> > > I don't think that love and critical faculties are > > > mutually exclusive. One should never abdicate one's > > > critical faculties. If a spiritual teacher tells you > > > to do so, head for the door. > > > TurquoiseB wrote: > > I couldn't agree more, and find the assertion to > > the opposite -- that one "should" believe that one's > > spiritual teacher is "perfect" -- very curious indeed. > > > This seems to me to be a contradiction in terms - if someone > has a "spiritiul teacher" it would seem that they would have > to leave their critical faculties at the door. Otherwise, > why would anyone want to have a "spiritual teacher" in the > first place - they could just have a "critical faculties" > teacher, or take a course in logic at a secular college. > Rick Archer wrote: > So you're suggesting that critical thinking and spiritual > development are mutually exclusive? > Well, I guess it all depends on what you mean by "spiritual". In Barry's case, he is an avowed athiest, so where is the spiritual in that? If you are a New-ager, everything is probably spiritual in some sense.
Have you ever taken a logic class where the teacher instructs you to believe in "spirits" or said that that the dead have "spiritual bodies"? The term "spiritual" itself defies logic: are there spirits that fly around in the sky? Hegal used to write immense tomes about spirits and once was the pride of German philosophy, but was later proved to be just full of it. But thousands, maybe millions, of people believed what he said. I wonder what happened to their critical faculties? My point is that, if you are going to follow a spiritual teacher, you must suspend your critical faculties - that's what being spirtual is, otherwise you're just playing a word game with yourself. There's a lot of difference between being a dilettante and being a devotee. A devotee believes in the words of his spiritual teacher - that's faith. A skeptic is a doubter who retains critical faculties. Almost all so-called spiritual teachers who have oroginated in India have suspended their critical faculties, with the exceptinion of maybe Krishnamurti and Osho. For example, a lot of things said by Marshy seem logical, but at the same time I'm convinced that Marshy believes in Creation Science, the Transcendental Person, and that Guru Dev was a Jivanmukti.
