Vol. 51 No. 20 - Elizabeth Clare Prophet - September 1, 2008
Darshan with the Messenger
The Guru-Chela Relationship
“Nothing Will Ever Allow Me to Stop Loving You”
Part 1
Thank you for your support of the guru, the mantle of the Guru, and your own mantle of chelaship. I’m gratified to be in your presence this evening and to bring you teaching on the guru-chela relationship.1 When we understand this relationship, we have nothing to fear and every reason to embrace the wonders of the love of our Gurus throughout the Great White Brotherhood.
Reliance on a guru, or spiritual teacher, is fundamental to many spiritual traditions. The guru-chela relationship is emphasized in Tibetan Buddhism. The disciple gains the blessings of all the Buddhas when he diligently practices his guru’s teachings.
Tibetan lama Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche explained this principle in his book The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel:
If one sees the teacher merely as an ordinary being, then one will only receive the “blessings” of ordinary beings; if one sees him as an arhat . . . , then one will receive the corresponding blessings; if one sees the teacher as a bodhisattva, one will receive the blessings of the bodhisattvas. If, however, one can see the teacher as a buddha, then one will receive the blessings of the buddhas. . . .
[The guru] is like... a wish-fulfilling jewel granting all the qualities of realization, a father and a mother giving their love equally to all sentient beings, a great river of compassion, a mountain rising above worldly concerns unshaken by the winds of emotions, and a great cloud filled with rain to soothe the torments of the passions. In brief, [the guru] is the equal of all the buddhas. To make any connection with him, whether through seeing him, hearing his voice, remembering him, or being touched by his hand, will lead us toward liberation. To have full confidence in him is the sure way to progress toward enlightenment. The warmth of his wisdom and compassion will melt the ore of our being and release the gold of the buddha-nature within.2
The Guru’s Rebuke Can Spare the Disciple
Years of Struggle and Self-Discipline
The guru-chela relationship is fundamental to Hinduism also. In the book The Eternal Companion, Swami Prabhavananda offers glimpses into this relationship. Here he describes a method used by his guru, Swami Brahmananda (a disciple of Ramakrishna), to train his close disciples:
Sri Ramakrishna himself often rebuked his most intimate disciples, and Maharaj [as Swami Brahmananda was called] also used this method to train those who were near and dear to him. The chastening of a disciple never began, however, until after he had enjoyed several years of love and kind words. These experiences were painful at the time, but they were later treasured among the disciple’s sweetest memories.
It often happened that even while the disciple was being reproached by Maharaj, he would feel a strange undercurrent of joy. The indifference of Maharaj was the only thing we could not have borne; but Maharaj was never indifferent. The harsher his words, the more intensely we felt his interest in our welfare. The very fact that he could speak to us in this way proved that we were his children, his own.
Sometimes, a disciple would be reproved for quite insignificant reasons, or on grounds that seemed to him utterly unjust. But, as time passed, he would realize that there had been certain tendencies and karmas stored in his subconscious mind, and that Maharaj had seen them and was working to annihilate them before they could appear and become harmful. Thus, at the cost of a little unpleasantness, the disciple would be spared years of painful struggle and self-discipline.
At one time Maharaj was disciplining me continually. All day long he would scold me. On one occasion I was supposed to have some stationery designed for him. I examined the proofs of the letterheads carefully before I presented several ornamental fonts to him from which to choose. When the stationery was printed, one of my brother-disciples took it to Maharaj, and then came back trembling:
“Maharaj says the ‘S’ is broken!” I went to Maharaj. He scolded me vehemently. Then I opened the stylebook and showed him that the space in the letter “S” to which he was objecting was really a part of the design. Nevertheless, he continued to scold me.
Although he did not mention the real reason for his scolding, he somehow gave me to understand that it had nothing to do with the letterheads—the apparent cause of his rebuke. He was wiping out karmas from my subconscious mind.3
Three Classes of Disciples
Swami Prabhavananda cites another episode:
I remember the first time Maharaj ever reproved me. I had failed to do a certain errand for him, because I had not understood exactly what it was he wanted. For this neglect he scolded me throughout the afternoon. At supper time, Swami Turiyananda was seated with Maharaj and I was fanning them. The scolding continued. I remained silent. Swami Turiyananda turned to me and asked: “Do you know why Maharaj is so hard on you?”
“No,” I replied, “frankly, I don’t. I do not see how I am to blame.”
