Guru-Shishya Series - 5: Modern behavior/ attitude of Students towards teachers

16 April 2023

Houston Texas

Here is the Guru-Shishya Series Database with hyperlinks

In my previous posts, I have addressed the approach of student to teacher as per ancient Indian system in quite detailed fashion to relevice myself from certain pressure levied on my psyche for certain demands.

Guru-Shishya Series-1: Introduction & Approaching the Guru

There was more compressed message in that post and one can unveil or discover as one puts it into practice than just read it and go away.

There were certain points indirectly it was addressed in those posts but the message is not conveyed yet, so I am expanding the post on key critical points for modern times. During ancient times, certain modern attitude of students approaching very serious teacher for spiritual training did not exist, with globalisation and other materialistic influences, these modern behavior has to be approached more in detail with nuances.

**Disclaimer: This post is applicable only for very serious spiritual training like forest ascetism or even more serious houselder practice (grhasta), and it is between serious Guru and Teacher, a case by case basis, not a group class. One should not use it for training in social settings like camps, office, etc only for recluse ascetics.

Modern behavior and attitude of the students:

This is a pattern, I have observed from older to younger generation in last 60-70 years. This is a trend and new normal. Media influence and materialistic influence is feeding this abnormal shameless behaviour towards serious teachers.

These are 2 modern attitudes which have infiltrated most of the spiritual seekers both physically & psychically:

1. Dancing and flashing Victim Placard
2. Teaching the Teacher
   1. Demanding equal respect as teacher 

All the 3 are enough to sink the studenthood and stagnate over births. This time of Kali Yuga (Dark Age), these behaviours are constantly enforced by nature and Kali (Dark) Devatas or Entities. So, more care must be taken than before.

Impact of Kali Yuga in Day to Day life:

A the end of Dwapar Yug (Eon), King Parkishit who is the grandon of Arjuna and Priskhit was personally saved by Lord Krishna when Ashwatthama released Brahmastra (Highest Weapon of Brahma) towards Abhimanyu's wife womb to destroy the race of Arjuna and Pandavas forever.

King Parikshit comes from such a heritage and was a dhamic King (righteous) and was respected by all sages of his time. Kali devata enters his kingdom and asks his permission out of courtesy and diplomacy to kick start the beginning of Kali Yug.

1. Gold
   1. Money, Land, Power, Credit Cards, Unproportionate money in relation to his work
2. Alcohol
   1. Drugs,Alcholism, Addictive substance use
3. Prostitution
   1. Pornography and Prostitutions camps like Red light area are obvious centers of Prostitutions, one can take decent preventions from going to those places but Kali Devata has brought that energy to our pockets in the form of phone. One has to guard from phone too from such subtle prostitutions exposure.
   2. Subtle Prostitutions Media: Abnormal or excessive exposure of reproductive parts of both gender is a psychic subtle flesh trade or showcasing it to open market or potential customers. Eg: Sexy songs, movies, sexy dialogues, sensual music (this has penetrated even so called devotional music in modern times).
4. Butcher Shop
   1. Meat eating is pervasive, if one is happened to born in meat eating family, one cannot escape until one is freed from their clutches at older age between 18-25.
   2. Most of the packaged or canned items contains certain form of preservative or gelatin made from Pig, Cow or fish fat or bones. We have already consumed out of ignorance or necessity due to Doctor' recommendation or travel needs. Later stage, one can cook one's own food and less travel to avoid such food.
5. Gambling
   1. Casinos, betting matches, Horse races, Lottery, Online rummy or card games
   2. Lottery: This can get addictive to huge masses in third world countries than first world country. In my place in India back in 90s, there were extraordinary addcition for lottery tickets and hard working labors were investing there daily wage almost in full in buying lottery seats over decades and betting that one win is enough to erase all his poverty overnight. If he loses, he will end up in wine shop to vent his sorrow. This loop is destructive and the state took a bold step of banning lottery against all their lobbyists and that reduced this habit to a good level but the lottery is still running in neighboring states in India.

From 3:00 to 7:18, one can see the interaction between Kali Devata and King Pariskshit, how Kali Devata sits on the head of the King Parkishit, the moment King gives the Gold to be one of the residing spots for Kali and that spelled the doom for the King himself. This is from a 80s famous Mahabharata drama in India. It does not have English subtitles, but one can look at it for reference, it was a masterpiece back in the day compared to any recent sensuous renditions of the epic mahabharata. 

This contains a detailed video on entire story of Pariskhit and Kali devata and the birth of Srimad Bhagvatham and aftermath with English subtitles.

The impact of Kali Yuga in day to day life hast be strongly inculcated and be understood that no one born in this planet from King to pauper is free from dark Kali devata's influence and one way or the another he will collect his tax and everybody comes back to level playing field. Infact, the first victim of Kali devata on the KaliYug was the great King Prakishit himself, he did not target any laymen or richman, he dismantled the king himself who has personally saved by Krishna in embryo. 

