How did "guru" become a four-letter word? "Walking into a party
and telling someone you have a guru is like saying, 'I'm a
heroin addict,'" writes Mariana Caplan in
Do You Need a
Guru: Understanding the Student-Teacher Relationship in an Era
of False Prophets (London: Thorsons, 2002). And that's no
joke. Let's think about it for a minute. What comes to mind when
you hear the word "guru"? Do you get misty images from the good
old sixties, love-beads and long hair and all? Folks in funky
dress swaying together as they sing
Hare Krishna in
front of a smiling bearded man in long robes? Maybe you
half-laugh, "Been there, done that," with the underlying resolve
never to do
that again. Or maybe you think about your
meditation teacher, recognizing how much help you've been given.
But she's not a guru—or is she? And you might vaguely
recall news stories of a charismatic Indian man with a fleet of
Rolls Royces in the desert somewhere. Or perhaps your thoughts
turn even more ominous, recalling spiked Kool-Aid and other cult
insanity. Funny, while we feel comfortable with business gurus,
exercise gurus, financial gurus, when it comes to
spiritual gurus—
guru gurus—we're often not comfortable at all.
Indeed, isn't it interesting that there are few questions in
the contemporary spiritual world more loaded than this one: What
is the role of spiritual authority in our search for wisdom and
wholeness? It's totally understandable that we're more than a
little gun shy, given how much we've been failed by the
authorities in our lives. The twentieth century was an age of
disillusionment—our faith in the integrity of all
authority, from parents to police, from religious leaders to
secular ones, has been shattered over and over again. But, even
so, the truth is that for literally thousands of years, in many
different cultures (including ancient Greece, the cradle of
Western civilization) the teacher-student relationship has been
the most venerated and successful vehicle for profound and
lasting human transformation. Historians tell us that Christ
sought out the teachers of his time, and so did the Buddha—before he discovered the "middle way" that
revolutionized spirituality in ancient India. It is rare to find
saints or sages, now or in the past, who have realized Ultimate
Truth outside some form of relationship with a teacher. And in
our everyday lives we have no trouble recognizing that usually
the most effective means of learning just about anything is
through the one-on-one teacher-student relationship. Even
nowadays, our most powerful vehicle for personal growth and
change is relationship with a psychotherapist or perhaps with an
intimate partner.
In our spiritual lives, however, we find ourselves in a "great
dilemma," as Caplan puts it. You see, even though the
teacher-student relationship historically has been the primary
context in which individuals reach the most profound
transformation, so many gurus and spiritual teachers have
drastically let us down. And we've been let down at a time when
humanity desperately
needs spiritual guidance. The
future that is staring us in the face—a world of
genetic engineering, weapons of mass destruction, and
environmental devastation—cries out for new spiritual
vision, for a transformation in human consciousness that can
cope with the global chaos and complexity that our technological
imagination has released. So, is there a way past the dilemma
with spiritual authority—a way to revitalize the
teacher-student, or dare I say, guru-disciple relationship that
actually takes into account both our understandable skepticism
and our need for true and trustworthy help to actually
transform? In other words, is there a way to re-vision this
crucial learning context so that it is not simply a part of our
history but serves to create a new future?
Now, obviously, I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't think
that there was some way beyond this dilemma. Like Caplan, I have
a guru myself, and so I have a more than academic interest in
the subject. In her new book, Caplan offers an updated approach
to this thorny issue, one that shakes the dust off the guru's
robes and takes the whole relationship through a badly needed
makeover, giving it relevance to our psychologically savvy,
self-authorized lives. At a time when the question of having a
spiritual teacher is no question at all—because the
answer is
no way—Caplan reopens the entire
subject by bringing a cutting-edge spiritual perspective to this
ancient and august tradition. But let's be clear that, face-lift
or not, a relationship with a spiritual teacher is certainly not
for everyone.
