Gurus and disciples are inevitably products of a particular historical moment. They represent a specific time and place, even as they draw upon ancient psychological and theological themes. As our contemporaries, they are, like the rest of us, psychologically unmoored, adrift from and often confused about older value systems and traditions. That unmoored state has great importance. Here I would stress only that a guru’s complete structural and psychological separateness from a traditional cultural institution—in Asahara’s case an established religion—permits him to improvise wildly in both his theology and his personal behavior, to become a “floating guru.” Disciples in turn are open to any strange direction he may lead them and contribute their own unmoored fantasies without the restraining force that a religious or institutional hierarchy might provide.
The guru narrative is always elusive. The guru appears to us full-blown, catches our attention because of what he, with disciples, has done—all the more so when that is associated with any kind of violence, no less mass murder. We then look back on the guru’s life history to try to understand his part in this culminating act. But while we should learn all we can about him, we are mistaken if we believe that his childhood—or his past in general—will provide a full explanation of that act.
