WALKING THE TIGHTROPE ~ THE DELICATE BALANCE BETWEEN ENLIGHTENMENT AND SELF-MASTERY

Painting: Nicholas Roerich, Star of the Hero (Nicholas Roerich Museum, NY)

In an earlier Substack post (“Does Enlightenment Automatically Make One Ethical?”) I made reference to the disturbing stories one sometimes hears about respected, and quite possibly enlightened, teachers who fall prey to one or another devastating scandal. Though this most commonly involves a sexual infidelity of some sort, it might also be a financial indiscretion, an incident involving public drunkenness, or some other expression of woefully bad judgment.

As I heard someone say about this, “How is that even possible?”

In this short post I’d like to come at this question from a slightly broader angle—namely, by way of the point that enlightenment and self-mastery are not necessarily the same thing. Let me explain.

A person can have a genuine enlightenment experience in which they momentarily glimpse their oneness with all life, realize the true nature of self, or even experience some manner of cosmic consciousness. Important as that may well be, that doesn’t by itself necessarily confer a disciplined control of one’s appetites, emotional states, thought patterns, or even the ability to move at will into enlightened states. In the tradition of esoteric yoga, of course, self-mastery is an essential component of the spiritual life, and various yogic texts discuss that at length. But not all spiritual paths emphasize this as deeply as others.

On the other hand, there are those who work for years or decades to develop mastery of their bodies and minds, to the point where they can sit still for hours, control their thoughts and emotions, endure extremes of temperature, and resist the temptations of the flesh, all without great difficulty. We call such individuals “ascetics.” But it’s entirely possible to have achieved such feats without ever having experienced true enlightenment, that of knowing the condition of formless, blissful consciousness, or of all-embracing oneness.

In other words, these sad stories about our proverbial “fallen angels”—great teachers who turn out to have feet of clay—are likely examples of individuals who haven’t succeeded in balancing both of these aspects of experience. While enlightenment and self-mastery may ideally go hand-in-hand, which is certainly the yogic ideal, it’s the rare soul who can walk that tightrope over the course of an entire life without falling even once from those heights to the pavement below.

Ray Grasse is a writer, astrologer, and photographer based in the American Midwest. He is author of ten books, including The Waking Dream, An Infinity of Gods, and Under a Sacred Sky. His websites are www.raygrasse.com and www.raygrassephotography.com.