that you have established yourself in your community as a "Man of Wisdom" and your disciples have come to depend on you for spiritual, as well as temporal guidance ("Is it okay for me to wear my sneakers to the A & W?"), it is time for you to sharpen up your act and bring to your guruship a combination of techniques and behaviors that will permit you to ply your trade with a greater degree of confidence and assurance.

      There is nothing like knowing what to do Next for giving a teacher the necessary strength and authority to handle a bunch of unruly, rebellious disciples. "Knowing what to do next" depends, of necessity, on having had exposure to a wide variety of disciplines, people, strange and ordinary experiences, and in being able to get a "feel" for what is required at the moment and then selecting from your bag of tricks one that offers a good probability for successfully dealing with the situation at hand.

      Say your students have been concentrating for some time on the study of some obscure philosopher - P.D. Ouspenskya or Bertram Rascal - and it is evident that the miserably short attention span of your students is becoming manifest in some annoying behavior, such as unsuccessfully pretending to stay awake through your lectures. It is then time to invite another local guru to demonstrate his knowledge and methods for the benefit of your students.

      Preferably, his repertoire should include some strenuous physical activity as well as a philosophical approach which by some weird stretch of the imagination, may be correlated to your own. It is then possible to impress on your students the universality of your teaching, while at the same time temporarily awakening them by sheer physical exertion, or shock. If the consultant guru can demonstrate some startling, but relatively harmless trick, such as cracking a student's back in demonstrating Aikido, so much the better. It will not only subdue the recalcitrant disciple, but will also impress the others with the need for paying more acceptable attention to the Guru while not drawing unwanted attention to themselves.

      Another ploy is to invite a group of friends or colleagues to dinner and to assign your students the task of discerning just what is transpiring at the event. Inasmuch as "what is going on" is something different to everyone involved, it should be easy for you to employ the obvious contradictions to reinforce your own authority. You do this by inviting the students to present their view of the action (sort of Monday Morning Quarterback style). You demonstrate the students' perceptual shortcomings by pointing out some other aspects of the situation, implying that your observations are either more important, less self-serving, or more in touch with the invisible Higher Dimension activities than those of your students. This uncomplimentary comparison will have the desired effect of reducing the student's confidence in his own observations, while at the same time enhancing both your mood and authority.

      Remember, any theory or practice which you make a part of your "bag of tricks" should be selected not only for its potential effectiveness - in gaining you more awe from the students - but also for its general compatibility with your own Guru personality. For instance, it would not be well for the strongly intellectually-oriented guru to go too far afield into strenuous physical activities. What will inevitably occur is that his shortcomings will become obvious and his authority undermined.

      Better by far for this guru to select some harmless physical activity with which he has more than a passing proficiency, say badminton, and imply that its practice has deep Spiritual Significance. You can then spend a pleasant afternoon in the gymnasium hitting birdies back to three disciples at a time while pummeling them with fast birdies to the nose and ears. They are bound to appreciate your skill - and reward your efforts with renewed loyalty, perseverance and fear.

      Always assign your students to carry out tasks which fit with your skills and predilections - but are utterly foreign and incomprehensible to them. One possibility for the intellectualist, literary guru might be to require the students to submit a chapter for consideration for the book which he is currently writing for his own amusement - about how to become a modern guru. Inasmuch as this tome represents the efforts of many years of aspiring to and practicing Guruship, it is improbable that your students will have anything significant to contribute. ¹

      Assigning your students to write a chapter of your book will not only impress on them their inability to write a well-documented and generally interesting essay, but will make it clear how vastly superior you are in being able to write an entire brilliant, overwhelming book. Thus impressed, your disciples will redouble their efforts to do things they know how to do, but generally avoid unless specifically forced to. With any kind of luck, your house and automobile will glisten, your table will burgeon with culinary delicacies, and your correspondence, filing, typing and so forth will be accomplished cheerfully and efficiently with little or no grousing from the disciples.

¹ Actually, this chapter was written (in first draft) by a student who thought he could write in such a way as to disguise his less than perfect respect for his esteemed Guru.