Self-Deception
Self-deception is a constant problem as we progress along a spiritual path. Ego is always trying to achieve spirituality. It is rather like wanting to witness your own funeral. For instance, in the beginning we might approach our spiritual friend hoping to get something wonderful from him. This approach is called “hunting the guru.” Traditionally, it is compared to hunting the musk deer. The hunter stalks the deer, kills it, and removes the musk. We could take this approach to the guru and spirituality, but it would be self-deception. It would have nothing to do with real opening or surrender.
Or we might falsely assume that initiation means transplantation, transplanting the spiritual power of the teachings from the guru’s heart into our own. This mentality regards the teachings as something foreign to us. It is similar to the idea of transplanting a real heart or, for that matter, a head. A foreign element is transplanted into us from outside our body. We might tend to appraise our potential transplant. Perhaps our old head is not suitable, perhaps it should be thrown into the rubbish heap. We deserve a better head, a fresh one, a more intelligent one with lots of brains. We are so concerned with what we are going to get out of our potential operation that we have forgotten the doctor who is going to perform it.
Have we stopped to make a relationship with our physician? is he competent? Is the head we have chosen really suitable? Might not our doctor have something to say about our choice of heads? Perhaps our body would reject that head. We are so concerned with what we think we are going to get, that we ignore what is really happening, our relationship with our doctor, our illness, what this new head really is.
This approach to the process of initiation is very romantic and not at all valid. So we need someone personally concerned with us as we really are, we need a person to play the part of mirror. Whenever we are involved with any kind of self-deception, it is necessary that the whole process be revealed, opened. Any grasping attitude must be exposed.
Real initiation takes place in terms of “the meeting of the two minds.” It is a matter of being what you really are and of relating to the spiritual friend as he or she is. This is the true situation in which initiation might occur, because the idea of having an operation and fundamentally changing yourself is completely unrealistic. No one can really change your personality absolutely. No one can turn you completely upside down and inside out. The existing material, that which is already there, must be used. You must accept yourself as you are, instead of as you would like to be, which means giving up self-deception and wishful thinking. Your whole make-up and personality characteristics must be recognized, accepted, and then you might find some inspiration.
At this point, if you express a willingness to work with your physician by committing yourself into the hospital, then the doctor for his part will make available a room and whatever else is needed. So both sides would be creating a situation of open communication, which is the fundamental meaning of “the meeting of the two minds.” This is the real way of uniting the blessing or adhishthana, the spiritual essence of the guru, and your own spiritual essence. The external teacher, the guru, opens himself and, because you also are open, because you are “awake,” there is the meeting of two elements which are identical. This is the true meaning of abhisheka, initiation. It is not a matter of joining a club, of becoming one of the flock, a sheep with your owner’s initials branded on your behind.
So now we can examine what comes after abhisheka. Having experienced the meeting of the two minds, we have established real communication with our spiritual friend. We have not only opened ourselves, but we have also experienced a flash of insight, an instant understanding of part of the teachings. The teacher created the situation, we experienced this flash, and everything seems to be fine.
At first we are very excited, everything is beautiful. We might find that for several days we feel very “high” and excited. It seems we have already achieved the level of Buddhahood. No mundane concerns bother us at all, everything goes very smoothly, instantaneous meditation occurs all the time. It is a continuous experience of our moment of openness with the guru. This is quite common. At this point many people might feel that they do not need to work further with their spiritual friend, and possibly they might leave, go away. I heard many stories of this happening in the East: certain students met their teacher and received an instant enlightenment experience and then left. They tried to preserve that experience, but as time went on it became just a memory, words and ideas which they repeated to themselves.
Quite possibly your first reaction after such an experience would be to write it down in your diary, explaining in words everything that happened. You would attempt to anchor yourself to the experience through your writings and memoirs, by discussing it with people, or by talking to people who witnessed you having the experience.
Or a person might have gone to the East and had this sort of experience and then come back to the West. His friends might find him tremendously changed. He might look calmer, quieter, wiser. Many people might ask him for help and advice with their personal problems, might ask for his opinion of their experience of spirituality. In the beginning, his way of helping other people would be genuine, relating their problems to his own experience in the East, telling people beautiful and genuine stories of what happened to him. It would be very inspiring for him.
But at some stage in this sort of situation something tends to go wrong. The memory of that sudden flash of insight that a person has experienced loses its intensity. It does not last because he regards it as being external to himself. He feels that he has had a sudden experience of the awakened state of mind and that it belongs to the category of holiness, spiritual experience. He valued the experience highly and then communicated it to the ordinary and familiar world of his homeland, to his enemies and friends, parents and relatives, to all those people and attachments which he now feels he has transcended and overcome. But now the experience is no longer with him. There is just the memory. And yet, having proclaimed his experience and knowledge to other people, he obviously cannot go back and say what he said previously was false. He could not do that at all; it would be too humiliating. Moreover, he still has faith in the experience, that something profound really happened. But unfortunately the experience is no longer present at this very moment, because he used and evaluated it.
Speaking generally what happens is that, once we have actually opened, “flashed,” in the second moment we realize that we are open and the idea of evaluation suddenly appears. “Wow, fantastic, I have to catch that, I have to capture and keep it because it is a very rare and valuable experience.” So we try to hold onto the experience and the problems start there, from regarding the real experience of openness as something valuable. As soon as we try to capture the experience, a whole series of chain reactions sets in.