DISCIPLESHIP [Essay]
Discipleship is for those who make the quest of the Overself the deep underlying aim of their existence, who take a live and keen interest in the particular form of it outlined by P.B. in his own books, who are critical enough to understand the unique value of his teaching and grateful enough to proffer its disseminator their abiding personal loyalty. Disciples naturally look for discipline, but P.B. neither seeks the first nor stipulates the second. Discipleship is for the few because while there are many who read the books, there are but few who follow the quest, there are many who will take the first few steps but few who will take the last ones, many who can swallow fables but few who can swallow facts.
It is for those to whom the quest has become their life, their goal, their refuge, and their strength.
The true relation of discipleship cannot be established by any merely vocal asking for it and being vocally accepted. Nor can it be established by any formal outward rite or ceremony. Nor by mail order, that is, by a written request and a certificate granting it. It can be established only when it becomes first a mental fact, an inward relation, a telepathic link, and when second these things are based on the disciple's side on complete faith, devotion, loyalty, and willingness to subordinate his own little ego, his own limited intellect, should they ever find themselves opposed to the master's guidance.
This last must not be confused with blind slavish obedience. It is a realization of the need for superior guidance until that glorious moment arises when the guidance can be dispensed with, when the master himself is transcended by union with the disciple's higher self.
In other words, there must be internal evidence of the relationship's having been established, for then alone does it become a reality and a certainty.
This relationship is very rare in the modern world because most people are too materialistically minded to contribute proper efforts towards its making. They think that by associating with a master and by seeing his physical presence they have found him. This is not so. They must find his mental presence within themselves before they can begin to say they have really found him. The relationship is also rare because few such teachers are to be found in the world. For a man may attain the heights of self-realization and yet neither his characteristics nor his karma may permit him to perform the work of teaching along with his realization.
All this is the true explanation of the word "Sat-sang" (that is, association with the illumined, or with a Master) which is so often mentioned in Indian mystical circles as being the first condition to be sought for to make discipleship effective. But in present day India Sat-sang has been materialized into a physical association only, so that aspirants think they have only to go and live in some guru's ashram in order to become that guru's disciple. But this is only an imitation of Sat-sang, and the false belief partly accounts for the disappointing results noticeable in so many ashrams in that country. It also partly explains the melancholy warning given by the master K.H. in the book entitled The Mahatma Letters, wherein he laments the fact that so few of the pilgrims who set forth on the ocean of discipleship ever reach the longed-for land of attainment.
No man is so secure that he can afford to walk the path entirely alone, or so sure-footed that he does not feel it necessary at times to call to his aid those who are qualified to help him negotiate the difficulties.
Why is it that so many--if not most--seekers feel the need of a personal spiritual teacher? Beyond the obvious need of intellectual instruction, practical guidance, and emotional inspiration, there is a further, a profounder, and sometimes an unconscious need. The formless Infinite is a conception the human mind can hardly comprehend, much less hold for any sustained period. But the name and form of another human being who has himself succeeded in comprehending and holding the conception constitute an idea and a picture easily within mental reach. Reverent devotion given to him and imagination directed towards him set up a telepathic process which eventually elicits an intuitive response from the devotee. For in this process there is an interchange of vibration between the two whereby something, some mysterious quality of the sage's mind, is drawn into the devotee's mind and gives the devotee a feeling, however imperfect, of what the Infinite Spirit is really like. The mental image of his master can be carried by the devotee anywhere and everywhere and provides his own mentality with a definite resting place, without which it would be yearning vaguely and struggling aimlessly. But because such a relationship depends on two factors whose reality has not yet been fully granted by the educated world, it may be laughed at as an imaginary one. These two factors are telepathy and intuition. Therefore only those who have themselves experienced it can say how utterly true and intensely real it is. This is why the Bhagavad Gita says that out of love for his devotees, God the impersonal assumes the form of a personal guide. This is why Jesus proclaimed himself to be the door. If so many students are running hither and thither in search of a master, it is not only for the commonly given reasons that they do so, but also because of their need of a personal symbol of the impersonal God, their need of a human gate to the gateless Void. But let us not forget that this need is really a manifestation of human weakness. There are some seekers who can draw from within themselves the guidance they need, the light upon their path, and the intuition to comprehend the Absolute. They can get along quite well without a master. Indeed it is better for them to work in lonely independence for they have the best of all masters, the Higher Self. But such souls are fortunate and blessed, and those others who do not come into their category need and must find a spiritual leader. First they must find him in the world without. Later, with more understanding and increasing development, they must find him within themselves.
