Word: gurus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Both the Cao Dai and the new gurus are attempts to respond to this growing erosion of consistency. Cao Daism attempted to synthesize the experience of a frightening clash between the Eastern and Western world that was taking place in colonial Vietnam. With its Joan of Arcs and its Buddhas, it attempted to provide for its followers a new, relevant sense of order to replace the one that had shattered...
There are more than accidental similarities between the Cao Dai and various popular movements in America such as Divine Light, the Jesus movement, and the followers of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the mentor of meditation. Both the Cao Dai and the American gurus are initially arresting because they are so incongruous: the images of Vietnamese civil servants worshipping Victor Hugo and young people from America's suburbs genuflecting before a 15-year-old Indian Guru are strangely symmetrical. But the similarities run much deeper than this curious congruence of the odd: the popularity of both the Cao Dai in Vietnam...
...gurus and the yogis serve a similar function in the present-day United States. Young people groping for sense amid the numbing madness can grasp at anything that seems ordered and coherent--even a chubby teen-age Perfect Spiritual Master who rides a motorcycle when he is not dispersing the Word. Suffering, illogic and irrationality must be explained if people are to function in the world, and in the swirling confusion of the moment, almost any form of consistency can pass for truth...
When Malle does put order into these diverse events it is more a reflection than a theory. He lets Indian politicians discuss splits within the Communist party, and films Indian gurus praying in isolation. He takes these themes to their furthest extremes by showing political problems in the slums of Bombay and the primitive beauty in natural village communes isolated from the Indian mainstream. These polarities bring some conclusions to the sequence of scenes...
...scores of gurus who have come to the U.S. in the past decade is India's Swami Satchidananda, who gained national attention by opening the Woodstock rock festival in 1969. Satchidananda teaches "integral yoga," a combination of yogic disciplines, in 15 metropolitan centers as well as two new live-in communities in Middletown, Calif., and Pomfret, Conn. Catholic nuns and priests often attend the integral-yoga weekend retreats...