Crisscross Applesauce position and the power of self-deception
CA court rules that yoga (as practiced in this public school district) is not religious.
In other yoga-related news, we saw Kumaré last night (streaming on Netflix, get it while it's hot) and enjoyed it quite a bit, even if the star/filmmaker is a bit of a jerk.
Joisey-raised Indian American is disenchanted with his religious heritage, and annoyed by the proliferation of yoga in modern America, and the skeevy culture-appropriating fake fakirs and gurus. Travels to India, and concludes that the authentic fakirs, gurus, and sadhus are all fake too.
Comes up with the idea of becoming a fake guru, documenting it, and seeing how easy it is to get people to swallow his empty baloney, so he can end up with a huge Nelson Muntz laugh at the end.
Succeeds all too well. People start confiding their marital problems, past history of sexual abuse, and other problems to him. He gets a bit weirded out. Hot young women in yoga pants make adoring googoo eyes at him. So it ain't all bad.
Slowly, his mission transforms into getting his devoted core of followers to rely on themselves. The insincere fake guru has become a sincere fake guru, or maybe not even fake any more. It's just that his main message is, "I'm not special. You can give yourself this life advice. There are no gurus, or everyone is a guru." Several scenes are virtually identical to this:
My main beef with the filmmaker is that by the end he seems to have convinced himself that this was his mission all along, when the earlier scenes make it clear he wanted to trick people and lay that Muntz-laugh on them.
Anyway, he works himself up to 'The Unveiling', in which he will reveal the truth to his disciples. He chickens out, but manages to do it after he's gone back to his regular life for a time (maybe because the docu would suck without a proper ending). A few of the disciples flee and never speak to him again, but the majority still appreciate what they'd learned, and some, in true When Prophecy Fails-mode continue to believe that he has psychic powers.
In other yoga-related news, we saw Kumaré last night (streaming on Netflix, get it while it's hot) and enjoyed it quite a bit, even if the star/filmmaker is a bit of a jerk.
Joisey-raised Indian American is disenchanted with his religious heritage, and annoyed by the proliferation of yoga in modern America, and the skeevy culture-appropriating fake fakirs and gurus. Travels to India, and concludes that the authentic fakirs, gurus, and sadhus are all fake too.
Comes up with the idea of becoming a fake guru, documenting it, and seeing how easy it is to get people to swallow his empty baloney, so he can end up with a huge Nelson Muntz laugh at the end.
Succeeds all too well. People start confiding their marital problems, past history of sexual abuse, and other problems to him. He gets a bit weirded out. Hot young women in yoga pants make adoring googoo eyes at him. So it ain't all bad.
Slowly, his mission transforms into getting his devoted core of followers to rely on themselves. The insincere fake guru has become a sincere fake guru, or maybe not even fake any more. It's just that his main message is, "I'm not special. You can give yourself this life advice. There are no gurus, or everyone is a guru." Several scenes are virtually identical to this:
Click to viewMy main beef with the filmmaker is that by the end he seems to have convinced himself that this was his mission all along, when the earlier scenes make it clear he wanted to trick people and lay that Muntz-laugh on them.
Anyway, he works himself up to 'The Unveiling', in which he will reveal the truth to his disciples. He chickens out, but manages to do it after he's gone back to his regular life for a time (maybe because the docu would suck without a proper ending). A few of the disciples flee and never speak to him again, but the majority still appreciate what they'd learned, and some, in true When Prophecy Fails-mode continue to believe that he has psychic powers.