Gurus are out of fashion. Millions of Americans do yoga, many practice meditation, but no one seems to be searching for a bearded wise man to guide their lives (perhaps because many famous gurus of the 1970s were revealed to be charlatans). Brilliant Disguise: The Samadhi of K. C. Tewari is not about a Perfect Master, however, but a rarer figure: the perfect disciple. Brilliant Disguise, directed by David Silver, will be shown at the Old Dutch Church in Kingston on October 23. The screening will be followed by Krishna Das speaking about his experiences with Tewari.
Richard Alpert was the assistant to Timothy Leary in his groundbreaking LSD research at Harvard University in the mid-1960s. After Harvard booted them both out, Alpert wandered to India, where he met Neem Karoli Baba, a grizzled sage who showed him truths beyond those offered by lysergic acid. Under his new name, Ram Dass, Alpert wrote Be Here Now, a memoir of his transformation, which became an instant New Age classic. Westerners began following the trail he blazed, to his guru’s ashram. There they met K. C. Tewari.
Tewari was notable because he often fell into samadhi, a mystic state in which breathing and blood flow appear to cease. (There is no measurable pulse.) Presumably this rapture is accompanied by ecstatic bliss, but those who experience it—including Tewari—are usually too modest to reveal their inner experience.
Born in Uttar Pradesh in 1921, Tewari became a wannabe yogi, wandering around with Neem Karoli Baba (also known as “Maharaji”). Tewari’s intention was to be a celibate monk, but one day while he and Maharaji were staying at a household in the town of Haldwani, the guru announced that his disciple should marry Krishna, the daughter of the household. For two days, the two spiritualists argued, but finally—of course—the guru won. Ultimately, Tewari was a “householder,” with three children; he worked as headmaster of a school at Nainital, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Tewari once casually remarked to an American friend that his samadhis only began after his marriage.
Of course, balancing yogic bliss with family life can be tricky. In Indian culture, one must wait for the father before sitting down to dinner. Often Tewari would be in samadhi, while the rest of the family was starving! Maharaji taught his wife how to bring K. C. back from a trance state: whisper “Ram Ram” into his year, and if that didn’t work, use a spoon to pry his tongue from the top of his mouth. Unfortunately, while doing so, she once knocked out a couple of his teeth. Later he gave those teeth to one of Maharaji’s disciples, Radha Baum. “I still have those teeth,” she admits, in Brilliant Disguise.
The day before Maharaji died in 1973, he told Tewari: “Take care of the Western disciples.” A guru is a father figure, but K. C. was more like the world’s greatest uncle.
Tewari visited the US three times. Once, during the 1970s, Krishna Das, the well-known yogic singer, was taking Tewari to an acupuncturist on 42nd Street in Manhattan. Walking down the street, they were surrounded by porn movies and drug dealers. Krishna Das was deeply embarrassed to be polluting the mind of a saint. K. C.’s wife whispered something in her husband’s ear, and Krishna Das asked what she said. “She said it’s like Heaven here,” K. C. revealed. “All your desires are fulfilled.”
One forgets, even if you know them well, that yogis are not “religious,” as we use the term. They aren’t Episcopalian ministers. They are closer in spirit to drunken hobos (though they drink an invisible liquor few others have tasted).
Upstate Films will screen Brilliant Disguise
