Читать книгу Spiritual Transmission - Amir Freimann - Страница 10

CHAPTER 1

THE NON-TEACHER TEACHER

I don’t see myself as a teacher, although it certainly seems that I am. But for this interview, I am happy to pretend that I am teacher and speak as if I were.

–JAMES SWARTZ (FROM AN INTERVIEW)

I was once with a great Tibetan teacher, and a student asked him, “If all enlightenment is within you, why do you need a guru?” And he said, “You need a guru to tell you that you don’t need a guru!”

–MIRABAI BUSH, FROM “OF TEACHERS AND TEACHING: WHO IS A TEACHER? WHAT IS A TEACHER?” INSIGHT NEWSLETTER, BARRE CENTER FOR BUDDHIST STUDIES, FALL 1993

PETER (HAKIM) YOUNG

My interview with Peter (Hakim) Young was the first one that I conducted. I had previously heard of Peter, the mild and gentle British successor of the colorful Turkish mystic Bulent Rauf, from several people who had stayed at the Beshara Centre. People spoke of there being a rarified atmosphere at the Chisholme Institute (the charity organization based at Beshara), but when I tried to get information about what was happening there, I couldn’t get a clear picture—except that the food there was exceptionally good, and that it was Bulent, who passed away thirty years ago, who was responsible for that. So when I heard, through some friends, that Hakim was visiting Israel with his Israeli-born wife, I asked to meet with him, and he agreed.

AMIR: Would you tell me about your relationship with Bulent Rauf, your teacher?

HAKIM: I’ll start by saying that Bulent never regarded himself as a teacher. He used to say, “There is only one teacher [pointing upwards], and I’m a fellow student, just like you.”

AMIR: How do you understand that?

HAKIM: I think there are two levels of his “not being a teacher.” The first one is that reality itself, or what we might call “God,” is the only teacher. All guidance ultimately comes from that single source. To give a simple example, I might be a plumber and I’m in a situation where I don’t know how to fix something; then I discover how to do it. I would consider the guidance even for that discovery as coming from that one source.

AMIR: Would you also say that knowing itself, before knowing anything specific, comes from that source?

HAKIM: Absolutely. All knowledge is single-sourced, therefore all guidance is single-sourced and it’s diffused into everything according to the capacity of that thing. For example, you and I have different individual capacities. The guidance that comes to me will be according to my relative capacity to receive and in line with my unique destiny. My relative capacity can also be expanded, when I tune in to what’s there for me. That’s the place of the teacher in this world, to help me to reach my uniqueness.

AMIR: What is the other level of “not being a teacher”?

HAKIM: I think that Bulent is more than a teacher. Some people who we know as “teachers” help others to come to the single source, yet they are not themselves embodying that source. Bulent was actually embodying the source, which is why he said that it was not him that was the teacher. So on the one hand, there is the metaphysical Truth that there is only one teacher, and, on the other hand, there are those who embody the reality of that metaphysical Truth. I think he is one of those.

AMIR: Could it also be that him saying, “There is only one teacher and I’m a fellow student,” was his way of turning the student’s attention from him personally to the source?

HAKIM: I think so, yes. But it wasn’t a trick. His taste was not to be a teacher, but rather to be genuinely, truly nothing. He wanted to be under the constantly changing revelation of the reality. If you are already a knower, you can’t be that; but if you’re a student of reality, then you’re learning moment by moment. So his saying that he was a student was not diminishing himself, but elevating the meaning of being a student, to being a receiver and open to the divine guidance.

AMIR: So the teacher, in the case of Bulent, was actually teaching by being an example of “studentship” of the source, of that higher knowledge.

HAKIM: That’s right. He wasn’t teaching. He was simply being.

AMIR: Could you tell me what led to your meeting with Bulent? Were you looking for a teacher?

HAKIM: This was in the early ’70s. I was twenty-four years old, living in the material world, working more than full time, basically living somebody else’s life. Then I had this car accident and a kind of near-death experience during it. I was recovering when a friend arrived at my doorstep and said to me, “I really think you should go to this place.” This was the first time that I had heard of the Beshara Centre, which was at a place called Swyre Farm in Gloucestershire. I went there for a weekend, and that visit awakened something in me. I went back home, thought about that for a while and then got together with some people who’d also been in that place, and we met for study and meditation, etc. In one of my subsequent visits to Swyre Farm, I first met Bulent.

AMIR: Was it a love at first sight?

