*Brian K. Wilcox, February 28, 2006

In the East, sat-sanga refers to a student's association with the virtuous or real (Georg Feuerstein, The Deeper Dimension of Yoga). The student experiences the Teacher as embodiment of the Real. The student has to get up tight, so to speak, with the Teacher.

Also, sat-sanga refers to Holy Company; so, it can refer to a gathering of persons embodying the Presence of God. "Sat" is Sanskrit for "the Absolute, the Real, God." "Sanga" refers to "a holy gathering, holy company."

The blunt, uncompromising, and compassionate Realness of the Teacher, even the Realness of apparent oddities, calls the student to awaken from the lie of consensual reality. The Teacher knows consensual reality is a delusional mass-hypnosis that separates from Reality, from God - and from Holy Company.

Indeed, the Teacher will use strategic moves to help shake the student into wakefulness. This is why the Teacher attracts few and distracts many. The Teacher’s love for the True is priority over love for the student; or, rather, his love for the student is held within his love for God.

The Teacher seeks most of all to be the conduit of the Spirit, for another, while in the West the teacher is seen - as most of us pastors, priests, and educators - to impart information.

The Teacher's life is his main Message. Everything he does in the student's presence is a Word. He dares to say, by his life, "Look at me, see what is - the Real - within me, what I show you, and you will see, truly see. You will see Reality, and it is so Real you have been looking at it all along."

The Teacher can appear on the surface to be ordinary; indeed, he is. That is the paradox of Presence.

Few persons can tolerate the unusual, stark Realness a Teacher embodies. In the West we want comforts from religion and its preachers and teachers. Teachers are Spirit persons in a world that presses the masses into conventionality.

But the Spirit is wild and eccentric, certainly not customary, certainly not always comforting. The Spirit loves to play with us, to get us to lighten up, to laugh with us — and to get over the egocentricity leading us to take religion too seriously. One of the most holy acts is Laughter.

The idea of devotion to the Teacher in Buddhism is noted in the reference Beautiful Friend. This Friend seeks one's joy and fulfillment. The Teacher deeply loves the student and offers her a look into Reality, a look at herself. The Teacher may not be perfectly well adjusted - God forbid he be - , and he might not be very nice, but he is deeply caring. He cares so much he can appear uncaring at times.

In the West we largely lack this perspective of incarnation of Spirit in Teachers or ourselves. We are suspicious of those called Master, Teacher, Sri, Lama, Rishi, Rinpoche, and Guru. But, oh, how we will often trust the most untrustworthy simply because he or she has Rev., Dr., Pastor, Bishop, ... before the name.

While we are afraid of guruitis, we have so focused on Jesus as a one-for-all-time incarnation we have tended to over-stress Jesus' uniqueness. We speak of Jesus as "from heaven" and seem to forget "of Nazareth."

This emphasis on a high Christology, devoid of the nondual paradox of orthodox Christology, has created an icon-like veneration of Jesus - Would this be a form of Christian guruitis? - that distances us from how he taught the potential in us to be persons embodying the Spirit.

Indeed, the distance between the belief of the churches and their level of spirituality is related to a theology that sees Jesus being and doing for us what allows us to excuse ourselves from being and doing. The Spiritual Teacher is one example of a theology of participation, rather than one of veneration. The Teacher reminds us that we cannot hide behind Jesus, or anyone, and avoid what the One calls us to be and do. We are not only to adore, love, and follow Christ, we are to be Christs in the Body of Christ.

Yet, we each are incarnations of the Spirit that indwelt Jesus the Christ. We each can, like Jesus - and all great Spiritual Masters -, be a means of sat-sanga - a Beautiful Friend - for others. We can, by Grace, be a conduit of God.

We might not be able to be a Beautiful Friend to everyone, but we can be that for someone. To be this we need someone who is a conduit of Spirit for us, someone who is such a Beautiful Friend she will upset us when she sees us losing touch with the Real and playing "spiritual" or "religious" games, hiding from the One.

Look into your life and asks some questions.

Who is a Beautiful Friend to me? Who is someone that seeks my highest good and well-being? Who embodies to me good and virtue? Whom do I feel Realness from?

Whom am I called to be a Beautiful Friend to? Whom is God calling me to offer an unprejudiced presence that seeks the highest good of that other?

How might I open more to Realness, the Real?