Gurus and Psychotherapists

De Simple Silence.

Spiritual Versus Psychological Learning

[modifier] Illumination Of The Guru

PASCAL KAPLAN : Earlier you made a distinction between « role » and « personality. » Do you think that perhaps part of the dropout phenomenon of the late Sixties was due to a confusion of role and personality? Obviously there was a great coming into awareness of spiritual yearning and spiritual aspiration, and, with that, the sense of having to change and let go of something. Did people get confused about what they should let go of — and let go of roles instead of personality?

DR. MACKIE : I’ll make one comment about that, and then I think Murshida Duce might say something because her experience in that field is very rich and mine is limited.

Meher Baba loved the theater as a model and as a valid metaphor for life and said, in essence, that God was the divine playwright. He used that analogy with respect to karma, since karma is responsible for placing people in this role and that role and the other role. He also spoke of the necessity for them to play their roles as fully and as well as they could. But here comes the notion of spiritual detachment. Spiritual detachment has a place between the processes I have spoken about as the development of the personality, and the yielding of the personality to deeper processes while the role is not abandoned. In order to accomplish that transition, detachment is not simply laudatory, it is a necessity for life. One cannot detach from one’s personality and continue to exist, unless there is a strong structure beneath the personality which is pushing for expression, and which can now gradually be moved into expression. So detachment is not some elevated notion of hoped-for psychological skill : It is necessary in the process of first developing, then fully using, and then being detached from one’s personality in order to allow and nurture the deeper processes of knowing, and the deeper processes of organization of behavior and values which are there.

If you encourage people to detach who do not have those processes waiting for expression, then you encourage them to be weak. Why? Because there is little that underlies their personalities. So in the winding process, institutions, psychological organizations, religions, push people to attach and to build their temporary egos or personalities — and they question the whole notion of detachment. It is quite appropriate that they question it, because precocious detachment for someone who is in a winding phase of learning brings about weakened functioning, illness, and predisposition to psychological maladjustment.

But that is not the case for people who are unwinding. For them detachment is crucial. Therefore, gurus and spiritual Teachers speak of it and reinforce it in their students. It would be meaningless to speak of it if that process were not taking place within them. It would then be just empty talk. But it is spoken about because it is a living process, and critical in the later stages of learning.

PASCAL KAPLAN : Is it the ability to see who is going through which phase of learning processes that makes a guru?

DR. MACKIE : Yes, that’s what makes a guru. If someone poses as a guru and encourages such processes in people who are not ready for them, then he takes on himself the responsibility of his own ignorance. And that’s pretty profound ignorance. That is why Murshida Duce said that the illumination of the guru is crucial, because it allows him to see and know those processes. If he does not see them and know them, he has no way of working with them. He just works with what he thinks might be meant by those principles.

PASCAL KAPLAN : This raises the issue of false teachers. Ever since the incident at Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978, there has been great concern about the negative potentials of cults and the negative psychological and social impact of cult figures. Murshida, would you talk a little bit about the difference between cults and cult figures on the one hand, and spiritual Orders and gurus on the other?

MURSHIDA DUCE : I think the main difference between a cult leader and a spiritual leader is the question of power and money. It seems that almost all of the cult leaders want power and money. This is not, of course, what a spiritual leader wants at all.

There are several reasons why some people seek a cult figure rather than turning to a true spiritual leader. For one thing, many people who are seeking some meaning to life, or who are trying to get relief from a very boring and meaningless life, are what I call « shopping. » Meher Baba once said that when the idea first stirs within people that there must be more to know, they begin seeking. They then spend three or four lifetimes seeking before they warrant a good Teacher. There are so few good Teachers in the world and they are not about to waste their time on people who blow hot and cold. In other words, it is a natural thing for people in the course of their evolution to shop around before they can settle on some special path or some special Teacher.

