Meeting The Masters

 One of the books on the right is called Earth is a School which it is. A school for the development and refinement of consciousness and a testing ground for the orientation of the heart in an environment so cleverly set up that one can find reasons to believe or not in God, depending on one's desire. I got that phrase from my teachers but the one that is the title of this piece I came up with on my own which may explain its unromantic sounding nature.

God creates to become more than he is, expanding himself throughout creation, and also to express and share love. But if love is to be real then it must be freely given which means that God must create fully independent individuals. They are extensions of him but they cannot just be extensions of him. They must have their own integrity and it must be absolute. This means love can be given or it may not. It also means the resulting individuals may freely cooperate with God and creation or resist that or even, to further their own ends, turn against it. To have the possibility of deliberate, freely chosen good you must have the possibility of not good. 

This is why God cannot make a creation that is all good to begin with. Or he could but it would be full of clones of God who had no independence, and any love would be a sort of automatic, passionless, all-purpose, blissed out and bland everybody loves everybody else equally sort that you see in some spiritual communes or, at least, you see people imitating that because they think it's what they should be doing. But that is not love which to be real must be personal.

There needs to be a first creation which acts as a selection gateway to the second creation which is the real one. Nothing evil or dark or in any way damaged or even less than perfect can get into Heaven, the second creation. This is why I call the first creation a filter for the second. All propensity to evil in the individual is brought out in the first creation where it may either  be indulged in or made excuses for or justified. Or, and this is the only reaction that gets it through the fine meshes of the filter, repented. The soul makes its choice and on that choice depends its future, whether it goes on to the second creation, the one in which evil does not just not exist but is impossible, or is recycled through one of the many environments in the first creation which differ inasmuch as they are reflections of the consciousness of the soul so some are indeed dark while others may be perfectly pleasant, even wonderful by earthly standards, but they are not the Heaven of absolute good.

If only we knew this for sure, you might say, then we would make the right decision. But that's the whole point. We don't know for sure so we must make an authentic decision, one that reflects our true self. One could add that we do actually know. All the information has been presented to us. If we choose not to accept it, that is our affair.

This idea of Earth as a filtration system, designed to extract impurities in the soul, does not preclude the Earth as a school scenario. Both operate, albeit in different ways. One the one hand, the soul is developed through its experience, expression and experiment in the world of duality, the material world, in which subject and object are wholly sundered. On the other, its inclination to or from itself and towards or away from God is brought out and examined. It is given the opportunity to see itself and to know itself, and also the chance to grow so that when it does reach the portals of heaven it can contribute creatively to the new creation and experience more of it. Many souls may qualify for heaven but the greater the spiritual development, the deeper the spiritual participation and the more the ability to add to heaven's glory.

For heaven is not a place of static peace and tranquillity. It is the eternally blossoming flower that grows from the seeds planted on Earth. Thus, it increases in beauty and glory and wonder, and we increase with it.

Why is there evil in this world? The answer to that is simple. There is evil in this world in order to eradicate it completely and let those who wish go on to a new world in which evil cannot exist. This world brings out and filters evil so that the new creation may be one of absolute good. You might say that Earth is a refinery.

An earlier piece on a similar theme is A Body of Slag.

 There was an interesting article on the Orthosphere recently on celibacy by Professor J.M. Smith with which I am in broad though not complete agreement, and I thought I would offer my take on the subject here. I feel I can comment from the position of someone who has lived both lives, that of the celibate in early manhood and the married with children later on. The celibate phase was intentional not through disinclination, bad luck, negligence or failure, and it was because I was leading a life dedicated to the spiritual path as described in my book Meeting the Masters. 

I understand Professor Smith's point about the quality of priests being improved by abandoning the requirement of celibacy. It might weed out some of the sexual oddities and encourage more full-blooded males to join a group which they might thereby render more masculine and less effete. It would certainly widen the pool of available talent. But then you have to look at some of the vicars in the Church of England and wonder, would it really? I don't know. I would say, though, that to judge an institution by its defects does give a one-sided view of the overall picture.

Professor Smith's article is about priestly and monastic celibacy but I would like to open up the discussion to celibacy as part of the spiritual path and whether it still has a place. First off, I must say that celibacy is and ought to be difficult. It is not natural and those for whom it poses no problem are, in my opinion, not properly developed. Fruitfulness and fertility are wholesome expressions in the physical world of joy and creativity. Desire is godly because it is the flame of love as manifested in the human mind and body.