HAKIM: No, my involvement and relationship with him developed gradually, over years. Eventually, I moved to Chisholme House, in Scotland, which was being renovated and turned into the Beshara School. Bulent was there for a lot of the time. He didn’t teach but he was a consultant, guiding the people who were running the courses. I joined the first course there and for me it was an absolutely life-changing experience. I remember saying to myself, “I want to be involved in this; this is the path for me.” Then Bulent asked me to be involved with the next course as a facilitator, and after that I participated in a follow-up six-month course. For that course, Bulent was fully present nearly all of the time. He warned us at the outset: “For this course, you’ll be under the whims of a grumpy old man.” I must say I found it really difficult. It was so intense. We were meeting for conversation with Bulent every day without exception for maybe six hours a day. Extraordinary things came out during those six months. We were introduced to a place that we can’t own, but if we’re fortunate we can gain access to it—a place of journeying.

I’ll make a long leap here to 1984, when I was invited to come and be the director of studies for the six-month course, and afterwards I was appointed principal of the school. That summer Bulent was un-well when he came back from Turkey, and when he was diagnosed with cancer he told me, “I want you to look after me.”

AMIR: Was it only then that the relationship between you became closer?

HAKIM: Yes. I think that an invitation from him to come closer had been there much earlier, but I had been too afraid and held myself back. But at that point, in 1984, there was no choice. Or rather, there had been a choice but I’d already made it, so that then there was no choice. He said, “Come closer.” I said yes. Then I was in agreement. It wasn’t always easy, in fact it was very intense at times, but I had agreed to sit down in the fire.

AMIR: What was the intensity? Do you think he deliberately put pressure on you, or was it more of a spontaneous result of being in his presence?

HAKIM: There is a poem by Rumi about a conversation between a chickpea and the cook cooking it, which is a metaphor for the teacher-student relationship. Well, Bulent was preparing me for the role and for the responsibilities I had agreed to take. It was a highly pressurized situation. I was cooked, mashed and reshaped by him into nice hummus!

It’s important to clarify at this point that none of this would have been possible without my permission. And my permission was an essential one, from my essence. You could say it was my essential request, which is that I wanted to get closer to the real, I wanted to be of service, I wanted to be completely under divine love. Well, if that’s the case, then certain things have to happen and some of them are going to be a little painful. This is not a caravan of pain, but pain is part of the growing. That’s what the cook says to the chickpea: “If you want to be nice, soft and delicious, if you want to realize your essential goodness, then stay in the pot.” Of course, if that essential request had not been present it might have looked like a sort of bullying. But it was not.

AMIR: Were there times in which you felt that the pressure was too much for you?

HAKIM: There were times when I felt completely crushed, but it’s interesting that, although being with him was sometimes like sitting in the middle of a volcano, for some reason you never felt that he was out to destroy you. Something always felt right, even though your limbs and appendages were getting chopped off. We also had a lot of fun. He had a great sense of humor and we laughed a lot. Sometimes we’d be helplessly rolling over with laughter, crying with laughter, unable to breathe…

AMIR: What was it like for you when he died?

HAKIM: It was a very mixed period. There was the real sorrow that something has come to an end, but there was also this feeling of extraordinary joy, which was bodily joy, it didn’t come from a thought. A real grounded experience of joy which I’d never experienced before.

AMIR: How do you understand that?

HAKIM: When Rumi departed, he said to his followers, “Don’t grieve for me, this is only my nutshell. I’m going to rejoin my beloved.” You see, while we’re here, however much we talk about the union with the beloved, we’re still under the conditions of relativity and a kind of a distance, a trace of separation remains. When you die, or return to the source, there is the joy of reunion. Because it’s real and it’s not just his, not just Bulent’s, the whole universe experiences it. Something has become completed in the most beautiful way. It was tremendous.

AMIR: Do you feel that he has continued to guide you in some way, to function as your teacher, even after his passing away?

HAKIM: Yes, but when you say “he,” we have to go back to the single source which he represented. I believe it was him, but what is him? That question needs to be asked just as I need to ask, “Who am I?” If I’m asking, “Who am I?” I need to ask, “Who is he?” as well. Of course, that guidance is not limited to him. It can come from anywhere and it can still be him, but in another form. Do you see what I’m saying?

AMIR: I do, but don’t you find there’s something in your relationship with Bulent that makes this guidance more accessible to you?

HAKIM: That’s right, and I’ll tell you how that continues today. A maqam, a physical place or spiritual point of reference, is important for us all to find. For me, it is the Monument to Man at Chisholme, where Bulent is buried. I am fortunate that I can go there anytime, even if only in my intention. It has become a place of imagination within my intention. The fact that it’s in my imagination doesn’t mean that it’s not real. Real things happen there, in this place of the imagination, just like being with somebody in the flesh. So, yes, guidance continues. It doesn’t have to be at the monument, but the monument is for me a very useful physical representation of this guidance. When I visit, I am reminded of who I am and I am returned to who I am. All the peripheral stuff, the petty concerns, even if they don’t drop away immediately, they become reduced, and a different perspective is given. So, yes, guidance continues.