Then Swami Turiyananda said: “There are three classes of disciples. The third-class disciple merely does the guru’s bidding. The second-class disciple does not have to be told. He acts as soon as the thought arises in the guru’s mind. But the first-class disciple acts even before the guru has had time to think. Maharaj wants you all to become first-class disciples.”4
The Mantle of Guru
Padma Sambhava bestowed upon me the mantle of Guru so that we might have a guru-chela relationship on earth.5 It is a wonderful thing to know one another on earth and not merely in the etheric octaves.
I am always wearing the mantle of the Guru. Wherever I go, it is present with me. Whether at the altar, at home, in a social setting, on an airplane or even when I am sleeping, I still wear the mantle. The mantle carries the weight of the mighty I AM Presence. That is the meaning of the Guru. It is the Presence of the I AM THAT I AM.
The ascended masters use me to reach chelas, often in the most unlikely places. I reach them with whatever they need at that moment. Sometimes it’s comforting love. Sometimes it’s illumination. And sometimes it is the chastening fire.
What Is the Meaning of the Chastening Fire?
Throughout my life of being a chela under the ascended masters (since I have been consciously aware of it and prior to that time) I have received and continue to receive the chastening fire of the ascended masters and my beloved Bapu, El Morya.6 This never ends, thank God. Thank God we may always be chastened and brought into line by the great masters whom we trust.
So what is the meaning of the chastening fire?
The author of Hebrews reminded the early Christians of the true meaning of chastening. He said:
Ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him:
For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?
But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons.
Hebrews 12:5-8
The author of Hebrews also explains, “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.”7
The Chastening Fire Purifies and Transforms
The chastening fire from the guru is a true gift to be received and internalized. It dissolves our human substance and replaces it with the true divine matrix so that we can reintegrate with the truth and our Real Self. Sadly, I have personally seen many would-be chelas fail because they either could not or would not endure chastening.
What a great, great pity. I have seen this here, there and everywhere around the world. I remember sitting on the floor before chelas, speaking to them of the chastening, speaking to them of the great fire of God’s love that purifies us, strips from us substance that we do not even know we have. And I have had people turn me back again and again, refusing the chastening, refusing the love of God, refusing that moment when they could be transformed and truly understand what it means to be a being of light.
Chastening is never given in anger, although the chela who receives it may, because of his or her own anger, translate it to be so. Chastening is a ruby fire that purges and purifies and restores you to wholeness if you accept and internalize it. That is the key. Accept it, let it in, internalize it. Let it pass through all the organs and systems of your body and know that the chastening ruby fire is cleansing you. And the cleansing comes from God, your mighty I AM Presence.
Continued in Part 2, published in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 51, no. 21.
Wrestling with the Dweller-on-the-Threshold
A Chela Receives the Fire of the Rebuke
From a Teaching by Elizabeth Clare Prophet on August 3, 1986
I think we are all here because we value most the Path and chelaship. This is why qualified and professional people choose to work here. And I have wrestled with many people and many people’s dweller-on-the-threshold as they have come through this organization.
Now, if I have to wrestle with their dweller, it means they’re not wrestling with the dweller. So I wind up wrestling with the dweller and the chela both until I get them separated, and then the chela and I wrestle with the dweller together.
Sometimes after I have wrestled with an individual and their dweller for years, they leave, because they eventually choose to embody that dweller. Lord Maitreya explained this in his New Year’s dictations this year.* Spending my time this way where it has been to no avail can seem like a thankless task when I could have been dealing with real, fiery chelas who would have accepted that teaching.
So sometimes I wonder what it is all for. And in some cases it’s been purely instructional for me. By doing the wrestling I have learned the lesson and whatever my karma or dharma has been. And in some cases, my working with a person or Mark’s working with them has actually made the difference in whether that person ascended or not. I know that there are people ascended today with whom we have worked, not only in this life but in previous lives, who would not have made it had they not gone through this process of being wrestled with.
I also know that on this staff there are people who don’t get this personal interaction with me and they don’t progress as quickly as they might. And sometimes one of the only reasons they don’t get it is that they do not interface with me in a work situation.
It takes a tremendous amount of bearing down, of drawing forth the light of my I AM Presence to bear down on a particular situation, to wrestle with the dweller-on-the-threshold and wrestle with the person whose psychology and karma have somehow made him, in part, a part of the dweller. (We have to be a part of the dweller to be expressing it.) And individuals who experience this may become defensive or critical of me or resistive to the very fire that, in reality, they want to derive from the experience.
The reason why I give certain disciplines is because at certain points individuals are not striving to outpicture their Christhood. At these moments, Christhood, or the joy of Christhood, is not their goal. When I see chelas do things that are self-limiting and beneath them in their Christhood, that is when I go after them, rebuke them, and give them the Word of the I AM Presence—because they are functioning at a level that is demeaning because it’s not their full potential.
