Do We Really Need A Guide In The Spiritual Journey?

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A visitor of Inspirations and Creative Thought site recently asked, "Why people look to other teachers, saints, etc for so much guidance. Shouldn't our devotion come from within? Do we really need all these saints and guiders to show us truth, devotion, spiritual enlightenment through their lives, which are as ordinary as ours? Their struggles, simply because they are on a larger scale are no more grander than ours. We have the same capacity, nothing differentiates them from us, can we not be the same? Achieve the same struggle and state of nothingness? So why are we so in awe of them? They are simply human men and women."

"Spiritual journey is suppose to be solely concerned with one's own spiritual enlightenment and search for truth and God. Do we really need a spiritual teacher, a guide?" - that pretty much summarizes one of the most frequently asked question by people who are interested in spirituality.

This poor heart decided to keep the answer simpler here. What's important is to contemplate on what is not spoken, through the hints of the brief words. Verily God is the Granter of deeper understanding and Helper to see things as they truly are.

Newton and the living Physics teacher

It is common sense that knowledge (in any discipline) is taken from one who has attained the knowledge, or at least have learned the fundamentals well. Instead of every one doing their own experiment to come up with the law of gravity, we send children to school, to a teacher who can help the child describe and explain the law of gravity.

We go to university to learn Physics from a living Professor of Physics; the learning transmit from a knowing mind to another mind. We don't just begin reading Physics lessons by grabbing the thickest book of Physics written by dead scientists without any living teacher, because that would be very inefficient, and reinventing the wheel again and again is not practical.

Similarly in the Spiritual discipline (irrespective of any spiritual path) the learning is best transmitted by a teacher who has already understood the fundamentals by his or her own journey (just as the Professor attained his own degree and approval from his own teacher who took his exam). The teacher in a science class transmit the knowledge from mind to mind. For a spiritual teacher this transmission happens from heart to heart. From time immemorial, every spiritual teacher did transmit from their heart to their disciples', companions heart. There are no exceptions.

It is very naive to think that spirituality can be learned through self-help book (which is arrogance in one hand and also a reflection of our selfish collective psyche in this age). If one to dive deep into any spiritual path, one come to know the alchemy of the self is not a subject that can be mastered through self-help book or by the parrot like memorization of holy books or book of religious rules.

In a discipline like Physics one need to learn all the definitions of different terms, before one can solve a complex equation. How naive it is to think one can understand the meaning in its depth without even 'learning how to learn' . To give an example, to arrive at the meaning of the intricate many layered meanings of every single verse of the Quran, there are ways to learn 'how to read' even with the presence of the heart which the sufis call 'hudur al-qalb'

To journey in spiritual path one encounters terminologies such as qalb (inner heart), tawba (turning back to God), true piety (wara), tawakkul (trust in God), rida (contentment) to name just a few and each of them have many different levels. The knowledge of the soul (nafs) is a precondition to master the self.

Arriving at real self-realization, not the kind which is sold as package in some yoga studio, is a matter of first discerning the delusions of the nafs which are many and unless the inner eye is open, everything seen is clouded by a veil. And the knowledge of the soul (nafs), its characteristics and inclinations are many such as the subtleties of hypocrisy (riya), hidden lust (al-shahwat al-khafiyya), and hidden polytheism (al-shirk al-khafi) - which if one is not aware then one is susceptible to failure in entering into gnosis or in attaining the knowledge which is real.