Comedians remind us not to take our spiritual practice too seriously

Swami Beyondananda

Photograph: Steve Bhaerman

Swami Beyondananda has no followers. "He gets paranoid when he thinks he’s being followed," says comedian Steve Bhaerman. Bhaerman should know. He’s the swami. Under the pseudonym "Swami Beyondananda," he attends conferences and is always happy to talk to the public—"I will answer your questions, and you will question my answers." Bhaerman, who lives in Santa Rosa, California, is one of a number of comics parodying spiritual gurus and poking fun at the people who take them (and themselves) too seriously. "It’s comedy disguised as wisdom, and wisdom disguised as comedy," says Bhaerman.

Mat Zo, a money-obsessed spiritual leader, is the creation of a meditation teacher in Denver, Colorado, who declines to give his real name. A few years ago, he realized some of his students were becoming a little too deferential, so he donned a robe, beard and sunglasses; half of them didn’t get the joke. He persisted, though, urging students "to question spiritual practices with all those rules." In The Rascal’s Guide to Enlightenment, Mat Zo parodies self-aggrandizement.

James Murray of Venice, California, also realized the new-age community needed a good laugh. "Some people take their spiritual practices so seriously," he says. Murray, a puppet and voice artist for Hollywood films, put together a guru from materials like foam, fleece and ping pong balls. He’s called Puppetji, has a heavy Indian accent and stars in his own short films. Murray made one of the first Puppetji shorts following the 2006 release of The Secret, a DVD and book in which the "secret" of how to get everything you desire is revealed. "You can have anything you want," Puppetji says in increasingly exasperated tones. "But I ask: Who wants? Who is wanting? Who desires the need to want? Who wants and desires the need to want to be needed, and the desire or want to desire something it really doesn’t need and only thinks it wants?!" The sketch is on YouTube, where Puppetji continues to share his "words of wizdumb." His message: "You take life too seriously. Enlighten up!"