--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > "Actually casual investigation will show that Guru Dev was very > reluctant to take the post of Shankaracharya. It took twenty years > (!) for him to take it. You are either trying to start a discussion, > or haven't taken the time to challenge your assumptions with some > research." > > This was my point. Before he was Shankaracharya he couldn't > stand to be around people. When they were waving camphor and > ghee lamps in front of him worshiping him as Shankaracharya > he was OK with people. I think he had a strange relationship > with his fellow man.
I know very little about Guru Dev and have no desire to find out more. He's dead, and of no relevance to my life. But what you say here, Curtis, strikes a *strong* relevance to things I've noticed in my study of spirituality in general. There is *all too often* a common trait among spiritual teachers -- they have an inability to relate to other people *except* in the role of teachers, to whom these other people are often *required* to wave camphor and treat them as *non-equals*. One has to journey far and wide to find a spiritual teacher who is willing or able to relate to his or her students as equals, and to form any relationships with them that are *not* based on an enormous disparity of power. I've seen this trait in *so many* spiritual teachers that I really think it "comes with the territory." Just as it can be legitimately said that anyone who actually wants to become President of the United States is unqualified to hold the position, I think it can be legitimately said that anyone who is willing to fit into the trad- itional "me teacher, you peon" spiritual teacher mold is potentially unqualified to do so. It's just such an *artificial* model, and one that in my long-considered opinion has so many *drawbacks* for both student and teacher, that I think the whole traditional teacher-student model should be thrown into the trash bin and another one found.
