Celebrating our Teachers
Who can describe the grace of the Guru?
Who can describe the grace of the Guru? Their presence in our lives brings us into contact with the eternal, formless essence of who we really are. They are a celebration of the infinite in finite form. When we celebrate them, we join in that celebrative communion with the Oneness within us, that reflects the Oneness in all.
The true teacher is a beautiful icon of wisdom personified. The great ones, yogis and sages, have no interest in personal recognition or fame. Their only interest is in our realisation of our own truth – the truth that lies at the heart of all spiritual endeavour.
While the beauty of nature can throw us back into ourselves without our knowledge, the great yogis and sages with their living, their actions, their words and movement can consciously take us to the same place.
Some of the great sages have become almost legendary, almost to the point of being mythological, as the average man cannot even comprehend the possibility of the infinite wisdom they lived and loved as their own true nature.
“Who can speak Of the great Fathomless One But The Heart” - Savitri
THE MASTER IS A GATE TO THE ABSOLUTE
“A Master cannot give you love, he can only introduce you to the fact you are love” – Dolano
The word Guru means ‘One who shed light on the path’, ‘the One who lights the way’. The lamp cannot walk the
“The mere sight of him made me tremble all over because I had come face to face with the Divine. This recognition affected me so much that my body shook involuntarily. As I gazed at Sri Ramana, I felt I saw God himself sitting there. I was alone in the hall with him. Joy and peace suffused my being, never before have I had such a delightful feeling of purity and well-being at the mere proximity of a man.” S.S. Cohen on meeting Ramana Maharshi
Deep in the chambers
Of your own heart
Lies the Beloved
In-waiting
Who can say
When the doorway
Will spring open?
- Savitri
Great Blossoms in the Living Tradition of the Guru
Ramana Marharshi
Paul Brunton on first impact the silence Ramana made on his mind. “I cannot turn my gaze away from him. My initial bewilderment, my perplexity at being totally ignored, slowly fade away as this strange fascinstion begins to grip me more firmly. But it is not until the second hourof the uncommon scene that I become aware of a silent, resistless change which is taking place within my mind. One by one, the questions which I prepared in the train with such meticulous accuracy drop away. For it does not now seem to matter they are asked or not, and it does not matter whether I solve the problems which I have hitherto troubled me. I only know that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me, that a great peace is penetrating the inner reaches of my being and that my thought tortured brain is beginning to arrive at some rest.
“If you have extreme desire to realise, your guru will come.
When you get a guru he will open your heart.”
-Sri Hari Raj Maharaj
A guru will challenge your perceptions, thoughts and individuality - SHRM
THE GURU’S TEST
“It is not easy to be near the Master, not easy. Only those that come who really want to finish to burn. Very few people come. They know he is fire, he is death and if I come closer I will be finished. But they want to finish, therefore they love him. This can only happen with a living Master, so always where consciousness is, wherever the flame is burning, just go at any cost. Whatever you have to pay, pay it, but be there.” - Radha Ma
Sometimes we think that spiritual path will be full of love and light. We often project this dream onto our spiritual teachers and masters. We create them within this dream and, when the reality of their teaching hits us, we feel disappointed. Many times, I would go to have darshan of Sai, thinking that He will pay me great attention, chatting and laughing with me, only to find that He completely ignored me. Slowly, over the years, I came to understand that the greatest grace was not the chance to talk to Him, but that opportunity to go into deep self-reflection, understanding where my barriers to happiness lay – inside.
In order to transform the disciple, the guru often appears extremely harsh in his treatment. Many disciples describe incidents when they felt they could take no more, after which important lessons would take root. In a study of gurus and disciples Savitri related the following:
“One time, I almost threw myself under an ongoing train. I had had enough of his slaps. I told him, breaking my silence, as I thought they would be my last words: ‘Forget it. I have had enough. It is better to die than to endure this day after day.’
Later this disciple realised:
“He was not beating me due to his own anger. He was moulding me, shaping me, beating out any vestiges of attachment and ignorance, besting down my ego. He knew, every step of the way, exactly what he was doing, and he was in full control. He slapped me because it was the quickest, clearest and most direct way to literally knock an idea or a concept into me or out of me.”
This disciple had a profound love for this teacher of his youth and has now become the loving ‘father’ to many orphaned boys. “ - Savitri & Satyavan
“The Great Rishis exist on the roof of the world
Silently holding the fabric of harmony and wholeness
So we may all tire of playing with creation
And discover our true home
In its Heart.”