Yes, desire is godly, pace Buddhism, but attachment to desire is, if not sinful in itself, conducive to sin. It also binds one to the material world and material things. Now, celibates can be as full of desire as the promiscuous and sometimes even more so if suppressed energy, given no natural outlet, festers away beneath the surface and becomes a constant focus of attention. But the ideal of celibacy is to detach oneself from the world and be focused entirely on God. The world of matter, the Creation, is certainly good, but it is not the Creator and it may be that to have a full relationship with God one must turn away from his things and face directly towards him. As far as we know, Jesus was celibate and he seemed to ask his disciples to devote themselves full time to their spiritual lives which is hard to do if you have a wife and children to support. This may be a requirement only for those who are seeking a deeper contact with God but we may all have to become celibate at some time if we would attain to that deeper contact.

There are two aspects to the celibate life. One I have just mentioned and that is the need to give proper attention to a wife and family. The married man cannot devote himself to God quite as much as the celibate. His attention is necessarily divided, at least until a certain later stage of married life. That doesn't mean celibacy in itself is positive but it may be a positive negative. The second aspect is sex itself. This mysterious energy is the most powerful we know of, excepting for some the love of God. While not being a need, it is more intense than any need and more fulfilling in its satisfaction. Some traditions speak of this energy requiring to be turned inwards and upwards rather than expressed outwardly and would say that outward expression mitigates against the reorientation inwardly just as a river cannot flow in two directions at the same time. We have to make water flow uphill, back to the source. A lot of spiritually interested people reject this idea nowadays but it has a notable pedigree and one wonders if the modern rejection comes from the fact that we simply want to have our cake and eat it too, and look for reasons to justify doing what we want to do or are unable not to do.

Energy follows thought. In all cases, it is the mind that matters more than the body. By this criterion actual celibacy is less important than the state of the mind. At the same time, a mind truly focused on God will naturally seek less external stimulation and result in a body requiring less external satisfaction.

In the ancient Indian way of spiritual development there were four stages of life known as Asramas. The first was that of the student known as Brahmacharya which lasted to about the age of 25 and in which celibacy was enjoined. Then came the stage of Grihastha which was that of the married householder wherein one raised a family and fulfilled and enjoyed all the material demands and satisfactions of life though always within a spiritual context meaning one of virtue and religious devotion. After the age of 50 came the retirement stage of Vanaprastha when one started to withdraw from the world and focus one's energies more on Moksha, liberation or salvation as we might call it in the West. If one wasn't celibate necessarily then sex was certainly something that should be receding from one's mind and attention. The fourth and final stage was that of Sannyasa which was the life of complete renunciation and here again celibacy was enjoined though as the normal age for entering on this stage was 75 that should not be too much of a problem. This all represented the natural path of the soul through the world and returning to spirit and I think still represents a good path for everyone though it should be noted that anyone could move into the Sannyasa stage straight from that of Brahmacharya if one felt particularly called to the spiritual life.  

This Indian system tells us that celibacy has its place in the spiritual life, particularly at the beginning and end, but so does married life in which the full enjoyment of sex is not only permitted but encouraged as a good and healthy thing. There is no rejection of the body here but its incorporation into a grander scheme of things that has the ultimate aim of union with God though for this to take place it is expected that the soul is able to move beyond the demands of the physical body, the energies of which must be purified and transmuted. This means desire must be directed towards God.

Some might think this Indian description of life stages has no relevance for the Christian but I believe it has a universal application. If we think of the spiritual path as consisting of salvation and deification with the former as the preparatory stage and the latter as the ultimate aim then we might say that celibacy has a role to play in the context of deification as an occasional discipline and necessary condition for progress to be made. Every soul seeking full union with God, which union renders the soul divine in itself, must develop an exclusive relationship with God and that means all other loves and attachments must be renounced. The creation must be renounced for full knowledge of the Creator. But this may just be a stage. If we say that God himself has a spouse which is the redeemed part of Creation so every soul, as a reflection of its Creator, does likewise, and having reached conscious union with the Creator the soul can then turn back and re-embrace creation, though in the full light of God.

 Jesus said there was no marrying in heaven but his first miracle was at a wedding and religion constantly speaks of spiritual completion in terms of a marriage. There might appear to be a contradiction here but perhaps Jesus was speaking in terms of earthly marriage. There is also spiritual marriage, ultimately that between God and Creation but also between every individual soul, on the vertical plane with God its Creator for whom every soul is female, and on the horizontal with its created other half. Celibacy relates to the union with God but the sanctified soul does not just exist in that union. It also has relationships with other souls and among these is the reflection of the Cosmic Marriage of Spirit and Matter on its own level.

