What bearing should you assume toward your disciples, toward friends (if you have any), toward outsiders? Answering this question is crucial to your success as a guru.

As a guru you can't afford to let down your front for even a second when you're around anyone. (Of course, when you're alone you can cut loose. And I advise you to really let it out in the solitude of your room or home. After all, even a guru can only repress the inevitable hostility and anger for so long.) The moment you let your ordinary self come through around others, that's when others are going to lose the reverence you've worked so hard to concoct in them.

The key word for today's Modern guru is Aloofness. You must at all times give the air of unassuming Superiority tempered with High-Wisdom. At no time must others - especially your disciples - see you as a normal person. You must constantly appear Super-normal, above the petty distractions which bug the ordinary man and the pseudo-guru.

Answer questions, give information, whatever you do or say, with an instinctual air of reserve and condescension. This may feel unnatural to you, you may be inclined to be one of the group. Alas, the role of the guru does not allow you the comfort or leisure of ordinary human association. Had you chosen a more mundane Part in Life's Drama - say the French Taxi Horn player in the Great Orchestra of Life - you could relax at times, like any ordinary businessman or disc jockey or airline flight attendant. But your Supernal Calling places heavy demands on you. Comport yourself as a fitting representative of the Larger World.

Especially do not, whatever your proclivities, hob-nob with your disciples. Your disciples must always look Up to you. Warn them solemnly against the Danger of Familiarity, that is, looking Down at you. A good exercise is to have your disciples look up the definition of such a word as "familiarity," read it aloud, and discuss what it means in their behavior. Impress on them that the surest way to destroy their Effort (this is a particularly effective word) is to make everything Ordinary.

You will soon discover the genius of this ploy. By keeping all your customers/clients in a constant state of un-ordinariness, they will feel that your Teaching Center exudes a fascinating, mysterious Atmosphere of profundity, subdued excitement, and bizarreness.

To surround yourself with this necessary mood of Mystery, obey Magic Formula Number Nine: Never Answer Questions. Actually answering questions opens you to the danger of confronting a question you can't answer. When a disciple asks a question, shoot the small wisp of a smile at them and remain silent until everyone begins getting nervous.

As a beginning guru you are subject to the same stresses as an ordinary person, so during these necessary silence ploys, I recommend you count to three hundred under your breath. Then speak, but do not answer the question - only ordinary gurus answer questions. Point out some irrelevant detail about the question or questioner. "Do you notice you stressed the word "the," you might ask, sagaciously. Your disciples will begin to be self-conscious not only about what they say but how they say it, and they'll think you have some deeper insight into everything. This cuts you off from any normal intercourse with them - just what you're after.

To perpetuate the illusions surrounding you, formulate a number of bizarre things you do at key times - moments when events threaten to become ordinary. Recommended gimmicks: learn to stand on your head (do this during the most solemn period of your Teaching), breathe loudly through your mouth with eyes closed for five minutes at irregular intervals, listen to unusual music with feigned appreciation ( I recommend John Cage or Charles Ives).

Cultivate in your disciples the feeling that you're Far Out (as they'll tell their friends - potential customers) and Unusually Smart. Focus much of your Teaching around a few out-of-print books you can find in a used book store. (Never let your students discover what books you use as the basis of your own ideas. I know of a guru whose "secret book" was discovered by one of his disciples; he was ruined; had to move to Oklahoma.) Recommended subjects: Transmigration, Animal Magnetism, the Teleological Suspension of the Ethical, or the Difference Between M1 and M2 money in the Federal Reserve. Anything that no one understands.

Your continued distance from people is for the purpose of making yourself stick out as strange. People are attracted to the weird. Of course you don't want to seem foolish. Don't, for example, misbehave at funerals. Create a personal myth surrounding yourself that you appear strange for a Reason: because someone Super-Ordinary cannot be understood by the ordinary. This Strangeness Myth will bring you potential customers just by itself.

