Ch. 17
Never Doubt Your
Messianic Complex

"Sherard Blaw, the dramatist who had discovered himself,

and who had given so ungrudgingly of his discovery to the world."

Saki


      There will come moments, I must warn you, when you will have a flash of doubt about your Guruship. Even I once had such a nagging flash. But, as usual, this book provides the Answer to every such Danger!

     You can adapt this General Answer to your peculiar needs and situation. Here's what I do whenever I feel the faintest hint of doubt creeping into my mind about my Doing Good as a Guru.

     I have a favorite church I go to on a Sunday morning because I know the particular minister performing will restore my unshakeable faith in myself. He is one of those clerics who dresses, acts, lives, and talks like a 1960's Hippy - because he thinks he's hip and because he has terrorized his congregation so that they dare not criticize anything Post-Modern-Decadent.

      The Hippy Scene, he has pounded into them, is Original Christianity, and any old fogey who thinks that these New-Fangled Goings On are of the Devil is a Hypocrite. Since his church is full of old fogeys, he has been very successful.

     I renew the sense of my own Supernal Mission by watching this Barbarian as he struts and preens across the church dais, stomping noisily in his thoroughly scuffed boots, Gestapo-style, and sawing the air with his nervous, brutish paws, excoriating and pontificating with thoughtless abandon. For a brief moment I feel the Ancient Embarrassment of seeing someone make a complete ass of himself - and not having even an inkling of it. But beyond those subtle, and somewhat dangerous emotions, is the sense that I am Right because this loathsome Beast is so Wrong. I slip a penny into the collection plate - a disguised Judgement - and walk out of the crumbling edifice a New Guru.

      A Messianic Complex is essential for any Modern Guru. There are plenty of ordinary businesses - such as dentistry or topless dancing - where such a complex is helpful but hardly necessary. You must remember that you are in a trade that has no built-in prestige. Even today you sometimes hear people sneer about Gurus: "I wouldn't want my sister to buy a used car from one."

      If you are the kind of person who needs clear guidelines, an established niche within the social disorder, then Modern Guruship is not for you. You will have to carve out your own Place, my boy, in this Old Universe - nobody's going to hand you a guru practice on a silver platter.

      Rather than be disheartened by this, you should see it as an Exciting Challenge. You won't be assigned a desk and fifty clients - like the ordinary social worker, say - but there are compensations. The stratosphere's the limit. True, there won't be anyone around to tell you what to do. But also - and this is immensely important - there will be few people around telling you what you can't do.

      To sustain yourself in such shifting sands of Doctrinal and Practical Anarchy you will have to believe fervently in your Mission. You must have a sense that there is something (e.g. dishonesty) or someone (e.g. Satan) that you should destroy - or at least make unpopular. And you must also feel that you have an earth-shaking Message to share with Mankind. It was once easier to whomp up the conceit of a Mission and a Message - in a simpler age of Dogmatic Belief and Undeniable Calls from on High. But our era is not without its own gimmicks of psyche-twisting.

      I outline several in the form of Meditative Dialogues that are peculiarly helpful in sustaining your Messianic Complex.

      Dialogue 1: "Spiritual Teeter Totter

     One last thought: Unless you know of some self-anointed Messiah doing a better job than you, you're it!