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Many, and likely most, excellent teachers, have followed the three steps of “Learn
and Practice,” “Awaken,” and then “Go deeper, and abate the power of the
vasanas and samskaras before teaching.” These are those who are truly worthy
sharers of what really can’t be put perfectly into any words.
Except… As with almost everything else, there are exceptions.
The outstanding example of an exception is The Buddha. He went out of order.
He had worked intensively on his Vasanas and Samskaras before he
“Awakened,” so for him Awakening and Enlightenment were basically
synonymous, at least in time.
His example, fantastic though it was, has confused things for many for the last
2500 years.
For perhaps everyone except the Buddha, Enlightenment is not an immediate by-
product of (an) Awakening. For most persons, it takes at least five to ten years of
“Abiding” in the Awakening(s), of working on (letting go of) the power of
lurking vasanas and samskaras, before the person is ready to “teach.” However,
(again, partly due to the synonymous nature of the Buddha’s Awakening and
Enlightenment) this fact has been lost on many, including some who should
have, and likely actually did, know much better.
This three-step model, to repeat, is not exact. To take three of the most significant
spiritual personages in the modern consciousness as examples,
--Ramana Maharishi did barely any training before Awakening (though he spent
years of what could be called “spiritual processing” on and around the holy
mountain Arunachala after that before he became a renowned teacher).
--The Buddha, to say it again, was rare in that for him Awakening and
Enlightenment (defined here as the ability to teach as a true sage) came at
virtually the same moment.
-- Jesus, meanwhile, is a mystery. He had to have Awakened at some point, but
for many years of his life we have no record at all. During those “lost years” he
might have been living in the desert with the Essenes, have gone to India, or
been taken by aliens to Sigma Alpha Picardo. Nobody knows. A good guess is
that for at least part of those years he was dealing with what the Advaita and
Hindu folks would call his vasanas and samskaras, but there is only
circumstantial evidence for even that. All we know is that his official “ministry”
began around the age of thirty. He seems to fit the three-step model, but..?
Among other teachers, in recent times Mooji took years alone after Awakening
before he began to share. Pre-WWII in the twentieth century Krishnamurti
suffered through massive headaches as he processed all that to which he had
Awakened. In the late 19th century the great Swami Vivekananda met his master,
Ramakrishna, and despite being a rare being who was Awakened very quickly,
still spent years walking around India, radiating in the Truth, before deciding,
fatefully, to journey to the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
The examples go on and on, each with their own variations but with each “real” teacher, all three pieces being there.