Always wear something to draw attention to yourself: Aztec beads, a neat carbon smudge on your left cheek, or carry a wand with a star on the end. But remember the sage advice of Saki, that one's socks should compel attention without losing respect. Remember that the wily customer is now, unfortunately, used to the ordinary weird elements. Your weirdness must be super-bizarre. You should be in a constant state of inelegance. A maroon velvet cape with white spats - that sort of thing.

When people ask you about your appearance, you can begin to draw them into your Programme. Learn to read your prospective customers; give them just enough to entice them into your net. Develop certain strange things you say to people to pique their curiosity. Be careful with this, however; pick your victims carefully. Don't try your Weird Talk approach on perfect strangers on the street until you've developed appreciable skill - or if your guru practice is particularly hard-up. Your Weird Talk repertoire should include such phrases as: "Strange how asleep people are, isn't it?" (Everyone thinks everyone else is asleep; they enjoy sharing their projective prejudices.)

There are lots of meetings and lectures you can use for your purpose of encountering prospective customers. Wearing a strange enough garb and keeping a look of Fierce Gravity on your face will tempt a few benighted souls to ask you some meaningless question. That's your opening - and if you develop proper savvy through reading and re-reading this book, you can hook an increasing number of unwary wonderers.

You absolutely must have a captivating name - so, of course, that means you must create one for yourself. Hardly anyone gets a really enchanting name just by the accident of birth. My esteemed teacher, for example, chose his guru name most carefully: Sigmund Iago Enterprise - to include all the mystery and puzzlement that a name should inspire. Actually, his first name, Sigmund, was his real first name. It seems that his mother became an addict of Freud's when she found that using such terms as "Oedipus complex" and "libido" and "repressed homosexual" infuriated her husband no end. Plus, I like to think, she mystically foreknew what great heights my master would attain as a practitioner of arcane psychology.

His second name comes from his one brief dip into Shakespeare. He'd heard all his life that old Will was quite a writer, but the one play he read was crammed with ancient, boring kings murdering other kings. Then a college friend turned him on to Othello and he suddenly discovered a terribly inspiring character named Iago. Now here was a fellow who knew how to get what he wanted - what a psychologist he was!

My guru's last name I consider a stroke of genius just like the name Iago. He wanted a last name that would connote several worlds of meaning. One day as he was watching an old Star Trek TV rerun, he noticed the word "Enterprise." This word also has meaning in the economic world - another of his areas of expertise. So with that my esteemed guru master became Sigmund Iago Enterprise. And what a difference that name made! I can't tell you how many people stopped to ask how he ever got such a name. Of course he explained that he was given the name by brilliant parents who were brain surgeons and runners-up for the astronaut competition.

As part of your mien, you should develop a broad foreign accent. Nothing impresses people - especially Americans - like an accent. The sharp, crisp British accent - Churchill style - was very popular ten years ago, but avoid it now unless you're talking about Princess Di. Never, under any circumstance - unless something strange happens in the U.S. - adopt a southern accent, say like a peanut farmer or an Arkansas governor. The more your accent makes it difficult to understand what you say, the more profound people will assume you are. Currently popular accents are the West European accents, German and Italian, or the Eastern accents of Chinese or Tibetan. Carefully study tapes of people like Henry Kissinger, the current Russian president (whoever that happens to be), or a rap artist - anyone impossible to understand. By all means choose someone who is unintelligible and then use that voice pattern as your model. Before long people will be straining to catch your mispronunciations.

Accent poses a problem if you are already known to your friends and disciples as having no accent. Another reason why the True guru can have no true friends; the Way is his Friend. Never shrink from the necessity of moving to a new locale - when a new accent or a new group of marks students is needed. There is something intriguingly mysterious about the guru who moves quietly from Bethany, Connecticut, to Salem, Arkansas, to Vista, California. If nothing else, people will be curious about this Strange Person who's just moved to town. And there's the nucleus of your Group.