The service of such a guide in helping seekers to understand spiritual truth and in sustaining their interest in it is necessarily great. He will equip them with sound metaphysical knowledge and impart to them the primary elements of the hidden teaching. It is essential to pass through a course of systematic instruction involving the highest discipline before this knowledge can be got. His own informed mind will enlighten theirs and his inspiring words will stimulate aspiration. He will be to them the voice of research and meditation far beyond their present capacity. Also he enables them to conserve their interest after the first flush of enthusiasm for the teaching has inevitably lost some of its emotional intensity amid the pressures and oppositions of a sceptical world.
Even when whatever is good and true from amongst current notions in different schools of thought is selected and sifted, and a compact doctrine is formed from the results, the tremendous vitalizing power of a master is often needed to make such truths tangible.
The teacher examines the aptitudes and trends of aspirants and prescribes accordingly. The disciple is not told directly what to accept, but is so guided that he is given the chance to perceive the facts, follow the reasoning as if it were his own, and to reach for the conclusions apparently by himself. In reality throughout this process he is aided by the teacher, yet so subtly that in perfect freedom he develops his own capacities, for it is the aim of the true teacher to put the red corpuscles of self-reliance into his pupils.
The adept opens up a line of communication between his disciple's conscious mind and the secret conscious spiritual self. Thus in due time, the disciple receives from his master the full truth of the world.
The wonderful influence which a true sage exerts upon a receptive student is well-exemplified by the statement of Alcibiades about his former master Socrates: "At the words of Socrates," he says, "my heart leaps within me and my eyes rain tears when I hear them. And I observe that many others are affected in the same manner. I have heard Pericles and other great orators, and I thought that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state. But this Marsyas [Socrates] has often brought me to such a pass that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life that I am leading; and I am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him and fly as from the voice of the siren, my fate would be like that of others--he would transfix me and I would grow old sitting at his feet. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the Athenians; therefore I hold my ears, and tear myself away from him. And he is the only person who ever made me feel ashamed, and there is no one else who does the same. For I know that I cannot answer him or say that I ought not do as he bids, but when I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me. And therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed." (from Plato's Symposium)
The relationship between the spiritual counsellor and his disciple must first find an inward harmony as its basis. After that harmony there will emerge a telepathic reception on the part of the disciple. There is often much misunderstanding about this type of communication. Let it be stated categorically that whatever the counsellor communicates it would necessarily deal with the general rather than with the particular, with the higher emotions to be cultivated rather than with the things and happenings of this world, with the spiritual qualities to be unfolded rather than with the material affairs and special situations of the external life. It is common enough, however, for the seeker's ego to mistranslate the character of the help given to him, to turn the impersonal into the personal, the lofty into the lower, and even the pure into the impure.
It is rarely understood here in the Occident that where spiritual help is given telepathically, it is given as a general inspiration to remember the divine laws, to have faith in them, and to follow the higher ideals. It is not given as a particular guidance in the detailed application of those laws, nor in the day to day outworking of those ideals. The teacher gives by radiation from his inner life and being, and the disciple draws it into his own mind by a correct approach and mental attitude towards the teacher. What he receives, however, is impersonal. His own ego will have to convert it into a personal form and will have to apply the ideals instilled into him. Another misconception is also very common: "Is it not the master himself who helps me at such moments?" is a question asked in astonished surprise by those disciples who feel his presence keenly, see his image vividly, and converse with him personally in experiences which are genuinely telepathic in character. The answer is that it both is and is not the master himself. The minute particulars of the pictorial experience, or the actual words of a message are supplied by the disciple's own ego. The mental inspiration and moral exaltation derived from it and the emotional peace which surround it are drawn telepathically out of the master's being. Both these elements are so commingled and diffused with one another in the disciple's mind, and so instantaneously too, that inevitably he gets only an unclear and partial understanding of his experience. The truth is that the master does not necessarily have to be conscious of the pupil's telepathic call for help in order to make that help available. Nor does he personally have to do anything about it in order to ensure that his help is transmitted. Just as it is said that the cow's idea of heaven is of a place eternally filled with grass, and that a man's idea of God is a magnified human being, so it may be said that the uninformed aspirant's idea of a spiritual guide is often only an improved and enlarged version of himself. The master is pictured as being filled with oozing sentimentality, however pious, vibrating with personal emotion, and fluttered by his disciple's changes of fortune--as being almost always on the verge of tears with sympathy for others, as fretting over every little fault and change of mood in his disciples every hour of the twenty-four, every day of the week, every week of the year. It is imagined that the master seeks only to influence pleasurable experiences towards his disciples and to divert painful ones--as though pleasurableness were the only good and pain the only evil. It is easy for people to open the doors of a weak sentiment or to gild the bars of the cage of selfishness and forget the living prisoner within. To them the Illuminate is a paradox of conduct. For the same law which stays his hand from giving promiscuous relief also bids him render unto each man his due.
