From the workshop "The luminous connection between teacher & student"
- Christian Bauer
- Dec 13, 2025
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 11
A person-to-person encounter, from heart to heart, from soul to soul.
It was Friday evening when the workshop began, to which Daniel had invited – with the special topic of the direct relationship between teacher and student – which this time took place exclusively in presence.
Gradually, the practice house on the outskirts of Munich filled up with students who had traveled from various German cities, as well as from Austria and Italy. The atmosphere was warm and welcoming, but also somewhat restless and bustling. A kind of anticipatory tension hung in the air.
Reunion
Slowly, the conversations died down, and about fifteen minutes before the workshop began, most people were already seated. They gathered in the lovingly decorated and pleasantly lit practice room, around Daniel's still empty chair. I took a seat in the front row.
In an upright sitting position, on a cushion or a chair, each person, usually with the eyes already closed, prepared himself for the reunion and the upcoming encounter with Daniel. When, shortly before the beginning, several footsteps and Daniel's voice could be heard at the entrance, my inner joy lifted, and the quiet atmosphere throughout the room filled with a noticeably vibrant energy.
Shortly afterwards, Daniel came into the practice room, greeted one and the other in a low voice – as I could tell from his whisper – and audibly cheerful and grateful words sounded back.
At times, it became completely silent again. A few slow, attentive steps could be heard, which then ceased once more. The atmosphere in the room noticeably intensified, and an occasional soft sob revealed quiet emotions. Feelings, including tears of gratitude and relief—as I perceived them—finally found expression.
As I glanced to the side, I saw Daniel stand behind individuals, pause briefly in silence, or gently touch someone. Then, at the place prepared for him at the front, a beaming face came in: "I'm so glad you're all here."
Heartfelt aliveness & awareness
After a brief welcome and a few introductory words, Daniel started the evening with a guided meditation – of which there are three short audio samples here to give you a little insight …
(in German - please find translations into English in the download file below)
"When the mind is inactive -
no longer holding on to the contents of consciousness and no longer creating a separation -
you are very close to aliveness.
Shift into your heart and you will experience your oneness with what is.
This immediate, heartfelt aliveness creates the best conditions
for being absorbed into awareness."
(Daniel Hertlein)
Listening to Daniel's words in meditations is like an inner awakening for me. Something gets up, allows itself to be taken by the hand, and helps to see and experience different inner processes, dynamics, tendencies and connections more clearly.
Greater connectedness
Following a short break, in response to Daniel's question:
"What would you like to share?"
a student, visibly touched, recounted her experience when Daniel entered the room and what happened inside her when he was near.
Student : "I've noticed how easy it is – that there is a natural experience of the heart – when you're just near. And that this often doesn't work for me in everyday life.
Then I wonder why that is. Is it my attention? Because when I try to experience everything more from my heart, it doesn't come so easily. But when you entered the room earlier, I was immediately enveloped in boundless blessing and love."
Daniel: "Why do you think it's easier for you here?"
Student : "It must have something to do with you." (laughs)
Daniel : "What do you think the reason is – what's happening between us?"
Student: "It's as if a previously felt separation disappears, and then it's not just the connection to you, but a much greater sense of connectedness that I experience."
Daniel: "Can you experience that too when you connect with me in everyday life?"
Student: "Yes, I can. That's right, that's a good point."
Daniel: "That's interesting, isn't it? ...that you don't need physical proximity to experience it. You focus your attention 'there' and experience greater connectedness. How is that possible?"
Student: "It's as if love opens the door. And then the mind that thinks about wanting to feel love or something like that is no longer there – it's gone."
Daniel: "Then you can understand that a teacher, a master, or whatever we want to call it, is like a bridge. If you keep your attention in that connection in everyday life, then it's not 'I'm connecting with a persona.'
The fascinating thing about a master is: you connect with him and your heart opens, you feel love – not for him, as when you are in love with someone – you feel love for everything.
That's the difference between feeling love for a master who guides you toward realization… and feeling love for someone you're simply in love with. Because in the love for a master - if we stick with that word - you open yourself to the love for everything.
