The Truth Is Controversial - Andrew Cohen and the Three Gurus in Dialogue

what I wanted to speak to all of you about is The Challenge on a very human level for for the guru for the for for the realizer for the individual who assumes that position and you were speaking about it in a very powerful in a p powerful way you know tonight that I could personally really uh relate to uh very very deeply that no matter how realized an individual may be or may not be there there's still a human being and there's and and and there's a there's a very human Dimension to assuming the karmic burden of the transformation of one's disciples how hard is it to hold a community of 100 or 150 people who are living together how how hard is it to hold just just let's skip the spiritual teaching for a minute how difficult is it the spiritual part the esoteric part forget it how hard is it to get 150 people to live you know and work together in a peaceful and harmonious manner how hard is that it's probably one of the hardest things I think I think splitting the atom would probably be more easier you you have to have first of all achieved something in your in your sodena just to be able to hold a group of people together certainly now in our culture I mean one of the things that that is really a problem for us is that we have groups of people around us right we live together we don't live in in individual housing we live together we share our meals together we share a some form of spiritual practice together you know we interact with one another a lot and reinforce our values together yes the the culture thinks that's really weird I mean we are we are different and anything that sort of sets itself up in contrast to the to the general culture is going to automatically attract some you know attack so when you when you were speaking earlier that you were expressing that on a human level how challenging it is to to even if even if it it's true that one has choicelessly assumed this role uh on a human level it's still quite often ultimately challenging emotionally psychologically well spiritually you know it's stressful because doing something you care deeply about uh and you know it's a very I mean we're swimming culturally against the current and trying to share something that is at the vibrant core of our being with people who have all kinds of confusion about it they're going many different ways their fragmentation as Master Charles would say really resists integration and resist the experience of that integrated wholeness so you know that is a struggle the human part of it is that you have these endless amounts of expectation coming at you from every different direction which you have to deal with and of course our humanness some of our humanness likes that feedback that we're getting you know and it's very difficult not to become entangled in that caught up in the positive feedback that some people are giving us and not see you know their agenda you know not see their expectation at work it's very easy it's it's a problem for us continuously and it's painful to endlessly have to have the discipline of separating yourself from the expectations of the people around you and their own you know projections projections and remain at all times in your humanness in yourself that's very difficult and very painful but you you know and we all know that you know the consequences of not doing that are much more painful than than than the pain of you know dealing with the situation in the highest possible manner M Mand once said to me being the guru is the curse remain secret as long as you can and we had many discussions about that he and I I wanted to know exactly what he meant of the guru as the curse what is this about said well in more modern terminology um the guru is a garbage dump everybody comes to you and dumps huh one after the other after the other oh this is wrong oh I have this problem oh this conflict or this challenge or this misery this confusion this illusion Dump Dump Dump Dump Dump and what do you do with it you're you're then you're full you got all the garbage the classical principle was you got the power you got the fire you take the karma of the disciple because you can burn it in the power of your fire and it's an Alchemy it's a a transformational process and the sacrifice is that you have to endure it you have to remain embodied and go through all the dimensionalized aspects of that that transmutation process and that can be very intense huh but why isn't it always uh an intensity that's going to annihilate you because at the center of it uh is your bliss at the center of it is your realization uh that includes the sacrifice and within that also is the awareness that that is your evolution in this role H the more that alchemical process happens the more you transmute the higher you go so it's not just about evolution of the disciple it's about evolution of the guru too for Consciousness is evolving in so you're saying there's a relation there that there's that there's also a relationship between uh uh assuming this karmic burden or choic asly uming this kic burden of of the disciple and uh and and the evolution development of the guru absolutely absolutely and I watched that I I mean we had a brilliant model in mukanda but to watch him from the days we met him in 1970 to where he was in 1982 when he left to see the evolution in his Consciousness you know it's um there's always a tension between the Divine and the human within within a person exactly yeah that's and the first the first attempt often we make is to transcend and uh you know that's uh the model where you go to a cave and you go higher and higher uh but the problem is that you come back and then you're with people and then you get brought down yeah so it's the same for everyone in this in this sense there has to be a perfect integration of the personal and the divine mhm and I think that that um I noticed around Manda there was a powerful experience of the Divine uh enormous experience of divine but people weren't integrated personally so a lot of people in the