WILLIAMS (FROM AN INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAMS, A STUDENT OF CYNTHIA BAMPTON)
LLEWELLYN VAUGHAN-LEE
The paradox of the personal/impersonal or relative/absolute nature of the teacher-student relationship has been front and center for me ever since I was catapulted into a state of unitive consciousness, in which there was no I, no other and no relationship; and at the same (no-)time, I also realized that Andrew Cohen had always been and would always be my Teacher. How can the absolute-impersonal and the relative-personal be so closely—inseparably—related?
I posed this question to many of the interviewees, and it turned out to be alive, present and paradoxical for most. It was clearly central in my interview with Sufi master Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, a student of Irina Tweedie, and her lineage successor in the Naqshbandiyya Sufi Order.
AMIR: What does being a teacher mean to you?
LLEWELLYN: To be a teacher is to be in service to the path and the work of the path. I have been given the duty to be the representative of a Naqshbandi Sufi tradition, and as such I have been given access to the transmission of the path, the energy, the grace that is needed for the disciple to progress on the path. On this Sufi path, the transmission is a quality of divine love, or grace. My work, my responsibility, is to keep this transmission pure and help the wayfarer to be aligned to the path and give them the energy, the love, that is needed to realize their highest spiritual potential. We say that the ego cannot go beyond the ego, the mind cannot go beyond the mind, so on their own, the student does not have the energy or guidance to make the journey.
AMIR: What are some of the differences you see between you and your students?
LLEWELLYN: Spiritually, the student needs everything from the teacher, while the teacher is not allowed to want anything from the student. The teacher is one who has been made empty, has become featureless and formless. The student—particularly in the initial years—will often project their higher self or divine nature onto the teacher, which is a very powerful and numinous projection. The teacher has to bear the projections of the student, both positive and negative, while the teacher should not project anything onto the student.
AMIR: You say that the teacher is not allowed to want anything from the student, but doesn’t the teacher need something from the student—not for himself, but so that he can fulfill his function? I’m thinking of honesty, respect, appreciation, trust, even love—doesn’t the teacher need and want them?
LLEWELLYN: This is an interesting question, and also distinguishes between need and want. As I mentioned, this is a path of freedom, and so the wayfarer must be left free, and the teacher must want nothing on an essential level. And yet, in order for the teacher to do his or her work, a certain attitude on the part of the wayfarer is needed. What I have found is that a quality of respect is what is most important, and often most lacking in Western wayfarers—respect for the real nature of the teacher and the work that needs to be done. Without this respect there is little container for the inner work, and the nafs [the lower self] and personal psychological dynamics interfere too much. But it is not the teacher’s personal self that is respected, but the role or position that the teacher has been given, as representative of a tradition.
You ask about love—and, yes, in our tradition, love is essential. The disciple progresses through love. Again, it is not a personal love, but a quality of divine love. If there is no love on their part, either he or she is not suited to this path, or the teacher has not been able to open or reach their heart as yet.
AMIR: You say that in your tradition, love is essential, but what does love actually mean if, as you said earlier, the teacher has become empty, featureless and formless? I guess you’re using the word “love” in a very different way than it’s usually thought of.
LLEWELLYN: This love is a quality of divine love—and, yes, it is very different to what most people identify as love. It is given directly from heart to heart, from soul to soul. But it is important to understand that this love is not personal. It is both intimate and impersonal.
This is a mystical tradition, the via negativa, that leads from the created to the uncreated, to the primal emptiness. One of the mysteries of the Sufi path is how the disciple is absorbed into the emptiness within the teacher. This process of absorption is an essential part of the final stages of the journey, which can also be described as merging within the teacher. On their own, the wayfarer cannot make the journey into the mystical emptiness. Through the empty heart of the teacher, the wayfarer is taken from existence to non-existence.
AMIR: Let me ask it this way: How important is the student’s personal relationship with the teacher?
LLEWELLYN: Because this connection happens on the level of the soul, it has nothing to do with a personal relationship. In fact, I actively discourage people from trying to make a personal relationship with me, as it confuses the real nature of the love that is given and the soul connection. However, I have found that in the West, students, particularly female students, often want to have a personal relationship, to feel a personal connection.
There can be no personal friendship with the teacher, despite the feelings of inner closeness that are very real. The teacher is in essence an empty space, through which the energy of the divine can nourish the disciple, or a mirror that just reflects back our true self. Having no conscious understanding of its real nature, the disciple will color this soul relationship with personal dramas, with the images of parents or other authority figures, or even with the longing for a physical lover. She will paint her own pictures on this clear mirror.
Hopefully the teacher has been emptied so completely that there is no danger of being caught in the trap of so many projections. I was fortunate in that I was trained for almost twenty years before I began. I was ground to dust in order to do this work. And for the first few years I was watched very closely, and then crushed again. I was taught the old-fashioned way, forced to see my limitations again and again. And this was only the beginning.
AMIR: Can you say more about being ground to dust? Is this also part of the process that some of your students undergo?
LLEWELLYN: According to the ancient tradition, “one has to become less than the dust at the feet of the teacher,” and this was also my experience with my teacher. One becomes nothing, worthless, without dignity or shame. One cares for nothing. It is completely brutal and ruthless and involves the whole person. For example, at the beginning I was not allowed to sleep for more than two or three hours every night, after which my kundalini energy awoke me. After months of this, you do not care about anything, you are ground down.
With most of my students, it is the power of love that transforms them, so I have only done this on very rare occasions, and only when it was absolutely necessary in order for the student to progress. Of course, there needs to be a degree of trust, as the disciple needs to be held in love while this takes place; otherwise, the psyche can be fractured. Even so, it still takes a long time, often years, for the psyche to heal from this process, unless the disciple is surrendered on all levels, which is very, very rare. But this is a terrible task for me as a teacher, because, on a human level, I care for my students and the suffering they may experience. I have not actually done this for many years now. Maybe I am getting too old or too soft! Though at times I do need to be strict, to point out mistakes or if they are going against the tradition.
AMIR: On the one hand, it sounds like the teacher has to be detached from their students, but you also spoke of love and care, and to me it sounds like ambivalence—is it?
LLEWELLYN: Here you touch part of the real paradox of being a teacher, of being completely involved and yet also detached. The spiritual heart of the wayfarer is held within the spiritual heart of the teacher, and so one cares on a very deep, soul level, both for