-Savitri
SURRENDER TO THE FEET OF THE GURU – THE INNER MEANING
One day, in a talk to the students, Sai Baba made it crystal clear as to what it means to be at the feet of the Lord or Guru. It was the year 2003. All the students who had stayed back with Swami during the summer vacations were in Brindavan, Whitefield, Swami’s ashram in Bangalore. Swami called all the students into His residence for the famous Trayee Session. As He sat on the lovely ornate jhoola, Swami decided to speak to the boys on the nine-fold path of Devotion, the Navavidha Bhakti Marga.
He dilated in length on Shravanam (Listening), Keertanam (Singing), and Vishnusmaranam (Remembrance) before arriving to Padasevanam (Worshiping the feet). It washere that Swami gave a unique interpretation - an interpretation that made one’s hairs stand on their ends with its meaning and significance. Swami said that people often thought Padasevanam meant service to the Guru’s feet. And that was the reason why everyone felt it was the easiest route if only Swami allows them to press and massage His feet. But that was not the actual meaning. Swami said that Padasevanam means to walk in the footsteps of Guru. To walk the path that the Guru walks is true service to His feet. And following the Master is the first step to completing the game of life successfully. (Personal communication sent from John Moore)
A Guru can’t do it for you. Like a trekking guide, she can walk ahead, show you the path, but cannot walk the path for you. - Savitri
GURU PURNIMA.
Guru Purnima is the occasion dedicated to offering respect to all of our spiritual Gurus. It celebrates a sacred relationship between students and teachers. The Sanskrit word ‘Guru’ translates to mean someone who removes the darkness of illiteracy and ignorance from our lives, hence Gu = darkness, Ru = lightness. Hence the Guru helps the student transcend from a suffering cycle of life and death towards the eternal consciousness - Atma.
Guru Purnima is traditionally celebrated within Hindu and Buddhist religions by performing puja and offering prayers to Guru and God. Some choose to fast the entire day. It symbolises the moon’s cycle around the earth to mean the end of a chapter in one’s life and the beginning of a new chapter.
Rituals as found in all religions are symbolic and interesting to a point, essentially the subject who has a Guru in their lives or who has dedicated oneself to the teachings of a Guru, pays reverence toward that Guru by prayers of forgiveness toward everyone and everything or every memory of past or present that needs forgiveness, including oneself of past mistakes.
Primarily the Universe is love and I am forgiven and governed by love alone.
The enjoining with a Guru in one’s life is a fascinating evolvement of an unfolding of the layers of ignorance falling away as we merge closer toward that which we are, Atma, pure consciousness. Over eons, clouds of ignorance have formed around and over us to the point where our clear vision of who we are has been obstructed and we are immersed in maya or illusion, the dust of the universe. Our senses attract us to the mundane phenomenal world (transitory) and we forget the true nature of who we are. We become lost and bereft of God, ourselves.
So, the expression of gratitude can be understood against the unfolding history and the reclamation of self in the true sense of the word, Atma, supreme consciousness, that which was never born, therefore never dies - the eternal witness.
On Guru Purnima Day one should light the lamp of knowledge and dispel dark ignorance from the heart. The Supra-consciousness in the heart is the Lord or the Divine Guru who resides there permanently. When people realise this, then that will be the day of fulfilment.
Om Sai Ram
Tom Elliott
“If you take one step toward me I take a hundred towards you. If you shed one tear, I shall wipe a hundred from your eyes” -Sathya Sai Baba
A TEACHER IS NECESSARY
The realised master and the guru-disciple relationship as expounded in the ancient Vedic texts (the Upanishads)
Having a realised master is essential in the process of Self-realisation. The Upanishads are emphatic about the need to be in the company of a guru in order to realise the Self. The literal meaning of the word ‘Upanishad’ is ‘sitting near the guru’. The Upanishads view a guru as one who has crossed over the ocean of worldly existence and at the same time takes others across.
The Kathopanishad is built around the story of how Nachiketas (the disciple) is liberated by Yama (his guru). Yama states: “Unless you learn of God from some Master soul you shall not experience Him.” Similarly, the Chandogya Upanishad states: “without a master soul we can neither know nor experience the true nature of the Self.” The Manduka Upanishad speaks of it in this manner: “To know God, go to a guru who is adept in the knowledge of Brahman and is fully embedded in Brahman.”