If he places himself in the proper attitude the disciple may be ten thousand miles away from the master and yet receive not less fully and not less adequately the bestowal of Grace, the telepathic awareness of a higher presence, the divine renewal of his inner life.
The mental image of his absent master may come before him bearing any one of several different suggestions, reminders, inspirations, or consolations.
But it is for the pupil himself to cultivate perfect poise between the two extremes of utter dependence upon a teacher and complete reliance upon himself. Both extremes will obstruct his advance upon this path. Nor will it be enough to find the mid-way point between them and adhere always to that point. The definition of poise will vary at different stages of his career. At one time it will be absolutely necessary for him to cultivate self-reliance, whereas a couple of years later it may be equally necessary to cultivate a mood of dependence. What is proper at one time or period may not be proper at another. Which phase is to be uppermost or when both are to perfectly balanced is something which can be decided only by a mingling of inner prompting, logical reflection, and other circumstances.
"To the real enquirers after knowledge, the master's words will enable one to know his own self. A teacher's Grace, if it becomes en rapport with his disciple, will of itself in a mysterious manner enable the disciple to perceive directly the Brahmic principle within. It is impossible for the disciple to understand how Brahman is prior to his direct perception. It is indeed very rare to attain that state without the help of a Guru."--Yoga Vashista.
The master flings his divine grace direct from his own great heart into the heart of the disciple--this is the true initiation.
"The master who has completed his quest commences it anew with every disciple"--The Persian Sheikh Gazur-i-Elahi the Sufi
There are always the few who respond to the master's voice more quickly than others, and hence receive more fully. When he finds querents who are completely unready to grasp the subtle truth which he expounds to those more familiar with his philosophic ideas, he takes up the view point of the questioner and gives him a lift upward from his present state.
If some complain that he is inaccessible, this is because real intercourse with them is impossible, because they can meet him only on surface levels where all that is said or done vanishes futilely in the air. But if anyone comes to the master as a seeker to discuss the higher purposes of life, he is quite ready to do so. The fact that he seldom gives himself to others shows only that so few come to him in such a spirit. And for those who do he cannot eliminate the long search for truth, but he can shorten it. The intuition of the seeker which brought him into touch with the teacher has, however, to be put to the test during the probationary period. If during this contract time the seeker allows nothing, no outward appearance or inward doubt, to break his loyalty to the Guide, then the day will surely come when he can enter into full discipleship; but if, judging by intellect alone and deceived by superficial circumstances, he falls away from faith in his guide, then the rare opportunity will pass and be wasted. In that event he will spend the years groping amid semi-darkness for the entrance to the path which he has missed, but to which his teacher would gladly have led him in due course.
The master's Grace and guidance abides with this disciples so long as they abide inwardly with him.
At the moment of death of a disciple, the teacher will always be present spiritually to help him pass out of the body in a peaceful state of mind. If, as should be, the disciple places his last thoughts and faith in the teacher, that will call to the teacher wherever he may be, and he will appear to the mind's eye of the dying disciple.