The next difference we might consider is why a cult leader or a spiritual Teacher demands obedience. A cult teacher demands obedience because he has to sway his followers and make them do what he wants if he is to exercise his power and extract money from them. There are many examples of that. A spiritual Teacher, on the other hand, has to have obedience because once he initiates a disciple, he is responsible for that disciple’s spiritual ongoing. People have the idea that when an aspirant is initiated, he makes a vow of obedience. But they do not realize why. The reason is that the guru becomes responsible for him. You cannot take medicine from two doctors for the same disease. The medicines could work against each other. So the guru demands obedience to his guidance, the sole purpose of which is to help his students to balance the karmic problems with which they are faced in this life and not get into more sticky karmic messes. So the guru has to have obedience ; if a student won’t do what he tells him to do in order to avoid such problems, then the whole thing is a waste of time.

That is premised, of course, on the guru having the vision to see what the karma is in a particular situation.

MURSHIDA DUCE : Yes. A real guru normally has to have very high involution. Baba told me that a Murshid had to have illumination — that without illumination the Murshid could not work satisfactorily. And, as I have said a thousand times, I did not have that. I did not have to have it, because Baba promised to do my work for me until I was really ready to do it myself. I’m sure that Dr. Mackie can articulate this better than I have, but that’s my simple answer.

DR. MACKIE : There are three or four issues that seem to me important for people with an orientation towards social science to understand about distinctions between spiritual groups and cults.

The first has to do with the very definition of a cult. Under ordinary circumstances a cult offers a set of ideas, values, and social structures which form a very clear barrier to other social organizations. Within that system there is usually a particular kind of language that is taught. The membership within a cult organization is, therefore, restrictive. Distinctions between members and nonmembers are clearly articulated both in the ideational systems and in the organization of the cult.

Power and force within a cult are usually specified in some hierarchical social system — who is better, who is next, who is more powerful, and so forth. One finds familiar organizations of that kind everywhere. Since the basis of power within a spiritual group is not on force and not, therefore, with money or with social influence over people, there are certain distinctions between its organization and a cult’s.

First, membership within a spiritual group (and even obedience within that group) is moderated by clearly felt love. Principles are internal and personal, therefore, rather than external and widely shared. Thus one familiar psychological distinction is that membership within a spiritual group is determined by a personal and individual understanding of principles. Those principles are usually principles of positive affection and love.

Within most cult organizations the force and articulated social design of the cult is much less on principles than on rules — rules of thought, rules of behavior, how to do it right, and so on. Since rules are externalized, shared patterns of belief and conduct, cults may proceed with no understanding of internal principles. Thus, from a psychological framework, cults always proceed in terms of reward and punishment — both externally reckoned and externally given. This is why the externals of most cults are extremely important. It is important to know who wears what badge of authority, whose behavior is best, whose achievement is higher, and so forth. Within a cult those things are very clearly specified. If they are not specified at the outset, they are part of the social evolution of a cult that very quickly gels.

That is not true within a spiritual organization. Within a spiritual organization, all of the values, principles, and signs and badges of learning and achievement are internal. To the degree that they are externalized, they are imperfect. To the degree that they are externalized and that the external design is considered crucial, they are still in an early stage of organization.

Since all the major patterns that regulate the organization of a spiritual group are internal, they are understood primarily between the individual aspirant and his guru. The result is that social organization — the external picture — is quick and changing. Because the principles of organization are internal ones, it is never gelled. It remains in movement. Characteristically and traditionally, its external form is a matter of indifference.

MURSHIDA DUCE : For example, with Sufism Reoriented, we do not have any chain which would establish that this teacher is higher than that teacher or any such thing.

DR. MACKIE : Or that this student is higher than that one.

MURSHIDA DUCE : No, and we have no graduation classes.

PASCAL KAPLAN : No merit badges.

MURSHIDA DUCE : That’s right, no merit badges.

DR. MACKIE : Another way of conceiving the difference between cults and spiritual groups is that, broadly speaking, all cults are social extensions of the personal ego. As such they are concerned with judgments of what is good, what is bad, what is up, what is down, what is powerful, what is less powerful, and so forth.

