We need a new, more deft understanding of “student” and “spiritual teacher.” In fact, ultimately both, rightly says The Avadhuta Gita, have to go. But first the promised understanding.

The student in life–be he a spiritual practitioner, an entrepreneur, or (really) anybody–tells a story in which he, the protagonist, is struggling to follow the path. His life, it’s presumed, is like a quest, one that’s filled with seemingly endless obstacles, difficulties, and setbacks. He worries that the quest will never come to an end and so his questions keep kicking up obstacles, difficulties, setbacks–in a word, problems.

Then there is the sage. If her story is told poorly, then we’re given to believe that she, qua person, is squeaky clean. All now goes along smoothly, and only milk and honey (or nectar) known as Knowledge or Truth floweth in immeasurable abundance from her ever-divine mouth.

This whole frame must go, and the trouble is that the spiritual literature (I think not just of hagiographies) has contributed to this muck. It keeps setting humans in the muck while placing the sage or saint beyond it.

In place of the picture I’ve just presented, we can start with a much simpler model: two (or more) are dialoguing, with one who (perhaps) has seen more, the other less, yet both are involved in “hashing out” or “exploring” what needs to be understood together. It is a joint venture, a “co-creation” (in the jargon of the creative class).

In this way, the student needn’t regard the teacher as unimpeachable (and therefore, at a later date, subject to “disillusionment” and “debunking”) and the teacher (thank God) needn’t even call herself “a teacher” or (dare I say?) “a guru.” The teaching, then, will consist of a whole host of things (like spiritual practices), yet it shall be unfolded with a light touch. Offered, received, pondered, tried out, tweaked, refined, and so on. In short, we should actually learn something from “the best of entrepreneurial thought.”

Of course, then also, right near the end, this simpler model needs to go. The student and the teacher represent an needless conceptual split. Reality is one, seamless, thus indivisible. To give up “I” and “thou” is to surrender both the one who doesn’t know (the so-called “student”) and, with it, the one who is alleged to uniquely know (the so-called “teacher”).

Maybe you’ve heard it said: “If you see [the mental image of] the Buddha on the road, kill him.” Also, for that matter and–well–to start off with: kill the ego who fancies himself walking. Split from the split.