 This is an extract from my book Meeting the Masters which is relevant to the discussion of divine femininity and Satanic feminism. It refers to my contact with a spiritual being who was clearly female despite coming through a male medium. The essence of her message was that love disperses all darkness which is a statement that is almost trite but becomes profound when delivered by a being who, as in this case, embodied what she said. This encounter dates back to 1979 and I wrote the passage below in 2010.

"Earlier when discussing the Masters I wrote that I had no experience of their female equivalents. I had completely forgotten this talk! However, reading through my notes brings the whole episode back with absolute clarity. This companion in spirit (as she described herself) was obviously a very lofty soul. She emanated a loving gentleness that was profoundly affecting, and the balm of her presence had a consoling quality that caused me to feel an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude to her for taking the trouble to visit me. She had a feminine grace and purity that do not seem to be so highly prized nowadays but are just as much divine characteristics as will or intelligence. In addition to this, she transmitted a peace that made all troubles and fears just melt away. I remember the radiance of her peace very well. The Masters also brought peace but the peace she brought had a soothing quality all its own.

The question might be asked that, as this was coming through Michael, how did I know it was a female spirit? All I can say is that there could be no doubt. The soft voice, the gentle manner, the whole vibration of the person, all of these were clearly feminine. As always there was no trace of Michael and though this being spoke through a male body, the voice was feminine. The scent of lily of the valley she brought with her just confirmed all this. I never knew the Masters to be accompanied by such a heavenly perfume. Nowadays many people talk rather glibly about the goddess and the feminine aspect of divinity. Curiously, this is happening at precisely the time when a true grasp of femininity appears to be being lost, leading one to suspect that there is a political as much as a theological imperative behind it. However, there most definitely is a feminine aspect to divinity, most perfectly embodied by such figures of wisdom and merciful love as the goddess Isis and the Virgin Mary, and, in China, Kuan-Yin, and this is the closest I have ever come to experiencing it. It is probably not one many feminists would approve of though since one of its qualities is a perfect submission to divine will. I should add that it is the height of wisdom to submit to divine will since the only true freedom is freedom from self.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that certain aspects of modern feminism are actually antipathetic to true femininity because they seek to supplant the traditional feminine virtues, which are (largely, though by no means exclusively) to do with nurturing, intuitive wisdom and compassionate love, with those usually associated with the masculine. It is an old trick of the devil to sneak in falsehood under the coat-tails of truth, and he has successfully done so on this occasion by corrupting the idea of the feminine under the guise of the pursuit of an entirely legitimate and overdue fairness and equality, with which no-one could have the slightest argument.* All human beings lose by this but perhaps the biggest losers are women themselves who are denied contact with their true nature. I sometimes think that if the balance between the sexes were right then everything would be and we would finally know true harmony, but that time still seems to be a long way off. The sexes are meant to be complementary but, in the name of equality, they are increasingly being lured into a competitiveness which can only bring about disequilibrium. The root causes of this are egotism, both male and female, and metaphysical ignorance.

It is fine and good to refuse to be bound by stereotypes (cultural conditioning) but we should not forget that there exist archetypes too, independent of human will and imaginings, and that a properly functioning society can only be one in which these are acknowledged (I don’t mean slavishly enforced) rather than denied or ignored. For the individual as well, true fulfilment can only come from conforming to one’s divine pattern. This is not a plea to return to past modes of behaviour which were also unbalanced but for human beings to learn to be guided by what is real rather than what is desired to be real. The current state of affairs is too far advanced for deviation from that course to be likely at any time soon but I write these words for anyone, male or female, who might be open to them."

* The equality referred to here is one of spiritual worth as mentioned in the Divine Femininity essay.

 I have been made aware that somebody recently has complained about some of the contents of this blog. I don't know exactly what but assume it is something I have written calling into question one or other of the shibboleths of modernity. One of the liberal dogmas that a good person must hold and if they don't it is because there is something morally wrong with them. A classic case of the illiberalism of liberalism.

