The Need for a Teacher
Self-knowledge requires guidance from a realized master.
The Upanishads emphasize the importance of a guru - one who has realized the Self and can point the way. Without proper guidance, the subtle truth is easily missed.
Approach a teacher who is learned in the scriptures and established in Brahman.
The teacher-student relationship is sacred in Vedantic tradition.
Mundaka Upanishad
Written about in
- What the Upanishads say about loneliness
Mundaka sends the seeker to a teacher who is both learned and established in Brahman; the knowledge is not held to be available to someone working alone with a text. A tradition claiming non-separation still routes its central teaching through one human being sitting in front of another.