The female guru

Abstract

In the modern West, personal experience as a modality and method for change is inextricably tied to the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s. With its validation of women’s feelings that they are unfulfilled in traditional roles, its emphasis on critical reflection on the experience of gendered social roles by individuals and in consciousness-raising group meetings, and its crystallization in phrases such as Carol Hanisch’s ‘the personal is political’, feminism has understood personal experience to be both a catalyst and a path for self and social transformation. It is through the theme of personal experience that ‘second wave’ feminism intersected with spiritual movements outside of mainstream religion that became prominent during that era, 1 including Wicca, which drew primarily on European Goddess traditions, Zen Buddhism as popularized by D.T. Suzuki, the Zen-inspired Erhard Seminars Training (Est), and what can be called a ‘second wave’ of Hindu-inspired gurus in the United States, including Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho), Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation), A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (International Society for Krishna Consciousness; ISKCON), and Swami Muktananda (Siddha Yoga). 2 As Harvey Cox observed in 1977, these religious movements were especially appealing to devotees because they emphasized practice rather than doctrine: ‘The influence of Oriental spirituality in the West is hardly something new…. But there is something new about the present situation. In previous decades, interest in Oriental philosophy was confined mostly to intellectuals and was centered largely on ideas, not on devotional practices’ (Cox 1977: 9). That is, people were interested in doing the spiritual work themselves through devotional practices, and these religious movements encouraged that through various practices, including group rituals (the circle, dancing, chanting) and meditation.