the guru principle

The topic for the Progressive Blogger Union this coming week is Sun Myung Moon. He is not just a kooky "cult" leader. He has been very quiet about it, but he seems to have gained a certain amount of influence in the U.S. behind the scenes. For example he owns the Washington Times.

A less famous "guru" is Lauryn Hill's recent spiritual advisor named Brother Anthony, mentioned in the Rolling Stone piece called The Mystery of Lauryn Hill

Our individualistic secular society tends to be VERY suspicious of "gurus". In fact, one can even find antipathy to "gurus" even among people who acknowledge a spiritual dimension to life, which from a certain perspective is a little odd. If you have legal trouble, you go to someone who knows the law; a lawyer. If you have financial issues, you go to a financial advisor. If your car needs to be taken care of, you go to a mechanic; someone who understands cars and knows how they work and has experience fixing them. So if your soul is troubled, why wouldn't you go to an expert, someone who knows souls and knows how to heal them and guide them along the right path? So, in theory at least, I think that the idea of a guru - shaykh - teacher makes alot of sense.

The problem comes in when you actually have to find a good guru. In the case of mechanics, lawyers and doctors there are bodies which certify the ability of each "expert". You can ask to see their diploma from law school, or their board certification etc. In the spiritual case, this is often much harder to do (although it is not impossible to get some indications. For example, in Sufism a shaykh would need to have ijaza or permission to teach given by another shaykh)

At the same time, it also very possible for any sufficiently charismatic individual to simply claim to have some kind of spiritual qualification and abuse the trust of unsuspecting students., And that's where the problems start. False, unqualified or fraudulent gurus can damage and exploit the people put under their charge and we are right to be concerned about them. And unfortunately such gurus are common and widespread. Finding a true teacher is a difficult process, and requires a certain degree of discernment. Like finding a needle in a very big haystack.

The healthy counterbalance to the guru principle is what might be called spiritual egalitarianism (At least that's the term which comes to mind); the idea that spiritual knowledge isn't just the special domain of experts but that it is something we all have access to. Some groups, like the Quakers are quite explicit with their doctrine that we all have the "inner light" and so instead of looking outward towards a scholar or a shaykh, they tend to look within to examine their own conscience in search of guidance.

I would say that, like the guru principle, the idea of spiritual egalitarianism has its positive aspects but it can also be abused. (In the sense of not recognizing ANY differences between the deepest spiritual insights and the most self--serving populist slogans) And I would say that there is evidence for both tendancies in Islamic sources (from the positive perspective). There are certainly references which suggest that if we don't know something we should "ask those who know". But there are also texts which point to the idea that our ability to reason gives us the capacity to look at the signs of Allah, in the world, in history, in nature and in ourselves to find evidence of his will.

More later...