FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > The Need For a Spiritual Master > Resistance to Gurus

5. Where Our Resistance to Gurus Comes From


Chris Tong, Ph.D.


This is Part 5 of Chris Tong's six-part article, Why Great Spiritual Realization Requires a Spiritual Master.

In part 1 and part 2 of this article, I discussed why a Spiritual Transmission Master is functionally essential for Spiritual Realization of the greatest kinds. It is also important for us to be consciously aware of where the resistance we have to the very idea of "Spiritual Master", "Guru", etc. comes from. In general, that resistance is not based on our own careful consideration of the subject, or on any personal experience with Spiritual Masters. Rather, most of us are unconsciously programmed to mistrust or resist Gurus (and "authority" altogether) through our cultural upbringing; as a correlate, we are instead trained to be "self"-sufficient. But when what is required for great Spiritual Realization is "self"-transcendence, "self"-sufficiency can be the very thing that places us at war with our own Help, whereby we undermine our Ultimate Destiny.


The mass of humankind has nothing to do with Real Spiritual life — because, basically, what people are dramatizing is the willfulness associated with their own karmas, their own limitations, their own separateness, their own ordinariness. . .

Therefore, everybody becomes a philosopher. Everybody becomes a "self-guru". People are "self"-generating their own "dharma" [teaching], by piecing this and that together from what they read in books, thinking in their rooms, and indulging themselves. To what end? To become one of the Adepts, a Great Realizer, to Divinely Translate Beyond? No such "self"-indulgent and "self-guruing"-individual has ever Realized Real God. This has never happened.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, My "Bright" Sight



1. The potential corruptness of Spiritual mediators

In the history of Western civilization, the cultural origin of this resistance can be traced all the way back to the Reformation (500 years ago, in 1517), when Martin Luther strongly criticized the Catholic Church — and, more specifically, its clergy — for abusing their position, in corruptly trying to sell spiritual favors in exchange for money.[1] For Luther, this was just one example of a much bigger problem: the insertion of a "middleman" (priest, clergy, saints, etc.) between the ordinary person and God. Luther would go on to argue that the "middleman" or "priest" was not spiritually necessary, and therefore should be removed.


[Referring to those in the Catholic leadership:] How then if they are forced to admit that we are all equally priests, as many of us as are baptized. . . If they recognize this they would know that they have no right to exercise power over us . . . except insofar as we may have granted it to them

Martin Luther, On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520)


Thus was born the "minister", who, unlike a priest, was not held to be consecrated by God, and was viewed as simply performing a useful function for the community.

That questioning of the need for an intermediary between oneself and the Divine (along with a fear of the abuse that could go along with it) is still part of our cultural programming to this day. Pedophile priests in the Catholic Church reinforce it. But recent tragedies like Jonestown, Heaven's Gate, or David Koresh and Waco, project the same fear onto all new religious movements that have a "Spiritual Master" or "Guru".

This specific mistrust of spiritual authority or spiritual intermediaries resonates with a general, anti-authoritarian (and individual-empowering, "do it yourself") trend that has been growing ever since the Reformation. With the Renaissance and its humanistic focus, cultural life shifted its center from the Divine to man. The rise and success of science and technology complemented this shift away from God, since it demonstrated how much human beings could gain control of their world "on their own". Finally, the shift toward a largely materialistic view of reality has raised doubts about any greater-than-material reality, and, consequently, about anything spiritual (including "Spiritual Masters").

So these days, anyone raised in Western civilization will automatically be programmed to have a mistrust of authority in general; a mistrust of spiritual authority (or Gurus or Spiritual Masters) in particular; and a focus on self-empowerment.

There is no doubt that there are some significant advantages to the cultural changes that have occurred in the last five centuries. In a real sense, we as a civilization, have moved out of our childhood (coinciding with the "Dark Ages" and earlier) into our adolescence: doubting, questioning, criticizing, developing discrimination, etc. And that growth is a good thing!

But it has its limits. Individuals are intended to keep growing — not only beyond childhood into adolescence, but beyond adolescence into adulthood. Just so our civilization as a whole. This requires developing a greater intelligence than just the adolescent kind of indiscriminate anti-authoritarianism, which throws the baby out with the bathwater.

For example, "question authority" is a useful principle. But "question authority" remains merely (and petulantly) adolescent, if one never finds an authority or organizing principle to which one can submit oneself and one's life. In that case, one is "questioning authority" because one reacts to and rejects authority altogether, in adolescent fashion. In contrast, mature "questioning of authority" is always constructive, and always in service to the finding and/or creation of appropriate authority, understanding that a meaningful life requires an organizing principle.

It is actually the case that Divine Realization is possible, but it is also the case that one cannot Realize the Divine on one's own. Not everything is possible through a "do it yourself" approach . . . especially the complete transcendence of that "self". (Indeed, putting oneself in charge of the process of ego transcendence is a lot like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.) One actually does need a genuine Spiritual Transmission Master, and (fortunately) there actually are genuine Spiritual Transmission Masters. Knowing and living on the basis of these realities is a key part of the adulthood of our civilization (which has yet to fully take hold).

The primary reason we tend to react to the notion of a Spiritual Master is because we are (largely unconsciously) programmed by Western culture into a "do it yourself", anti-authoritarian disposition. In order to Realize Spiritually, we must first grow humanly outgrowing not only the childish, cultic way of relating to Master and community, but also outgrowing the adolescent tendency to reject or compete with one's own essential Help. It is a great shame that many people deprive themselves of the extraordinary opportunity of Realizing with the help of a Spiritual Master solely because their own (as yet uninspected) adolescent tendency talks them out of it! They notice and rightly reject childish tendencies in themselves and others, but don't yet fully appreciate the liability represented by their adolescent tendencies.

So in summary: It is good that we have outgrown our need for self-appointed "mediators" who place themselves between oneself and the Divine, but have no real Spiritual Power to make the Divine available. But we must grow further, and realize we do need a human incarnation of the Divine, to be able to locate the Very Divine (Who has always existed, but is otherwise not accessible), and come to recognize such a Divine Incarnation when one appears.


My Divine Avataric Self-"Emergence" here Is the Perfect Fulfillment of all the sacrifices that have been made by individuals and collectives since ancient-upon-ancient time. All of that provided the Incarnation-Vehicle for My Divine Avataric Self-"Emergence" here.

My Incarnate Divine Avataric Self-"Emergence" here Cancels the need for a mediator to connect the "world", the body, and the mind to the Divine.

I Am the Divine here-Presence — now, and forever hereafter, Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealed and Self-Given to all-and-All, in Always Already Perfect Coincidence with all-and-All, and Intrinsically As all-and-All.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, The Aletheon



2. Spiritual Masters as revolutionaries


The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Albert Camus

COMING SOON.

 


Part 6: Did Adi Da Himself Need a Spiritual Master?




[1]

Luther specifically criticized the sale of "indulgences" (through which once could ostensibly reduce the time one has to spend in purgatory after one dies).


Quotations from and/or photographs of Avatar Adi Da Samraj used by permission of the copyright owner:
© Copyrighted materials used with the permission of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. None of these materials may be disseminated or otherwise used for any non-personal purpose without the prior agreement of the copyright owner. ADIDAM is a trademark of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as Trustee for the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.

Technical problems with our site? Let our webmaster know.