Are Spiritual Teachers Necessary?

This is a serious question. What are spiritual teachers and do we need them? In the West until recently there were no such things as spiritual teachers. There were priests, monks and theologians but these were not spiritual teachers as in the modern sense, borrowed from India, of supposedly enlightened people who could guide their followers to enlightenment. Spiritual teachers in the guru sense are only about 150 years old at the most in this hemisphere and, as far as I can see, they haven't done anyone any real good. Indeed, many of them have been harmful, more interested in personal power and prestige than true spirituality. It is a heady experience, being adored by the faithful who see you as some kind of superman or even divine being, and it can turn the head of even those who start out with good intentions, perhaps after a spiritual experience that makes them think they have broken through to a new and higher consciousness permanently. But time always shows that is not the case. They are just ordinary people, subject to the ordinary sins and temptations. And though they can be helpful at the beginning, they often end up being traps.

I wrote this paragraph about a month ago meaning to develop it later but forgot about it so it just sat in the drafts section of this blog. But I was reminded of it by an excellent post of Bruce Charlton's which he called Against Spiritual Methods. See here. The post concluded with these lines which make the general point that it is motivation that matters in the spiritual world not method.

We should pursue our spiritual aims, from our best motivations (of love); and we should never trust the methods by which these aims are pursued; but always retain discernment concerning the effects that 'what we are doing' is actually having upon us. 

We should never let the method itself dictate what counts as true, virtuous or beautiful - but need to retain a direct apprehension of these values. 

There is an almost inevitable transition between learning to trust the method; to unconsciously using the method to generate what we desire. And these unconscious desires are nearly always self-gratifying and hedonic - which is why manipulative power-games and exploitative sexuality are so often a feature of New Age groups and techniques. 

Method belongs to the world of science and technology. It is always an attempt to force your will onto something and subject it to your desire. In spiritual terms this is getting things back to front. You do not get the soul to do your bidding. You must submit yourself to the reality of the soul. This doesn't mean that there are not things you can and should do to attune yourself to the reality of God and the spiritual self. Prayer and meditation come to mind. But if the motivation is not right, if it is not what I call love of God as opposed to desire for heaven that drives you, then you are chasing shadows. And if you think that any method or practise will make you more 'spiritual', you don't understand what spiritual means. A method may have effects on everyday consciousness that we in our ignorance might call spiritual but then certain drugs can do that too. In the spiritual world it is the heart that is important and if we pursue the path for our own personal advantage or benefit we are effectively materialists.

As for teachers, I do not deny that they can be helpful. How could I, given the story I describe in my Meeting the Masters book? But the evidence from the 20th century shows the field is wide open to corruption and perhaps the lesson we can draw from that is that times have changed. We are now required to be self-motivated and self-taught. This obviously does not mean that we cannot learn from others and that there are not people to whom we can turn for guidance. But the elevated guru figure belongs to the past and we should probably retune our thoughts to the traditional Western idea of a spiritual guide, a fellow-traveller who points us to God rather than himself and does this in practice not just theory.

In saying this I do not mean to disparage real gurus but I suspect their time is past and that is why we have had so many duds of late. Human consciousness evolves, much as some people don't like the idea of that, and as it does our engagement with the religious life does too.