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There are no ‘saviors,’ no ‘spiritual’ teachers.
Research suggests that as much as 95 percent of all learning is state specific. Only 5 percent of what we learn lifelong is acquired through formal instruction, training, or schooling. Of the 5 percent we learn through instruction, only 3 to 5 percent is remembered for any length of time.
Joseph Chilton Pearce and Michael Mendizza, Magical Parent-Magical Child
Staring at a menu won’t cure hunger.
Sitting on Gray’s Anatomy doesn’t make a healer.
Real learning is based on real experiences we give names to.
Bev Bos, early childhood educator.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them dink.
12th‑century English proverb
I invested fifty plus years at the feet of various masters; Joseph Chilton Pearce, David Bohm, Yogananda, J. Krishnamurti, Ashley Montagu, Jean Liedloff, Samdhong Rinpoche (one of the Dalai Lama’s closest colleagues), to name a few. Hundreds personal interview and books, each sharing lifetimes of experiences that we give names to. Of that vast body of abstract concepts and metaphors I remember only 5% for any length of time. And of that 5%, only 3% to 5% sticks. What sticks are the concepts, images and metaphors that resonate with what I had already experienced. All the rest is fluff.
What resonates is ‘state specific.’ An embodied state, a unique constellation of thought, feeling and action, that provides the context where true shared meaning resides. Appreciating this context flips, and completely, where elite learners and performance specialists place their emphasis. The ‘state’ one is in, as a learning experience takes place, determines what is learned and retained. ‘Form is Content,’ as media and environmental genius, Jerry Mander, “Dumbing Us Down,’ John Taylor Gatto, and author of “The Inner Game,” sport psychologist, Tim Gallwey, try to remind us.
Of course, we can blow up the world and ourselves applying abstractions, such as E=MC2. Or murder 200 million human beings just like us in the past century, hallucinating they are different. We are applying the ‘Form is Content’ insights to our so called spiritual and personal growth teachers. ‘If You See Buddha Kill Him.’ There are no ‘saviors,’ no ‘spiritual teachers.’ Only gifted individuals that point and open the door to what is obvious for those who already know. And for those who don’t? All the rest is fluff.
In this regard no one can ‘teach’ us anything. They can point, explain, tell us stories, bribe, and beat our knuckles with a ruler. Until there is an inner experience that a so-called teachers’ pointing resonate, there is only pointing.
However, where true wisdom and personal insight is concerned, there is what Joseph Chilton Pearce called ‘the model imperative.’ Telepathic, unconscious and epigenetic resonance modeled in close relationships. When this special and rare relationship is active, all that the so-called student needs is a gesture, a hint and the learner ‘sees,’ in-line with their age and stage of development, what was obvious to those who know. This ‘insight’ represents mastery of the inner game. The close relationship is the critical difference that give transcendent meaning to the pointing, not the words or abstracts symbols, punishments or rewards. This changes, and fundamentally, how wisdom is passed from one generation to the next.
Create the optimum learning relationship, the optimum state or context, and learning takes place spontaneously. We can guide and invite others into experiences, but we can’t make them learn.
Michael