The Need for a Living Spiritual Teacher
Ever since there have been human beings on this earth, there have also been spiritual teachers, saints or mystics to show us the real purpose of life. As explained earlier, the terms saint, mystic and spiritual teacher as used throughout this book apply to a person who has conquered his or her mind, elevated his or her consciousness to the highest spiritual regions, seen the reality of God face to face and merged with that reality.
The first and most fundamental principle of the saints’ teachings is that in order for us to achieve God-realization, we need the guidance of a living teacher. For something as simple as learning how to drive, we need a teacher. If we want to learn to fly an airplane, we cannot do it by just reading manuals and books. If, while we are learning to fly, we don’t have a teacher with us, we will crash. How much more, then, will a living teacher be needed to learn how to cross the dense reality of daily life safely, to face the complexity of the world without losing our balance, to learn how to enter the more subtle planes of existence and to travel through them – those fine inner regions which the soul has to pass through once it leaves the physical plane.
Spirituality is a highly involved and complex subject. For travelling through the inner regions, it is necessary to have a guide who knows those regions and travels through them himself. Until we are in contact with a person who is thoroughly conversant with every detail of the inner regions so that we can benefit from his experience, we will find it very difficult to move in this direction at all.
No person in this world – no matter how intelligent, loving or religious – can help us go into these inner regions unless he himself has passed through them. Just as we need a guide to lead us when we travel through unfamiliar and dangerous terrain in the outer world, so we need a guide on the inner planes. Unless someone has already reached and crossed these subtle planes, how could we be confident that he or she could even meet us on the other side of death? Similarly, unless a person has himself experienced God-realization, how can he take us back to the Lord?
We actually stand in need of a teacher the moment we are born. Whether it is at home, at school or in life, we learn best from others. There is hardly a skill or profession in the world that can be mastered without a teacher. How then can we conceive of learning, without a teacher, this most difficult subject of spiritual science? Its requirements are far more exacting and the need for a teacher far more urgent than any other subject we can imagine. Not only must our teacher guide us throughout our life, but he or she must also be with us and guide us beyond death.
Once we accept that we will always learn best from another human being and that spirituality is not a matter of blind faith but a science like any other, we start to accept and appreciate the need for a spiritual teacher. The great mystics or saints come to earth for this very work. They come, not to make the physical world a better place, but to reveal to us the way of spiritual realization so as to free us from the endless bondage of birth and death. The following parable may illustrate this point:
Imagine for a moment that there are many people incarcerated in a jail. A humanitarian comes along and, seeing that the inmates do not get cool drinking water during the summer months, arranges for ice to be sent to them daily. Another arrives, and seeing that they get coarse and unpalatable food, he arranges for delicious dishes to be regularly distributed to them. A third one, also taking pity on the prisoners, provides them with warm blankets during the cold weather. All three humanitarians have doubtless succeeded in lessening to some extent the hardships of prison life, but the people still remain imprisoned. They are still in jail! High walls still separate them from the world outside and the hope for freedom still remains an empty dream.
Then another person appears on the scene. He has the key to the prison gate. He opens the gate and liberates the prisoners so that they are free to go back to their homes. There can be no doubt that the deed of the last person addresses the real need of the prisoners in a way that the charitable deeds of the previous three do not.
Mystics often depict this world as a vast prison house. There is only one exit from this prison – the human life – and its secret is known to the saints alone. A saint, therefore, is the one who has the key and can open the door. Only a saint can guide us along the hidden escape route that is the inner spiritual path and remove us from our suffering in a way that no one else can.
The saints of the past were doubtless true spiritual teachers, but we cannot benefit from them now. We need a living teacher of the present day. Just as a sick man has to consult a doctor who is living and cannot take treatment from a doctor of the past – no matter how famous the doctor was – so too we need a living spiritual teacher. Only a living spiritual teacher can help us unravel the complexity of life that entangles us from day to day.
