To run any spiritual path to a successful finish, one must first clarify the starting point, then define the goal, and finally come to know the road that leads there, its means and its rules. Whoever then sets out to run the course successfully as a disciple will likewise pass through three personal stages as he comes to know this threefold unity. These are awakening, dying and rebirth.
Awakening, or coming to awareness, is the recognition of the contradictions of limited earthly existence and of the freedom of spiritual existence. Its first level is dissatisfaction with the material gratification that everyday life offers. His desires spur man on, and if some wish of his is fulfilled, the long-awaited satisfaction usually still keeps him waiting. Such supposed joy springs from the meeting of the sense organs and the sense objects, and since it lures him with the promise of instant gratification, he goes on repeating the same method for a long while: desire, striving, supposed fulfilment, real lack, new desire, striving, and so on. The recognition of this limited, conditioned nature of earthly existence is not yet full awakening, which only the first glimmering of spiritual ideals can bring. If one merely runs from suffering or lack, that is the race of the defeated. Fulfilment calls for moving towards a positive goal in a positive way. This is the second level of awakening.
As spiritual goals shine forth ever more distinctly, they lead on to the second stage: dying. Many find such consequences of high spiritual ideals frightening and life-denying, and yet whoever strives spiritually must change his aims. Symbolic death by its very nature implies a change of consciousness and rebirth. The Bhagavad Gita puts it more gently: ‘While everyone sleeps, the disciplined man is awake, but the waking of living beings is night to the sage who sees his soul.’ (Bg. 2.69.) A long, gradual development precedes the highest task, dying to the world, which is followed by only one ideal higher still: the birth of the new, spiritual man, rebirth to God.
How does one become a heroic successor, and how a feeble epigone? In childhood he spends a long while learning by imitation. He sees the example and the deeds of his parents and his peers, and tries to make them his own. Later, at an intellectual level, he learns propositions and data too – this is the time of schooling, of becoming well informed. But if he goes further and becomes a seeker of real wisdom, then example, the practical guidance of others, once again sets his direction. Imitation accompanies man nearly all his life: so man is an epigone after all!
At a low level of conformity, the disciple imitates the form. If his master walks with a stick, he grabs a stick too, though he is barely twenty. If the master does not like pine trees, he too will shudder at the needles. He adopts his diet, his tone of voice, his bearing, sometimes wears similar clothes or takes on his habits, in the hope of following, imitating and coming to resemble him. But though the ant climbs the same mountain as the elephant, it still does not see the same thing.
A slightly higher level is when the disciple seeks not merely imitation of the formalities but likeness in the spirit of the teaching. A basic understanding of the teaching is soon transplanted into the disciple's consciousness, but as to the details he remains ignorant. That is why an extraordinary role in the disciple's growth and unfolding falls to the master, whose example, words and very being embody the higher reality for him.
If the disciple succeeds in making his own his master's spirit, the exacting care with which he approaches divine facts, and the intensity with which he lives his life, then he may succeed in the future. He arrives at personal insights, experiences spirituality in flavours of his own, constructively enriches the tradition, and yet does not become unfaithful to the heritage. If he becomes independent in the good sense of the word, he will be a heroic epigone rather than a headstrong experimenter, a worthy successor who still feels that he needs his master, and the master, too, feels that such a disciple matters.