It is customary to look for a spiritual guide when we decide to embark more formally upon the pathway of enlightenment, particularly if it is being conducted within the Yogic and Hindu schools of belief. I have several times been asked if I have a guru myself and I always respond that I do, that it is the best guru you could possibly have and that everyone in fact has one, which is their own inner Self, their personal guide.
Most people have heard of gurus and many also have a fair understanding of what the name means. The term evokes contradictory perceptions, from a sense of the exotic and notions of Eastern wisdom and mystique, all the way to cynical charlatanism. Stories abound of people from Western cultures going to India, never to return, lured into some ashram or other and the aegis of a guru. Juxtaposed with a deep seated mistrust of these figures is an equally deep seated fascination, a feeling that possibly they do indeed have some sort of key to a philosopher’s stone, some magical ability to deliver the divine, or at least to make your problems go away. They talk in strange ways which challenge the mundane world conditioned listener to see that world and their own selves within it in different ways. For many folk caught up in an unrelenting modern life with its proliferation of obligations and demands upon one’s freedoms, this can be immensely attractive.
Given the sheer number of these characters, however is one to discern the genuine from the phoney? Mere appearances are unhelpful, as so many gurus sport the standard customary look generally of white or saffron robes, long hair, longer beards (generally grizzled) turbans or versions thereof, including even beanie hats. And they all seem to have that certain beaming quality of smile, which can border on the sanctimonious. The few female gurus I have seen are generally dressed simply in Indian style clothing such as white sarees. Of course this by no means guarantees the product, simply by having the packaging look convincing.
In earlier years, during the experiments I made with different traditions, I did briefly fall under the influence of a real life guru myself. Two of them in fact. A brief flirtation with the movement founded by Sri Chinmoy (onetime of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry, India) expected the pursuant to embrace Chinmoy and his teachings in totality, as in the demand “give your heart, mind and soul to the guru”, at which point I knew it was time for me to leave. In my subsequent experiment with Sahajayoga, Sri Matagee was the guru in question, another self proclaimed Divine Mother in fact, with a similar demand to commit oneself in totality to the sovereignty of the guru. It seemed that you must renounce all independence and self responsibility and sublimate yourself entirely to the guru, who (in these two cases as indeed with many) claimed to be nothing less than an incarnation of God (or a version thereof) on Earth.
Personal Responsibility
Whatever your personal beliefs, it seems to me to be the greatest danger to give over your responsibility for yourself to some outer authority, as though you have returned to childhood. What is needed is a robust inner wise counsel and critical faculty, as well as a preparedness to take full responsibility for oneself in this journey of life. That is not to say needing advice or guidance isn’t necessary or desirable, but wisdom and guidance can be found in many and sometimes quite unlikely places, and generally come when needed. It seems to me that part of the problem lies in the fact that many people have a hope or an expectation that the hard work of self realisation can be passed over to some higher guru figure. I recall that with Sri Chinmoy, there was an implicit acceptance that the pathway to full Self Realisation was, in fact, too prohibitively hard for the majority of seekers anyway, therefore they would need somehow to bind themselves in the aforementioned mind, body and soul to the guru and somehow become enlightened and transcend on his/her spiritual credentials.
It all boils down to the need for taking full responsibility for oneself, which I might observe seems increasingly unpopular in the age we live in. Yet a refusal to grasp this most basic of nettles of how to approach living life honestly condemns people to being a sort of perpetual teenager. During the process of leaving childhood immaturity and dependence behind and moving forward into adulthood, there is an in-between stage where young adults expect to be able to enjoy the freedoms of adulthood, yet none of its responsibilities. This is a fairly general and understandable stage which shouldn’t have to endure for long. With many people, however, it seems to last for years, well on into their advancing adult life in fact. It is a most basic fact of life that with freedom comes responsibility. If we expect to enjoy liberties to do and be as we choose, we must be accountable to wider society, indeed to the very earth that we live upon, for our behaviour and actions.
It is the same in pursuing the spiritual pathway to enlightenment. ‘Self Realisation’ in the purely spiritual understanding of that term, which this website is largely about, literally means realising yourself as the Self. If this seems absurd, dangerous or simply unachievable, or your interest in spirituality is grounded in psychology, it can also mean bringing into consciousness and fully integrating into your personality as much as the total potential of the Self archetype as possible (the process called Individuation by Carl Jung). Whichever version you are aiming for, this inevitably means that it is you who must do the work in order to achieve the goal. No one can do this for you. A good teacher should simply offer guidance and general advice along the pathway at those times when confusion sets in, or obstacles present themselves in ways that confound. Yet I have observed that with many folk signing up to the various schools/traditions of yoga of the sort that proliferate in places like Rishikesh, and increasingly on-line, this dominion of the guru appears part of the deal. I should qualify this by admitting that I do not know this for an absolute fact as I haven’t conducted any independent research into it, yet it nevertheless appears to be the case. As with a woman of middle years based in Rishikesh and under the direction of a personal guru, who had been recommended by him to train in being a guru herself at some course or other, who apparently had to check in with him via her phone wherever she went, as though she were a child or a person on probation.
In Why I am a Hindu (2018), ‘Gurus and the God Market’, Shashi Tharoor discusses the whole phenomenon and associated issues of modern gurus and what I have here called the ‘spiritual industries’, particularly as it relates to India. It is very much worth reading.
A very useful brief explanation of who or what constitutes ‘Sadguru’ – a true spiritual teacher or master/mistress – is given in: ” Who is a real guru? How do I find a real guru?” at Ananda.org, where the respondent writing clarifies that not even good spiritual teachers necessarily constitute ‘true’ ie Self Realised teachers. Recommended reading for those who are not certain what the distinction is. https://www.ananda.org/ask/real-guru-find-real-guru/
Jayaram V discusses the Hindu concept of Kaivalya, the state of aloneness where the individual takes full responsibility for their spiritual journey with only the guidance of the Self as their true guru. This has been my own journey. See: https://www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/essays/kaivalya-the-state-of-aloneness.asp