are today’s spiritual teachers offering real guidance?
Vic Shayne
author
13 Pillars of Enlightenment: How to realize your true nature and end suffering
What does it actually take to be awake to what you really are? Are thousands of pages and countless hours of lectures, presented by spiritual teachers, of any value at all? Which teacher really knows what he or she is talking about, or is our current strain of so-called spiritual gurus no more than the newest wave of opportunists built upon egoism and a codependent relationship?
It seems that when a spiritual seeker really knows what she wants then eventually she will find a way to to truth. In the meantime we have to wonder what spiritual teachers offer and whether they are what they say they are.
teaching what is not actually understood
I recently read an article by a prominent psychologist saying that the self is not an illusion, and to say that it is is a way of avoiding one’s problems. While it’s true that many people are using the idea as an excuse to avoid their problems, the self is nevertheless an illusion. If this psychologist had enquired into his own sense of self he would know this, but instead his conclusion is based on other people’s ideas. To make matters worse, this same psychologist has set himself up as a spiritual teacher who teaches people how to awaken.
promises earn followers
I won’t name names here, but in our current age there is a plethora of spiritual teachers, famous and not-so-famous, acting and speaking as if they know what it is to be awakened and as if they are qualified to teach others. They are all touting a similar message that is all too familiar to us: all is one, we are souls, we are each a spark of god, we are all connected, and love is all there really is. It’s a feel-good industry making a lot of promises and statements out of ignorance. Who wins and who loses from all of this?
What kind of teacher does not realize that the self is an illusion but also speaks of spiritual awakening? It is a person who has not enquired into his own sense of self to find out what lies beneath it. Every enlightened teacher over the centuries has taught that the self is an illusion, because — and only because — they have enquired into the self and came to the same answer as their peers.
The most sincere seeker of the truth is easily derailed, misguided, and deluded from charismatic and confident New Age teachers sitting on a dais in front of a bouquet of flowers with eager sycophants at her or his feet, hanging on every word.
Who are these so-called teachers? They hail from all backgrounds — psychology, philosophy, Zen schools, park benches, and the ranks of other famous teachers. One is even a chiropractor. Perhaps the most outrageously deceptive of all of these people is a man who passes himself off as an Indian sage with an outrageously self-aggrandizing Sanskrit title. What do these teachers know that you do not? What can they tell you about yourself and how to set you free? What drives these fame- and money-seeking teachers to believe they are free of the egoic self? Tens of thousands of followers who devour their words and bask in their light, do not seem to care what this sort of teacher says or that he is misleading them. They just yearn to feel wanted and secure. But to the very few who really want to know who they are at their essence, we may say that such people are doing a tremendous disservice. Or we can say that they act as detours away from the truth.
what do followers really want?
We can divide spiritual seekers into two main categories:
1. those who say, “Tell me what I am and what the world is,” and
2. those who say, “Show me how to find out for myself what I am.”
My own teacher once told me that 95 percent of spiritual seekers fall into the former category, though I have no idea how she came up with such a statistic. Maybe she is right, however.
spiritual teacher for hire
If you have an iphone, computer, youtube account, a good memory, and a lot of moxie, you too can be a New Age spiritual teacher. If you’ve read books from truly awakened teachers then perhaps you’ll be successful if you simply repeat what they’ve said as if it’s your own realization. If enough people believe that you woke up one morning on a park bench and all of reality was revealed to you and you were suddenly one with the trees, squirrels, and clouds, then you can parlay your initial group of followers into a multi-million-dollar enterprise.
codependence makes for a good show
Generally, the relationship between the newest crop of New Age gurus and their followers is a codependent one. Each satisfies the other’s needs. People do not, by and large, want to be told they have to do their own work to find out what they are and what the world is. Instead, they just want to be told. And they want to learn that everything will be all right in the bosom of Mother Earth, the universe, God, or some other higher power. Most spiritual teachers deliver what their followers want — a promise of a better day and a way to alleviate their suffering. The worst of the teachers inflict harm on others.
