In this essay I’m going to address spiritual authority from the perspective of the Philosophy of Spiritual Realism that we have been exploring. It seems appropriate as a follow up to Spiritual Realism: Part V – Spiritual Experience
In general, the spiritual authority of the great religious traditions is real. Careful acceptance of the authority of spiritual traditions can provide profound spiritual insight. The holy scriptures of the various traditions convey the teachings that encode what some of humanity’s greatest spiritual explorers and teachers have learned.
Religions
Religions have grown up around these teachers and their teachings to preserve them and pass them on to new generations. This passing on can also certainly be a good thing. However, as human institutions governed hierarchically with economic and political self-interests, religions have also, on occasion, acquired and passed on serious spiritual errors.
For example, one of the teachings of Jesus that I have always found most compelling is: “The Kingdom of God is within you.” Unfortunately, some branches of Christianity hold that Jesus was both God and man, but the rest of humanity was and is not. But this doctrine contradicts the essential Christian truth that God created everything and participates in everything. If God created everything and participates in everything, then each of us is both divine – one little piece of God among many – and also human, like Jesus was. And the Kingdom of God is, indeed, within us.
The worst error that religions have made is the promulgation of the proposition that any one of these religions – any one of these spiritual traditions – has the exclusive truth and the right to impose its truth on everyone else, resulting in the religious warfare humanity has been suffering through during the last couple of thousand years.
It can be deeply beneficial to study and know something of the great religious traditions and to accept something of their authority. But, each person who does this makes his or her own choice as to what to believe and what to practice.
Acceptance of spiritual authority in any form is an act of spiritual self-determination, so it’s a good idea to develop and strengthen our own spiritual selves so that we will make good choices as to which spiritual authorities we value and accept and to be able to eliminate the errors that sometimes have polluted religious institutions.
The Guru Model
During the era of the loss of spiritual participation that we have been passing through, as hunter gatherer tribes have been replaced by industrial civilization, the Guru model has worked to guide the spiritual evolution of many people. To attain spiritual experience leading to the different kinds of “enlightenment,” seekers ultimately had to find a teacher (Guru) who had already attained enlightenment.
Typically, the teacher had, in turn, been guided through meditation, insight, physical exercises, and/or other practices by someone who was that teacher’s teacher. Spiritual progress and enlightenment often came, if it did, mediated by one or more “transmissions” of spiritual energy from a teacher to a student, who then became a teacher.
To attain enlightenment, the seeker needed to create a physical/psychological vehicle strong enough – with a high enough vibration rate – to be able to receive the transmission(s), i.e., receive “the light.” This meant attaining a larger spacio-temporal gestalt and also meant acquiring the ability to go into the higher spiritual dimensions with inner vision and inner hearing, and, eventually, with full participation.
Typically, each Guru holds sway in a certain area of spiritual territory and helps his or her followers to connect with that spiritual territory. The relationship of teacher surrounded by many students in the physical world is usually replicated in the spiritual territory, except there the current spiritual teacher is connected to the lineage of spiritual teachers that have gone before.
However, the amount of power that the Guru brings through into the physical domain, and the amount of authority that the Guru has over his or her students, can also bring about distortions, twists, and, sometimes outright errors and evil actions.
Spiritual Circles
One of the most important things that I have learned in my own searches is that one person by himself or herself alone may not have a large enough and balanced enough consciousness field to bring through the most deeply grounded and balanced spiritual truth and wisdom.
The positive way to state the principle is that it may take a Spiritual Circle made up of approximate spiritual equals to experience the deepest spiritual truths fully and to apply the insight and power gained wisely and effectively. I believe that the way of the individual teacher (i.e. guru) with his or her group of students seeking instruction and, ultimately, transmission from that individual teacher is now being supplemented by the way of Spiritual Circles exploring together and receiving transmissions from the higher spiritual powers together.
I believe that we are entering an era of Spiritual Democracy, which means that we all can pursue our own spiritual journeys, find the source, learn our lessons, and make our contributions. And, we can do that by following the teachers and traditions that we choose and also by participating in groups of spiritual peers, helping each other, comparing notes, learning from each other, and making our contributions together.
I believe that we can all find and live and work in what Robert Nadeau called the realm of reality. As I said in my spiritual philosophy, which I called Spiritual Democracy in my book called “In Search of a Revelation”:
- We all have our own consciousnesses that are nodes in the great spectrum of consciousness and we all can expand our participation in that spectrum to our great benefit.
- We all must choose for ourselves what authorities, what teachings, what practices to pursue to bring about that expansion.
- We all have to do our own work to advance spiritually, and we all can be recipients of grace as the result of that work.
- We all can experience the Creator, the Void, the Absolute as a unity beyond all diversity throughout all of the aspects of each diverse Creation.
- We each are a Soul, a unique aspect of the Creator and a unique perspective on all that was and is and will be, and we each can develop a coherent Self to provide clear guidance for the life that we lead in our bodies, emotions, and minds and in our communities and societies.
- We are all expressions of the love of the Creator, and we can all be forces for the full realization of that love as long as we are guided by the justice that is the other side of the Creator and woven throughout the Creation.
- We all live in a time that is real and we each have a role to play in the Great Transformation, choosing together the real alternative future that is best for us and our children and our children’s children.
Every one of us can take this journey. Every one of us can complete each of these tasks. And every one of us can do this better by joining together with others of us. That’s why I called the philosophy Spiritual Democracy.
Walt Whitman, the great – uniquely American poet and explorer of expanded consciousness – was a proponent of a version of Spiritual Democracy. According to him:
“I say to you that all forms of religion, without excepting one, any age, any land, are but mediums, temporary yet necessary, fitted to the lower mass-ranges of perception of the race – part of the infant school – and that the developed Soul passes through one or all of them, to the clear homogeneous atmosphere above them. There all meet. Previous distinctions are lost. Jew meets Hindu, and Persian Greek and Asiatic and European and American are joined and any one religion is just as good as another.”
