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What is a Guru? Part 1 of 2
Part 1of 2
24 Jan 2003
PART 1 of 2
Do I need one? Can I find God without a Guru? How do I recognize and shop for a quality Guru? What about False Guru’s - I was hurt by one, how can I tell if they are the ‘Real Thing’? I don’t want to be a student (we are all equals here), or disciple, (that’s just weird): can’t they just be ‘Friends’? Who do they think they are, calling themselves ‘Guru’, or ‘Master Spiritual Teacher’ anyway !? We are adults here, and I know a thing or two about Spirituality as well!. Hey, real Gurus are only from India, are men, have long white beards, wear flowing robes of orange or white or are almost naked, are really poor, don’t charge a penny for their services, can make miracles on demand, and are supposed to be…..!
Does any of this sound familiar? These are the most common questions and ideas about the ‘Guru’ , which is synonymous to ‘Master Spiritual Teacher’ . All are valid and understandable sentiments from a western mind’s perspective. Afterall, we have little or no personal cultural exposure to Master Teachers of any kind, save for Jesus Christ or Buddha, the martial arts ‘Sifu’ or the stereotypical, mass-media ideas of Gurus or Monks from Asia. Let’s enlighten ourselves about these mysterious folks, and separate fact from modern mythology. Knowing the old saying, “When the Student is ready, the Master shall appear”, we can better prepare ourselves for the Guru or Master Spiritual Teacher, just in case one should suddenly pop up in our lives!
"Do I need one? "
"What happens with me and a Guru?"
Great questions! First, let’s define, ’Guru’. The literal Sanskrit meaning of ’gu’ is darkness, and ’ru’ is light. Great and lengthy discourses exist as to the nature and meaning of ‘Guru’, and its relationship to humans. I say ’it’ here, since ultimately, the Guru is God, or ‘Satguru’, in Sanskrit, ( ‘sat’ pronounced like ‘cut’). God is impersonal and therefore not a human being, per se, so the ‘Guru’ or ‘Guru-Principle’ is also not the physical body, person or personality of the Master Spiritual Teacher. Rather, the Master Spiritual Teacher is the embodiment of the ‘Guru-Principle’, the flow of which is commonly understood as ‘Divine Grace’.
This gives us our first clue as to the true nature of the Guru, and we begin to realize how ‘off-track’ the western idea of Guru really is. It is also noteworthy that the perception and worldview of spiritual aspirants change completely many times during their ‘unfolding’, so the idea of what the ‘Guru’ really is changes as well. As with all ideas and concepts along the spiritual path, it is a moving target! In Swami Muktananda’s book, “From the Finite to the Infinite”, he defines a Guru as: ‘a spiritual Master who has attained oneness with God and who is therefore able to both initiate seekers and to guide them on the spiritual path to liberation’. If we equate a Saint or Siddha (saint in Sanskrit) to also being a Guru, we instantly have a more clearer idea of what a Guru is as a human or a Being in spirit.
However, not all perfected, self-realized beings (Saints), have the mission of being a spiritual teacher or giving the gift of SHAKTIPAT, (initiation of true baptism; the awakening the Holy Spirit; also known as Shakti Kundalini), to worthy seekers. What is a ‘worthy seeker’? Another great topic for future discussion, for there is indeed much written on the worthy seeker, the sincere student, and the good disciple. So, we can say that all Gurus are Saints, but not all Saints are vested to be Gurus. For example, many enlightened beings through the ages have opted instead, for being Ecstatic Divine Poets, such as Rumi and Kabir, Dancers - such as the Ecstatic Sufi Dancers; Shamans, Artists or simply having non-descript, quiet lives, continuing with jobs, families or living solitary, enraptured lives in caves, secluded areas of nature, and the like. You might say, Gurus are a specialty group of Saints, who are specially charged with awakening the spiritual seeker and lifting them to their own level of God-Consciousness.
The reason a true Guru is so highly prized, is not only because they are so rare and ‘hard to find’, but because the very tool we use to transcend ego, maya ( illusion of the world) and the suffering of the world, namely the ‘Limited Mind’, (or ‘Chitta’ in Sanskrit), is the very ‘enemy’ we seek to escape and master! The true Guru is said to be not only ‘there’ already, but is gifted through Grace to draw, guide, protect and support the aspirant out of false identification of the Mind and into true Self-Realization, the Universal Mind, or ‘Chitti’. In fact, ‘Satchittananda’ in Sanskrit means ‘existence, (sat), consciousness (chitt), and bliss, (ananda)’, and is the very nature of Self, the Guru and God. It is through the Guru that the Grace-bestowing power of God is directly accessible and flows with great ease and power to the worthy aspirant. The seeker only need be open and receptive, as the 'yogini'.