And a master who has led even one chela some distance on this path will never be content to let him reappear on this earth without the hope of finding further guidance, further support, and further teaching. The master will never be content with the passionless peace of Nirvana the while his former students struggle in the maze of passions and suffer thereby. He is no master of the true doctrine that all beings are oneself in reality who could desert his students to gain his own ease. The awareness of his identity with ALL will surely and compulsorily arouse his profoundest compassion with those earnest seekers who know not whither to turn for genuine help during their groping amid the darkness. And this will lead to a single and certain result: that at the moment of dying he will WILL his own rebirth again and again until his flock are brought safely through the narrow gate which leads to the kingdom of heaven. Therefore it is said, for such is the mysterious reality of his telepathic power, that the birth of the guru sends forth an echoing vibration within the universe, which acts as a call to his unborn chelas to incarnate with him, and as a command to the principle of rebirth to make effectual the event. Thus he sacrifices himself for the salvation of his chelas.
Discipleship. Seeking the master: The word "guru" is sacred throughout India. Although a Sanskrit term, it has been incorporated into most of the varying tongues and dialects in the different provinces and is even used in several books written by Tibetan mystics.
Guru means teacher; and a teacher who has realized his responsibility and tested his views, who has proved his competence and established his trustworthiness, is very hard to find.
If a seeker cannot find himself, let him find a teacher. If he cannot find such a one, let him find a disciple. If he fails in that, too, let him find a book written by a teacher.
We are affected by our associates; he who keeps company with criminals is apt to descend into crime himself; he who seeks the spiritually minded as friends is apt to ascend to spirituality.
There are various teachers in the world, but each can only teach according to the experience he has had. Because we believe that meditation has a place and a purpose in life, this is no reason why we should raise every idiot who practises it to the stature of a sage, nor why we should esteem every charlatan who plays with it, as a saint.
There are several self-styled spiritual guides who can guide their flocks into all kinds of queer experiences, but they cannot guide them into the Kingdom of Heaven. That territory is barred to them. Consequently it is barred to those who meekly walk behind them. The reason for this is quite simple. Jesus explained it long ago. The lower ego with its baggage of desires is too big, while the door leading into the Kingdom is too small. In all their activities, these teachers fail to achieve a truly spiritual result because they are thinking primarily of themselves rather than of what they are supposed to be thinking. In some cases the process is an unconscious one, but in many it is not.
The difference between a false teacher and a genuine one is often the difference between a dominating dictator and a quiet guide. The false teacher will seek to emasculate your will or even to enslave your mind, whereas the true teacher will endeavour to exalt you into a sense of your own self- responsibility. The teacher who demands or accepts such servility is dangerous to true growth. In the end, he will require a loyalty which should be given only to the Overself. The true teacher will carry your soul into greater freedom and not less, into stabilizing truth and not emotional moods. The true teacher has no desire to hold anyone in pupilage, but on the contrary gladly welcomes the time when the disciple is able to stand without help from outside.
But because talk is easy and redemption is not demanded except in the distant future, these false teachers thrive for a while. Many of them are but students, yet find it hard to take the low places where humility dwells. Hence their gravity; hence the laughter of the gods at them. Could they but laugh at themselves awhile, and perhaps at their doctrines occasionally, they might regain balance, a sense of proportion--but greatest of all true Humility. They are not necessarily deliberate misleaders of others, these self-appointed saviours, but their mystical experiences have given them false impressions about themselves. Their authority is fallible and their doctrines are false. They find it easy to deliver themselves of lofty teachings, but hard to put the same teaching into practice. These gurus promise much, but in the sequel do not redeem their word. These self-styled adepts appear to be adepts in circumlocution more than in anything else.
Those who openly court worship or secretly exult in it cannot possibly have entered into the true Kingdom of Heaven. For the humility it demands is aptly described by Jesus when he describes its entrance as smaller than a needle's eye.
Would-be disciples who are so eager to fill this role that they are swept straightaway into enthusiasm by the extravagant promises of would-be masters, usually lack both the desire and the competence to investigate the qualifications of such masters. Consequently they pay the penalty of their lack of discrimination.
If a nation accepts and follows a wicked man as its leader, then there must be some fault in it which made this possible. And if a seeker accepts a false guide on his spiritual path, then there must be some false intuition, false thinking, or false standards which made this possible too.