If your love for a master excludes others, then either he is not a master, or you don't yet know how to love him. And there is a risk that you will become attached to that body and create dependency.
If you don't see the body in the master, but are more interested in the awareness from which he speaks, then you can truly meet the master... basically yourself/ your true self."
The questions in Satsang ranged from seemingly more banal everyday worries and challenges in interpersonal relationships, unconscious beliefs and inner struggles to spiritual healing, inner growth, deep heartfelt longings and the desire for truthfulness and liberation.
Everyone shared what's currently on their mind – and Daniel encouraged, supported, and accompanied them in exactly that. No question seemed wrong, no concern unimportant.
Actually, only partial truths
This is how another student described her insight during meditation.
Student: " I've noticed that some of my views cause me stress. But that I can also let them go.
When I let go of everything and experience it as vibration, everything is one – then there is nothing left to limit. Only my thinking can limit and alter my experience.
I've became aware that when I pick memories and reflect on them - thus recreating something of the past - I'm only remembering a specific fragment of what happened and piecing it together from what I found interesting. Like a press report. But that can never truly reflect how it really was.
What kind of nonsense is this then – a recollection, like a press report, that actually only contains partial truths?”
From Daniel's reply, I would like to share just one short quote here, which immediately opens the door to a different experience for me.
Daniel: “I can’t tell you how things are, but I can tell you what I’m experiencing.
And when what I experience corresponds to what is now, I feel connected to life… one with life.
The mind is inactive, no contents of consciousness... no identification.
This is how I am closest to awareness – I don't want to know anything at all and have natural access to my inner wisdom.”
Everything & Nothing
With the following words another student shared her experience.
"On Saturday I joined fresh and you were still outside. So I just sat down and felt what was there. It was so 'simple' and yet so profound. Because the closer you got to the door, the stronger the feeling of safety, security, and trust became – like being in the womb.
After days, weeks in 'survival mode', this meant so much more to me than I can put into words. The sentence came: "Now I'm home." Inwardly I had to laugh at myself, because in all these years with you I feel like E.T. on earth... I WANT to phone home. ;)
When you then entered the room with the light-bringing energies accompanying you, it felt both deeply familiar and like a promise of something much greater. I actually perceived it as an infinite spectrum of light flooding the earth – incredibly wide.
There were all the colors, a variety of specific lights and energies.
Depending on the topics addressed by the participants in Satsang, I could sense the energies emanating from their words, experiences, and perceptions. And it was your responses to these that, in turn, touched different levels within myself. Through this, I found my own life within this colorful interplay of light and its nuances.
At the same time, amidst the numerous facets, there was a tangible constant through the connection to you. There was a rooted sense of being held, earth, stability, warmth, trust – and through the foundation of this upright pillar within, a wide level of light, expansiveness, lightness, freedom, and heaven could unfold from the heart.
When I'm able to surrender to this connection, all limitations and classifications dissolve. Then earth is not 'inert' and heaven is not 'lifted'. I feel that the vastness of heaven contains the earth.
Because when I listen to what you say, my mind is still, all my inner antennae are on reception, my body is completely relaxed, and my whole being is ready – then I too AM the wide space, in which everything is possible, in which everything is there.
There are no colors anymore, no play of light, no polarities, no nuances or facets, not even possibilities, only pure light. There is no I, no You, no earth, no heaven.
As soon as I seek myself within that, there is a perception – of purity, bliss and dissolution. There is an earth that carries me. And a stable bond that holds me.
Then again, infinite space and light.
There is everything and nothing.
And that's what you are to me."
I am pleased if this article provides a small insight into what it can mean to experience the gift of a teacher-student relationship.
Through the years I've spent with Daniel, I understand more and more that what's essential (even in this special relationship) is only momentary, directly experienceable, and never truly predictable. That, hardly comprehensible from the outside, it is, despite all the familiarity, always new and always absolutely unique.
"Only in pure consciousness are we one.
Not in the idea…
not in the contents of consciousness…“
(Daniel Hertlein)
