Pujya Gurudevshri explains the role of a Guru in a seeker’s life and how grace of the Guru and faith from the seeker’s side both are a must for his spiritual evolution.
Guru means One who is awakened; He is a link between you and God. He is like a doorway to God. God is invisible, unknown and unfamiliar to you. Your ears are not ready for the divine music. Your heart is not prepared for the divine touch or for the seed of the divine to sprout.
Your back is turned towards God. You can face only one - God or the world. The worldly-minded and the seeker, both stand in the same space. But the former faces the world with his back turned towards God, and the latter has his face towards God and back turned on the world. Taking a 180-degree turn, the worldly-minded can become a seeker in no time.
Guru – The Translator
Guru was once like you, with back turned towards God. His past was just like yours, but His present isn’t. He turned around. He is now one with the divine. He has experienced the formless and known the unknown. He has realised the unfamiliar. He knows God’s language, and also yours. He acts as a translator for you. He brings the divine to you in your language. He makes access to the divine easy for you. How would you connect to God without connecting with the Guru? It is like one knows Hindi and the other Japanese. Both can speak yet nothing is understood. You need someone who knows both the languages. That One is Guru.
Guru slowly prepares you to take a leap into the divine. A small plant needs protection. Like a gardener who protects it from heavy downpour and excess heat of the sun, Guru protects you from heavy showers of divine grace which are beyond your capacity to receive while preparing you for God. When God and you both are ready, He moves away and the divine communion occurs. He prepares you for Self-realisation and moves away. Self-realisation occurs in the space where there is neither ‘I’ nor the Guru and His thoughts. Guru is like a door you have to pass through and go beyond too. But you need to earn the experience of His grace. It doesn’t come free. You need to put everything at stake.
Guru’s Grace
Guru Himself is grace. But you can experience the grace only when you are ready. Buddha once said that of those sitting in satsang, some are like inverted pots who don’t get filled, they cannot receive no matter how much the sky may shower; some are like cracked pots, whatever is filled gets leaked immediately; some are like imbalanced pots, they keep swaying and thus retain only a portion; some are like upright pots, they remain filled with what is poured in them, and some are like those pots that not only retain everything poured into them but also increase the quantity filled within.
Guru is continuously showering grace. Until the disciple is ready, he cannot get connected with Guru’s ever flowing grace. The task of spiritual awakening is accomplished when the faith of the disciple and the grace of the Guru meet. When the faith becomes absolute, grace is experienced completely. And the lotus of the heart blossoms. Faith however is a difficult occurrence.
Doubt Comes Naturally
To doubt is natural for the mind. To keep faith is very unnatural for the mind. The mind feels secure in doubting, and insecure in having faith and taking refuge. Without experience, it is difficult to keep faith but without faith, one cannot experience! All your life, you have learnt to be sceptical. You feel that the whole world is out to cheat you. You see protection in doubting others, you want to secure your valuables and lock your houses. Even with friends, you remain cautious because you fear a friend can turn into a foe. Suspicion is the gospel of the world. The mind is trained to doubt. Faith is considered as helplessness. Believe only when there is no cause for doubting. This is the formula of the world! This being so, faith in the subject related to the Self becomes even more difficult because Self is formless, unknown, unfamiliar, and unexperienced.
Only the daring ones can have faith. One who has seen every shade of life and realised the worthlessness of cynicism and shrewdness, deceit and ego, such a one is ready for faith. He who is ready to take a leap, who has realised that the way he has been living is as bad as being dead, decides that he wants to try the refuge of faith. He has walked with open eyes yet did not reach anywhere because the vision was not right. He now wants to walk the way shown by the Guru. The world may call this blind belief but once convinced that he has not been able to realise the Self with his own understanding, he now wants to experience through the vision of the Enlightened One. Such a one is ready for the adventure of faith. The one who is tired of his ego and spiritual blindness is ready for faith. He knows that with faith, his blindness will not increase, but he shall attain divine vision. The one who has become aware of his ignorance, is eager to have faith, he will venture, take a leap and will experience the grandeur and divinity of the Self.
Faith Before and After
Your state currently is that you are standing on the bank of a river and someone tells you to enter the river to go across, assuring you ‘I will teach you to swim’. But you say ‘I will learn to swim before I enter the water. I am sure to die without knowing how to swim. ’This appears logical. The gospel of the sceptics says ‘you should enter water only if you know how to swim.’ But how will you learn to swim without entering the water? You will have to enter water when you don’t know swimming. Get in slowly, with caution, but enter. He who dares to enter learns to swim.
Guru inspires and encourages you to enter. Once ventured, it doesn’t take long. In the beginning, you may move your limbs inefficiently but in just a few days, you will master it. There is a difference that occurs in your mind. At first you moved with fear, now with faith. You know that even if the water is deep, you can be saved by your own hands and legs. If you make friendship with water, there is no way you can drown. Water doesn’t drown you, your fear does. In fear you make unnecessary movements and end up taking in water. You have enough air in the body to keep you afloat.
With faith in the Guru, enter the waters of the inner world. Don’t stay tied to the bank of extroverted-ness. Enter! Practise inwardness. As you start exploring and mastering the art of going within, your faith will grow stronger into experience. But you will also need faith before entering within and after entering the faith will deepen and strengthen. And this is not possible without the grace of the compassionate Guru! When faith and grace meet, the spark of revolution ignites within.
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