So, we can understand his impact and make safe guards and keep safe distance and hide under Krishna, Buddha or Shiva's influence and escape with minimal damage. Things are gonna get worse in time in term of righteous conduct/ virtues or dharma and one cannot keep expecting even a decade before virtue at present.

Time is the ultimate controller, so it is better to start innovating new yogic techniques and self reform to be immune or resistant to a decent level to Kali or Mara's evil influence and escape to higher dimensions if one can. (In Buddhism literature, Mara is used in similar context as an equivalent or brother like deity of Kali devata)

After this fact is established, we can move to the following modern behaviour of students towards serious spiritual teachers.

 Dancing and flashing Victim Placard:

In Kali yuga, everybody is victimised one way or another. No one can escape, it may look like shimmering and glorious outside, only the insider would what infestation or pain, one is going thru. If one is taken way something, nature balances it by giving something else.

For Eg: Fate for some reason make's one childhood without both parents and always made one live under someone's roof. Fate takes note of it and after the age of 22, he or she gets a great and prosperous life that make ignorant people envy him or her of such perfect adult life setting.

When I have encountered such people, they still keep crying about the childhood miseries day and night and how they were never cared by their mother or father and blame all the miseries in their adult life stemmed from it. This is a true to a small degree but most of it is crap and self-delusion, the narrative they tell themselves and others.  

Human psyche has a natural quota for sympathy whenever any misdemeanor happens to any living beings including plants, animals, etc. There are variations from individual to individual form low to high.

These people mostly have the victim placards right at their forehead psychically and roam around, any instance or word  or action would be reflection of that victim placard. They may not say instantly about their miseries but their every actions or thoughts will based on the tree of old misery. Ignorant liaty, friends and relatives misunderstand this self delusion and start sympathising for the other person and they get deluded in return. The friends, relatives perceive the actions and words of this "Once upon a time Victim" as Sattvic or clarifying mode like very humble, down to earth, moderate, it is actually full fledged Tamo Guna or depressive mode in display. The person is exhibiting serious dark and depressive energy and running towards retardation state.

From surface, Sattva (clarifying, calm state) and Tamo Guna (depressive, retardative state) looks very similar but they are totally opposite. Anyone who identifies Calm and non-restless state as equivalent to drowsy and depressive state is blind person with eyes but it is common.

One needs higher Rajas mode (passionate, enthusiastic) to switch from Tamo Guna to Sattva guna, most depressive people take sleeping pills, alcohol, drug or other habits like media, chattering, etc to suppress any lower Rajo Guna (anxiety, restlessness, confusion) to flip back to Tamo guna (sleepy, depressive, retardative state). 

One has to enter into Rajo guna to perform required actions and duties in this world in a detached manner, for detached perspective, one has to constantly go and come out of sattva guna (clarifying mode) to avoid any false identification with the tasks and forget oneself of one's true nature. 

And once the victim placard is lifted, no more learning will take place. Everytime, one tries to reform the other, the other picks up the victim placed of umpteen reason and flashes and dances around. No learning is going to happen to such individuals. 

First action is to burn the placard in flames psychically and move on from that incident. In Valmiki Ramayana, Goddess Sita make a statement "I must committed a grave sin in the past that's why I endure so much suffering under Ravana". When Goddess Lakshmi in the form of Sita itself has committed some crime and fate is making sure to collect the penalty by throwing Sita in the Ashoka Vana in Ravana's kingdom and torture her day and night by female demons. Goddess Sita did flash victim placard but instead she realised her mistakes in this life and past lives for her unfortunate situation, now one can realise the absurdity when laity's flashes victim placard because he or she is purely innocent of any crimes over this and past lives. Not a single place in Valmiki Ramayana where Sita blames her misfortune to Lord Rama or Lakshmana, she blames herself for this life and past lives misdemeanor, she did not play the victim placard. 

If the learning has to start, the victim card psychih mechanism has to be thrown away constantly inside the head every time it flashes and start required austerities to move to next stage and reverse the ill effects as much as possible.

Psychichally perceptive entities will not usually fall for this victim card playing and sympathy, they can also disguise in the form of the child (the epitome of innocence) astrally and seek sympathy psychically by hitting on the sympathy orb in the psyche. One should be wary of it and deflect such psychic tracks. These individuals never go too far, and will stop soon.

Some western bodied entities might say if I had a particular Indian or Tibetan body, I would have been liberated by now or within this lifetime or would have made massive progress. They go on to say that I had that great Indian or Tibetan in my past lives, do look at all my addictions/ attractions to Indian/ Chinese food,Indian/ Chinese movies, books and Indian/ chinese bodied people.