The problem is that most people nowadays are unable to conceive that reality might have a metaphysical basis and so for them if something offends against feelings it is bad. What I write here is wholly based on metaphysical, that is to say, spiritual, assumptions. Worldly beliefs and ideologies do not enter into it. I say assumptions but I really mean traditional teachings and personal intuitions. My worldview is essentially Christian though with some modifications based on mystical and esoteric thought and personal experience. This involves the idea of the development of consciousness leading, put in its most basic terms, from animal man to modern man to God-realised man, a trajectory that moves consciousness from identification with Nature to self-identification to union with God. As far as I am concerned, this journey is what life is all about and anything that opposes it or would arrest it or reverse it is anti-spiritual and it doesn't matter whether that be human or supernatural in origin. It is working against the will of God. So to offend against modern sensibilities if those sensibilities are spiritually corrosive, and most of them nowadays are because they are grounded in a rejection of God and divine purpose, is not a choice but an obligation. I am not writing for a personal reason but out of what I consider to be necessity. I am not alone in that. Many other people are doing similar things because they too realise the gravity of our current spiritual position.

Enough about me! This post is just to say that I will continue to write about things I believe to be relevant whatever they might be. It is never my intention to cause upset but if God is a God of Love he is also a God of Truth and we can only really encounter his love in the full sense when we open our hearts to his truth. This may involve offending human feelings sometimes but that is only to awaken our minds to the deeper and, yes, more loving reality beyond personal feelings. 

Someone has objected to my recent post Satanic Feminism. I'm not sure on exactly what grounds but it may be the juxtaposition of the word Satanic with that of Feminism. I should say that this phrase was not of my making but the name of a book published by the Oxford University Press, the premise of which I was discussing. I should also say that I was approaching the subject, as everything on this blog, from a metaphysical point of view and considering what the spiritual origin of this radical revolution was.

For feminism was a radical revolution, overturning thousands of years of a cultural norm that existed more or less everywhere in the world. I don't think people today really appreciate that. We in the secular West are so used to it and take it so much for granted that we never question it but perhaps we should. A spiritually aware person, and especially a Christian, cannot fail to see that feminism arose concurrently with the rejection of God. It goes against traditional teaching of all religions which may be a bad thing or a good thing but surely gives us valid grounds to examine its origins more deeply than we normally do.

My contention would be that a change in consciousness that was of divine inspiration and had an evolutionary purpose was hijacked by a counter-evolutionary force. Around 250 years ago developments that had been gathering pace started to come to full expression. A new form of consciousness, one that had appeared here and there for hundreds of years in pioneers of humanity, began to spread much more widely and impact the whole of society and culture. This was when the 'I' became fully aware of itself and of its ability to think and to act. No longer part of a tribe or group, it was now a full individual as a consequence of which it was spiritually cut off from the rest of the universe. A famous precursor of this form of consciousness would be the figure of Hamlet, often called the first modern person, but now it spread throughout all human beings, especially, to begin with, those in the West, and it led to the questioning of religion and the assertion of self. It had many benefits as people began to act independently, the development of science for one, but it also increased the sense of alienation. It was an advance because moving from group consciousness to self-consciousness is a necessary step to full and active participation in divine life but it also brought trouble in its wake as the separation from God became absolute. You cannot know yourself properly and be fully conscious of yourself if you retain the greater connection to universal life but when you lose the connection to universal life you may well be plunged into isolation and existential loneliness.

This change in consciousness lies behind everything of the last few centuries, good and bad. It lies behind feminism because it was experienced by both men and women equally who now had to negotiate life and being and relationships from a new perspective. Feminism from this perspective is an inevitable consequence of evolutionary development. As women become more aware of themselves as full individuals in a similar way to men so their inner life changes and that means their outer life must change too.

So feminism in its raw essence and origin was not Satanic. But what if that change was captured and re-routed? There are two forces in the universe, not two equal forces because ultimately everything comes from God, but still two forces that are in opposition. There is the divine force that seeks to bring human beings to spiritual completion and there is a counter force that we call evil because it opposes good. It is principally spiritual evil which means it seeks to do spiritual harm and if we do not understand what spiritual good is we may have a problem understanding how spiritual evil works. One way it works is by consolidating the material and worldly so some things that appear good in material and worldly terms actually work against the true and ultimate good. The aim of this evil force is to separate from God, not temporarily as in the sense of being a self-centred individual but permanently. This tells us that the current stage of full individual consciousness carries risks because if that sense of self is over-stimulated and encouraged it can lead to a much wider and deeper separation from God and the true good. Self-centred individuality is like adolescence, a temporary phase that should act as a springboard to a deeper adult engagement with God, but unfortunately the whole process has been derailed and we have got stuck and embedded in that phase. This has been due to interference from demonic sources but also, it has to be said, our own spiritual weakness.

