 161. Teachers, Spiritual |
Ram Dass States:
Ultimately each person finds his or her linage or route through. And when you reach the stage of asking, "God, know me," or "let me be enlightened," or "I want Nirvana," or however you've said it, at that moment you call forth your spiritual guide or Guru, whom you may not know and may never know until the moment of your enlightenment, That being may be Christ, it may be any one of a number of beings, and is not necessarily on the physical plane. In fact, for most of us, our real Guru, our Sat Guru, is not on the physical plane. Our Guru will guide us, to the extent that we are asking purely, through one teaching after another. Some of them will be in the form of teachers or situations or experiences. And when we trust that we are in relationship to our Guru, we will constantly learn how to ask our Guru inside, and listen, and tune to the awareness of the presence of our guide, and allow our Guru to guide us, and we will begin to see how each situation is being presented by our Guru to bring us home.
Our Guru or guide represents a unique and specific lineage. CHRIST REPRESENTS A LINEAGE. PADMA SAMBHAVA REPRESENTS A LINEAGE. MOHAMMED REPRESENTS A LINEAGE. ABRAHAM REPRESENTS A LINEAGE. MAHARA-JI REPRESENTS A LINEAGE. Not all lineages are necessarily identified with any specific religion. Many of the highest beings have incarnated across time and across religions. And the same lineages have come down so that a being could represent a lineage which has manifested within Tibetan Buddhism, within Hinduism, within Judaism, within Christianity. Just as Luke is different from John, is different from Paul, is different from Peter, so Milarepa is different from Tilopa. Yellow Cloud is different from Cochise in the American Indian holy man tradition. The different Tzaddiks in the mystic tradition of Judaism represent different lineages. In the Talmud, the different rabbis represent the different lineages. We are ultimately going to make it through on a specific linage. We may not have a guide in form, we might be advait, meaning non-dualistic, the formless, which would attract us ultimately, we start to fall into a linage, not because it's the hip thing to do, not because our intellect tells us how its interesting, not because it's a nice community and we like the way they dress, but because that way pulled us. It's our way through.
And as we tune to that linage, our perception shifts, and we begin to notice changes in figure and ground in relationship. We notice teachers we never noticed before; we notice people to be with we never noticed before. The whole process starts to narrow in perceptually, and we start to go directly on what the Theosophists call a "ray" coming from God. Even working devotionally with the concept of God is a ray, for merging into God is merging into where the concept of God is not, because it's beyond the concept of God. Where God is not is exactly what the state of nirvana is. But to know that all ways lead to the end does not nullify the requirement that, sooner or later, we will have to make some sort of commitment or other. A process of surrender is required.
And we go through the linage. A linage which is pure is one that catapults us ultimately out the other end; it isn't designed to make us followers of the linage. It is designed to take us through itself and free us at the other end. A less pure teaching of a linage traps us in the linage, makes us a Buddhist or a Christian or a Hindu, not a free being, because when the people that lead do not have the full connection, they cling to the vehicle rather than the truth towards which the vehicle is directed, and vehicles (institutions) corrode unless they are constantly fed by the living spirit. And the living spirit comes only through beings who are it. We can become organizational groupies as part of our path, but if we know it's not enough, we must have the honesty to let it go. Ultimately we will come out of a linage at the other end and acknowledge that through the Sufi, through the Hebrew, through the Christian, through the Buddhist, through the Hindu, through the Zoroastrian, through linage after linage, have come beings who are the living spirit. Then, like Ramakrishna, we will put on each of the hats, not out of need, but out of acknowledgment, to appreciate the universality of ways. A true master, in the perfection of all ways, even through the form in which he or she manifest may be a vehicle for the transmission of a certain linage. Ramakrishna followed the path of devotion to the Mother. But when he completed his work, through he remained in the path of devotion to the mother, he was totally in the Advait, non-dual state, way beyond the mother. So at the beginning is eclecticism, at the end is universality, and in the middle is the linage.
