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The Hebrew version of Spiritual Transmission is called Ma’arbolot Ru’ach (“Spiritual Whirlwinds”). A second edition of it was published in 2024 and I added to it a preface. This is its translation:
In the five years that passed between the publication of the two editions, I continued to explore the topic of teacher-student relationships on the spiritual path. Among other things, I wrote (together with my friend and mentor Prof. Ofra Mayseless) an academic article on “Surrender to Another Person: The Case of a Spiritual Master” and conducted a doctoral research, in which I interviewed dozens of other spiritual masters from different spiritual traditions and paths about their experiences and lives.
The publication of the second edition gives me the opportunity to say a few words about the insights I have gained on the subject during these years. The first insight is so simple and self-evident that I feel a bit awkward saying it: “spiritual teacher” is a relational construct. It comes out of a relationship between people (similarly to “lover” or “leader”) and does not stand on its own (like “mountain climber” or “cab driver”). While this sounds simple, it has some significant consequences.
* First, just as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, so is a “spiritual teacher.” An authentic and profoundly enlightened “spiritual teacher” in the eyes of one may be perceived as a charlatan full of ego and delusions of grandiosity in the eyes of another.
* Second, since this construct, its function and its contents are derived from and depend on relationships, the role of the student in its construction and maintenance is no less important than that of the teacher. In the absence of student(s) there is no teacher-student relationship and there is no teacher. Students’ weakness and psychological dependence on the teacher dilutes the relationship and reduces the potential inherent in it. Strong and independent students, on the other hand, enable the realization of rare human potentials and the mutual flourishing of teacher and students in their relationship.
* Third, the teacher depends on the student no less than the student depends on the teacher. A student’s loving, devoted, serious and committed attitude can activate in the teacher a sense of care, responsibility, love and an empathetic and penetrating vision, and allow the teacher to respond to the student in ways she or he would not have been capable of had the student not approached them in such a way. Since such an attitude of the student activates dormant potentials in the teacher, the student also benefits from their love and devotion to the teacher. In such a case, a virtuous cycle of relationship forms between student and teacher, the totality of which is greater than the sum of its parts.
The second insight is that in the teacher-student relationship on the spiritual path, a universal human longing to experience surrender can be expressed – a longing that is expressed also in various other contexts. In relation to this insight I found the following in the introduction to the book “Will and Spirit” by Gerald May (1982):
“We all have secrets in our hearts. I will tell you one of mine. All my life I have longed to say yes, to give myself completely, to some Ultimate Someone or Something. I kept this secret for many years because it did not fit the image I wanted to present – that of an independent, self-sufficient man. The desire to surrender myself had been at least partially acceptable when I was a child, but as a man I tried to put away childish things. When I became a physician, and later a psychiatrist, it was still more difficult to admit – even to myself – that something in me was searching for an ultimate self-surrender.”
A longing for surrender is at the core of many of the world religions (think of Abraham’s surrender in the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, the meaning of the word “Islam” in Arabic, and the surrender of various saints to a divine command, sometimes at the cost of their lives). Surrender is also embodied in love relationships (between parents and children, between romantic lovers), in therapist-patient relationships, in leader-followers relationships and in sado-masochistic elements in sex. Characteristics of surrender in such relationships (love, admiration, projection, loss of control, etc.) exist also in teacher-student relationships on the spiritual path.
Since “Spiritual Whirlwinds” was first published, and even more so following my doctoral research, which included interviews with several dozen other spiritual masters, people have approached me with the question: Which spiritual teacher would you recommend that I go to? My answer in most cases is this: I suggest that you visit several teachers and initially avoid devoting yourself to any of them. Getting to know several teachers, if accompanied by honest self-reflection, facilitates a process of ripening and maturing. It allows one to find out what one is looking for in a relationship with a spiritual teacher, what attracts one to certain teachers and repels them from others, and what are the things one has to be aware of when forging a deeper relationship with a teacher. One’s ripeness and maturity as a student is the best guarantee that when one chooses, at some point, to enter into a committed relationship with a teacher, it would be a healthy and beneficial relationship.