How To Immortalize Yourself (As A Scholar)

12 Steps To Become A Spiritual Leader

“Universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.” –Thomas Carlyle, 1840

1. Be that kind of person

You must have a certain personality. Is there an egomaniac, a sociopath, a control freak or a little dictator in you? Do you want to succeed in life as bad as you want to breathe when pulled under water? Is it all about you, and how the world could be made your oyster? Are you prepared to do anything, everything that will make you go ahead? Then chances are you have the very fundamental character traits that are necessary to keep yourself moving forward and drive yourself to become the next messiah, shengren, or buddha.

2. Have a great idea

You need a plan, a system, a manifesto, a mission. Think of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. If you write it down, you created it. And what is created exists. (Keep this simple rule in mind; you will thrive on it throughout your life.) It can be a book, an unpublished manuscript, an essay, a painting, a diary, a couple of poems, a draft for a constitution, or just a single line of thought, something! That idea is what you must focus on now; it will be your genius sitting on your shoulders and attending your actions every step; it is your guiding spirit, your talisman, your protector. And it will forever distract the critic’s eye away from your over-the-top personality toward that genius, so choose it wisely.

3. Become historically aware

You must connect both yourself AND your teachings to historical events and historical persons. Anchor your wishful avatar permanently to reality and you have set in motion a brand-new dialectic. You do so by comparing your idea with already existing ones, ideally from two thousand years ago, as if your thoughts were, say, the logical conclusions of the teachings of the great sages Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. Your idea, of course, is universal and had been known before by “the other great personalities.” In a nutshell, you must add your cause to world history.

4. Be a force of creation

If you study any religion or popular movement, you will observe that the great leaders and their followers are constantly creating new connections of themselves and their movement to current domestic, economic, political, or socio-historical affairs. Everything is interconnected, that is the essence of all spirituality. Places, events, people, incidences, movements… everything must be incorporated: your life-work, your existence, your holistic framework; in modern times –your networking. If you can, become a supercreator.

5. Keep your socio-economic status high

Your socio-economic status is essential to success because it determines what kind of people you will meet, and how they will see you. In short, people want to see you have a job. So you have to establish your credentials either before starting your movement or along the way. Do you own a company; are you affiliated with a university, a religion, or a political party? Are you a professor, entrepreneur, director or president of something? If not, you better become one, or many. Ikeda held 400 honorary doctoral degrees. Tagore held 1,000 guest lectures. And then keep getting ever more great titles. Needless to say, if you don’t come from money or power, you can always marry into it, or anyway mingle with the influential and successful.

6. Know that followers will follow

The truth is there is no planning for followers. Followers will follow. It is the followers that care about the spiritual leader, and that is that. In fact, since by now you are that movement by constantly creating connections to the happenings around you, people are already drawn to you like moths to a flame. You give them a purpose in life, or at least you will make them think about purpose. Every remark they make, every piece of paper they comment on, every gesture, every meeting, every conversation they will have about you will enhance your own presence and reputation. Imam Khomeini is said to have possessed only about $12 on the day he died. Yet, he practically commanded the entire Iranian nation.

7. Give back

You must always be giving back. If you don’t have anything, you cannot give. But as a “rich” spiritual person, you have a lot to give, and I don’t necessarily mean money or material props, but also more abstract forms of empowerment like access to resources, titles, jobs, gifts, or simple the credit of being in your presence. This is an important function of any leader: to distribute resources among his people. Tread all your friends like one big family and distribute among them your favors (or withhold them some times) like you were a king or pasha. Be benevolent and give and you will be given even more.

8. Mange your image

To manage your public image, you need your own channels. This is about constant public relation management. At first, you publish your ideas in magazines, journals, newspapers. In modern times, social networks, blogs, websites, videos, or mini-production firms; all help to brand your name. The key is to treat each publication like it was holy and invaluable. That said, in order to speed things up, you have to “self-publish” because it is fast, accurate, and the best way to promote your creation.

Now, let me explain what I mean by “self-publishing” to avoid a common misconception. Self-publishing is more common than you think, although it is not always labeled as such. Self-publishing means that you (and your organization) are in total control of the publishing process. All successful companies in the world have marketing departments, which are, as a matter of fact, in-house self-publishers. You want to publish fast and without too much resistance. No true leader wants to send 100 submission requests and receive 99 rejection letters. Better even, think about your own newspapers, magazines, book clubs, television shows, or media corporations.

9. Become a founder

Few leaders reach this step, but if they do, they all did it the same way. You establish an institute, a method, a research center, a foundation, a non-government organization, a political party, a religious movement, your own country, whatever suits you best, and the more the better. You flank that with your own media channels. You are now a spiritual entrepreneur, and your “employees” work for your cause.

Have your underlings regularly conduct brain-storming sessions. Their ideas are obviously yours. You have the resources to publish them, they don’t. Next you build a library with all your favorite collections, you publish your memories, you exhibit you family photos, you venerate your ancestors, you let people know your favorite dishes, your travel anecdotes and philosophies, your dreams, the illnesses you’ve overcome, as if you were a global celebrity. You are your own brand now, or better: your founded your own vain empire.

10. Become an exemplar person

If you can, become a hero. Save little children from starving in Africa, help the victims of earthquakes in Japan or Indonesia. And let the public know that you helped those homeless. On the other side of the spectrum, always remember to connect to important people and world events, and let everybody know about your connections. Your life has turned into a work of art. You are now a force of nature, and you believe, like all people with great power, that you have the highest ethical standards anyway. Write more books about it. Go on TV.

11. Engage in diplomacy

Exactly like heads of states would do: Search relations and dialogue. I assure you, it has been road tested: You are now in a different ball game than most of humanity. Meeting with ordinary people gives you nothing intellectually; you must search for those very few who are exactly like you. Presidents meet other presidents, CEOs meet other CEOs, spiritual leaders meet other spiritual leaders. The effect is bombastic: Talks will be given; the word will be spread. Dialogue between great spiritual masters is essentially the greatest promotion tool of spiritual leaders that exists today.

12. Carefully plan your legacy

Ideally, you should have died before the age 40, and suddenly. The shock will make many people say good things about you that they would never have said about a living or elderly person. Think about Bruce Lee who died at the age of 33 or Vincent van Gogh who died at 37, or Kurt Cobain who died at 27. They weren’t exactly great scholars, but everyone is now studying them, which is even greater. Think about that.

If you have done everything right so far, your accomplishments may have bought you, say, a hundred years, maybe two hundred years of fame. But to become truly immortal, you must be ever-present in the eyes and minds of future generations. Architecture, statues, temples, tombs, schools, kindergartens, universities, institutes, films, documentaries, valleys and park benches in your name, and history books about your rise can do that for you. You must lend your name to as many static symbols as possible while you are still alive; or have agencies in place that will do that for you.

Don’t take your money into the grave. That is stupid. Think about Alfred Nobel and donate your wealth to a public trust or foundation. In the end, it all boils down to this: People must feel that it is their fault, and that they should have known you. You must lay claim on future history so that people who are born later are thrown right back into your scheme.

Final words of advice

Scholars have various talents, strengths and weaknesses; they also come from different countries, live in different times under different circumstances. Still, successful spiritual leaders have much in common (hence they are an archetype): they have powerful personalities who experienced similar (exact!) developmental stages in order to be recognized by society as truly remarkable person that can’t be forgotten (even if we tried hard).

Your call. T