The average aspirant does not find the true teachers because he would not behave himself correctly with them if he did. Sooner or later he would abuse the lofty character of the relation of discipleship and seek to force it to become a half-worldly one. It is probably true to say that even imperfect teachers, who are all that the public is likely to know, often receive from their followers frantic appeals for this or that personal intervention or frenzied outpourings concerning this or that personal material problem for which immediate help is demanded. But even when the aspirant has linked himself up with an embodied master or invisible adept, a scriptural personage or his own higher self, he may start to assume that the higher power or person is henceforth going to settle all his personal troubles without his own exertions being called for. This is a piece of wishful thinking. The very purpose of evolution would be defeated if he were to be deprived of the opportunity of tackling his problems and troubles for himself: it is only so that his capacities can stretch out and his understanding enlarge itself. We may sympathize with the need of troubled disciples, but a wrong notion of what constitutes the teacher-disciple relation will not help them. It will lead to false hopes and the anguish of subsequent disappointment. For what is it that they are really trying to do? They are not merely using the teacher as a spiritual guide, which is quite correct, but also as a material guide, leaning-post, and father-mother, which is quite wrong. They want to shunt their own responsibilities and shift their personal burdens onto the back of a master or at least to share them with him. Such a conception of discipleship is a wrong one. Also it is an unfair one. Instead of using the master as a source of principles and inspirations to be applied by themselves in practical life, they try to exploit him, to avoid the responsibility for making their own decisions by saddling it upon his shoulders. The master cannot solve all their personal problems or carry all their burdens. This task rests with the disciples themselves. To seek to shift their responsibility for it onto the master's shoulders is to demand the impossible, the unfair, and the unwise. If successful, it would defeat the very purpose of their incarnation. It would rob them of the benefit of the experience to which they have been led by their own Overself. Such excessive reliance on the guide makes them more and more incapable of independent thought and judgement. But it should be the object of a competent guide to help them develop these very things and grow in spiritual strength, as it should be the aim of a sincere one not dictatorially to rule their conduct but suggestively to elevate it. If they are to advance to higher levels, disciples must learn to rely on their own endeavours. No master can relieve them of this responsibility. It is not the work of a philosophic teacher to save students from having to make decisions for themselves. It is, on the contrary, his duty to encourage them to face up to rather than to flee from the responsibility and profit of working out their own solutions. The prudent master will leave them to work out for themselves how to apply philosophy to their personal situations. For him to manage their lives, settle their problems, and negotiate their difficulties might please their egos but would weaken their characters. Hence, he does not wish to interfere in their lives nor assume responsibility for forming decisions on those personal, domestic, family, employment, and business problems which they ought to arrive at for themselves. At best he can point out the general direction for travel, not supply a definite map; he can lay down the general principles of action and it is for them to find out the best way of applying these principles. The agony of coming to a right judgement is part of the educative process in developing right intuitions. Each experience looked at in this way brings out their independent creative faculty, that is, makes them truly self-reliant. The principles of such solutions are partially in their hands; practical horse-sense must be harnessed to shrewd reason and guided by ethical ideals and intuitions.
-- Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6 : Student-Teacher > # 562
