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Unveil Your Mind Off The Gurus

By Cara

Praying
Being religious or blindly following a religious guru (mentor) is completely based on one's faith. In such cases, the brain fails to exercise its questioning power. One prefers to follow the signals given by their gurus, even if it is without any logical reasoning.

Gone are the days when a religious mentor selflessly spread his knowledge of the supreme. Today, most of the religious mentors are driven by some force of selfishness. Every now and then we get to read about the so called 'gurus' who have cheated their disciples. Reports of gurus turning out to be fake are common these days. Under the shade of their saffron robe goes on activities like smuggling, skin trade and other scandals.

In the recent past we have had scandals involving figures like Asaramji Bapu in Delhi, Swami Nithyananda in Bangalore and Swami Bhaktaswaroop from the Swaminarayan sect.

It is difficult to judge whether a guru has genuine spiritual powers. But one thing is for sure that they have the power to take advantage of the faith that people have in them, for people blindly follow their mentors.

The study has also been conducted on the way people's brain behave when exposed to prayers or sermons spoken by someone possessing divine healing powers. The findings of the study has been published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

The brain sees what it wants to see. Thus it sees vision or a blur is actually it's wish. The reins of our brain are in our hands but we have to be strong enough to not let others allure it the way they want to.

Story first published: Friday, April 30, 2010, 8:31 [IST]