Resonating with Spiritual Teachers

As a full-time life coach since 2001, I’ve worked with hundreds of clients to clarify their sense of purpose and to help them make great strides in their spiritual development. I told them that all authentic spiritual traditions lead aspirants to the same place — the infinite here and now. That’s what enlightenment truly is — the awareness of the infinite within yourself and, in time, the infinite all around us.

Recognizing that they felt a gap between where their limited consciousness was at present and where it could be in the future viz a viz the enlightenment described above, these clients have often asked me how they should go about closing that gap. What I’ve so often told so many of them is that spiritual techniques and paths are not one cookie-cutter approach which is right for one and all.

Intellectuals often gravitate to spiritual teachers who speak to intellects. They might prefer a sage like the great J. Krishnamurti from India or George Gurdjieff, the unorthodox Russian master. Those who are very emotional might be drawn to heart-centered teachers of Bhakti Yoga which involves devotion to a guru or God. Those who are very active often find teachers stressing Karma Yoga, the way of action, as a path they deeply resonate with. Those strongly connected to their bodies might like tai chi instructors whose method involves a great deal of physical movements. Ditto for hatha yoga teachers whose classes rely on the wide use of postures, known as asanas in Sanskrit.

As a writer of humor books (15 in total, but who’s counting?) and a standup comedian, I respond wonderfully to people with a very good sense of humor. And that includes gurus, as well.

So, it’s not surprising that I resonated deeply with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, whose Transcendental Meditation attracted the likes of such superstars as the Beatles, Oprah Winfrey, and Jerry Seinfeld, among millions of lesser-known people around the world. The Indian sage was known to the media in his halcyon days as “the Giggling Guru” because he laughed a lot. He said that “life is bliss” and “the purpose of Creation is the expansion of happiness.” I resonated deeply with this teacher of cosmic truths with a comic flair.

This story will illustrate my point. It was the middle of May and I was sitting in a huge tent on the beach in southwest Spain with a thousand others where, every day, Maharishi was “reproducing” himself, cultivating us to become teachers of his Transcendental Meditation. I was 19 at the time. One of my colleagues walked up to the microphone and began to describe his diet. (The sage never demanded of his charges they eat in a particular regimen.) It was the ‘70s, and a lot of odd eating programs were much in vogue. This fellow happened to be eating macrobiotically and described his very austere diet in great detail, filled as it was with seaweed, kelp and tofu, and devoid of anything resembling sugar. After he outlined what he put into his body, he asked the Master what he thought of his food intake.

Maharishi considered the question for a few seconds, while two thousand eyes focused on him, two thousand ears waiting for his sage advice. The only sound one could hear was the roaring of the Atlantic outside the tent. Then he asked, a childlike lilt to his reply,

 

“What, no, ice cream?”

At that moment, every throat in the tent roared with laughter, drowning out the crashing waves. The oldest man present in the tent was Maharishi, but he had just demonstrated the youngest spirit.

Translation:

Enlightenment

means freedom,

play and joy.

And laughter.

The cosmic had become the comic.

 

I have since taught meditation to many hundreds of people throughout the world. But all these years later, I’ll never forget that the guru had me at “What, no ice cream?”