Whom Can I Trust?

Whom Can I Trust?

A question of truth

Some years back when speaking to an informal group in a friend's home, a young woman asked me: "How can I know if a teacher or a body of teaching is valid?" I asked her to let me delay answering until our next meeting, for I realized how very crucial her question was. To find our way through the labyrinth of clamoring "truth" that assails us on all sides is no simple thing. Nor is it simply a matter of ensuring that we recognize intellectual accuracy, for spiritual teaching is just that–spiritual–and directly effects our personal evolution.

On the surface it does not really matter much what we intellectually believe about many aspects of spiritual philosophy. But on a deeper–and therefore more real–level, it matters greatly. For since it is definitely true that "thoughts are things" it only follows that every individual concept and every system of philosophy possesses a vibrational life of its own–a thoughtform or force that either serves to release the fettered spirit of the seeker into the freedom of the Infinite Spirit, or which serves to perpetuate its bondage within the realm of untruth and illusion.

The hidden life of religion

It is not the obvious, outer shell of a concept or belief that really affects us, but its inner heart–its "blood" which conveys the state of consciousness from which it arises. This is why Jesus told His disciples that they must not "eat" His body alone, but that they must "drink" His blood as well. 1

That is, they were not to simply adopt a series of beliefs or external ways gleaned from listening to Him speak, but they were to access the very Divine Source from which He drew His words–words which, because He spoke from a perfectly illumined consciousness, were in truth "spirit and life."2 For this reason, reading His words nearly two millennia after they were spoken still conveys a definite spiritual power. The same is true of the writings of saints and masters. It is not amiss to say that by reading their words we attune ourselves to their liberated consciousness and begin to absorb some of their interior vision along with the intellectual concepts expressed by them.

Conversely, writings and verbal teachings that arise from ignorance or deception convey the vibration and psychic state of ignorance and deception–even when the words are true on an objective level. This is why Saint Paul3 spoke of turning truth into lies–not by verbal alteration or rearrangement, but by the infusion of corrupted consciousness. We may think of the simile of good, wholesome food served in a dish laden with virulent disease germs. Those who eat the food also get the disease of the dish. As Saint Ignatius of Antioch, a disciple of Saint John the Beloved Apostle, wrote, it is like a pleasant drink with poison concealed in it so that whose who partake "do sweetly drink in their own death." Teachers and teachings are vessels that either purify or contaminate.

The four traits of trustworthiness

So what did I tell the inquirer at our next meeting? I told her that there are four characteristics which indicate that a teacher or religious-philosophical system is trustworthy, and one through which we can get more than just verbal answers to verbal questions–one by means of whose teaching we may attain to higher consciousness. Those four traits of such a teacher–and teaching–are these:

1) They have a well-established tradition of long standing–however popular the "new religion for a new age" slogan may be. Generations of aspirants who have applied the teachings and practices demonstrate a tradition's validity by their own objective spiritual realization which was gained by their applying that tradition's beliefs and practices.

2) They did not simply read books, do some kind of research, have some vivid dreams, "channel," or attempt to archeologically reconstruct a broken (or non-existent) tradition, and then set themselves up as a teacher or restoration of "lost wisdom." Rather, they learned from living guides, even though the study of written texts is usually part of the training they received.

3) They are supported by other valid traditions–that is, they are in harmony with all other ways of illumination and acknowledge the truth of those ways, not claiming to have the only truth or be the only right teacher and teaching. The differences between the great spiritual traditions are necessary so those traditions may benefit seekers of differing psychic makeup. Although there may be differences or seeming contradictions, there are never really any conflicts between the spiritual systems based on spiritual revelation. Further, each valid tradition understands that its ways are not for all, but only for those who can benefit from their distinctive approach. For example, valid meditators on God with form never disdain meditation on the formless, though they understand that it is not the kind of meditation they themselves need. And true seekers of the formless never disdain or deny the validity of approaching God through form. Nor does either one think that their way is the best one that all must eventually come to. As Swami Nikhilananda, a Vedanta missionary to the West, wrote, we cannot accept Christ and reject Krishna, nor can we reject Christ and accept Krishna. For they are One. And those who rightly seek union with the Real will come to experience that for themselves.

4) They not only give instructions in concepts or external observances, they also open the inner life through knowledge of the practice of meditation so their students may both comprehend the intellectual side of the tradition and on the esoteric side be enabled to attain the same state of consciousness which the original Teacher and His successors embodied. That is, through application of esoteric knowledge and power they are enabled to pass from being Buddhists to being Buddhas and from being Christians to being Christs. This takes much more than philosophy or external disciplines–however subtle or dramatic. It requires the inner experience and knowing that comes from meditation. Saint John wrote at the beginning of his Gospel: "As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God."4 That is, those who "receive" the pure consciousness of their own spirit, their own inner Christ, will be enabled to manifest their true nature as sons of God–as gods with God. It should be noticed that Jesus did not make His disciples sons of God. Rather, He gave them the "power to become" and they got to work and themselves did the "becoming" until in time their very shadows could heal the sick.5 As the Rig Veda says of God: "His shadow is immortality," and so is that of those who are one with God.

When these four points are truly possessed, and not merely claimed, then a teacher or teaching may be at least provisionally accepted until the seeker's experience itself becomes the determining factor of trustworthiness.