There are various ways of appraising a teacher at his true worth. We may watch his external life and notice how he conducts his affairs, how he talks and works, and how he behaves towards other men. Or we may dive deep into his interior nature and plumb the depths of his mental life. The latter course presupposes some degree of psychic sensitiveness. The best way is to combine both, to penetrate the unseen and to observe the visible.
Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, uttered this warning; "Do not reverence those who call themselves guru and who beg for alms. Only those who live by the fruits of their labour and do honest and useful work are in the way of truth."
Spiritual knowledge is not to be bought and sold. Indeed it could not be. That which could be got and given in this way is only the pretense of it. It is utterly impossible for a man who has entered into communion with the World-Mind to sell his powers for money. The very act would of itself break his connection with it, leaving for his possession only those undesirable lesser powers which come from contact with the fringes of the nether world of dark spirits.
I dislike, and shall always dislike, any attempt to cash in on the spiritual assets of a teacher or his teaching. Those who begin to hawk the things of God, however indirectly and remotely become nothing but common hucksters.
The aspirant who expects a guru to be like himself, only somewhat better, a guru made in his own image, rejects the teacher who does not fit in with his preconception and goes on looking for the impossible.
The ideal sage is not the wandering sadhu but the working one, he who works incessantly to relieve the sufferings of his fellows and to enlighten them.
There are too many aspirants who are hoping, like Micawber in Dickens' story, for something to turn up. In their case it is a spiritual master who will not only take their burdens and responsibilities off their shoulders but, much more, translate them overnight into a realm of spiritual consciousness for evermore. They go on waiting and they go on hoping, but nothing turns up and no one appears. What is the reason for this frustration of their hopes? It is that they fail to work while they wait, fail to prepare themselves to be fit for such a meeting, fail to recognize that whether they have a master or not they must still work upon themselves diligently, and that the harder they work in this task of self-improvement, the more likely it is that they will find a master. They are like children who want to be carried all the way and coddled while they are being carried. They are waiting for someone to do what they ought to be doing for themselves. They are waiting to receive from outside what they could start getting straightaway by delving inside themselves.
Because of bad karma and inherent insensitivity most people fail to recognize the master as such, and therefore fail to take advantage of the opportunity offered by his presence among them.
Only the master's body can be perceived by the physical senses. His spirit must be received by intuition. If acceptance or rejection of him is based on the physical senses alone, then only a false master will be found, never a true one. If the idea of him is predetermined by conceptions about his appearance, and if he is accepted only because he looks handsome or speaks well, and rejected because he is lame, blind or diseased, then the true master will never be found, only charlatans and imposters.
He who says, "I want no mediator between myself and Truth," has the right instinct but the wrong attitude. None save self can make the divine discovery for him, but this is not to say that an adept who has attained the inward light cannot come to the one stumbling in darkness and give a guiding hand. As a matter of fact the true teacher does much more than this. He even gives that stimulus which carries us over the quest so steep and difficult, so beset with snares, and so often clouded over that a guide who has travelled the path already is more necessary than we dream. It is he who points out the direction when all are uncertain, who encourages when our pace slackens, who strengthens when our will weakens, and who becomes a bridge as it were between our present standpoint and a diviner one.
The oracle of wisdom must find a seat, the stream of divinity must find an outlet. Hence the need for a teacher.
If it be asked are the great Adepts accessible by the masses and willing to bestow help upon them, the answer is that they are not. They leave the masses to the infallible workings of gross Nature, which influences and develops them by its general internal evolutionary impetus; they leave even ordinary aspirants to the guidance of more advanced ones. In one way they stand like helpless spectators of the Great Show, for they may not interfere with but must ever respect the freewill of others, whose experience of embodied life is regarded by them as sacred. For this experience incarnation is taken, and its lessons are a fruit of which not even the Adepts may rob any man or woman. They reveal themselves to, and shed their aid upon, the few who can win their own way to their presence by preparatory self- purification, mystical methods, and philosophic understanding. Their duty is to guide such as have earned the right to their guidance and who can inwardly respond to them. From the foregoing statements it should now be obvious that the teachers who accept any and every applicant, themselves belong to the lowest rung and possess an imperfect character.
