Letter to a Friend Who Is
Disillusioned By His Guru

By ZENBOB

This letter originally appeared on the HarshaSatsangh mailing list on January 28, 2000. Many thanks to Victor Torrico for bringing it to our attention.

Dear ———,

Sadly, as long as you are falling into the habit of deifying this or that guru... holding them up on pedestals, rather than understanding that they, like you or me, are merely humans, you will fall into the sad condition of illusion, then disillusionment... possibly deciding that they are all frauds...

It would be sad to see someone who sincerely yearns for honest spiritual insight and knowledge fall into this mind trap. What Shirdi Sai Baba meant, and all genuine and inspired teachers insist on, is that God is within you... "Know thyself" as Socrates admonished. There is no ultimate place. There is no singular person of magical or divine attainment. It is all a journey and the trip is paved with your own road of life.

Stop fawning and following. Read, respect, study, learn, yes, but do not set up teachers as ultimate authorities, nor devote yourself to such ephemeral abstractions. Love those who guide by intent and also those who teach by example or by accident. It doesn't matter their credential, history or esteem in the Arcane World. You can learn love from a child, from a dog, a cat, a bird. You can find the universe in the center of a rose. Words, forms, structures are but mental traps. Nonduality is about the evolvement of thinking without boundaries... seeing the universe in all things, coming to understand the totality of all things and the deep interrelatedness of it all.

With a sigh a dream can be extinguished... with a breath, a world can be saved from destruction. Every moment and thought is precious... waste no words or efforts on rancor and harsh labels of "fraud" or "saint" as all saints are frauds and all frauds might be saints, too, if we understood them. I always believe that people who can only be devoted to abstract identities and long dead saints, gurus and mystics have a tragic block that limits their perception about people living in the here and now. They can love the dead, but they can only find fault with the living.

Don't fall into that trap: if you knew the dead as close up and personally as the living you would find faults with them, too! We must constantly guard our minds against this form of discrimination. Learn to love in the here and now. That is the only test of our spiritual advancement. And when people disappoint or hurt us...

Love them all the more...

Because that, my friend, is the ultimate test.

Love,

ZenBob

This page was published on January 31, 2000 and last revised on May 9, 2000.