Excerpt from How to Become a Modern Guru, by Norman D. Livergood
People no smarter than you are becoming Gurus. You can too. “But they can sit cross-legged and meditate, or breathe through one nostril, or pronounce archaic Chinese,” you say. So what! The fad of the stereotyped Guru is passe. Gurus now come in many different shapes, I.Q.’s, and speech defects. Whatever your previous training or feeling of physical or mental inadequacy, you are as much a candidate for Guruhood as the next fellow or gal. In fact, more so.
You may think this book is a put-on. But just look around at the accelerating number of people becoming Gurus. Politicians, business consultants, think-tank experts, military advisors, investment analysts, and sanitary engineers. They’ve tapped into a Way of proclaiming themselves teacher, trainer, instructor, master, tutor, director, coach, don, professor, lecturer, reader, prelector, prolocutor, preacher, chalk talker, pastor, schoolmaster, dominie, pedagogue, abecedarian, schoolmistress, dame, monitor, expositor, preceptor, guide, mentor, adviser, pioneer, apostle, missionary, propagandist, and munshi. By taking on such titles, people listen to them, respect them – and PAY them for their Wisdom. These same methods are available to you – as revealed in this book.
If you sat at the feet of these modern Gurus for a time, you would doubtless get the feeling – as many have – that they are not “special” people, ordained from On High, but ordinary persons who have the drive to make a go of it in a highly competitive racket. Many of them have no better qualifications than you. The only thing that keeps you from becoming a Guru is You! (1)
But Charisma can’t be taught, I hear some faint-heart chirp. Humbug! Most current charisma is concocted from impudence, audaciousness, and presumptuousness in exactly the manner set out in this book.
You can become a Modern Guru in Seven Days – if you believe everything this book tells you. Seven days may seem like too short a period for learning how to attain the exalted status of a Modern Guru. Actually it is probably much too long – considering the modern style in Gurus.
If you read several chapters per night, you’ll wake up the 8th night a Changed Person. Or, the short method, you can become a Modern Guru in SEVEN HOURS if you buy this book, read it, and then write to me and order the ADVANCED How to Become a Modern Guru home study course (with advanced pricing). (2)
Only if you want to become a Modern Guru will this book assist you. The old-style, self-effacing, retiring, unassuming, disinterested Guru is largely a thing of the past. (And some say good riddance.) You may find the venerable old or young Teacher working away in some remote corner of the world – if you bothered to search. But the old school of Guruship is not doing at all well in today’s busy Spiritual Market-Place.
For every old-style guru there must now be hundreds (thousands?) of Modern Gurus.
The Modern Guru has the self-assurance of the door-to-door salesman of Magic Food-Chopper II and the suave stage presence of Rodney Dangerfield. And rightly so, for she is “selling” something just as important in this materialistic world as toothpaste or a new foreign policy.
He is the representative of a Larger World, opening up a new marketing area, where humans have been deprived too long of the benefits of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. He must be dynamic and forceful – and sincere. Above all, Sincere.
One of the chief dangers (3) in becoming a Modern Guru through reading this book is that you will hurry through the instructions, not allowing the techniques to soak in, to become second nature to you. Like the impatient child who tries to learn to ride a bicycle without training wheels, your disciples will detect the same kind of wobbliness in your approach if you do not practice to become Sincere.
Let none of these dangers, however, deter you from pressing on to become a Modern Guru. The field is white for the slaughter.
One common delusion you should avoid at all cost: that becoming a Modern Guru requires some kind of Enlightenment. Our modern era is way past any such archaic, stultifying, and obscurantist requirement as that. Modern Gurus are no more enlightened than ….than You.
Two decades ago the style in Gurus was the Oriental, dark-skinned Yogi-Swami, the psychiatrist who won the prize for performing the largest number of lobotomies, or the Harvard Business School Full Professor with his class on Obscene Wealth. Fortunately, since that time the Guru field has Opened Up. Today the pace-setter is the artificial intelligence expert lecturing on “Why Computers Can Think Pretty Good,” the business wizard pontificating on “Higher States of Consciousness as a Way to Increase Corporate Profits,” or the retired Army general holding forth on “Humanitarian Killing As a Way to Increase Corporate Profits.” You will be able to find an image and a technique in this book which fits your idiosyncrasies.
You don’t even have to leave your present profession or career to become a Modern Guru. You can add the elements of Guruship to your present occupation – or turn your present profession into Guruhood surreptitiously. It’s especially easy to add Guruship to your life if you’re a lawyer, physician, professor, movie director, full-bird colonel, billionaire, psychologist, or supervisor at a Taco Bell. The techniques I divulge in this book will be second nature to you already if you’re a banker, a financial advisor, or a hair dresser. In most professions, adding some or all of the aspects of Guruhood to your way of operating will really make you a Power to be Dealt With. Just think of the people you could make your disciples.
There are even some of you who are already Modern Gurus but who haven’t recognized it–or won’t admit it. By reading this book, you’ll find familiar characteristics and ways of thinking that you’ve been practicing all your life. Of course you’ll find a lot of new, exciting ideas as well–techniques and theories you would never have concocted on your own. However much you already have the inherent tendencies of the Modern Guru, you can become an even more Devastating Force than you are now.
Each chapter will present a wide variety of ways in which you can apply every facet of Guruhood. You need not reshape your psyche to fit a mold. Use your creativity to design a style of Guruship that is You.
I am using the word “Guru” in this book because it is still an In title that evokes respect through mystification. If this title is being used pejoratively in your area, however, shift to another name: Adept, Master, Wizard, Thaumaturgist, or Sorcerer.
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- This book, incidentally, will, by its very example, teach you how to write Guru-style. A major lesson: Always underline especially lapidary sentences.This gives the reader a sense of the Importance of your message.
- The Modern Guru quite understandably allows his readers or disciples to share in the good karma of buying the advanced version of the Truth.
- There are many.
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