How many students do you have?

I get asked this question a lot.

If I were Jesus, the answer would be twelve. Jesus had many followers, but only twelve disciples.

If I were a Tantrik Guru living a traditional lifestyle in India, the answer might be one or two, or at most ten.

If I were a contemporary teacher with dozens, or even hundreds or thousands of initiated students, you might find me complaining that only a handful of my students are “getting it.”

The conviction that quantity is a measure of the quality of the teacher is a consumerist View. In this View, the one who has more stuff (or students) is more successful and therefore must be better.

The teacher-student relationship is a fated circumstance. It is the primary vehicle that Reality uses to play its own game of Self-realization.

The circumstance of a teacher and a student coming together and enacting the game thoroughly is rare. Think in terms of baseball. Most people are onlookers, benchwarmers, or pinch hitters (they get into the game only in an emergency).

Everyone derives some benefit at their own level, but each team has only nine players on the field at any one time.

The teacher-student relationship is the central practice of Tantra. Each relationship is unique. Each student requires individualized sadhana and close supervision. In order for the natural technology of teacher-student to work its best magic, teachers and students must be in close proximity, usually for a number of years.

In fact, the best method for most dedicated students of householder teachers is that they live with, or very near to their teachers for some time. This is called the “Gurukula” system. Students become members of the teacher’s family.

The practice of having daily contact with your teacher is tapas, or austerity. It supercharges your practice, confronts you directly with your fixations and helps you to relinquish tensions via the immersion plan.

Students who have more fully discovered the desire to Self-realize and have surrendered to that do everything possible to remain in the presence of their teachers. Others come and go, trying to “manage” the inexorable life process by regularly escaping to the comfort of more familiar habits, away from the fire of transmission.

Not many students are ready for a full-on teacher-student relationship, and teachers, who are also human, cannot generally provide this function to very many students.

Sometimes teachers have one or a few students and that is all. More common, especially these days, is that teachers have numbers of “come and go” students and only a few for whom they function as Guru, if they are qualified to do that.

Anandamayi Ma spent decades traveling up and down India, bringing only moments of greater peace and contentment to people who would never be her students. She answered questions and offered advice and comfort. But she initiated and guided the sadhana of only a handful of people during her lifetime.

It is useful to understand this history of the tradition, and how it still works today, even in the context of contemporary life. Despite competitive social scenes masquerading as yoga classes and mass initiations, the heart of the tradition is still one teacher working together with one student and finding a way home.

In Ma’s love,
Shambhavi

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