Gurus and Spiritual Masters
An assessment and incomplete listing
Writing Rivers and Streams blog - Honoring our teachers. I'm not necessarly a devotee of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi or a Krishnaite, but I love this image for its cosmic naunaces and artistic and emotionally evocative tone; it embodies everything that the true guru, the Sad Guru or truly Realized being, as a universal or transcendent principle, represents.
This project is currently in the midst of reorganisation...
On the authentic guru...
"...(T)he greatest Master is much less a Teacher than a Presence pouring the divine consciousness and its constituting light and power and purity and bliss into all who are receptive around him."
On those who are not quite of that level of Realization...
"So long as it's not exclusive, that is, so long as the man or woman (whoever they are), the guru, doesn't come and say, "I alone am the Truth" (meaning the others don't know, I alone know), so long as they're not like that, it's quite all right. And when they're enlightened enough to tell you, "Yes, I've caught hold of one little bit, I am giving it to you, but all other little bits are good" ... But even if you put all the bits together, you are still far from the Truth."
"Many people have the Great Vehicle Root Nature, but there are also many people who lie. Having cultivated without success, such people claim to have the way. Though they have not certified the fruit, they claim to be certified sages."
Bodhidharma and Hui-K'o - Fact, Fiction, Legend
Note on this topic:
This topic contains some material originally written some seven or eight years ago. Some of this, and some of the assesments, no longer reflect my current understanding. So the relevant sections have to be rewritten or deleted.
Many of these pages are no doubt very biased or opinionated, I am only writing about things as I see and understand them, or as i understood them at the time of writing them. Others are more neutral. See this disclaimer. As the topic is revised, I will be modifying and toning down the more arrogant and presumptious statements; my concern is to provide a non-polemical coverage that takes into consideration all perspectives, while at the same time upholding the truth in as much as it can be partially understood, and not making excuses for self-deluded and abusive gurus.
I should point out that I no longer use the word "Enlightenment", although it appears on many of these pages. The reason I don't is because it has been so abused by self-deluded so-called gurus, many of which indeed may have power, but lack gnosis. Universal, authentically Enlightened and avataric gurus are here referred to as Realized beings (or will be, when the pages are all revised)
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