2-9-98 Da Avabhasa and the Issue of Enlightenment versus Mastership

One of the great spiritual teachers of this age is Da Avabhasa. He has influenced scholars as prominent as Ken Wilber (see prior article entitled "Jung, Eliade and Campbell and the Critique of Ken Wilber"), as well as a host of others, through an increasingly large number of spiritual treatises of enormous scope and depth. He not only appears to be an enlightened person, but a fully enlightened one, which means, he has traversed the full range of spiritual evolution from Psychic to Subtle to Causal to the ultimate Non-Dual state of Realization.

I have purposefully chosen Da Avabhasa's words for describing these states rather than the language of other great sages who have also described these states, such as Saint Teresa of Avila, the eminent Rudolph Steiner and His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, because I feel that Da Avabhasa's descriptions are particularly apt for modern western people. Although Da was greatly influenced by eastern teachings, he is a teacher of and for the west, whose presentation is highly suited to the more logically minded and discriminating people of the west.

The various schools of mysticism often lack the detailed delineations of the different states of consciousness provided by Da Avabhasa, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Rudolph Steiner and Teresa of Avila, and for that reason, lead to much confusion for the spiritual seeker. It is not enough to know a teacher as an enlightened one; we must also know the stage of enlightenment from which he speaks.

In his extensive preface to "The Song of the Self Supreme: Astavakra Gita", Da seeks to differentiate the non-dual seventh stage wisdom from knowledge which is generated from lesser states of consciousness. In doing so he has provided an invaluable contribution to the spiritual literature of the world and deserves an exalted place in our lives of great people series.

However, it is my obligation to point out how, even a great teacher as Da Avabhasa, has certain defects in his teaching when viewed from a still higher perspective. It is comparable to a man having won the world championship four times, but never having won the gold medal at the Olympics, and therefore not having that Olympian perspective. So what it this higher perspective?

It is the distinction between a fully enlightened human being and a Master. A fully enlightened human being knows intimately all the states of consciousness and their culminating point and, like Da Avabhasa, can describe them to others, but he does not know the complete art and/or spiritual science for leading others to this same point. Only a Master, or an impersonal teaching of the Masters, such as The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living, has this capacity.

Thus, when Da, in the book previously cited, criticizes Krishnamurti (See my earlier article on him) for his anti-guru stance and his no-path approach, he fails to understand how the path of Gyana Yoga differs from the other seven archetypal paths, especially in relationship to the guru-disciple model, and he also fails to appreciate the relationship of Gyana Yoga to the third level or short-path teachings. A modern day esoteric teacher named Raphael addresses this second question in two of his recent books.

Whether he is consciously aware of it or not, and it apparent to me that he is not, Da Avabhasa represents the Karma Yogic stream of spiritual evolution. Representatives of this stream necessarily promote "satsang", or sitting with the Guru as a primary spiritual tool. They also promote transcendence through conscious feeling. Finally they create an extensive esoteric religious organization, with many levels of hierarchy, to extend their teaching to others.

A Master will never project, even in subtle ways, his style of spiritual approach onto those who do not belong to his spiritual stream. Da does it constantly, as did Krishnamurti and most all of the other spiritual teachers of the last few thousand years. In doing so, they expose themselves as merely enlightened spiritual teachers, but not Masters. The few Masters who have honored each individual's own path have done so privately not publicly, since any other strategy could have interfered with the more extensive and universal goals of his organization. Or, to put it in simple terms, up until now, the time has not been right for Masters to bring out the full expression of their teaching, nor was the esoteric technology available to ascertain and honor individual streams of evolution. Only well into the age of science could genuine spiritual science blossom through The Art of Multi-Dimensional Living and provide a practical technology for bringing the guidance of Mastership into every dimension of the spiritual life.