Transmitting enlightened awareness directly to you

verse, that women were inferior human beings, that homosexuality was a sin, and that slavery was acceptable – even in the monaster- ies, Hindu and Buddhist alike. At that time, the mythic-tradition- alist worldview was the most advanced belief system in existence, and its values of absolutism, fixed hierarchy, and strict authority were the leading edge of human evolution. Modernity hadn’t yet emerged, and nobody in the ancient world lost any sleep over futuristic fantasies like the separation of church and state. Conse- quently, the guru, who was almost always male in those days, was like a God-King – a sovereign endowed with divine attributes like omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and infallibility. It was generally assumed that the guru’s attainment of the Great Perfec- tion of enlightenment also guaranteed the perfection of his human body-mind. Because he had realized this state of Absolute Perfec- tion, everything he said and did was therefore also perfect. Reflecting this godlike perfection, the guru was attributed with absolute authority, and total submission of your autonomy to the spiritual master was considered to be the high road to God. But these mythic-traditionalist times are long gone. Cultural evolution has advanced since that illustrious era, and we have now come to a more refined understanding about the relationship between the guru’s enlightened state and his human personality. In my work as a teacher today, I have come to understand that making a clear distinction between the man and the master is crucial. In the ancient past, the man and the master were consid- ered one and the same – not a glimmer of daylight between them. The guru was viewed as the ‘perfected one,’ absolutely pure and enlightened through and through. The absence of any division be-