To the western mind, lineage is a nebulous concept. In the teaching of spiritual or mystic traditions however, lineage is of utmost importance.

Let me explain lineage by using the "telephone" game. In this game, everyone sits in a circle and one person whispers a phrase to the next. Each in turn passes on the phrase until it gets back to the originator. The result rarely resembles the original phrase. This is an example of "lineage of phrase". If the game is interrupted after the first 2 or 3 people, the phrase is probably very similar to the original but by the 20th person, it has been altered dramatically.

Now let's change the rules of the telephone game to try to keep the original phrase intact. Instead of passing The Phrase to one person, the Originator passes it to many people. After years of repeating and explaining The Phrase he selects those who have best understood and remembered The Phrase and makes those people Teachers. The Teachers do the same thing, so that at each generation there is a returning to The Phrase. Along the way there may be some alteration due to changes in collective consciousness or culture, but for the most part The Phrase remains the same. The Meaning of The Phrase remains the same since each teacher will test the students for understanding of The Meaning as well as memorization of the words of The Phrase before considering them as Teachers. This formula for returning to the original phrase at each generation would allow many generations with little or no corruption of The Phrase. There are many ways in which The Phrase can be altered, even corrupted. For instance:

• Students other than those named as Teacher pass on their understanding of The Phrase. At first it wouldn't vary much from the original phrase but there would be some change as the students would not necessarily have shown the same understanding and memory of The Phrase as a Teacher. If each of these unauthorized teachers went through the same process of choosing their own teachers, similar but varied versions of The Phrase would evolve. If these successive teachers did not ensure quality standards, The Phrase would quickly mutate until it was unrecognizable.
• Someone outside the circle of students overhears The Phrase. This individual would not be party to the discussions about The Phrase and would never have the chance to learn The Meaning and be tested in their understanding of The Phrase. The Phrase passed on by this individual would only be a phrase — devoid of embodied understanding.
• Student disagrees with the Teacher as to the Meaning or the words of The Phrase. That student might choose to change The Phrase and therefore create a new phrase. The new phrase may have inherent value but it isn't and shouldn't be called The Phrase.

Lineage is all about keeping the knowledge pure and true to "The Phrase" — the original teachings. In any spiritual or mystic practice, it is essential that the teaching at each generation be held true to the original teachings. This does not restrict the practitioner or the student. It only restricts the teacher and only in the way the knowledge is passed on. Each recipient of the knowledge must make it his or her own but each time one becomes a Teacher there must be a return to The Phrase. If this does not happen, then after only a very few generations the knowledge becomes corrupted and lost. This is also the rationale for the secrecy in most traditions — to protect the knowledge from being misunderstood or misused, rather than maintaining some sort of elitism.

There are clear examples of this phenomenon all around us. Martial Arts in most schools now bear little resemblance to the pure teachings of the Originals. Most mystic teachings have numerous "copy-cat" versions, often using the same names as the Original.