attached to roles...

No guru can lead anyone to enlightenment if he himself is attached to the role of guru, nor can any disciple ever receive enlightenment if he wants to play the role of disciple forever.

Both are suffering from attachments which prevent enlightenment.

This is why the whole thing becomes a stage play, whether serious or comical, in which the actors are performing their personal parts.

Even if they babble about the necessity of not getting attached to the world, they are still attached to what they are supposed to be, that is, questing.

A truly enlightened man has no such attachment and unless he is invested by the Higher Power with a special apostleship, or with a special mission, he would not consider himself a guru, nor anyone else as a disciple.


— Notebooks Category 1: Overview of the Quest > Chapter 6: Student-Teacher > # 590
Paul Brunton