Is a Teacher Necessary?, March 31, 2010

Moderator: “Does one need a teacher to be self-realized?”

David: No. This question like the previous one though requires clarification. If you understand the teacher in a strictly objective sense as a separate person, then your view about the teacher can contain a misunderstanding about the nature of the relationship with the teacher, the teacher who is a human person. Specifically here, the teacher’s body or form is not the teaching.

Now here I’m only talking about my teaching. I can not talk for any other teacher. I’m going to say that once more because it is so important. I can not speak for any other teacher. I am not speaking about your Indian teacher, and I’m not speaking about anyone’s teacher who is on this forum. I’m only speaking about David and what David is and what David knows. That’s where all my wisdom proceeds from.

The teacher, me as teacher is not the body. Nor is it my personality. It’s not the ego structure. It’s nothing you can see. So, if it’s nothing you can see then the question as to whether you can do without it or not is illusory. Something has to be your teacher. If you have a prejudice toward human forms of teacherhood then avoid humans, but you might have to go to instuction to nature or to your own intuition, or to friends. There’s no escape from relationship and having to learn in the context of relationship.

This question about whether a teacher is needed seems to be to be based on some kind of aversion that’s deep in the personality to even pose that question. You need a teacher for everything in life. Your parents are your first teachers, later on, your school teachers and the friends that you accumulate over the years. You are always in relationship to others. You are always in relationship to teachers. Teachings are streaming forth in all directions, even from animals.

This notion that the spiritual teacher is any different than any other teacher is to me a conundrum. It’s an unfortunate question because of its presuppositions, which are all about the fear of relating. And a spiritual teacher, with me as a spiritual teacher, for example, you’ll come into the most profound vulnerability, the most profound opening of which a human being is capable.

All your defenses will come down. Your mind will shed its fears, paranoias, superstitions, illusions, delusions, and rigid conclusions. That whole process is the true presence of the teacher, that opening. That is what the teacher does as in my case. So, to ask whether a teacher is needed, my response is the teacher is highly desirable, most desirable, the most desirable thing in a human birth.