The central theme of the Bhagavad Gita is how Arjuna (the disciple) is led by Krishna (the guru) to higher levels of spiritual understanding.
Both the resilience and the relevance of the ancient practice of the guru and his disciples were made clear by twenty-five of the twenty-seven participants in a recent study of realisation. These twenty-five confirmed the importance of this deeply intimate relationship in their own process. For them, the role of their guru was a far more complex one than that of just a teacher or preceptor. The relationship was transformational. Saraswati (1991) describes it thus: “If you say that the guru transforms the minds that are like brass into shining gold, it would not be an adequate measure of the true extent of the guru’s greatness.”
-Savitri
THE GURU INSIDE
“Before searching for a guru, our mind should become introverted and find the source of the energy. The power within us leads us towards the guru. Guru is the One that cannot be put into words. He is beyond any explanation. If he is a great guru, he comes into your inner self and then works on you. You can never find him, he finds you.” - Ajja
Even if we have a living Master, if they are truly a great guru, they will always direct you inside. We pay so much attention to the outer world, and this is true for our search for a master who can guide us. Sai Baba always says “Your Master is your Heart” , the place where we can discover our truth and our love. If we are always externalising our search, we reduce the spiritual to the physical. However, if we internalise our yearning, miraculously, the Master appears.
“The role of the human Master is simply to relay the information that comes from the Self. The human teacher is just a gimmick, he is a puppet being used by the great puppet master to invite us to party. “ – Francis Lucille
THE OUTER GURU LEADS TO THE INNER GURU
The role of the outer guru is to help awaken the inner guru. They acknowledged that while God and guru are within each person, as long as the ego persists, the seeker remains unaware of this. If the disciple has lost the ability to ‘hear’ God, due to being so externally orientated, the outer guru becomes the voice of the Self.
Rabindranath Tagore (2012) gives one explanation of the mystery of the guru/disciple relationship. He says that an embodied soul or jiva wanders through hundreds of thousands of births in different bodies, searching for the way to attain its own true state of the eternal Supreme Self. Through its struggles, it achieves consecutively higher and higher states of evolution. Finally, at a stage due to the intensity of man’s longing to reach his goal of perfection, a miracle happens: the inner soul which was driving him towards his real nature separates itself and assumes a form and guides him to the goal.
“Outer guru has only one role: to get you to the inner guru. The Guru is the Self. The guru is your consciousness”
This sheds light on the view that is held by some of the senior practitioners: that the guru is none other than their own Self, who has come to guide their steps towards realisation. Participants attempt to describe this mystery in various ways:
“If the guru is omnipresent, how can he be absent in me?”
“My inner voice is my Master’s voice.”
There is a progression from being reliant on the physical form of the guru, to communing with the presence within. Those participants whose gurus are deceased continue an intimate and close relationship with their guru, which is just as real and devoted as when they were alive. The guru’s consciousness is discovered to be all-pervading and the whole of the disciple’s life continues to be lived in devotion and communion.
-Savitri
DAKSHINAMURTHY AND THE POWER OF SILENCE
The symbology of Daksinamurthy is interesting and instructive. Being considered an aspect of Shiva (the ultimate consciousness) the image of Dakshinamurthy is found on the south side of many temples in India. He is considered the supreme guru. But the real significance of Daksinamurthy is that his teaching is conducted in total silence (para vak). Around him sit the sages, absorbing his lessons delivered without a word!
This image brings to mind the manner in which Sri Ramana Maharshi mostly taught – complete silence. It was presence that imparted the truths, not words. Ramana also stated (about Dakshinamurthi), “one meaning of Dakshina is efficient; another meaning is 'in the heart on the right side of the body'; Amurti 'means Formlessness' . "Dakshinamurti Stotra" in Sanskrit, means the "Shapelessness situated on the right side".
Here Ramana is referring to the spiritual heart – the Hrdaya, which is situation to the right of the sternum (breast bone) opposite the physical heart. Ramana referred to this often, as has Sathya Sai and other great teachers. If we enter into the hrdaya we enter into the cave of silence – no sound, no words, just the bliss of utter peace. But our truest Guru imparts the greatest wisdom when we are in that space.
That s the message of Dakshinamuthy.
-Satyavan