Point well made!

But why wasn't that entity who had the most desirous and so called ideal indian or Tibetan in whatever class was not liberated or made progress in his / her's past lives? That clearly show the gap in one's reasoning and confusing the attachment to the filthy temporary body for manifesting secret interests or desires in the earth to the desire for liberation.  

Dangers of Tamo guna (confusing to Sattva guna) people association:

One need not waste time if they are not willing to burn the victim placards and silently walk away from such individuals to avoid any association. Such tamo guna (depressive) energy entities flashing victim placards becomes in time the store house of depressive energy of their deceased ancestors and other astral depressive groups.

They can take one to lower realms or hells where one would constantly suicide and still no die. It will happen in a repeat mode until the atma will suffer lot of trauma in those places, these tamo guna entities love such hellish life and they get a secret kick out of such repeated death trauma. No spiritual aspirant should enter in association with such people even if it is member of temporary family setting in this life. Worst part is Tamo guna people are often confused with Sattva guna and given too much importance to their compulsive actions and speech which might look like humble or less spoken but in reality, it is due to sluggish nature in the psyche. 

Romanticizing or glorifying the miseries of tamo guna (depressive) people by other family members or friends is born of delusion and spiritual ignorance (avidya). Such acts should not be taken serious.

For laity, some basic non-yogic methods like reading books, mindful while talking and not repeating old stories, walking outside to get fresh air can change certain basic habits and sattvic foods is a good starting point to avoid astral hellish dimensions for time being. 

Some spiritual aspirants who do all the advanced yogic methods for self reformation still may not see the results because the victim placard is flashed every second of his life which he may not even be aware, the teacher might have hinted but still goes on with the behaviour and resents and find every opportunity to belittle or admire things which he/ she envied by flashing victim placard secretly behind his shirt. It is left for oneself to reform that psychic behaviour in this or coming lives.

Teaching the Teacher

Repearaledy, this is happening and it has become a common trend of teaching the teacher. It also happens in the name of of dialogue or conversation where students silently tries to teach the teacher openly or subtly. The media or information age has also played a big part in fostering this behavior.

If the student does not have confidence on the teacher, he can shake his hand tightly, bid goodbye and move to the next teacher. A serious spiritual teacher is not petty to hold students tied to the rope like cattle and squeeze for money or psychic support for his teaching missions, such teachers are phony.

Students needs to have confidence on the spiritual teachers and take their words as commands not suggestions or thoughts and execute it to the fullest. If such a confidence, the teacher cannot induce on the student, the student should not waste his precious time and instead find one teacher that suits his composition of psychology who can cuddle and play along with the student's whims and his/her concept of how teaching should be. 

In specials cases, student can propose humbly an alternate path or solution to the teacher and it is upto the teacher to take it or reject it, teacher may or may not explain the reasons of rejecting and that's okay. The student's proposal or suggestion has to be straightforward not hidden with agendas and it should be done only to bring some information to teacher's notice but not to teach the teacher in a manipulative way.

Eg: Teacher might use some harsh words for the benefit of student on case by case basis. The student may say "Why don't use affectionate words instead of harsh verbiage to convey the same message? May be the student can be more receptive to your words and teachings". Affection energies exhibited here can take a different turn, teacher is vigilant of it.

Student in the name of proposal or suggestion is teaching the teacher on how to teach for himself/ herself. If the student knows how is psyche is receptive of new habits or ideas, why didn't the student learn himself ? and why he is in search of any teacher ?

Student may even go on to say to offer equal respect as teacher in very indirect and manipulative silent way. Students may say "Why do you respect one only based on his spiritual wisdom (jnana)? Aren't there so many other things for which one can be respected of".

Student calls the teacher indirectly as arrogant here for possessing wisdom which he or she does no possess. He/ she came to the teacher for the very same reason to learn that wisdom and to reform oneself, now to demand equal respect as teacher from the teacher himself (very subtle envy) and goes on to offer we can teach other and help each other in different way and other topics. No, one is teaching a particular topic and the other one is paying the fees for that teaching in form of service as per scriptures or as required by the teacher. This counteroffer is a secret way to get the post of parallel teacher and dilute the effect of spiritual teacher.

The spiritual teacher would be aware of all such shenanigans and still play along secretly with the drama and help with whatever development is possible among all constraints imposed by the student and silently hand him over to the next impending teacher to fix these old traits. The spiritual teacher is gracious enough to do it and working under the auspices of Lord Shiva or Krishna to finish their responsibility. One cannot guarantee if the particular Guru has given his personal blessing glance when one is habitually unloyal and mischievous psychically during his studenthood towards him and that's the biggest loss which student has always miscalculated and undervalued the personal teacher's blessing. In future, in distant time one may be inspired to correct this behaviour.