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Relationship to a Spiritual Teacher
Fall 1997


The relationship to a spiritual Teacher is gravely misunderstood in the western world. God alone is the True Teacher and the representative of God is the personal Teacher. Though this relationship offers the promise of God-realization, the idea of submission to another human being confuses and scares us. In this talk held in New York City in July 20, 1994, Sheikh Din Muhammad Abdullah al-Dayemi sheds light on this seminal spiritual relationship.
     You are a little boat on-a big ocean. Sometimes the wave is up, and you're way on top. You can see out there for miles around. Sometimes the wave is down, and you're in the trough. Then all you see is a formidable wall of water in front of you. Every reference point seems to have disappeared. Given the intensity and volatility of this duality, what gives the practitioner, the traveler on the Path, the faith to stay engaged in the spiritual process?
     Practical and personal experience, first-hand understanding, direct spiritual realization and revelation, as well as the exercise of personal responsibility are the ingredients necessary to give the aspirant enough faith to stay on the Path. Without them, we are lost. Without those items, we will continue to measure our feelings based on temporal, external factors.
     We should not make it so important "what somebody else said" and "what someone else thinks" about us in life. Some may support us by causing us to go inside to reflect on our True Self, or others may distract us by taking us away from our purpose, our True Self. Inspiration is always nice to hear, while criticism always seems to bring us down. However, in this process of spiritual growth, one of the most important things for us to remember is, "Although it appears that we are many, in Reality we are only One. There is no one else here!" This is the opportunity to realize what it really means to be "Me." Allah reminds us in the glorious Qur`an, "I (Me) am in the Heart of my servant.'
Yoga teaches us as well, "There is no differentiation before God." In the ultimate or divine sense, God does not distinguish "for better or for worse" between the conditional attributes of God's creation. God is the Controller of all. Do you really think that God cares who wins the play-offs? Regardless of our associations of beauty, do you really believe that a rose is more beautiful or more important than a dandelion to God? Is any particular person less important to God because they are short, tall, fat, skinny, black, white, English, British or Indian? How about the language that a person speaks? Is a person speaking Sanskrit, Urdu or Bengali to God, any closer to God than one who speaks Swahili, Arabic, Hebrew, Italian or English? These are only the conditional attributes and associations that humans create.
     When approaching the subject of God, we must try to appreciate that there is no limit or end to the subject. God is not something separate from our own True Self that is far away, external to us and limited to our conditionally contrived limitations and distinctions. Similarly, if we are going to explore the subject of the Teacher, the relationship to the Sheikh, the mystical Spiritual Guide, we must realize that there is no limit to the Me (Allah) presenting Itself as myself (the Teacher) and as I am.
The first step for understanding the Teacher, as well as the Student-Teacher relationship, is for you to "show-up with all of your bags." Show up; present your whole self, fully and honestly! With complete self-exposure and self-disclosure, one will begin to understand the Teacher. To completely understand, you will need complete self-exposure!
     The only way for spiritual life and the relationship to the Teacher to be real is to be able to feel! Feel it in your stomach, feel it in your heart, feel it in your throat, feel it in the crown of your head, feel it in your breath. Our hands must be in the clay; our feet must be in the mud. We must get in it! Spirituality and the Relationship to the Teacher cannot be allowed to remain just another philosophical concept. There is a reason we feel anticipation at a moment like this. If the Teacher's presence is really a "Teacher's presence," we are going to get to see ourselves. We are going to see our self in the reflection of the Teacher. Are we ready? Are we really ready to be in contact?
We do not make true contact by simply hiding out in scriptures or books. Scriptures are an indispensable part of spiritual life, but the scriptures are another place for the ego of the material mind to adapt and adopt itself to and hide. Have you ever met someone who could quote you any possible verse from the Bible and tell you how much Jesus loves you . . . and they do too? They cite each reference regarding Jesus' love, word for word, but you do not feel love coming from that person toward you. This is an example of the ego adopting the form of the scripture, devoid of feeling or true spiritual contact. No self-exposure.
     The subject of the Teacher is one of God's great mysteries and miracles. It is where Divinity meets humanity! Jelal'uddin Rumi, the great mystic poet of Sufism, spoke of the role of the Guru or the Sheikh in a line of a poem; "Those who know God are God's Mercy to the other Creatures." The Ananda Sutram teaches us; "Brahma eva gureka naparah." Here the word Brahma means God, the Absolute Supreme Reality. God alone is the Guru, Dispeller of Darkness. Only God is the Dispeller of Darkness, there is no other Guru.
     God is the Teacher, the True Teacher, Teacher of Teachers. So in order to realize, "What is a personal Teacher?" we are going to find ourselves examining the question, "What is God?" Those two, the Teacher and God, art intertwined. Let us dispel any anxiety or concern regarding the degree of the personal Teacher's divinity from the beginning. The personal Teacher is not God! The personal Teacher is the representative of God, Who is the Teacher of Teachers.
     A True Teacher, who is representative of God/Allah, is your eternal well-wisher just as God is described in many scriptures. The Teacher should be devoid of any attachments or concerns to the "material quality" of any relationship including position, hierarchy, post or level of interaction. A True Teacher is devoid of any attachments other than those parts of the material creation that are under his/her jurisdiction for the purpose of spiritual evolution. The Teacher's role is to ensure spiritual progress, to keep things moving forward. And quite frankly, the True Teacher is wide open to however this needs to happen. Whether it is to finesse you, converse with you, put a foot up your ass, shock and prod you, confuse you, trick you, steal from you, take everything that you ever thought was yours, give everything back, pile it upon you, take it away from you, make you skinny, make you fat, it doesn't matter. Devoid of any worldly attachment.
     In another poem, Rumi says, "The Teacher doesn't run after the student for profit or loss." There is no "profit or loss" to exchange on the personal level from the student to the True Teacher. It is important to understand that the relationship to the Teacher is not like the business of "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine," or "I've got something great to give you." If I give it to you, and because I gave you something really cool, you give me back something I like too." I am telling you frankly, very directly and at the same time very sincerely: The student does not really have anything to offer the True Teacher, not materially, not physically, not mentally and not emotionally, that is affective to the state, station or nature of the relationship. The student is the "receiver" in the relationship. The Teacher responds to the call of the student's need.