Within a spiritual group, the principles are much broader and they cannot be so conceived. In fact, since the ego is seen as a temporary structure more apparent than real, ideas of reality are not based on personality. It is not the personality which is considered important, but the part of the being which lies behind that temporary fragment of ego. It is that underlying part which is spiritual and defines the orientation of a spiritual student.

Those differences are basic ones, and they make it very difficult for social scientists to understand or study spiritual organizations. In their studies, social scientists identify and work with the usual social dimensions, dimensions which actually are extensions of the ego. Thus the social scientist conceives of the value, purpose, and success of an organization from the perspective of social achievement or personal achievement. But those values are not shared by spiritual groups. It is internal achievement, internal understanding, and actual behavior — not the words associated with behavior — which are important to spiritual Teachers and their students.

At the same time, it is necessary for people who are committed to spiritual principles of growth and life and who pursue spiritual study to maintain an equilibrium so that they look like perfectly ordinary people to anyone from the outside looking in. Thus, they are not social rabble-rousers. They do not seek the destruction of social organizations, and they do not seek social-political roles and power in order to change the external environment, since all of them are primarily concerned with internal growth.

PASCAL KAPLAN : You spoke, Dr. Mackie, about the difference between a cult, which is an extension of the ego, and a spiritual Order, which does not work on ego principles. Wouldn’t most psychologists tend to be very skeptical that people could function on other than ego principles or ego structures?

DR. MACKIE : Yes.

MURSHIDA DUCE : They don’t believe that people have that much love for humanity or, more than that, that people have so much love for God that they would want to help others to come closer to God. That’s because they themselves have no desire along those lines.

PASCAL KAPLAN : Murshida, you have met many people who are considered to be gurus, and I know that you view some of these persons as authentic Teachers and others as not. Could you summarize some of the differences between a true guru and someone who might be acting the role without the authority to do so. Specifically, what can a true guru offer that a false teacher cannot?

MURSHIDA DUCE : Light. A true guru has lost so many ego veils that God’s light and God’s radiance in him comes forth and helps the aspirant or the disciple. False gurus do not have that light. They simply do not have it.

PASCAL KAPLAN : In what ways does the light help a disciple?

MURSHIDA DUCE : To enlighten him.

PASCAL KAPLAN : Dr. Mackie, would you wish to say anything about that?

DR. MACKIE : Only to underline what Murshida has said and to suggest that, again, light is a condition, a situation, a vivid experience which is beyond psychological validation. It cannot be measured, quantified, shared publicly, or evaluated empirically by other people. The recognition of the light in another being is a profound, subjective, and individual experience. But while it cannot easily be put into words or shared with another person, it is the deepest perception of a spiritual aspirant. Indeed, it is the perception of that light and the value placed on it that becomes the aspirant’s motivating principle. It is so forceful that everything else in life becomes reordered according to the importance of maintaining that light.

MURSHIDA DUCE : When Hazrat Inayat Khan came to this country, they asked him to go to see the wonders of industry and chose to take him to Henry Ford’s big plant where Henry Ford showed him around. Before he left, Henry Ford said to him that he would give anything to have what he sensed Inayat Khan had. He could sense it.

Something similar frequently happened to Meher Baba. Often when he waited at a railroad station crowds of people took notice of him. They did not know that they were noticing light around him — unless perhaps they had some psychic gifts — but they always did a double take and stared at him. Some would come closer to take a better look, although he dressed very much like they did and just sat there at the station making no effort to look at anybody. But they sensed his light.

PASCAL KAPLAN : Murshida, the light you refer to comes through a person when the veils of the ego are dissolved. Is that light thus within every person?

MURSHIDA DUCE : Oh, yes. Yes.

Murshida Ivy O. Duce and Dr. James Mackie. Edited by Pascal Kaplan. © 1981 Searchlight Seminars