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The attractiveness of the eastern gurus can be illustrated by a story from the early '70s, recorded by the biographers of the Indian master Sri Dhyanyogi. When he was almost 100 years old, most of which time he had spent meditating in the seclusion of a Himalayan cave, the old yogi was persuaded to come and teach in the USA. Once, on a trip, his car pulled into a parking lot and one of his disciples carelessly slammed the door, trapping Dhyanyogi's fingers. Sri Dhyanyogi reputedly turned a little pale but a peaceful expression never left his face. "Could you please open the door?" he kindly asked the disciple.

When the door opened, he was bleeding profusely, his bones had been crushed and his fingers were hanging by their skin. The guru's expression remained happy and balanced, however, and the only thing the 100-year-old guru was concerned about was that the person who had caused the injury didn't suffer too much guilt.

Inner peace, all-encompassing compassion and practical techniques for finding harmony in this grim earthly existence have become the currency of Eastern masters. But the masters also brought with them Asian cultural norms that require the disciple's surrender to the master. This, in a Western context, leads to many forms of abuse. It's not simply that among the "real" gurus a few manipulative con-men have also sneaked in, it's more often that the master simply cannot cope with the temptations of the West and his followers' uncritical admiration. "The Eastern masters grew up in cultures that helped them maintain ethical boundaries," explains the British Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist Rob Preece, who has 40 years' experience working with Tibetan and Nepalese lamas. "They have their elders to make sure that they stick to the principles as their control mechanisms. When they come to the West, they are on their own and fail much more easily."

The gallery of Western gurus is full of controversial figures who abuse their position for sex and the accumulation of wealth, and who turn their disciples into dependent mental wrecks. It's interesting that a large number of them could be best described as contradictory characters rather than as wholly negative influences.

Indian immigrant Osho has become famous in the USA as the owner of the largest Rolls-Royce collection in the world -- financed, of course, by the cult members -- but his dynamic meditation is still practiced by hundreds of thousands of people. The Tibetan lama Chogyam Trungpa was famous for being a womanizer and ultimately drank himself to death, but his book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism remains a critical insight into the meaning of spiritual practice.