In India, there is a Guru classification system, (we will explore these in Part 2), and the term itself has many levels of meaning. Each meaning is favored within a particular ‘growth and awareness’ stage of the spiritual aspirants’ perception and world view, or Chakra Level of God-Consciousness. The relationship between Guru and student therefore changes as the aspirant’s ascension into True Self unfolds.
Let’s go over the three major stages, and what you can expect with your Guru in each one, according to Kashmir Shaivite, Hindu sacred scriptures, historical texts written by Siddhas and Saints, and my own experiences with the true Guru. For example, for those in the lower levels of awareness, just beginning their spiritual ‘maturity’, the external Guru, the person, is seen as God, and the source of Grace. Swami Muktananda himself remained completely and deeply devoted to his external Guru, Swami Nityananda, all his life, even after becoming a Self-Realized Guru himself, so great was the awe, love and gratitude for his Gurudev.
In this stage of devotion to the Guru, aspirants experience intense longing and yearning for their external Master Teacher, which are often only relieved by being in the physical company of the Guru, or receiving their attention. Essentially, the aspirant at this stage experiences the Guru in a very human way, and recognizes the Divine Love of the Guru only as limited, human, dualistic, external kind of love. The caveat of this perception of the Guru is that it is riddled with pain due to its inherent sense of separation from Self, and is the core of the learning lesson for this stage of spiritual development.
This lesson of Human Love versus Divine Love is most prominent for these individuals, who live through the lower chakras of mostly very limited and unconscious Personal Awareness world views. So here, we begin to understand the mystery as to how the Guru-Principle and the embodied Guru operate: they act as a multidimensional mirror to the aspirant, reflecting back to the seeker not only the seekers’ limited degree of sovereignty of the divine and its manifestation in their lives through thought, speech and action, but the Guru also invests the aspirant with the ‘Revealing Aspect of God’, through their ‘SANKULPA’, or blessings and intentions. This absorbs and transmutes the karmas and samskaras (energetic contractions and blockages) of countless thousands of lifetimes, and lifts the veils of ignorance and unconsciousness within the seeker. In doing so, the aspirant’s own glorious Truth of Self is gradually revealed to him/her. It is a time of great self-healing and personal growth.
As the spiritual aspirant grows and unfolds into greater divine awareness, a shift into ‘witness consciousness’ occurs. The spiritual aspirant, once worthy of receiving Shaktipat and the Mantra Dikshas (initiations in Sanskrit), becomes a Disciple of the Guru, and hence truth ‘sadhana’, or spiritual pathwork towards unity with the divine begins. No longer is the relationship simply Teacher and Student, indeed it never really was just that.
In Witness Consciousness, the source and object of this exquisite love for the external Guru is discovered within the Disciple as their own love, in their own heart, of and to their very selves. They begin to recognize that the source of this rapturous love and devotion is the ‘Guru-Within’, or also known as the ‘Guru-Principle’, or ’God-Within’. You see, in this stage of divine awareness, the disciple recognizes with the help of the external Guru, that the ‘Guru’ is not a human being, but the essence of God experienced as Love and Grace within their very selves as the Self! Love, God, Self-Realization and the Guru are One, the Source. That One, is the Self mirroring and guiding back its own very Self into unity and wholeness once again! In Kashmir Shaivism, this is described as Shakti Kundalini returning to her husband, Shiva. With this stage, the Disciple becomes the Lover. He/She discovers love and sees and feels love in everyone and everything; they begin to fall in love with life itself!
The disciple also begins to see the glimpse of their ultimate goal: The Guru-Within in their bodies is the Guru externally, and also all people, Nature, Mother Earth, and the entire universe. They are completely free, yet also One, in divine unity with all the manifest universe, their essential true nature. In fact, Self-Realization is called, ‘Liberation’, or ‘Moksha’, in Sanskrit. For this reason, it is often said that the only perfect relationship is the relationship of Guru and the Disciple. We all know now, that Guru means God at this stage.
