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How I Was Stood Up By The
Venusians
By Robert
Scheer
Published April 1, 1997 in the Los Angeles
Times
At first, it was difficult for
me to comprehend the events surrounding the Heaven's
Gate mass suicide since I never have believed in heaven.
Certainly not as a piece of real estate that one could
hitch a ride to somewhere in the sky where God
resides.
However, there was one time when I
got to cover God and experienced the full rapture of
tens of thousands of believers cast suddenly into his
presence here on Earth. That was at a weeklong
encampment at the Houston Astrodome in 1973, when God
appeared as a chubby and giggly 13-year-old Indian named
Guru Mahara Ji. I was following the guru because he was
rapidly making celebrity converts, including Rennie
Davis, then well-known as a defendant in the Chicago
Seven trial.
In the interest of objective
journalism, I subjected myself to the cult treatment and
came close to going over. Well, maybe not that close,
but the human mind is a fragile thing. It was quite an
experience to be kept up night after night with one's
stomach growling from macrobiotic gruel, ears ringing
from a droning repetitive lecture from some spiritual
yenta every time one's eyes happened to
close.
For a month before the Astrodome
extravaganza, I had traveled with God's group, sleeping
in fleabag hotels they called ashrams, never being
permitted any stimulants--alcohol, sex, television,
contact with noncultists or even spicy food. As with
those folks in San Diego, human contact for the
disciples, who had severed their external personal and
financial ties, was restricted to an androgynous
collective experience that chilled the sensual as well
as all other appetites.
That was for the
followers, but different rules, as could be expected,
applied to that self-proclaimed God who appeared in the
Astrodome. He was not sensuously indifferent or the
least bit androgynous in his tastes and clearly
preferred women. As I recall, he soon thereafter married
a quite attractive stewardess twice his height and age.
This kid/God was no wizened, castrated relic leading a
pathetic army of 38 lost souls. His claimed following
was in the millions, worldwide, and he amassed a
megafortune from his followers while making all sorts of
divine predictions that never materialized, which his
disciples gratefully accepted as proof of an even higher
wisdom.
One day at the Astrodome revival,
one of God's press agents--and he had many--came up to
me and said that while they were suspicious of the rest
of the media, they thought I had a pure soul. I assume
that was because I hadn't yet written anything. In any
case, they wanted me to have a very big news exclusive.
The guy looked and talked like any other flack, and I
think he had been one in real life. I thanked him for
the tip and asked what I needed to do to get the story.
His voice fell to that conspiratorial whisper common to
all PR people and he confidentially instructed, "Just be
in the northeast corner of parking lot G. The Venusians
are landing. You will get the first
interviews."
My career as a frontline
journalist was everything to me--just like those media
folks you saw camped at the house of death in Rancho
Santa Fe. So I gathered my reporter's notebook, tape
recorder and camera, lied to my colleagues about where I
was going and raced madly to be the first to report on
the Venusians. Hard to believe now, but I really was
ticked off when they failed to show. The PR guy said God
must have been playing one of his tricks, but not to
worry; other visitors from outer space, even more
important than the Venusians, would be arriving
soon.
Sounds crazy, but a part of me had
believed him. At that point, my mind was on autopilot
and they were writing the program. But then the spell
broke. Venusians? Venusians? I began muttering over and
over to myself, frightened by the realization that a
steady diet of soybean paste on rice cakes combined with
sleep deprivation and surrounded by tens of thousands of
people who truly believed this boy was God had started
me down the road to a nervous breakdown. Or was it a
religious experience that I should have
cherished?
At least that guru didn't get
anybody killed, as far as I know, and some members of
the media covering him who did convert are apparently
still wandering contentedly in his divine wake
today.
Is there a moral to this story? Yes:
If you're stupid enough to surrender your God-given
independence of thought to a guru, don't pick one who is
about to book passage on a dirty snowball in the sky.
Copyright © 1999 Robert
Scheer | | |
