Dependence of the Guru alone could be an obstacle and one has to be very careful about. A genuine teacher never wants you to be dependent on him. Ramana Maharshi is a great example. He did not want anybody to depend upon him. He said, find out for yourself.
Blessings will always be there. When a Guru, a real spiritual person is there, you will get blessings. You don’t have to cringe for it, it is natural, it flows from there. But suppose somebody comes and asks me, how do we go to Pondicherry? Now my job is to tell him how to go there, if I know.
I can even not know and say wrong things, that is different. If he has to reach Pondicherry, then he will have to follow that and reach that. What is the point if he stands here and does puja and aarti to me and garlanding – you are the greatest man, you showed me how to go to Pondicherry! I do not mean that you should disrespect the teacher, I am saying that the teaching is more important.
Teaching is very important. If you don’t follow it, what is the use of doing puja? It doesn’t mean anything.
Surrendering to the Guru
How will you know that it is a genuine person that you will surrender to? So take time. Don’t be in a rush to surrender. You may end up in the wrong place. Be careful.
A Guru is not recognized by how he looks or what he says but by the character of the heart which is Sarvatra Samabuddhaya. I can sit for one satsang for two hours and look very happy. Observe carefully in other actions, before you decide. If it is a true yogi, then under all circumstances the mind will be tranquil.
I can sit down for one hour and say Anandoham, Anandoham. I am bliss, I am bliss but when I go out in my car and there is a road block or a jam, I keep cursing the driver. So watch carefully.
It’s very difficult to make out who a spiritual teacher is unless you are at that level. You have the greatest Guru which is the divine spark in your heart, surrender to that.
ekaṃ nityaṃ vimalamachalaṃ sarvadhīsākṣhibhūtaṃ
bhāvātītaṃ triguṇarahitaṃ sadguruṃ taṃ namāmi
The supreme being is the sadguru. There is no other sadguru on this earth.
So you don’t have to surrender to anybody physically, surrender to that supreme being.
Guru Kripa
Guru Kripa means grace or blessings of the Guru.
First thing we should understand is that the ultimate Guru is none other than the Supreme Being.
Second, you need to work to get that grace, you need to serve, you should be serious and you should try and keep in touch and work towards asking for blessings.
If you are lazy and say Oh, everything will happen through Guru Kripa then we will continue to wait for the Guru Kripa and nothing will happen. The Guru, if he is real, will also think Oh, this guy, let him carry on for a while, enjoy his life.
So, we need to work towards it, to be able to invite the Kripa.
In my case, I did work hard and I did all that, true, but there was a certain element of grace without which I couldn’t have gone further. And grace need not be in the form of touching somebody etc. It’s a heart-to-heart communion.
So, for me, already at the age of nine, Babaji came, searching for this lost soul, to my house, and touched my head. That was the first, what you might call, Guru Kripa. But after that I lost touch. I didn’t know where he was, what had happened. And then again I found him at the age of nineteen, when I ran away from home.
So, it works in strange ways. If you ask me to define it, I cannot do that. I can assure you that any spiritual seeker who is genuinely looking for spiritual understanding, will certainly attract the grace of, first, the Supreme Being, second, whoever has been authorized to take care of him and take him further up.
But you should always be open to it, work towards it. I personally think that grace is always in the air. It’s like the gentle breeze that blows. But you may not feel it because you may have shut your windows and doors. So, our job is to keep the windows and the doors open, through aspiration, through asking for movement in the spiritual journey, through being good, not hurting others.
These are the ways to open the windows and the doors. The wind is there. You cannot dictate when the wind is going to come or not. You can’t say, the wind has to come now, or it has to go now. It will come on its own will. If you don’t keep your windows open, it might miss you and go somewhere else. So, our job is to keep the windows open.
