A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook a query about whether a gentleman called Sadhguru (whose site is here) was or was not an authentic spiritual teacher.
Trying to distinguish true from false teachers is, for reasons I will suggest below, a particular obsession of ours, around which considerable emotion is generated. But really we should be forewarned. If there were true and false teachers, then there would be truth and falsehood, good and bad, and these things there are not. Truth is situated not only beyond good and evil but also beyond truth and falsehood; truth in the non-dual sense does not tolerate or recognize a world in which teachers are true or false, any more than it tolerates or recognizes one in which they are good or bad, right or wrong. This is all a conceit of the mind. Yet we play it, again, and again. This game of the mind closes us to the heart, the only organ with which we can see and understand.
Now, personally, when I am trying to figure out whether a teacher has really “got it” and is saying and teaching something of general value to the human race (and not only to themselves, which is not my concern), I have a golden rule – what they say about sex. Mostly they ignore it, which is not a great sign. However, in this video, Sadhguru is asked a question and in his reply he portrays the sexual instinct, not as bad, but as essentially unimportant and a distraction.
This is objectively not the case. Whatever realms sexuality may or may not open us to – and many of us instinctively sense its relationship to the divine – it is in any case the locus of mankind’s fundamental neuroses. It cannot be worked around or ignored – it needs to be healed. That is, it perhaps can be worked around, but this is no shortcut, it is a very, very long detour. One can well imagine how Osho would have answered; but perhaps even more tellingly one cannot imagine that, in Rajneeshpuram, this question would ever have been asked. It was clear to Osho and I believe it was clear in practice that human sexuality should be unleashed, and that whatever mess one might make of it (provided it did not lead to unwanted pregnancies or disease) was in any case better, and resulted in more learning and personal growth, than the alternative.
Several of the others on the discussion thread, in tending to defend Sadhguru, displayed, to my mind, two fundamental mistakes. Firstly, they used their mind to try to assess whether what Sadhguru was saying was or was not, or could or could not be construed as, compatible with other teachings, such as those of Osho, with which they were familiar and tended to identify. To me this question is entirely unimportant and not very informative. What I say is very compatible, I believe at least, with what Osho said; I feel I know his mind and it is as if we are one mind. And yet, people are not queueing up to follow me, nor I think should they (yet 😉 ). Osho has simply realized, embodied, things that I have not, and these things are transmitted from heart to heart; what he says is just background music to this language of the heart. The relevance of what he says is a sign of his connectedness to the universe, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient, and it could deceive. Secondly, and this underlines the folly of the approach via the mind, my companions seemed unduly concerned to be inclusive; not to exclude Sadhguru, or anyone else, from the circle of qualified teachers, always to give them the benefit of the doubt, to avoid choosing. This should show us that the mind is not the neutral arbiter we imagine it to be. It is at least as concerned to avoid disrupting the ego as it is to uncover truth.
So my very rapid working hypothesis on Sadhguru is that, whilst he may be worth listening to and may have many qualities, he is not pushing his followers on the issues they need to be pushed on and they are not getting the answers they look for and need.
But how do I feel, making this judgement? If I am honest, it provides a certain gratification, but, though I stand by it, it is not very pleasant to really become aware of. In it I find shades at least of anger and destruction, triumphalism and revenge. And yet he seems like a nice guy whom I might well find good company and could in the worst case simply ignore. Perhaps he is indeed a con artist. But it is not my protestations or any views of mine at all which are going to determine whether or not people seek him out or how they feel about what they find.
My joy in judgment and the sense of victory it gives me are primal emotions which serve primal survival needs. These needs, however, are objectively absent here. I find myself hating that he may be loved, admired, respected and resenting my own, uninvited feeling of inferiority. By labelling him a false teacher I foreclose the possibility I might learn anything from him, which gives me nothing. Ultimately, I condemn him for not fulfilling a role he has never asked to play: that of a father figure in whose hands my childish insecurities would dissolve into boundless love and reassurance; and I envy him for having access to love which seems denied to me.
Seen in this light, the sense of victory masks a profound inner defeat. I have essentially said to him, as I have said to my father, “Fuck you, I can stand on my own two feet.” This attitude of defiance, this unresolved Oedipus complex, while it may have been necessary for ego-survival, has become so etched into my behavior patterns that it forecloses ever receiving that which my inner child and my soul desire. And that is very sad, and very lonely.
It is exactly the same thing I do on a daily basis when I foreclose possibilities which come across my path to learn and love, out of a misplaced fear of displacement and manipulation. Even if those I encounter may not come into consideration as gurus. This is because I approach no-one as myself a whole being. Onto each and everyone I project a paternal role, hoping desperately they may meet some unmet childhood need of mine, and being eternally disappointed. Disappointment becomes a lifestyle; it even becomes a solace.
Humankind’s search for a guru is always a search to meet unmet childish needs. This is why, in the search for guru, we are always disappointed. There is no guru unless and until we are guru ourselves; and then all is guru. Thus the quality of the other, their state of enlightenment, is in reality irrelevant. What we call enlightenment is only a quality of awareness, not the essence of being, and it is with the essence of being that we must first come into contact. It may help to be in contact with someone who is aware of that essence of being within themselves; I do not deny it. Yet the surrender we need is a surrender only to ourselves. The false guru is the one who will allow you to believe he (or she) is true; that he or she really corresponds to your childish impulses. In such a relationship, as in any relationship founded on such a presupposition, you will become trapped. If a teacher is desirous to help you, he will never allow you to believe that he is “true”.
This means that another’s discernment can never substitute for your own. So much confusion stems from lack of awareness of this fundamental law! I may be right about Sadhguru, or I may be wrong, but you should not listen to me, or to anyone else, because it is not possible, even for an enlightened person, to answer this question other than directly to your heart, and by inviting you to examine yourself what you would have liked him to advise you on. Essentially, either I do not know, or I can not tell. Whether I am right does not help you to be right; not unless I can become you and this I cannot do through the mind. You must remain open to the essence of being wherever you find it, and you find it everywhere, accepting that the unmet childish needs will always remain unmet, but also understanding that there is no need any longer to meet them, and therefore remaining vulnerable, never judging with the ego-backlash of the mind which hates all, but weighing wisdom with the heart, which loves all. Then you will no longer seek guru, but it will have come to you.