SHEIKH DIN: What is that verse from the Vedas? "Om purnam madha purnamidam." Do you know what the verse means?

STUDENT: The Supreme Lord is perfect and complete. Everything emanating from Him is perfect.

SHEIKH DIN: Good enough. Purna literally means "full." So the "fullness" referred to is "perfection," but its literal meaning is "full." In Sanskrit, the full moon is called purnima. It means that the moon is completely full. This verse says that God is complete fullness, completely full and perfect!
     The verse goes on to teach us that even if you were to try to take or remove something from God which is perfection, because everything that is emanating from God is perfect, you still have what?

STUDENT: Perfection.

SHEIKH DIN: If you try to add to or put something into "perfection," you still have what?

STUDENT: Perfection.

SHEIKH DIN: So, God is perfect and complete - perfectly and completely full. This is not a material understanding or worldly relationship that one can realize through the conception of one's mind and intellect. This understanding comes through the heart.
Are you at peace? How many more waves are still crashing on the beach of your heart? How many shadows are still left, leaving dark spots inside the crevices of your own heart?
     The answers to these questions are how to measure the meaning of this verse for yourself. Are you "full" regardless of the waves of your personality? The personality with its preferences is only the surface of the ocean. The ocean remains "full" of ocean. On the surface, however, are waves. Fullness. Are you "full," regardless of what the waves look like ... today? Oh! There's a typhoon going on out there. Tidal waves arc going up and down! Yet, the ocean is still "full" of ocean. Oh! It is a placid day today with the sun shining, and the gulls are flying through multicolored rainbows! The ocean is still "full" of ocean. Foamy? Clear? Choppy? The ocean is still "full" of ocean. It is important to have this understanding in your own heart: "Is there fullness?"
When you turn off the light at night, and you are by yourself in the four walls of your bedroom, and there's nobody else around, lay there and check it out! If you've got it (fullness, peace), you won't have any doubt. If you've got it, you know it! If you don't, you will have doubts, "Now wait a minute here! I think sometimes that maybe I …." In other words, you don't got it.
     Do not compare or confuse the compatibility of your inner state with the Teacher's personality. This is a challenge. There are all kinds of styles of teaching, and there are all kinds of personalities of Teachers. There are men Teachers and women Teachers. There are family people and renunciates, and there are even kid Teachers! There are old Ones, young Ones and there are Ones that teach in styles that rivet your senses. Others teach in styles that don't allow you to indulge in even one inkling of the senses, and there are Ones that will rip apart every one of your conceptions of how Reality works. There are Others that will put it all back together and give you a neat package to follow.  Those methods and expressions are only the "waves" of the Teachers and their Teachings. The style. If a Teacher is a True Teacher, then the Teacher, in spite of his or her style, is going to get you back to basics. This is the point from which we started - God! God Alone, Singularly.

