the Guru principle: Risks and Rewards

Risks
The risks of entering the guru/disciple relationship with a spiritual Master are often overplayed in the West, while the rewards are largely unknown. The increased emphasis on individualism in the West since the 17th century makes the relationship more difficult, but we also find a greater naiveté about the potential rewards than in the East. The apocalyptic nature of the Judaeo-Christian tradition seems to be deep in the Western psyche, and the phenomenon of cult suicide seems pretty much restricted to this tradition. The risks then seem tremendous : that we can not only lose our individuality, but all sense of proportion, leading to the point where we could even lose our lives.

'The risks of involvement with a Guru seem obvious, while the rewards seem obscure. This perspective is partly due to the apocalyptic religious instincts of the West, which have led to so many tragedies. It is time to see apocalyptic messages for what they are : immature fantasy'

Rewards
But what about the rewards? The benefits and purpose of involvement with a living Master can be summed up in a single Hindu word : darshan. It means simply to be in the presence of the Master. The actual form that darshan can take is varied, in that it may or may not involve ritual or ceremonial, and it may involve the Master speaking or being in silence. What is required from the aspirant is some intuition that the Master's state of being is in itself significant, regardless of what they say or do. The Master lives from a space that is available to everyone, but very few ever find it, hence the mere presence of the Master acts as a continuous reminder of what is possible. The Master embodies wholeness, a state of being where the divisive nature of the mind and the resulting anguish has been transcended.

The Right Master
The rewards of being with a Master cannot be overstated, even if it is for a short piece of time. It is the single greatest piece of good luck in one's life. The risk then lies not with the Master-disciple relationship itself, but with false Masters. The sobering truth however is that the aspirant is always drawn to the teacher that best reflects his or her existing ideas, which by definition, because the individual is an aspirant, are mainly muddle-headed. However in the West, because of our shared intellectual heritage, one can make some generalisations about the most likely kind of false Master that will attract aspirants. This type of Master will inevitably have an apocalyptic kind of teaching, involving a coming disaster which only they have predicted, and which only they can help one survive. Avoid them like the plague.

The Dancing Analogy
If we were to draw an analogy with dancing, then one could imagine the strange situation of individuals or even a whole society which had never danced, although they had read about it as a cultural activity from history books. To then see a dancer would be a revelation, but most would deny the phenomenon; alternatively the credulous would assign 'dancing' to all kinds of fake systems of movement. For a few individuals however, in the company of a real dancer, there would arise in them a sympathetic movement, a resonance with the dance teacher. No words could cause this sympathetic resonance, though they could then help to explain the details or externals of the dance. The sympathetic resonance that can take place between an aspirant and the spiritual Master is a little like this, but a whole order of magnitude more difficult, because there is no external activity in the Master analogous with dancing. The metaphor is still useful however, because the nature of the transcendent spiritual experience has some similarities with dance: it is creative, fulfilling, yet sufficient in itself (anyone who likes to dance will know that the hours spent in the club or dance floor are not to be seen in terms of other social purposes, though these might also exist, but simply as something sufficient in itself). There was of course in recent history a great jnani Master who also happened to be a dancing teacher: G.I.Gurdjieff (more of whom later). Gurdjieff also happens to be one of the spiritual teachers often cited amongst those considered suspect, and his case will help us to explore some of the risk/reward issues.

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