And I want to tell you, as an interjection in this teaching, that I had a very sweet reward yesterday. I have had a number of people serve in a certain capacity on my staff over the years. All who have served in this capacity have received the most loving chastisements, corrections, teachings, insights that they might be around to hear, just because they happen to be in my presence.
Now, two of these individuals that I can think of, whenever they were corrected or rebuked, would usually weep. And then, by and by, I would hear back from other people how they would go out and criticize me for disciplining them. The weeping is from self-pity, not tears of repentance; and the criticism is the total rejection of the sacred fire, the individual choosing rather to blame the messenger for the very things for which they are being corrected.
It happens, when people keep on in this vein, that eventually there is no longer any path of chelaship for them. And by their own circumstances they remove themselves from the scene. So these individuals, having passed through the training situation where all could be given to them (and the Law having been satisfied that they had been given an opportunity to foreswear their dwellers and had not taken that opportunity), chose other places to be.
Thus, I was working with another person who was doing that same job. And this person was receiving that wrestling with the dweller-on-the-threshold and going after a certain density of substance, a certain something that had to be gone after. This is a very sweet person whose parents never wrestled with this in her. And I always ask people, because I think it’s important, How did you interact with your father and your mother? Didn’t your father and your mother ever teach you this? It’s important to look at that.
Well, this person received as strong a wrestling as I had given to any others in that same job. And I always wonder, how is the person going to survive it? After an individual has received a correction, I will pray for them and for their highest and greatest victory, that they will shed that particular snakeskin or cocoon of that substance.
So, lo and behold, after this particular experience, this person came back to me with a gift and a thank-you of three yellow roses, thanking me for this illumination. And I thought to myself, after approximately eight years of wrestling with those who were ungrateful and never did internalize the Word, here is a real chela who can receive that fire and truly drink the blood and eat the flesh of Christ and become it and be grateful for it.
It is a sign of a person who can go all the way from a seeming lowly estate of small beginnings in life to the victory of the ascension. That is the real heart quality it takes to receive the rebuke that strips from you karma and coils of bad habit in an instant, if you accept it. And the next day you can go on.
* See Lord Maitreya, December 31, 1985, “I Draw the Line!” 1986 Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 29, no. 19; and January 1, 1986, “The Lord of the World’s Path of the Six-Pointed Star: Taking the Hand of Maitreya’s Messenger” 1986 Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 29, no. 22.
“The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance o’er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom.”
Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivered this teaching during the Thursday, February 20, 1997 Darshan with the Messenger at the Royal Teton Ranch, Montana. Parts 2, 3 and 4 are published in Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 51, nos. 21, 22 and 23.
1. The Sanskrit word Guru (“Dispeller of Darkness”), when spelled with a capital G, indicates a God-man, or avatar, who is Teacher, Initiator. Lowercased, it indicates an enlightened teacher. The degrees of attainment by the officeholder may vary. The term chela refers to a student or disciple of the guru, a devotee of the light of Christ in the living master who wears the mantle of Guru. In The Chela and the Path, El Morya tells us, “In the Eastern tradition of chelaship, recognized for thousands of years as the way of self-mastery and enlightenment, one desiring to have the mysteries of universal law imparted to him applies to the teacher, known as the guru, considered to be a master (through the ages the real gurus have included both ascended and unascended masters) to serve that teacher until he is found worthy to receive the keys to his own inner reality” (p. 19).
2. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, The Wish-Fulfilling Jewel: The Practice of Guru Yoga According to the Longchen Nyingthig Tradition, trans. Könchog Tenzin (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1988), pp. 10, 11.
3. Swami Prabhavananda, The Eternal Companion: Brahmananda (Hollywood, Calif.: Vedanta Press, 1960), pp. 70-71.
4. Ibid., pp. 73-74
5. The mantle of Guru. On July 2, 1977, Padma Sambhava bestowed the mantle of Guru upon the messenger Elizabeth Clare Prophet. He said: “The ascended masters come as a living witness to proclaim in this hour that the guru-chela relationship can now be sustained in this octave through the flame of the heart of the Mother.” On July 1, 1992, beloved Omega said: “Beloved ones, what we offer you today is a very direct and living contact to us through the messenger and through the mantle of Guru that is upon her solidly and sealed.... The Path and the relationship are open to you as long as you will maintain the single foundational quality, which is love.”
6. Bapu [Hindi, from Sanskrit papu ‘protector’]: father. In his October 10, 1981 dictation, El Morya said: “Call me Bapu, if you will—‘Little Father’—that I might not displace the role, nor of the All-Father, nor of the Great Guru Sanat Kumara” (Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 24, no. 48, p. 473).
7. Heb. 12:11.
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