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It is quite wrong to conceive of a spiritual guide in a highly sentimental way. He would reveal his incompetence and bungle his work for you not less if he were to pamper as to nag you, not less if he were to be emotionally too solicitous about your personal life as too authoritarian. For he would make you more egoistic and less disciplined, more dependent and less self-reliant, more incapable of achieving real progress and less informed about the factors concerned in it. He would, indeed, make you a flabby parasite instead of an evolving entity.

-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6 : Student-Teacher > # 395