--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I don't allege that he was homeless, that is a fact.
He was *houseless*, not necessarily homeless. I have my own > opinion about his mental state just as you do. I sincerely > believe that he needed medical attention as a boy. I think > his folks needed a check up from the neck up also. Whatever > he was able to achieve with such a deplorable beginning in > life is amazing. Don't forget that his achievement began while he was still 9 years old. How many 9-year-olds do you know who could go off on their own and wander through India for years without running into big trouble somewhere along the way? That was one incredibly competent and resourceful 9-year-old right from the start. As for needing "medical attention," how do you know he didn't get whatever the equivalent was in India at the time? I rather doubt it would have occurred to anybody to send him to a psychiatrist even if one was available, which I also doubt. But for all we know, his parents may have taken him to the local Ayur-Vedic physician, or a priest, or the village sage for evaluation. That's what I mean about your lack of imagination. You're not able to imagine what the available resources were, or that his parents may have done everything they possibly could to get him the help they perceived he needed. What were they going to do when nothing could sway him, chain him to the radiator? > The aspect that you raise considering his humble beginnings, that he > rose to such heights in the Hindu religion is amazing. It is a heroic > tale of survival worthy of a movie. The fact that his position of > power we instrumental in upholding social values that I find repugnant > is another issue. But I appreciate your perspective that he was a > spiritual Horatio Alger story. That is an aspect I was not > appreciating fully. Yeah, except it wasn't a Horatio Alger story. Horatio Alger wrote about people from disadvantaged beginnings who clawed their way up the ladder to success in society via hard work and persistence. Guru Dev, in contrast, didn't *want* success in society, and he made no effort to get there. He was lifted up by others from some obscure place on the ladder to the very top in one step and despite his protests. Admirable or not, Guru Dev was sui generis.
