"Gurus"

I'd say they do know, but choose to wrap themselves up in it anyway. In effect they are just grasping for self identity in the weakness of their student. A real abuse of privilege, but seemingly common in life teacher traditions as the 'guru' gets older they become dependent on others - as the saying goes, you can be young and broke but not old and broke. The success of them is proportional to their effort to hide their false authority but the smarter ones probably make a packet doing it as well, so that others can continue on the falsehood. But the more complex something is the more chance there is for something useful to emerge from it... and I think its on the student to be smart enough to smell a dodgy rat and get up and leave - just because the world is full of `em.

If anyone has Netflix and is interested in a recent example a guru devotion gone horribly wrong, see if you can find 'Holy Hell', a documentary. I think it might be intended for adult audiences and despite being half uncomfortable and half hilarious, its a shocking example of how easily people can be sucked in. It covers a cult starting from the mid 80's and still going seemingly. I seriously wish it was a mockumentary but it seems legit.

It sums it up at one point, there seems to be people who are passive narcissists being unable to view things outside a type of selfish frame of reference (regardless of whether they are empowered or vulnerable), and become easy prey for vindictive sociopaths who are working an agenda. It seems the vindictiveness serves as some cheerful veneer of group think to entrench a group dynamic but later on can often reveal itself as the root nature of the guru. who can begin to abuse the privilege given to the guru by the followers until it gets to bad it starts to spin people out and draw some even closer in. By the time followers realise how bad it is, its been seen as really really bad by everyone elses perspective for a long time. Unfortunately those warnings go unheeded early on and often only serve to feed the closed group dynamic of the emerging cult. Though at least he did 'seem' to deliver some results for a few in the beginning in terms of spiritual progress, if you can believe them at the time.

Cool, I will definitely have to check that out!