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SPIRITUAL INSPIRATORS
This page is dedicated to what I call Spiritual Inspirators.
From 1989 to 2011, I spent much of my time in India, passionately engaged in
studying and practicing meditation. I took a year-long leave from my job as
a high school teacher three times, and almost every summer, I spent my
two-month holiday in that blessed country.
This page is created in deep gratitude to those spiritual torchbearers from
India. They are a dying breed. Today, I doubt many of them remain. Only two
individuals in my Hall of Fame on the left are still alive.
I often encounter the notion that one should only study meditation under a
single teacher within a specific system. I disagree. Only by studying under
various teachers can one find their own unique path. In the tradition of
classical music, an adept must study under at least two different teachers.
Otherwise, they will not find their own style but will become copycats.
Where and what is the Master?
Intentionally, I refer to my meditation teachers as inspirers rather
than masters. The very notion of a perfect master as an object of external
worship might, in fact, be dangerous.
No human can leap over their own shadow. We are all wonderfully fallible.
Hence, there is only one master. This master resides in each of our hearts.
No one embodies this message more closely than
Papaji:
Don't listen to anyone!
Don't even listen to me!
Listen to your own Soul
A true Masters message can only be:
There is no teaching
There is no teacher
There is no student
Only through the inner master's intuitively
articulate and emotional advice do we find the convoluted path to the soul's
butterfly. To follow the path to the source's origin, we must follow the
inner stream. The stream's course is never straight. It meanders organically
through the landscape. Only as vigilant
individual surfers can we surf the ocean of bliss.
Obeying authorities' offers of straight highways can, in the worst case,
deprive us of wonderful and valuable mistakes! The body doesn’t learn by
avoiding experiences through external commands. It learns by being maximally
touched by life's dual pulse.
Man has to seek God in error
forgetfulness and foolishness
Meister
Ekchart
What you perceive today as a misstep will
later be revealed as a spiritual dance step. In this sense, at certain
phases of our lives, we might even need to follow shadowy masters. At least
that was the case for me! However, in this hall of fame, I have only
collected those whom I consider the noble ones. It is not my job to make
others make mistakes. They will surely occur by themselves.
It makes no sense for me to call them gods or gurus. Don’t follow their
words as if they were absolute. Instead, allow your heart to be inspired and
then let the true teacher emerge from within.
Take a look in the Mirror of a Noble Face
Now take a look at the wonderful faces displayed above... Here,
meditation is smiling at you! The mystic Nisargadatta Maharaj once said:
'One can take a photograph of a candle, but it will not emit light.'
I dare to disagree... Just look at these pictures: It is indeed possible to
get divine inspiration...
Just by looking at these faces, something can happen to one’s own face. It
can become an expression of... aliveness! Serenity, joy, love—these are
words we can use while trying to catch the Bird of Soul. Feel free to stare
at these faces. They reveal the answer to the riddle—and then, maybe one
day, you can pass on the joke to others.
A time will come when we all will smile like these Divine Inspirators...
This time is now.
However, be aware that what you will encounter here is primarily my
experience of them. It cannot be otherwise. Each one of them reflects
different aspects of the truth in me. I have therefore taken the liberty to
comment on these meetings with my own writings.
It is everyone's birthright to meet a Divine Inspirator or to experience
Divine Inspiration. It will happen when the time has been ripened by
timelessness.
Kind regards from Gunnar Muhlmann
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