In preparation for my meeting with Hakim, I searched online for information about Bulent, and what I found fascinated me. The description of him on the Chisholme Institute website begins like this: “Bulent Rauf (1911–87) was a man who escaped definition deliberately, but whom many varied descriptions fitted easily: a gentleman, a mystic, a world-class cook, archaeologist, writer and translator, Turkish citizen and man of the world, lover of beauty and champion of esoteric education.”

I learned that British mystic and author Reshad Field considered Bulent to be his teacher, and that Field’s well-known book The Last Barrier—A True Story of a Journey into Ultimate Reality was about their relationship. I also stumbled upon a documentary, In Search of Oil and Sand, released in 2012, which tells a fable-like story about how Bulent, who was married to Princess Faiza, the sister of King Farouk of Egypt, created in 1952 with members of the Egyptian royal family and their friends an amateur movie, Oil and Sand, whose plot predicted with uncanny precision the coup d’état in which King Farouk was ousted—which happened only a few months later. I came to the meeting with Hakim eager to hear about his relationship with that remarkable man, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I chose to start the book with this interview not only because it was the first one I conducted, but also because it touches on one of the most basic questions that has always baffled me: Why would a teacher tell their students that he or she is not a teacher, that they don’t need and must not have a teacher or that there is absolutely nothing to teach or learn? Why would anybody make such patently self-contradictory claims?

This paradox was especially evident for me in regard to the powerfully awake and profoundly influential J. Krishnamurti. Videos of him speaking to an audience or conversing with someone, not only with great conviction and confidence but also with powerful authority, leave little question in my mind that, if anybody should be regarded as a spiritual teacher, it is he. So why did he often use his spiritual weight and charisma to assert that there is no teacher and no pupil, and got upset when people referred to him as a teacher or even implied that?

These questions were highlighted also in the way Hakim spoke about his relationship with Bulent. It seems clear to me that Bulent functioned as and was a teacher to him and to his peers. Even the reasons that Hakim gave, for that not being the case, actually explained why Bulent was indeed a teacher and expressed Hakim’s great appreciation for that.

In Mariana Caplan’s The Guru Question: The Perils and Rewards of Choosing a Spiritual Teacher, she dedicated a section in her chapter entitled “Types of Spiritual Authority” to this paradox; there, she writes:

An increasing number of teachers say they are not teachers. There are many reasons for taking this position. In many of the contemporary neo-Advaita-Vedanta nondual traditions, for example, the labels of “teacher” and “student” are often considered illusory distinctions within the nondual truth of oneness, and therefore obstacles to the nondual realization of oneness. This model suggests that the affirmation of the teacher outside of oneself often distracts the practitioner from the truth of the inner teacher or guru, and disempowers the student’s self-awakening and the cultivation of trust in her own inner authority.

The point of discernment to be aware of in this circumstance is as follows: When two people are functioning as teacher and student in the Western world, there is an almost inevitable arising of psychological projections and power dynamics in spite of what a teacher does or does not call him or herself; and when the student-teacher relationship is not acknowledged or well structured, built-in structures to help both the student and teacher navigate the psychological complexities that arise for each of them often go lacking.

I will end the presentation of this paradox with the answer that Andrew Cohen (in Chapter 12) gave me in one of the interviews I did with him for this book, when I asked him why he thought Krishnamurti insisted he was not a teacher.

ANDREW COHEN

ANDREW: I think that’s because Krishnamurti was aware of the transference and projection that too often happens when people meet genuinely enlightened teachers. He wanted people to take responsibility for themselves and be mature. He was reacting to many of the difficult problems that tend to arise around powerful and charismatic spiritual teachers. Ironically, while he was doing this, he was denying who he really was. He himself was brilliant, radiant and obviously deeply enlightened. He liked to pretend he was not any different than anybody else, but it wasn’t true, and he knew it. He knew he was in touch with a level of depth and heightened consciousness that most people are oblivious to. And to be honest, when someone is so much more awake than others, they can’t really hide it. It’s not only obvious to them, but to all others who have the eyes to see. The light of consciousness shines through them with so much more power, depth and intelligence that it’s almost unavoidable. The “Guru Principle” was alive and active in that extraordinary man, even though he did his very best to appear to be no different than anyone else.