post Mand experience uh were integrating in many different ways psychological ways and other kind of personal ways and trying to bring it all together and sometimes they went too far to the personal where they lost exctly the connection sure uh and so there has to be that balance I think we experience that balance between the personal and the impersonal and every Seeker does but I'm speaking about something slightly different than than this than this significant point you raised about this the integration between the Divine and the human which is which is very you it's a big it's a big issue especially as you know as this whole notion of Enlightenment you know emerges in in in Western culture and and and and the whole question is explored but what I'm I'm I'm specifically speaking about the the human challenge in other words you know even even Swami muktananda you know that had to face many challenges on a human level you know even even in light of or in the face of his you know profound realization and enormous power there was still a human being there that had emotional psychological challenges that were an inherent part uh and consequence of his of of the fact that he really entered into the world and embraced this role you know that's what I'm referring to there's always a human Challenge and so could you speak a little bit about that like in ter Rel to your own experience well this I think the responsibility uh the G you know what what was it in that movie uh great power means great responsibility or something Spiderman yeah Spider-Man that's right that was a great line absolutely I think that that with great power comes exactly isn't it interesting we all notice that line yes I find that very when I mention it to other people they don't resonate with it like I did like we I love it but I think the the spiritual law is that uh if you're highly involved you always have the responsibility to get off everything you can't pout you can't sulk you can't have a tantrum you're the if an apology has to happen you give it and so it's always falls to you to get off it and so this sometimes becomes a tension with your your person would wants to cry out and say I want to stamp my feet I want to have a tantrum I don't want to do this and then be because you want to stay in that space you have to do it so I would say in that Dimension there's that attention and we have no defense mechanism our job is to be completely open and and loving you know unconditionally loving of anyone who presents V thems in our life you know to grow with to share with we you know you can't walk into this job and say I'm going to protect myself you know here's the contract see my lawyer you know when does that ever happen you the minute somebody comes into my class they are in my life and all their baggage everything that they brought for 50,000 years is right in the middle of my lap you have no defense so when you accept this disciple there you you don't you don't say well how is this going to turn out because if you decide in the front part how the relationship is going to turn out then you have become the limitation of that disciple and you can no longer be the guru the SEC so and the second thing is what you really want to do is awaken a an unimaginable possibility within that person and so any thought of what it might be is is wrong sure so then when it turns out that the person either CH for whatever reason and there's no justifiable reason in my mind you know that the thing breaks it's just the worst pain and the worst disappointment that anybody could imagine and I know it's a pain that all of us have experienced together and it's it's horrible it's really horrible that was the one of the the great personal sacrifices that I was talking about yeah another aspect I'd like to look at at here is the aspect of Freedom if you in your masterful state are so totally free you are so life affirmative and love-based and just absolutely free and you want to share that freedom and yet the only ones who could share it would be those who are with you the disciples and they can't rise to that level right uh it's the same thing you're talking about in another way they they bring all their limitation and impose it upon you and you're you're like a kid a little child you just want to play right and you can't do it because there's nobody to play with right it's a sacrifice It is Well it what it is is it just makes every single day all of all day long what we do is we work and the fact is even with the people who we love and we we want to share our joy with and have fun with we can't because you know if we say the wrong thing if we make the wrong gesture if you know if we allow if we put ourselves in a position where we might be misunderstood then you know it turns into a you know a drama a total mess and so we end up just living in the same straight jacket that our disciples have put us in and we live in that straight jacket lovingly because we care about these people you know but the truth of the matter is you know you open your heart you let someone into your life we never know when the knife is going to come out and we're the ones who are going to get our throats cut and it happens you know too often and in America you know we everybody falls in love and Out of Love on about a weekly basis you know love you I love you means something you know it's something to do with business in exchange I think but people say I love you all the time Real Love Never Ends Real Love is eternal and the real love that a guru and a disciple share the real love that gurus share among themselves you know is a love that is all-encompassing it accepts every humanness it accepts and EMB braces every human need every human desire every human activity without distinction without judgment you know and it continuously is finding unity and wholeness Real Love Never Dies and the purpose of having a teacher in the first place is to dis is to realize that all of our humanness in all of its all in every aspect of our humanness is really a manifestation of the Divine thank you that was powerful