Combining different practices
You may have heard or read, that we are deeply interested in interspiritual work and that we consider this part of the purpose or our organisation as a whole. Out of this interest of ours, comes our tendency to encourage people to, besides following our training courses, also explore other forms of spirituality for themselves.
The beauty in exploring other practices and traditions like that, or in keeping to your earlier beliefs while studying with us, lies mostly in finding the deep similarities that exist between the traditions. And that it is possible to thereby develop a sense of the universal, the essence behind all spirituality. This is an ideal, but one that is perfectly realisable, as our teachers hope to demonstrate during our courses and activities.
However, there is a downside to it that some of you may have expected already. It is possible that combining an interest in various traditions at the same time may lead to overcomplexity, confusing or other types of opacity. It may even happen that the mixing of beliefs and practices leads to situations where both the student and the teacher are unable to understand how to resolve problems that might come from it.
An ancient saying from my culture (The Netherlands) describes this by saying: “When two Faiths are sleeping on the same pillow, the devil sleeps in between them.” Sounds undesirable, right?
For this reason we have a ground rule that goes for all our students, to be observed at least until they have reached a certain advanced point of understanding our system. The rule is, that for as long as they are enrolled as a student with us, they make what we teach into their primary practice. Meaning, among other things, that if they encounter problems they fail to unravel, they temporarily fall back upon using only our system of practice. And temporarily leave any other practices or traditions on a time-out, so to speak.
In essence, this means temporarily following only a one master/teacher (or a single group of affiliated masters). And also temporarily stopping all other education in the spiritual field. You are of course free to stop following us whenever you feel is right! Only, for as long as you study with us, you give full priority to our teachings and put all other teachings on a secondary or tertiary position.
If that sounds acceptable to you, and you are willing to vow (to yourself only!) that you will keep to this, we will only encourage you to look beyond the boundaries of our teachings. Because there is more in the world of spirituality than our approach and a lot of it may indeed be very valuable. But trying to look at it through the lense of our teaching, and being careful while exploring similarities, stimulates us to stay aware of differences and to take precaution at all times.
A true Yogi is able to strike the perfect balance between taking risks and exploring new territory, and being better safe than sorry. A Yogi who is mostly still learning, can better lean a bit more towards the latter.
Let us end this article by exploring a – somewhat stricter — quote about this from writer Alice Bailey:
“Danger lurks in the path of the […] student and the […] adepts know adequately how to protect their pupils, provided those pupils stay within the periphery of Their united auras, and wander not out to other schools. All true occult schools demand this of their pupils, and all true Masters expect Their pupils to refrain from taking other occult instructions at the same time as they are receiving it from Them. They say not: “Our method is the only right and true method.” They say: “When receiving instructions from Us it is the part of wisdom and the line of safety to refrain from occult training in another school or under another Master.” Should a pupil desire so to do he is perfectly free to seek out other schools and teachers, but he must first break his connection with the old.” — Letters on Occult Meditation, p. 303
This article was first published on our mother website, www.varnamantrika.org.