The disciple recognizes that the external Guru is a mirror of the Self, as with all relationships, and even Nature and Mother Earth, as All is God. The inner and outer worlds begin to merge and the larger patterns and multidimensionality of life and existence begins to become self-evident, seamless and transparent through the Gurus’ Grace. Knowledge of God-Within grows as the aspirant is drawn more deeply and intimately within themselves. Lessons of the Guru deepen into more subtle language and communication, through intuitive and synchronistic events, visions and inner knowledge, and through emersion in nature and scriptures. Through deepening unity with the Guru, the disciples’ first recognition and conscious integration of the collapse of inner and outer worlds occurs, (subjective and objective,dualistic perception, ), into Unity Consciousness, the state of Self-Realization and Divine Love.
This brings us to the final stage of the Guru-Disciple relationship and the continuing process of 'Ascension'. In the final stage of completion into wholeness, the relationship with the Guru is sublime. The Master Spirital Teacher awakenes the Inner-Guru of the Lover of God. Narada, the divine sage of the Bhakti Sutras says, “This love manifests spontaneously in a worthy person with a pure heart”. And Kabir, the Poet Saint wrote, “Once you find a perfect Guru, you no longer perceive any difference between the individual soul and Shiva, between the Self and God”…. “The Guru has freed you from being stuck (in the wheel of birth and death) for many lifetimes”.
This is done through the natural draw of the Disciple to go within themselves, even deeper into meditation and finally into the state of union with the divine, called ‘SAMADHI’. This is a profoundly transformational experience beyond words. So the relationship at this final stage is the relationship of acheiving firm establishment in the state of Samadhi, where no words are needed or spoken between the Guru and the Lover of God. In the state of divine union with God, true divine love is all there is. True Lovers of God want nothing but to be close to each other; their highest joy is to sit in inner absorption, free of desire and beyond the senses. There is no useless chatter and no activity, only silence and stillness. Once a Moslem priest asked a Rabbi, “Does God speak to you?”, the Rabbi answered, “Does one have to talk to God? I keep looking at Him, He keeps looking at me. What could be more sublime? Seeing Him, I become utterly content, and then He is happy with me. What could be more wonderful than perfect contentment?”
This is why these saints advise to stick with the Guru, like fire to wood; at this level simply the constant awareness of the Guru will draw one into Samadhi and final absorption into the Divine. Kabir wrote, “Natural Samadhi (through the Guru), is superior and sublime. Once it is awakened by the Guru’s grace, it continues to grow day by day“. Remember here, again, that the Guru is the Guru-principle embodied by the external being, and is also the beings’ spirit, or it could be through an ascended saint or angelic being. The ultimate Guru-source is God, or ‘Satguru‘.
On the other hand, when Samadhi is attained through one’s own efforts and rigorous practices, it remains difficult for one to transcend the mind, because those efforts belong to the realm of the mind. That which one attains through this limited mind, ’Chitta’, can not be any greater than that limited mind. The Kena Upanishad says, “That which is not thought by the mind but by which the mind thinks - know That. That truly is Brahman (God), and not what people adore here”. So the relationship between the Master Spiritual Teacher and the aspirant changes as the aspirants own inner awareness unfolds onto the Divine within, and is necessary until the ultimate absorption of the aspirant into God, the Guru-with himself. Having an external Guru simply makes the process much more easier!
"Can I find God without a Guru?”
So, from our previous discussion, we now have a better understanding of what the true, East Indian term ‘Guru’ means. With this new information in mind, we can truly say that one can never find God without the Guru, because the Guru is God, is Self, all One, and not a person. The Guru is the Grace-bestowing power of God which enables the veil of ‘maya’ (mis-identification of Self), and spiritual unconsciousness to be lifted, and the merging into the Absolute to take place. The task of the Guru is to bestow absolute freedom and liberty unto the aspirant, not manipulation, trickery, servitude or bondage. In Part 2 we will explore how to find a true Guru, the different types of Guru, how to recognize one, the classic characteristics of a true Master Spiritual Teacher/Guru, and warning signs of a ‘False Guru’, and how to appropriately approach the Guru.
Devi ma
copyright IBASI 2003-5
International Bioenergetic Arts & Sciences Institute (IBASI)
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