It’s not so much that people can’t handle the truth, but rather that they do not desire to do what they must in order to find it. They pretend that they do, but they really do not. They prefer to sit googley-eyed in front of a person perched on a platform telling them who they are from on high. Is this even possible? Can anyone, including the most enlightened avatar, tell you what you are? No, only you can know what you are, just as you must know for yourself what the color blue is or what a lemon tastes like.
Jiddu Krishnamurti said, “I don’t need anybody to tell me about myself.”
who are you really?
Douglas Harding said, “Who are you really? Not who are you in other people’s eyes, or in the mirror, or according to your beliefs and unexamined assumptions, but in your own direct experience. Great spiritual teachers say you are not your appearance — deep down, secretly, nearer to you than your breathing, you are capacity for the world. They say that to discover this wonderful truth about yourself you must look simply and innocently, as a child looks. Where do you look? Right where you are, at the Looker. When? Now.”
There you have it. A real spiritual teacher explaining that it’s up to the seeker to find his or her own truth. This is the only way it can be done. No one can do the looking on your behalf.
cult teachings
When I was in my thirties I followed a cult leader. His was not the kind of cult that locks people away and deprives them from food and sleep. It had more to do with melding together a mishmash of Eastern schools of thought to form a senseless jumble of nonsense. But at that point in my life I didn’t know the difference between Sufism and and surfing. I was ignorant and this cult preyed and relied on the ignorance of every follower. In the end, I had been misguided for 12 years. After I had had enough of this nonsense I was lucky enough to find some informed ex-members who pointed out the faults and lies of the cult and that organization’s books were full of plagiarisms and appropriations from real spiritual teachers. My loss, their gain. If you want to avoid this cult yourself, I’ll share the name of it: eckanar.
In the end I had learned an important lesson from my stint in the cult: Belief is a waste of time and energy. Belief is for those who do not want to do their own experiments and enquiry. And I had heard every explanation and excuse concocted to dismiss the flaws in the cult leader’s teachings, including that he was speaking from his human form and of course all humans are fallible. (Insert gag reflex here).
I have to say that one of the benefits of cultish teachings was that I can now spot them a mile away. I can also see when a spiritual teacher is a bullshit artist. Here is one hint: If he or she teaches you about manifesting money, material goods, or a better “you.” There is no you; this is the entire point, so any focus on this you has nothing to do with enlightenment!
weeding out the phonies from the awakened teachers
Reciting and recalling sacred teachings and even the word of so-called enlightened teachers does not mean that a teacher is him/herself awakened to the truth. If you want to know the truth of what you are, forget all the teachers and just take a good, long, uninvolved, unjudgmental, unopinionated, look at what you are.
A real teacher will only guide you back to yourself, for you to look at yourself. We can go down the list…Nisargadatta and Siddharmeshwar constantly said to just keep your attention on the “I-am.” In nearly every talk, Krishnamurti repeated the advice, “Find out for yourself.” Douglas Harding said to try his experiments to see what you can find in them for yourself.
Information you learn from a teacher will not help you realize what you are. This is because seeing is a direct and immediate action; information is secondhand even from the best guru. When the mind is clear of all teachings, memories, and information it can perceive what reality is, including the reality of what you are.
Krishnamurti said, “be in communion, communion with yourself, not with the higher self, not with the Atman, God, and all that, but to be actually in contact with yourself, with your greed, envy, ambition, brutality, deception, and then from there move. Then you will find out for yourself — find out, not be told, which has no meaning — that there is a total action only when there is complete silence of the mind from which there is action.”
the moral of the story
The moral of the story here is that truth can never be found by listening to others, even the best teachers. And spiritual teachers are a dime a dozen. If you want to know who you are then you must find out for yourself. If you just want someone to make you feel like part of the crowd or have hope for tomorrow, then perhaps any number of today’s popular teachers will float your boat.
