moorthy@hctdemo.leis.bellcore.com (moorthy) (06/15/91)
I see recently a trend in this newsgroup comparing different masters and arguing that one is better than the other. I thought of sharing the following thoughts which are based on my experience. When one is blessed with a direct experience of God, that person will understand that what all great spiritual leaders were talking are different aspects of the same thing. In other words, every teaching one came across, every master one met with and every life experience one went through will fall in place automatically without the mind trying to unify them. One master is better than the other and one system is better than the other ONLY WITH RESPECT TO AN INDIVIDUAL AT A POINT OF EVOLUTION. When one experiences the grand UNITY, that person will realize through direct experience (without the mind trying to find the unity by itself) that all masters are that person and all the teachings received from the masters came from that person, etc. What is important is that we evolve spiritually using whatever teaching appeals to us at a point in our life. Of course it makes sense for an individual to say that a particular master did or did not appeal to me at a stage in my life. It is not the same thing to declare that one master is enligtened and the other is not or one is more enlightened than the other. A person who has unified with all beings will never compare oneself with another because that person knows by experience that he/she is not different from other gurus. Next, I would like to suggest that we avoid arguing whether guru is necessary or not. As discussed below, it depends on an individual and the current stage of his or her spiritual evolution. To bring out this point, let me suggest that there are three categories of spiritual evolution. Please note that this classification is not meant to say one is at a higher level than the other. During the first one, one is freeing oneself from the body and mind. At the end of this evolution, one sees an infinite light and merges with it. At this point one loses consciousness. In other words, one meets a blankness at this point. In general one needs a guru during this category of spiritual evolution. Most of us are in this category. In the second category of evolution, one is able to raise one's purified mind beyond the blankness that one meets at the end of the previous category of evolution. During this evolution one becomes one with the trinities, namely Shiva (Holy spirit), Vishnu (Son) and Brahma (Father). Such people are rare and do not in general need a guru. At the end of this evolution, the individual mind becomes one with the one universal mind. It is with this last stage that J Krishnamurti was primarily concerned in his talks. That is why his consciousness was asserting that guru is unnecessary. That is why he was saying you are the world; there is nothing like an individual mind, there is only one universal mind, etc. This is the state of transcendental person that DA was perhaps referring to. JK, being at the last stage of the second category of evolution, did not require a guru. He did not perhaps realize that he is talking to mainly people in the first category of evolution. Jesus Christ seems to have been in this category. These people in general learn mostly everything by direct experience and need to refer to scriptures and other books in order to describe to others what they know by direct experience. There is a third category of evolution. These people rarely come down to the physical level. They display one or more of the omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent aspects of God. If they lack one or more, they evolve to realize the other aspects. I would like to suggest NEITHER believe NOR disbelieve what I said but to verify whether it is true or not by direct experience. Till then, it is better to say I do not know. Also I am not asserting that this is the only way to classify spiritual evolution. Nevertheless it seems to me this explains why some people say guru is necessary and other do not. I would also like to suggest that if your master says that there is nothing like trinity, do not just borrow it and argue with others that there is nothing like trinity. It is true with respect to your master because he or she has unified the trinities and has gone beyond it. It may not be true with respect your stage of evolution. Similarly, knowing by reading about transcdental states is not same as knowing by direct experience.