Lord, give me understanding so that I may lead people in the right direction and fulfill Your Will.
(Education as Transformation, Vol. II, by Torkom Saraydarain, p. 385)

“What a huge and important job the teacher has in the life of every single person he or she touches. The imprint a teacher makes on others lasts for a lifetime at the least. We all remember our teachers from childhood, the good ones and the bad ones. We remember how one of them inspired us to take up the study of a particular subject. We remember the one who injured us and wounded us deeply. We remember the encouragements, the feelings we had as we went from one class to another. Even if we forget what the teacher looked like and what he or she said to us in particular, we still remember the feeling that we had from that teacher.

The teacher in the spiritual field is just as important as the one who schooled us in our childhood. The spiritual teacher can help us see our True Self, or turn us off and injure us for many years. The spiritual teacher is the one who influences us to seek our souls, to understand about life, to learn about the laws of Nature and her principles. The spiritual teacher inspires us to grow up and stand on our own two feet.

In an ideal situation, which has actually happened in many people’s lives, the teacher of our childhood and the spiritual teacher would have the same qualities. We see this particularly in the discussions about education and the requirements of teachers in the two volume set titled Education as Transformation by Torkom Saraydarian. The qualities of a good teacher would be the same no matter what the person is teaching. The path to the transformation of humanity is in the hands of those men and women who teach us, whether they are our parents, friends, formal school teachers, spiritual teachers, or even our ministers and leaders.

In this issue of “Outreach” we will look at the qualities that make up the spiritual teacher and how a person becomes a teacher. As we read through these pages, remember that the ideal teacher has these qualities— no matter what the position or the subject matter. In addition, what applies to the teacher also applies to the student. We are constantly exchanging our roles. We are all teachers and we are all students. We teach every time we come in contact with another person. We are even teaching our elementals to grow and learn and be disciplined! The same is true even with our pets.

We also learn every time we interact with others, with nature, even every time we notice how our elementals are behaving, and how our subconscious mind is playing tricks on us. In fact, most often we have opportunities to learn every minute. These opportunities are much more numerous than the opportunities to teach when we consider how awake and conscious we need to be in order to see what our lower bodies are doing. We need to learn before we can teach.

Torkom Saraydarian writes: “I was in a school in Asia and I entered the first degree of seven degrees. In the first degree they called me master. Everyone was master. In the second degree we became arhats, one degree lower. In the third degree we became disciples. By the seventh degree we were ignorants…. Now, everyone who reads a book becomes a master. They talk with a master, angels, spirits, UFO commanders in the sky bringing lots of messages. Wait a minute! Is it really real or are you hallucinating?” (Talks on Agni, Vol. 3, unpublished manuscript by Torkom Saraydarian.)

The story shows the most fundamental and essential quality of a teacher/student to be one of humility. Much has been written about the topic of being a teacher/disciple by Torkom Saraydarian in the five volumes of the Leadership Series, in the two volumes of Education as Transformation, in Challenge for Discipleship, in the Ageless Wisdom, and scattered throughout many of the other writings and lectures.

ŞØỮŘĆ€: http://www.tsgfoundation.org/images/outreach/OR00May-Jun.pdf