Guru Self-Talk

How a guru talks to their students is how they talk to themselves.

Someone sent me a video of a young man talking about enlightenment the other day. I will include the video below. The young man, who goes by the YouTube name of ASCENDOR, was very earnest and I found everything he said rang true.

Even with that I still felt a little bit uncomfortable listening to him, which is not an uncommon feeling for me when I listen to spiritual teachers or gurus.

My uneasiness, when listening to this young man was a sense that a deeper part of him had assumed full control of his whole system and was speaking these deep truths.

I have seen this before with other people sharing deep levels of consciousness. It often feels like there is something missing, a certain relatability.

I remember reading Krishnamurti’s biography and in it, the author, Mary Lutyens, described how Krishnamurti would wake up terrified like a little boy every night. He would refer to himself as “K,” in a frightened way saying things like, “When is “K” coming back?” and, “Is “K” coming back now?” 

This is a graphic representation of when a very deep part of a person takes control of the whole system. For me, this is not enough. All parts need to be included. All parts need to be loved. Any kind of hierarchy inside leads to tension and is ultimately lacking in compassion. For myself, the least conscious parts of me are just as valued and loved as the very conscious parts of me. 

You can get a little window into what the spiritual teacher’s self-talk is like when you listen to the way they talk to their students. 

Here is Krishnamurti, for example. If you replace “mind,” and “ego,” with “myself” or “me,”  you will get an idea of how he talked to parts of himself.

“The ego is a constant self-importance, a false sense of superiority or inferiority that keeps you from love and truth.”

“You cannot trust the mind because it is conditioned by fear and desire.”

“The personal self is an obstruction to the divine flow of life. It is the source of all suffering and division.”

“The mind is a trap, an illusion-maker that keeps you away from the truth of life.”

“To be free, you must die to the self. This is the only way to live in truth and love.”

Here is my spiritual teacher Barry Long. The same again replace “mind,” and “ego,” for “myself” or “me” and you will get an idea of how he talked to parts of himself.

“Ego is the greatest lie invented by man. And because of this lie, the whole world has gone wrong.” 

“The mind is the root cause of all misery. You can transcend it, but you have to be aware of it.”

“As long as you are full of ego, you will remain empty inside.”

“To be free of the mind is to be free of all suffering.”

“The ego exists through conflict. It feeds on comparison and competition. Without them, the ego cannot survive.”

Here is Osho. Replace “mind,” and “ego,” with “myself” or “me” and you will get an idea of how he talked to parts of himself.

“Your mind is like a monkey – it jumps from thought to thought and creates chaos.”

“The ego is a barrier, a wall between you and the divine. It is the only thing that separates you from the truth.” 

“Your mind is your prison. You are confined by it.”

“As long as you are full of ego, you will remain empty inside. The ego is a pretension that you are something when you are not.” 

Sadhguru. Again replace “mind,” and “ego,” with “myself” or “me” and you will get an idea of how he talked to parts of himself.

“Your ego is like a layer of dust over your perception; it prevents you from seeing the reality.”

“The mind can only understand what it knows. It cannot grasp the unknown.”

“The ego creates a sense of separation. It divides you from the world and from yourself.”

“The mind is a beautiful instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes a very destructive enemy.”

“When you have a strong sense of ego, you will always feel incomplete.”

When you listen to how a spiritual teacher or guru talks to their students it is, for me, a clear indication of how they speak to themselves. 

It highlights the kind of discipline they are exerting on their inner landscape, how much tension and control they are exerting on the least conscious parts of themselves, how unkind and unloving they are being to themselves. 

Spiritual teachers can talk with a lot of certainty and offer us a very seductive presentation of having arrived at some kind of certainty which, Jesus fucking Christ we all want so desperately, a little bit of certainty in a very uncertain existence. The part that craves that kind of certainty is the part of us that will be attracted to a certain kind of spiritual teacher. I speak from painful personal experience here.

So the very important question to ask ourselves is do I want to be talking to myself like that on the inside too? Do I want to create an internal version of my harsh guru beating the unconscious parts of me into submission? This never actually works, it creates a fracture inside, a compartmentalization and a suppression of the less conscious parts of us, which is a version of what the Victorians used to do with disabled children, locking them away in the attic. It is not loving. It is not efficient and it doesn’t help us become more conscious. 

So I encourage you to listen to how gurus talk to their students as a little window into what their self-talk is like and ask yourself if that is the sort of self-talk you want to absorb.

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Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash