Kumare is a guru. He is a mystic teacher from India who
combines yoga with metaphysical teaching to guide people into a truer
understanding of reality and their hidden potential. He sleeps in his backyard
under the stars, clothes himself in an orange sheet and has long, unkempt,
stringy hair on his head and face. He has a thick Indian accent, an infectious
laugh and an irresistible “aura” that attracts people to his utter humility,
wisdom and authenticity.
Kumare is also a fantastically successful fraud.
Kuamre’s real name is Vikram Ghandi. He was raised here in
the United States by devout Hindu parents. He grew tired and cynical of
religion, in any form, in his teenage years and gave up on faith entirely
during college. As he grew older he became increasingly concerned about our
nation’s growing fascination with eastern mysticism, meditation, and new-age
philosophy – the very religion of his youth and everything he had come to
believe was a total farce.
To prove the absurd nature of following religion he created
a film. In it Vikram grows his hair,
practices his accent, and ventures to Phoenix, Arizona where he begins to offer
mystical healing classes as an Indian guru name “Kumare.” In a remarkably short
amount of time Kumare has “disciples,” is invited to speak at conferences and
is even asked by local yoga experts if he would be willing to teach them his
own brand of completely absurd and wholly fictitious religious philosophy.
In the end Vikram is attempting to help people understand
that they do not need any sort of “guru” or “religion” to help them cope with
life or give them happiness. Everything they are searching for, Vikram
suggests, is already available within themselves.
The film is well-made, sobering, and shocking, if not
hilarious, at times. But is also bitterly sad. Sad, because each of the people
who choose to follow Kumare have a consistent story. It is not that they are
more gullible, ignorant, or trusting than anyone else. The thread that appears
to tie them all together is that they are woefully desperate. There is a former
crack addict, a lawyer who defends death row inmates, a young woman in a
horrible marriage, another who was sexually and physically abused, and yet
another who is obese and severely alone. They aren’t stupid or naïve, they are
frail and empty vessels that are simply looking for something, anything, to
fill the void.
These are the kind of people Jesus repeatedly turns towards
in compassion. The kind of people who are so thirsty that they are unknowingly
drinking from a mirage of sand. I know many people like the ones you meet in
Vikram’s film. People who are starving
to death spiritually and are willingly to ingest anything that sounds remotely
spiritual, be it a televangelist, the latest title from Oprah’s book club,
self-help guides, psychotherapy, eastern mediation, or the myriad of religious
leaders that promise health, prosperity and inner healing to their followers
through laws of attraction, “being present in the now,” or tapping into your
positive energy by becoming one with the universe.
Like Kumare, they all prove to be equally as fraudulent as
Vikram was.
Perhaps the most interesting irony of the film was the way
in which Vikram, in attempt to “liberate” people, in the end, only enslaved
them more. These people were all smart enough to know that “trusting
themselves” was the very thing that got them into their current mess anyway. Perhaps
even more ironic is that in order to prove his philosophy of self, Vikram,
perhaps unknowingly, borrowed most of his theology straight from the pages of
the religion he was trying to escape. Believing that we are all gods who possess
the ability to shape our own identity is hardly anything novel or earth
shattering.
Kumare (or Vikram) discovers this and it, perhaps,
unwittingly destroys the entire point of the film. At least it should for
“those that have ears to hear” for when Vikram (or Kumare) is forced to tell
his followers the truth he feels the stabbing pain of guilt…and therein lies
the rub.
When you build a philosophy around belief in yourself, and
you fail, even your own standards, who rescues you then?
