Aids in Attaining Spiritual Realisation: the Scripture and the Guru

A written scripture or teaching may help direct the focus of the mind and the heart toward the realisation to be gained. No book, however, can replace the experience, and an intellectual understanding does not constitute spiritual knowledge. Spiritual experience comes through receptivity to the vibratory pattern to be evoked in the being. The scripture, the ‘word’, helps to tune the consciousness toward the right vibratory pattern. It is then necessary for the individual to both accept the pattern and learn how to hold it steady in the being as it works to transform the mind, the life-energy and even the body.

Thus, a specific doctrine, a specific scripture is not required to have the spiritual opening and experience. What is needed is an implementation of whichever scripture one is following in one’s own life. The difficulties involved in doing this on one’s own, with the potential for misunderstanding, misapplication, and misdirection are enormous, and thus, the aid of an experienced guide, or Guru is frequently needed to aid in this tuning process. The ability of the teacher to receive and hold the vibratory pattern is a real aid to the individual seeker. Instruction in this sense is not necessarily, or at least not primarily intellectual, but consists of the creation of an atmosphere that surrounds, supports and guides the seeker.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Ordinarily, the Word from without, representative of the Divine, is needed as an aid in the work of self-unfolding; and it may be either a word from the past or the more powerful word of the living Guru. In some cases this representative word is only taken as a sort of excuse for the inner power to awaken and manifest; it is, as it were, a concession of the omnipotent and omniscient Divine to the generality of a law that governs Nature. Thus it is said in the Upanishads of Krishna, son of Devaki, that he received a word of the Rishi Ghora and had the knowledge. So Ramakrishna, having attained by his own internal effort the central illumination, accepted several teachers in the different paths of Yoga, but always showed in the manner and swiftness of his realisation that this acceptance was a concession to the general rule by which effective knowledge must be received as by a disciple from a Guru.”

“But usually the representative influence occupies a much larger place in the life of the Sadhaka. If the Yoga is guided by a received written Shastra, — some Word from the past which embodies the experience of former Yogins, — it may be practiced either by personal effort alone or with the aid of a Guru. The spiritual knowledge is then gained through meditation on the truths that are taught and it is made living and conscious by their realisation in the personal experience; the Yoga proceeds by the results of prescribed methods taught in a Scripture or a tradition and reinforced and illumined by the instructions of the Master. This is a narrower practice, but safe and effective within its limits, because it follows a well-beaten track to a long familiar goal.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Growing Within: The Psychology of Inner Development, Chapter III Growth of Consciousness Basic Requisites, pp. 46-47