Do You Need a Guru? provides practical
guidance for those who are trying to understand the purpose of
the relationship with the teacher and what it takes to make it
work today. Facing directly into the scandals of the past,
Caplan, a psychotherapist and student of spiritual teacher Lee
Lozowick, develops a new model for a committed relationship to
spiritual authority, which she calls
conscious
discipleship, outlining the qualities needed by teacher
and student for success. She also explores the "hot
issues" related to obedience, betrayal, and even outrageous
behavior on the part of the guru. Never straying far from either
its inherent pitfalls or promises, she gives us an
eyes-wide-open, contemporary look at this relationship that has
been a crucible for human transformation for millennia.
Yet, the question "Do you need a guru?" is more than a
practical one. Opening it up confronts us with some of the most
deeply held shibboleths of our postmodern era—those
hot button beliefs about who we are, what is humanly possible,
and how we should relate to each other. I mean, even the
relatively simple question—
Why would one choose to
have a committed relationship with a spiritual teacher in this
day and age?—can have quite a charge. Right below
the seemingly placid surface there often float some big
assumptions. In fact, most of the time, what "Why would one want
to have a teacher?" typically means is something more like:
C'mon, haven't we become far too sophisticated and knowledgeable
to put ourselves in that kind of dependent relationship? Or to
put it less politely: Isn't this whole business of having a
teacher simply a way to avoid responsibility and look for the
perfect mommy or daddy? And the tricky thing is that both are
true—we
have become too sophisticated to
assume a dependent role in an authoritarian relationship, and
too often the desire to find a teacher
is all mixed up
with other motivations that have more to do with comfort and
solace than with real transformation.
Yes, we've become too egalitarian and psychologically astute to
have the same relationship to teachers that you'd find in India
or Tibet. "Question authority" and "Know thyself" were twin
slogans of the sixties, slogans that have now been absorbed into
the very atmosphere of postmodern life. The sixties assault on
traditional authority—anti-war protests, struggles for
civil rights, the battle for equality between the sexes—cracked the hierarchies that created the fixed positions of
dominance and dependence that had been in place since medieval
times. In our questioning, we found our authorities wanting, and
so made
ourselves the ultimate authorities in a
glorious ideal of equality and freedom for all. For perhaps the
first time in human history, an entire generation had the option
to step outside the bounds of tradition and expectation to
create new plots for our life-stories. Rather than looking to
authorities for answers, the question became: How do we
authorize ourselves to lead our own lives? And so, increasingly,
psychological investigation—the exploration of our own
needs, desires, fears, and motivations—became our
guide to fulfillment in these new personal narratives.
Psychology gave us the knowledge to self-authorize, to author
our own lives by looking to ourselves for direction.
It's no wonder, then, that in this democratic climate of
self-determination, the relationship between spiritual teacher
and aspiring student—which always is and always has
been hierarchical—might seem simply out of date or
useful only as a safe haven for those not ready, willing, or
able to take charge of their own lives. And this dominant
cultural view has only been exacerbated by the disastrous mess
left in the wake of many of the Eastern gurus coming West.
Caplan ironically presents "a simplification of the trendy
spiritual perspective," which goes as follows: "The gurus came
West in the sixties, we believed in them, gave them our money
and lives and souls, and they betrayed us with scandals of
money, sex, and power." The dubious conclusion that we drew from
this affair, she says, was that "we have passed through that
immature phase, and are now ready for the new: the great return
to rugged, spiritual individualism." Sharply noting that this
stance of independence is "a classic example of American
thought" and therefore nothing new at all, Caplan observes that
"We burned through thousands of years of tradition as quickly as
we are burning through all the rest of the world's natural
resources." And what does spiritual individualism entail? Taking
the teaching, not the teacher. Reading classic and contemporary
teachings on our own, perhaps going to see different spiritual
teachers to get a variety of perspectives, engaging in different
spiritual practices. And using our psychological knowledge of
ourselves to guide us on the path to greater fulfillment.
All of this is well and good—in fact, it's great.
When in human history has so much spiritual wisdom been so
widely and readily available? Probably never. But in our
anti-hierarchical, psychologically aware state, what could be
the role of the teacher-student relationship? Clearly, as
time-honored as this relationship may be as a means to
transformation, it cannot just be airlifted from another culture
and dropped into our own. What would it mean to bring all of who
we are at the beginning of the twenty-first century, all of our
questioning of authority and our psychological perceptiveness,
into this preeminently powerful context for change?