This is the sense in which feminism can be described as Satanic as in the book cited earlier. A natural and healthy and spiritually positive change was hijacked and its material elements pushed and promoted while its spiritual ones were largely ignored, suppressed or denied. This means that the worldly ego was appealed to and its weaknesses exploited, while the redirecting of the ego to spiritual awakening, proper spiritual awakening I should stress because there are many forms which are to do with the ego self-medicating, failed to take place. Sunshine and rain cause both nourishing fruits and poisonous weeds to grow, depending on the receiving soil and the seeds that lie therein. A downpouring of spiritual energy can be reacted to by the soul or the ego depending on which one the subject is more attuned to. It can also be mis-channeled by the counter-evolutionary forces which can be identified under the traditional name of Satan, and this was what occurred.

What should have happened was what I mentioned in the earlier essay which was the development of a deeper understanding of both masculinity and femininity in their spiritual and creative aspects. If men and women had responded to spiritual energy spiritually they would have opened themselves up to their true spiritual archetypal qualities as man and woman, and this would have built on the Law and the Prophets rather than doing away with them which is the correct path of spiritual development. Feminism as we now know it is a perversion of a good. That is, its origins do lie in a certain truth but that truth has been corrupted.

For what it's worth, my understanding of man and woman and the relationship between them is based on the traditional Christian one qualified by an awareness of the recent development of consciousness, but this should have had an evolutionary impact rather than the revolutionary one it did have. Man and Woman are the two fundamental pillars of creation, equal in spiritual worth, different in spiritual function. The Satanic element of feminism is the confusion of worth and function.

You see, it is a metaphysical matter not a political or social or even a human, in the sense we now think of human, one. That is why people whose worldview is based on the ethos of modernity and secularism will not understand it. To such people a position such as the one I have outlined here will seem bad because it conflicts with their idea of good. But if you lack metaphysical understanding you cannot even know what the real good is. To learn about the true feminine mysteries discarded and rejected by feminism I would recommend a book written from the Catholic perspective by Alice von Hildebrand called Man and Woman: A Divine Invention. There is a divine femininity but it is not to be found in feminism.

 There has been a good series of posts on the Orthosphere recently on the subject of universalism and whether all will eventually be saved. One of them is here. They reminded me that I had written something on this subject a few years ago (here and here) which brought forth some interesting comments so it is clearly a subject that concerns people as well it might. Inevitably, no conclusion is reached in either case but the potential contradictions between perfect love and perfect freedom are explored.

For this is what it comes down to. God is a God of mercy and justice but in a conflict between the two which takes precedence?  Since God is perfect the answer must be that neither takes precedence and both are fully satisfied, but how can that be? For us it is not possible but with God, as we have been told, all things are possible. One way for the demands of both to be met is that the soul is granted an indefinite period of time to get it right. This might require something in the nature of reincarnation and karma but that is rejected by Christianity, and though there are hints of it in the New Testament (for instance, reaping what you sow, the idea that John the Baptist might be Elijah come again, and "did this man sin or his parents that he be born blind?"), they are inconclusive to say the least. I personally am sympathetic to reincarnation as something like an evolutionary mechanism but it does focus on the theosis side of the spiritual path and ignores, or certainly downplays, the significance of salvation. I believe both are important.

Another possibility would be that purgatory is not just to purify the already saved of residual sins so that they are worthy to enter Heaven, its acknowledged objective, but also has a salvific aspect. Or, if we don't call this purgatory, there are forms of post-mortem existence that have this function. This would also be contrary to orthodox teaching which insists on the right choice being made in this life even if it is at the point of death. That's because there is something unique about life in a physical body as regards making a choice in complete freedom, a freedom that does not exist in the spiritual (meaning non-material) realm, or not to the same extent, because it is not fully separate from God. Nevertheless, if we want God to extend his mercy indefinitely, and we do not accept a return to the physical world, we should admit the possibility of repentance after death. 

Then there is the question of Hell and what it is. In one of the posts on the Orthosphere I commented as follows. Heaven is an opt-in destination so you must want to go there and behave accordingly. This would mean that anything that was not Heaven could then be seen as a form of Hell. Perhaps the mistake the universalists make is to see Hell as necessarily a place of eternal torment. That may exist but it may not be the default option for those who reject God. Hell may have many mansions too and many of these may be not too different to how this world is, all reflecting the varying degrees of God rejection and self-assertion to be found in human souls. But they are not Heaven. 

