September 1-14, 2005
Two Weeks on the Road
with Andrew Cohen
Days 12-14: Interviews with Dr. Michael Beckwith and Rickie Byars Beckwith, and with "The Three Gurus"
Los Angeles, CA
by Tom Huston
Nearing the end of his stay in LA, Andrew sat down with Michael Beckwith and
his wife Rickie Byars Beckwith to interview them for an upcoming issue of
What
Is Enlightenment? Due out in spring 2006, that issue’s feature
articles will venture into the spookier, less corporeal reaches of human (and
nonhuman) experience, attempting to tackle both the mystery of reincarnation
and the nature of the soul. In one of our recent WIE meetings, as
we tried to see from how many angles we could approach these subjects, Andrew
posed a particularly interesting question: “What does it mean to have soul?” (That
is, in the Ray Charles/Smokey Robinson sense of the word.) And this was the
primary topic he explored with Michael and Rickie in their rather spirited discussion
that morning …
Rickie Byars Beckwith:
People who “have soul” have a certain way of expressing themselves.
What they’re saying is real; they have the facility, the ability,
to touch you. There’s the sense that they’re not trying to transmit
anything. Yet transmission is taking place. They’re in tune.
They have rhythm. They have an understanding of the way things are, and there’s
a commitment to the heart. They have a natural way of being and in their way
of being there’s something that is universally on point, whether they
know it or not. They have something. Soulful people love;
they have a connection to this greater love and to the divine. John Coltrane … he had
soul.
Finally, as the last stop on his jam-packed two-week odyssey, Andrew
attended an event in Santa Monica, CA, that might be historically unprecedented.
Calling themselves “The
3 Gurus,” Master Charles Cannon, Swami Chetanananda, and Swami
Shankarananda are three American teachers of enlightenment in the Kashmir
Shaivism lineage of the renowned 20th-century Hindu masters Bhagawan Nityananda
and his disciple Swami Muktananda (who was the guru of the 3 Gurus). Teaching
independently for years, the three have recently banded together to form
a holy alliance of potentially unparalleled transformative power. After all,
if just one guru or “destroyer of darkness” is a living, breathing,
walking and talking death threat to the miserly human ego, then encountering three of
them together is … well, probably three times as liberating.
After a successful evening presentation, the 3 Gurus were joined onstage by
Andrew for a compelling hour-and-a-half-long public dialogue. Here, they proceeded
to discuss everything from the technical distinction between a “spiritual
teacher” and a “guru” to the rather inhospitable environment
for gurus that our secular postmodern context presents. Everyone was invigorated
and excited by the conversation, and at the end, someone even suggested that
maybe someday soon we’ll be seeing “The 4 Gurus” hitting
the teaching circuit!
Well, who knows? I guess where the future of a 21st-century guru is concerned,
anything is possible…
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