PETER: Given that you have resorted to attempting to play the role of guru on this list rather than on your own mailing list, it occurred to me to offer you a bit of advice with regard to your self-appointed status of would-be Guru. I very rarely offer unsolicited advice to anyone these days but it does seem that your business is slow over there on the Ranch, else why would you bother hawking your ‘wisdom’ on a non-spiritual mailing list. I do realize that you are probably the last person who would be open to taking advice from anyone but I do have good credentials in being able to advise Gurus as I was an avid follower of many in my spiritual years. It is also an opportunity to pass on some information about the nature of the guru-disciple business for those who may have come to this mailing list thinking that this is a spiritual mailing list replete with a resident Guru.

The first important aspect that one needs to realize is that the reason that people are attracted to Gurus is that they are essentially looking for a Big Daddy or Big Mummy who will tell them what to think, what to feel, what to do and how to do it. In order to be successful in the business it is important for a Guru to never lose sight of this central role you are playing in other people’s lives and this essential need you are fulfilling, and I say this from direct experience of following several Gurus, and a good deal of reading about others. I am not saying that a Guru can’t have an individual style, but the important thing is to have and sustain an air of authority about you such as a child would feel for a parent.

A dependant child will take a deal of tough love from a parent provided there is a balance of soft love, or to put it another way, a child will take a bit of stick as long as there is carrot on offer to balance it out (else t’is what is commonly known as child abuse). In exactly the same way, a Guru needs to offer a mix of carrot in the form of soft love if he or she is to wield the stick on occasions. What the successful Gurus do is offer the carrot of unconditional love in the form of vibes and to do this they need to sustain an aura of love combined with a certain degree of personal charisma. Whilst this tends to come naturally to those who are Enlightened (as in they have ‘become’ Love, That, It, or whatever), for those who are not yet fully deluded these attributes do need working on.

Successful Gurus – those who have both aura and charisma and those who utilize both soft and tough love – literally have their followers on a string, and the shorter and stronger the string becomes, the more they personally can get away with, for the followers literally become blinded by love and devotion – not to mention being literally hobbled by dependency for the Guru’s love. Successful Gurus can literally toy with their followers and their feelings, sometimes casting pearls and sometimes not, sometimes praising, sometimes rebuking, thereby always ensuring they remain on the hook.

From what you have said, it appears that you may have modelled your business on Mr. Gurdjieff – the tough, hard approach, all stick and no carrot. I would suggest that Mr. Gurdjieff may well have had an aura, a certain (exotic/eccentric?) charisma and offered carrots as well as wielded the stick because he at least had gathered a few disciples by the time he died. Whilst I do understand that some people are attracted by the brutally honest (as in brutal), tough love (as in odious) approach, as in ‘She’s really being Real’, I do think it somewhat restricts your market both in numbers and in dollars.

Well that’s about it. The town I live in has two significant businesses, one being tourist, the other being Gurus and wannabe gurus of various sorts and at one stage I thought of offering a guru-grooming service, offering advice about style, technique and presentation – I think there could well be a buck in it for a smarter operator than me.

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BTW. Just to correct yet another piece of your disinformation, nowhere have I ever said what you purport that I have said –

[Respondent]: ‘And Peter is obviously being gracious when he refers to you [Vineeto] as being ‘silly’. ‘Sick’ Vineeto 10/10/2005

Au contraire, I have the everyday, all-day constant pleasure of living with a woman who is not only sensible but is also happy – but then again, it is sensible to be happy.

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