     God is the Teacher through the form of the Teacher. The ocean is the ocean through the form of the waves. True Teachers are all about the same thing. Only their styles differ. Food is food is food. True food has certain qualities. Food should be fresh. Food should provide you nutrition. Food should provide you a certain amount of reasonable pleasure. Food should last a certain amount of time. Food is to be shared. Right? But . . . how many different ways are there to cook food? How many different spices do we use? Do you know how many spices are in a curry for example? How many? It depends on what kind of curry.
     The first point is: God alone is the Teacher. The representative of God is the personal Teacher. The Teacher is your well-wisher who sets up the circumstances for you to complete your Truth, the dynamic flow for your own personal purpose. And the second point is: The True Teacher, as a personal Teacher, should have no other motive than to bring you to the Truth that exists within the interior of your True Self.
People often and easily clash with the Teacher, the personality aspects, when they try to either purposely or inadvertently revert the Student-Teacher relationship into a conventional relationship. "What did he say?" and in reaction, "What do I think?" etc. As soon as this dialogue starts, the relationship has reverted back to the material domain of speculation and argumentation. Only for the Teacher, a True Teacher, there isn't a care or concern in this matter. The Teacher sits back and reflects for you, "Well that's your speculation. You seem to know the reason for your suffering. Fine. Dance your dance as long as you like. Do whatever it is that you've got to do. Knock yourself out. By the way, if you're so happy, then why are you so sad? If you know so much about yourself, then fix your own dilemma and cure your own disease. Otherwise, when you are ready to listen, come back. If you can't come back to Me, then find the One that you can go to."
     When you get back home into the privacy of your own room and those four walls again, you will be looking into the mirror of yourself. You will eventually have to go through the process of uncovering the Soul, which lies at the Seat of the Heart. You are going to have to face the degree of your "fullness" or lack thereof. Therefore, whatever Teacher you grasp hold to the feet of will, in essence, to Me - just in a different form. Why? It will be Me, because God alone is the Teacher.
     Now, if the Teacher is really your personal Teacher and well-wisher the Teacher also doesn't care where you get your "realization" from. The Teacher is not even attached to that. All the Teacher is concerned with is the well-wishing of the traveler, the disciple. The Teacher's function for you to "get it" period. From where it doesn't matter. A case in point: I had a nice relationship developing with a certain Swami. He has been in my home many times. His disciples come here for programs. Do you think that he feels threatened or is in a kind of anxiety or fear about this? He must feel okay about them being here. Otherwise they wouldn't come. Why? Because by coming here, it furthers the message and the support that he is giving them.
     Actually at those particular moments, I am not Sheikh Din anymore. I am the Swami. That is how God/Allah works. I am teaching the same Essence as he, only I appear to you in a different form than what you get from that source. When you eventually return to the physical relationship to that source, you are farther along.
     A True Teacher will even send you away if you "can't get it here." Go somewhere else and get it. Why? God eternally is the Teacher. If you are not ready to listen, do what you have to do until you get ready. All of this comes back to our two points: 1) God is the Teacher, and the representative of God is the personal Teacher who is your infinite well-wisher; and 2) The True Teacher's only motivation is for the realization and fulfillment of God, regardless of the place or style.
     We have also said, "Make spirituality real for yourself in your own life." Do not live blindly according to somebody else's conception of Spirit. Get dirty. Get in it. Get exposed. Take the risk in relationship to the Teacher, and don't hide in the scriptures. Use the scriptures as a road map, an assistance from the counsel of those who have attained the highest. That is what the scriptures are for. They are not to hide behind.