There is a craze for Messianic revelations. The weak and credulous will always worship the bold. Hence any man who has seen a corner of the veil lifted can come forward as a god who has seen all the veil lifted, and he is sure to collect an obedient flock. Such men are very apt at creating personal fantasies. They appear in their own eyes as God-sent guides and liberators.
It is a strange but saddening thought that all these would-be Christs are conscious of a world-wide mission which they have to perform, whereas the real adept is unconscious of having any mission whatever. The Infinite is embodied in him and carries out its work perfectly without calling up his own separate ego-hood. Since the latter has been blown out like a candle he cannot be conscious of having a mission. Only those who are still under the delusion of separateness can harbour such an idea.
The conclusion is that instead of wandering about looking for Christs to come, we should be better employed wandering inward looking for the Christ there, the Christ within. Such a truth is our best Saviour and the surest Avatar of our time.
Discipleship. Meditation:
To practise meditation on the way of discipleship is always simple, and often easier than all other exercises. It is to repose physically, let the personal life subside mentally and emotionally, think reverently and devotedly of the master, and thus surrender the ego to him.
The same technique applies to the connection with the guru. After he is "seen," you should take the plunge and try to "feel" his presence as the next stage. Later you should transfer to yourself as your own that which was formerly the characteristic of his presence, and this you can do only by dismissing him. When the teacher disappears for you in personal emotion, it is because you see him from the Atmic standpoint, impersonally; later the love will return as intensely as before, but you will find yourself free. You will not be attached.
Initiation cannot be conferred as lightly as many seekers imagine. It must be gained by one's own unremitting effort to understand; it must be attained by fitting oneself through constant reflection. It is the fruit of growth, not only the gift of a teacher. Not that the teacher is not needed: his guidance, instruction, and counsel are prerequisites of its attainment. And it should be observed that what he leaves unsaid is at times as important as what he says.
It should also be remembered that if visions arise of a deceased saint or a living guide it is because there is the conscious or unconscious wish to have them. This does not mean they are without reality or without truth. It means that the form in which spiritual help is expected contributes to the actual shaping of that help. It means that each individual receives his spiritual experience in terms which have the most meaning for him and which therefore make that experience most useful to him.
It is very hard to concentrate attention upon something which has no visible points, and that is the nature of the pure Spirit--formless and shapeless. The easier way is to form a mental picture of someone who represents the incarnation of your highest ideal, and to whom you are deeply attracted because he makes this ideal real for you, and then to strive in imagination for inward unity with him. When the living presence is felt, it is like meeting a friend; when the vision only is perceived, it is like seeing his painted portrait. Then meditate on the attributes of a divinely inspired character, on the qualities of a divinely guided life. Later, the time will certainly come when the mental picture will disappear of its own accord and will be replaced by the consciousness of pure Spirit which the master has represented for you.
In the Tibetan systems of meditation, at a certain state the worshipper of a god has to think of himself as being the god.
Discipleship. The disciple's work. Difficulties, Errors:
It would be wrong to believe that the attainment of a high degree of initiation into mystical truth makes any man or woman absolutely infallible in personal judgement or absolutely infallible in personal character.
He who is only a disciple himself has no right to become responsible for the inner life of another. But within the degree of both his understanding and his misunderstanding of truth he may cautiously, judiciously, offer a helping hand to others who may be even more precariously placed than himself. Both he and they should do this with a clear understanding of their situation, without exaggeration on his part and without fanaticism on theirs.
It is easier for women to follow the path of devotion, for men to follow the path of discipline. And the easiest form of the first path is to choose, as an object of this devotion, some individual who reflects the divine qualities. More women than men are usually to be found circling around a prophet, a saint, or a guide. They are drawn instinctively to personalities, where they cannot so easily as men, absorb principles. This is all right so long as they do not lose balance. But unfortunately this is what they often do. The relation between them and their leader then tends to become unhealthy for both and enfeebling for them. The noble devotion to him which they may properly show becomes frenzied attachment or foolish deification. This enlarges personal egoism instead of dissolving it, and real spiritual development is hindered by the very thing which ought to help it.
-- Notebooks Category 25: World-Mind in Individual Mind > Chapter 6 : Teaching Masters, Discipleship > # 274
