Few people in the West actually seek enlightenment, at least in a deliberative manner. That is partly because Christianity, our dominant religion, emphasizes praying for salvation over a search for inner peace or “God-Realization,” as Paramahansa Yogananda terms it in his “Autobiography of a Yogi.” The crucial difference between the concepts of salvation and of enlightenment is that, while Christians who have been “born again” have been touched by God in this life and assured of salvation, they have not experienced the actual, on-going fusion with God, the all-encompassing divine bliss, that is the hallmark of the Hindu concept of enlightenment.
Still, there is another related and equally important reason why so few of us Westerners actually seek enlightenment. Western religions do not tend to breed saintly gurus who surround themselves with disciples and devotees. The Hindu gurus described so vividly by Yogananda are living instruments of God, human beings who have attained either full or partial enlightenment by rigorous spiritual practice and who are ready and willing to teach their methods of practice to a core circle of disciples, each of whom has the potential to attain to the master’s level. Practice is key, as opposed to divine revelation in the biblical sense.
The most impressive aspect of the master/disciple relationship in the Hindu tradition is that it has been passed on from generation to generation over the millenia, as each guru trains a disciple to succeed him after he departs this world. I can’t think of any similar unbroken chain of widely recognized masters, with corresponding circles of disciples and devotees, in the Western tradition. For example, recognized Catholic saints do not usually pass the baton on to a new living saint in the next generation.
While the West has produced great spiritual leaders, quite a few are confined to the monastery or convent, where word of their leadership or holiness does not spread far in the larger, multi-faith and secular society. Others have channeled their spiritual leadership into worthy causes of social justice, such as Dr. Martin Luther King and Bishop Desmond Tutu. Charismatic preachers on revival circuits – genuinely sincere ones, as opposed to charlatans – enact miracles of healing and sometimes of personal transformation that nonetheless fall short of the full God-realization inherent in Yogananda’s portrait of enlightenment. Sadly, the gurus that American society tends most often to breed are personality cults in which the leader’s huge egotism, in extreme examples expressed in group suicide pacts, is the actual object of veneration, with God being only the ostensible or official focus of devotion. Cults tend to take the Lord’s name in vain, substituting an egotistical idol. This worship is the opposite of the ego-destroying spiritual practice that is the prerequisite for attaining true enlightenment as formulated by Hindu sacred texts.
Bird of Spirit 
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