A living teacher is essential to reveal to us the inner reality of the spirit. If we could do without a living teacher for God-realization, then past saints need never have come to earth in the human form. If the saints of the past could help us today without being present among us, then what need was there for them to come to earth at all? If God, without the intermediary of a living human embodiment of his qualities, could today draw souls to that same high spiritual state, then where would be the need for a spiritual teacher to be present in the world? In short, if there was the need for spiritual teachers to come in the human form at certain points in history, then surely there is an equal need today. The fact is that a living teacher is an absolute necessity for the spiritual path. Christ too, in his own time, said: “As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:5). Saints and mystics of all countries and times have stressed the need for a living guide on the inner journey.
The way of the spiritual teacherOur concept of the higher realms remains no more than a mental concept until we have experienced them ourselves. It is no more than a projection of our mind, a figment of our imagination. A true spiritual teacher or saint, however, does not function from mental concepts, projections of the mind or from what he has read in books. A true spiritual teacher speaks from his own experience. Since the mystics have merged into the highest state of bliss and union with God, they explain what they have experienced.
True mystics never advocate that we should change our religion. They come to unite, not to divide. The sun has many rays, and when we look at them, they may seem different from each other, but when we look up at their source we see that they are all in essence one and the same. We may refer to God as Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Krishna, cosmic energy or by any other name, but what we all want in reality is to get in contact with that same Truth. True spirituality has nothing to do with the rites and rituals of our religions; its main concern is to explore the love that is to be found in all of us, regardless of how we express it. Inside us there are no boundaries. We want to rediscover our own natural heritage – that treasure that lies inside us – and how to do this is precisely what the true spiritual teachers come to teach. They themselves have merged back into their source, their primal home. To do this, they leave their body at will, travel to the highest spiritual regions and come back at will to continue to instruct their disciples so that they too may learn to do the same.
True spiritual teachers don’t come to change the world. They make it clear through their teachings that this world is not meant to be a paradise. If they so intended, the great saints and mystics of the past would have made it a paradise by now.
Instead, saints intend to teach us how to collect our consciousness and merge it with the sweet melody of God’s spirit. Once in contact with the inner music, the mind travels with it to its very source, and finds its lost home. The soul, which was paralysed in the wilderness of the mind, discovers its separate identity, and triumphant, it too reunites with its source.
Signs of a true spiritual teacherA true spiritual teacher never charges anything nor does he accept donations for his teachings. The saints’ teachings are free, like all the other bounties of nature such as air, water and sunlight. A true spiritual teacher is never a beggar nor a burden to anyone, and always supports himself and his family by earning his own livelihood. In this day and age it is very difficult to find a true spiritual teacher who is solely interested in helping people and not interested in their money. A true spiritual teacher is never opposed to those who do not share his convictions, nor does he complain about the conduct of others. He does not criticize or slander others. A true spiritual teacher is humble and discreet, and keeps his powers hidden. He does not perform miracles like a magician to please his audience. His main goal is to instruct his disciples on how to meditate on the Word or the Shabd to achieve God-realization, and how to live their daily life so as to strengthen this spiritual work.
Advantages of having a living spiritual teacherA saint alone knows everything about death. At the time of death, when family, wealth, possessions and body all leave us, it is the true spiritual teacher alone who stays with the disciple. He, the perfect master-teacher, is with us as we pass through death’s door. After death, it is he who acts as our guide in the spiritual regions.
The further we progress in our study of mysticism, the more obvious it becomes that we cannot do without a living teacher. Our teacher, friend, guide, the living example of our ideal, becomes the central pillar and support for our spiritual growth.
We derive endless advantages when we receive directions and advice from a living master. He enables us to be better persons – more loving, more efficient, more caring – and to better fulfil our responsibilities from day to day. He helps us raise our consciousness above the reach of mind and matter. By following his instructions we are metamorphosed as we contact God’s power within us. It is the magic of this power that breaks us free from all our limitations.
Just as a jeweller can take a rough diamond and, by removing whatever is in excess, can transform it into a precious gem, similarly, the spiritual teacher makes the disciple aware of his or her own dross as well as his or her own inherent spirituality. When we come in contact with a true, living spiritual teacher we discover our precious essence and we learn how to develop and bring forth this essence to the fullest.