Name: Yogi
Topic: Solo/Masters
Sent: 22.55 - 5/16 2001

This topic is of supreme importance.

I don't really know where to start. It is a very vast topic. As many of you know, I have worked extensively solo. I have also taught meditation and techniques to others. Occasionally people still contact me and want me to work with them, even though I haven't being doing the teaching thing for the past couple of years.

I have also had spiritual masters, and spent some time in my young adulthood seeking my right master.

First I want to say something that may seem like semantics, but to me there is a universal gap between the two concepts.

Learning a technique from a teacher is not the same thing as surendering to a Master.

I have been around the spiritual growth paradigm since I was a teenager. I believe actual spiritual masters are very, very rare phenomena. I believe that 99.99% of people called Master would actually, in my mind, be teachers, not masters.

A teacher is someone who imparts useful knowledge. A technique that works. A mentor who shows you the ropes.
A respected friend who has wisdom and experience in an area in which you wish to develop those qualities. An encounter with a teacher can be informative, even life changing, in the sense that you can pick up new viewpoints, and develop new habits and practices by association with a teacher.

A Master is a totally different phenomenon.

The confront with the master is completely shattering. There is no way to prepare your ego for it. In a single instant of surrender which is completely incomprehensible to the mind, the heart is blasted open while the mind is completely bypassed.

I know exactly when this moment happened for me, and most people who have had this experience can pinpoint the exact moment of it too. The master need not be physically present, or even know it is happening for you. However, the next time he sees you, he will know immediately.

That moment is surrender. The surrender, in fact, has nothing to do with the Master. It is totally on the disciple. The disciple allows himself momentarily to be as open as the master always is. The master isn't doing anything. Only the disciple opens deep enough to experience the deep oceanic beingness that is the home of the Master. The only difference is that the master lives in that oceanic beingness, whereas the disciple only experiences it temporarily, as in a satori, or temporary no-mind experience.

This is not to say that the master lives in an altered state. The master is exceptionally clear and focused, because he is open and without resistance to his own beingness. To encounter a master is to encounter someone who is simultaneously absolutely ordinary, and yet completely extraordinary.

A master may or may not give techniques. The techniques may or may not have a profound impact on you. So a master can do what a teacher does.

What is transformative with a teacher is the technique or the knowledge gained.

What is transformative with a master is the connection with a level of being that the disciple was not experiencing before his moment of surrender.

A master's role is not permanent. Once the disciple can live at the level of openness and beingness of a master, typically, the Master will terminate the relationship. The Zen literature is rife with examples of the master kicking out or rejecting his own best disciples, and then the disciple finding his own mastery shortly therafter.

The former disciple is usually always grateful to his Master, but the master doesn't go through life owing anything to anybody, or holding debts against anybody else. Therefore, a master doesn't feel like any disciples owe him any homage or credit whatsoever.

Where you see so-called masters or gurus requiring homage or obedience, understand that these are not people I consider masters. They may be either good or bad teachers, but the very idea that someone else owes them something is a dead-on sign that they are not actual spiritual masters free from any mind-bondage whatsoever.

A Master doesn't have to be a Master. S/he only does it because of the sincerity of people who need a Master. A master could live just fine in an ordinary life, holding a regular job, having a boss, etc. For example, Paramahansa's Yogananda's master's master, named Lahiri Mahasaya, was widely visited by his disciples from around India and could easily have had a temple built to support him. Instead, he worked his job with the Indian railroad until his retirement, and stayed in his house with his wife until he died. His bosses knew he was a spiritual master, but he remained in his role with them, discharging his duties at his job, by choice, because he was perfectly happy. This is the kind of non-attachment I am talking about. I know this flies in the face of our new-age self-styled gurus for whom self-employment is a necessary badge of honor required for guru status.

It should be clear by now that I don't consider most new-age gurus, or self-help bestselling authors as being masters. They can be great people, warm-hearted mentors, and even make millions, but these qualities are not spiritual mastery.

I am looking at the Buddha, some of the Zen masters, Bodhidharma, also some of the early Taoist figures like Lao Tzu, and Chuang-Tzu. I believe that Yogananda was of this caliber also. Socrates was in this class. I am sure there must be others, but they are not my master, so I am not connected to them.

My moment of surrender happened in the context of my connection to Osho. I was doing a meditation called "Latihan" one night with a couple of his disciples. One of them is my friend Kabir who is a singer of Indian raga and devotional music, and who has translated one of my all-time favorite Osho books from Osho's lectures in Hindi on the sutras of Ashtavakra. My mind still can't comprehend what happened to me that night, and I still expand out and experience new levels from my connection with Osho. It just blossoms forth, and is not necessarily caused by any techniques or meditation practice.

There may be some others alive today. I will not be attracted to someone else's master and vice-versa. The idea that everyone will recognize a master doesn't hold up. You could walk right past someone like Gurdjieff in the street and not notice. And if you engaged him in a conversation, you might not like him. He might tell you the truth about yourself, and you might strongly resist that. Mastery is not the same thing as charisma. I am not talking about glowing halos and supernormal parlor tricks. Not everyone will connect with a Master, and some masters work very quietly with only a few people. Headline news-making is not necessarily a sign of mastery. The number of disciples has nothing to do with it.

Lastly, I should state that Masters are people too. They have preferences. They make mistakes. They may not be able to do your math homework. Most masters can't fix your computer or your car. Like everyone else, they have their areas of expertise, and their likes and dislikes. A master may get angry and not resist his anger. Osho said that in fact only a master is capable of being absolutely ordinary: everyone else still resists themselves at some level.

That we want our masters to be more than human may only be a reflection that we have not accepted our own humaness.

I think we have many good teachers and accomplished solo explorers here.

Despite being a disciple, I explore solo 99% of the time. I think solo is where you have the deepest encounters with yourself. You can experience deep encounters with the self in a place where many other people are, as in a group training, but the encounter is still with one's self, not a relationship. You can meditate with hundreds of other people and use the group energy as a support, but the real depth only comes from diving deep within. Diving deep within can also be done completely alone.

Totally solo, or using teachers to get famililiarity with techs, using books and others for support, all are useful, and which you choose is a matter of preference. A master is not necessary for spiritual unfoldment, and some of the greatest masters had no guru themselves.

I liken it to music. You will see guys with great bands who attribute their mastery to their mentors. Then you will also see great soloists who were entirely self taught. Some are Juilliard graduates like Thelonious Monk. Some are entirely self taught and can't read a lick of music like Muddy Waters.
I think one's own patience and persistence are what makes the difference here, not whether you choose to work with or without teachers or a master.

Ultimately, those who say a master is not necessary are the victors in this debate. A master is not necessary. The surrender is to the existence itself. The master is just a trick to get you to surrender.
It just happens that many people find it easier to surrender to a master than to say, a rock, or to an abstraction like "Existence". Osho said as a master he was completely replaceable by any common stone. If you could completely surrender to a rock, you would have an enlightenment experience just the same. Or a tree, or an energy-based clearing process....

So I will agree- a master is not necessary.

But on this point I will not budge - surrender is absolutely necessary. By surrender I mean the dropping of resistance. Drop a little resistance and you get a nice light feeling. In a drop where all your resistance is blown, you get a spiritual awakening.

You can achieve this without a master, or even a teacher, but you cannot achieve this while clinging to your resistance. And you will not be able to drop resistance by using the mind. Some device must blow your mind away in order for this to happen.

In our old meditation center here in Seattle, there was a sign next to the meditation room. It said, "Please leave your shoes, with your mind, at the door." I really loved that little sign. Whoever made it understood this thing.

-Yogi