I said in the comment that Hell as a place of eternal torment may exist but I am not persuaded that it does. From the eternal point of view, what may happen to the truly recalcitrant soul that refuses to turn round and accept the reality of God is that it gradually loses its life force. All life comes from God. The demons must steal life energy from those who have it because they can no longer get it directly. Evil is parasitical. This is a major reason for their need to corrupt souls. They can then harvest the low level energy produced, the energy of anger, hatred, lust or whatever, but eventually souls that cannot receive life from God will wither and die if they cannot steal it from elsewhere. Meanwhile they will be in a sort of Hell because Hell is separation from God but this may not be experienced by them as torment. It may even have its pleasures though these will not be spiritual or not properly spiritual. After all, we are separated from God (apparently not really, of course) even while in this world.

God obviously wants all souls to be united with him but this must be on a voluntary basis or it is coercion and that would negate the whole point of creating souls with free will who can, in their turn, add positively to creation. If a soul fails the test of turning to God in an environment where that does require a choice (the material world) there are two possibilities. Either it is consigned (that is to say, it consigns itself) to the cosmic recycling bin or it is given new opportunities to get it right, perhaps here, perhaps elsewhere in quite different environments. The idea that it is tortured forever for the failure of a single finite life seems unreasonable, illogical and quite contrary to the idea of a God of love. However, like attracts like in the spiritual world, and for as long as a soul rejects God its consciousness will remain endarkened which is a kind of hell though may not be experienced as such by the soul that has adopted this position. I believe we need to see post-mortem conscious existence as containing many levels. It is not just black (Hell) or white (Heaven) but there are many shades in between. If we see Hell as anything that is not white we may be closer to true understanding. Perhaps jet black Hell is the one place from whence there is no return but most souls who fail to attain Heaven go to some kind of grey hell and from these there is possible redemption. Black Hell is for full and final God rejection but for those who may not have reached this tragic depth there remains hope.

In fact, many of them are net negative. I was prompted in this thought after being sent this link to the London Mind, Body and Spirit Festival which takes place shortly. Most of the spiritual professionals who appear at these affairs in talks and workshops are just selling their wares. They are basically business people who have a talent for giving a spiritual presentation but they cater to those who seek spirituality as a lifestyle accessory or means to develop themselves. They are the psychics, intuitives, positive thinkers, motivational speakers, wellness experts and aura readers who offer a kind of therapeutic self-help for people tired of materialism or, since few of them actually renounce it, looking to expand their horizons a bit beyond materialism. I suppose you could say they are a stage to be gone through but you shouldn't need to experience that stage to realise the essential emptiness and self-indulgence of it.

I'm sure some of these teachers believe they are doing good and perhaps some of them are but in my opinion they are mostly leading people away from true spiritual understanding down one of the many blind alleys that the novice might encounter when he first starts to aspire to something more than this world has to offer. Anybody who makes spirituality their profession, other than a bona fide priest who anyway follows a vocation not a profession and is certainly not in it for fame or fortune, is either a fraud or, since most of them are not that, an opportunist or, best case scenario, on a low rung of spiritual understanding. Some years ago my guides informed me that there were many teaching half-truths at present and, though they were not all evil, they were not very evolved. I wouldn't say the picture has changed since then. I am not saying these people are evil but what they have to offer is a spirituality intended to make one feel good, and the spiritual path is not about making the earthly self happy and fulfilled or even loving and good. It has one purpose only which is to reorient the heart and mind to God.

So, are there no spiritual teachers worth following? It depends what you mean by teacher. There are certainly people from whom one can learn but the whole concept of a spiritual teacher is foreign to the West. It is imported from Eastern religion, the guru and so on, and therefore it is operating on a different sort of level. But even on that level I would maintain that the spiritual teacher role as it exists now exists as much for the teacher's sake as it does for the pupil. Certainly we can and should share our understanding but the spiritual path today is an individual path and all teachers can do is give us a push in the right direction at an early stage. Thereafter, we must form our own relationship with God. No doubt many teachers would say exactly that but often by their behaviour they encourage dependence, personality worship and idolatry. Nowadays the spiritual teacher is just another manifestation of celebrity culture.