It’s an unfortunate thing. The Guru needs to keep themselves separate from everybody else, and there’s a real reason for it. But when we see that separation our monkey minds want to copy. It’s hard to resist because the Guru looks so wonderful up on that chair: so peaceful, so powerful, so beautiful. The separation looks beautiful. We then want to strive for that beauty because it’s what we are seeing. And so, basically, we lose right from the very beginning.
We lose understanding what enlightenment is, and we also lose because this is an open avenue to give fake gurus (or even real gurus) power and control over us.
In other words, if you want to sit in the chair you are never going to reach into yourself. Because the guru doesn’t want to sit up in the chair. The Guru never wanted to sit up in the chair in first place.
The problem is that the only guru that you’ll listen to is the one sitting up in the chair.
There are enlightened people all over the place that you don’t notice because they’re not holding themselves separate.
So for instance my teacher Osho. I remember a time somebody was asking him something saying, “Oh, you’re so beautiful, you’re so wonderful.” Osho replied, “If I was a taxi driver you’d never notice me, you wouldn’t give me a second thought.”
The disciple of course said, “No, no, I’d definitely recognize you anywhere. You’re so beautiful…”
But Osho insisted, “No, you wouldn’t. The only reason you recognize me is because I’m sitting up in this chair, because I’ve held myself separate from everybody.”
It’s brilliant when you actually see it. On one hand our deepest craving and our deepest desire is to be totally normal. to blend in, to be one with everything and everyone and not be separate. On the other hand, we really want that guru chair.
You’ll notice that anyone who becomes really, really famous regrets it. Their lives become impossible because everywhere they go they’re recognized. They’re not just getting adulation while they’re up on the stage. Their whole life becomes impossible. Drugs and debauchery are the only thing to fill the hole that comes with it.
What we really, really want is to fit in with everything. To have our sense of beauty and enormity with everything that is. To sit around with the gang, simply one of the gang.
Unfortunately our modern broken ego feels separate to start out with. We try to get away from that wound by being the one at the top. Maybe we can’t be at the top of the world, like being president, but we strive for the top of whatever we see in our world.
It hurts to be separate. The tendency is to believe that if I was the one at the top then everything would be okay. We see the Guru on the chair and we want to be on the chair.
The Guru doesn’t want to be on the chair, never did start out with.
So why does the Guru hold themselves separate then if they don’t want to?
Well, it’s for the sake of you and for the sake of everyone. Otherwise, no one will listen to them.
If the Guru allows themselves to be part of the crowd they will will be held down by whatever belief system is in that group.
There are a lot of people who are awake, and who choose to be one of the crowd. You won’t be able to name them because they look like a taxidriver. They might even be a taxidriver. They bring a beautiful and interesting dynamic to their small circle. They have a different kind of love than the typical person. They probably aren’t that popular because they call bull shit when things are going badly around them.
For the Guru, for the enlightened person, holding themselves apart creates certain difficulties. They may miss trends that are going on in the group. There’s a million lessons that they will never learn because they are separate.
All the people that I am mentioning on this site are people who have held themselves apart enough to be actually noticed. But it’s useful to understand this dynamic in order to be able to understand them.
One unusual teacher I have knowledge of is Andrew Cohen. He holds himself very separate from his disciples. That lead to numerous problems in the group. What was unusual about him is that when he recognized this as untenable, that it couldn’t be fixed, he bowed out and went into a period of pause. The community broke apart.
Actually, Osho himself is a good example. He went through five years where he didn’t speak. He basically said, I’ve said everything that needs to be said. There are recordings of everything, just watch those and figure it out. Talking didn’t work, silence didn’t work and things didn’t go well during that phase. That’s when Sheila took over and the community went from bad to worse.
So it’s a dilemma. The Guru holding themselves apart doesn’t work, in our day and age at least. The Guru not holding themselves self apart doesn’t work either because they are never recognized and held down by groupthink.
One of the things that Osho challenged was the Western mind. He grew up in India and so when he started working with Western students he could really tell the difference in how we approach things. We have such a different perspective to start out with that we make different conclusions about the things we hear.
When you are born in an Eastern society you have generations and generations and generations of parents and grandparents passing down culture. You have the language embedded. When you’re born, deep into a culture like that there are so many subtle things that can’t be conveyed to someone coming in new.
The same is true for Western culture. There are so many deep assumptions and and ancestral things going on with us that when we try to take on a new culture, we we bring all that with us.
This is another good reason why, particularly in a Western culture, a guru has to hold themselves apart. It’s also why the Guru holding themselves apart becomes toxic.
Dang! It’s a dilemma.
For instance, someone who’s not really awakened but who is skilled at looking beautiful and wonderful is often mistaken as a Guru. Especially if they managed to get themselves up in a big chair.
It’s very easy to fake.
So what we do?
One easy solution is to start recognizing the regular Enlightened people that are all around you.
Decades ago, when Osho was alive and I was a new Sannyasin, I heard him talking about this kind of thing all the time. He said there are enlightened people all over the place but you won’t recognize them.
So what I did was I decided that everyone that I met was enlightened until they explicitly proved to me that they’re not. This is still my rule up to this day.
That changed everything for me, because I started seeing enlightened people everywhere. It allowed me to eventually see myself for who I am.
With that all behind us, let’s explore how to listen.