Sandeha Nivarini - Post 5

Dear All,

Let us recapitulate the 3 summary points of yesterday's learning from Swami's answers to devotee's questions and deal with each point in today's post.

Pardon the author for a little longer post, but he had to cover all the three points in this post. 

First summary point

A Guru should not be giving mantra to each and every one who throngs to His feet. Guru is the one who should know the qualifications and the level of His disciple and guide the disciple accordingly.

The relation between a Guru and His disciple is like that of a doctor and patient.

In case of Doctor and patient, the Doctor has to prescribe medicine for curing the physical illness of his patient.

In case of Guru and disciple, Guru has to prescribe instructions which can cure the spiritual illness / ignorance / shortfall of His disciple.

Thus, it is clear that each disciple comes to their Guru with different ego level, different vasanas, different impressions, different knowledge level, different stage in their sadhana. 

How can the Guru give the same mantra to all of them?? Rather, how can a Guru even give any mantra to any of them without gauging and knowing where they stand in spiritual knowledge (or spiritual ignorance) level??

Second summary point

One must be very careful in choosing a right Guru. One must not be carried away by emotions and weak mind while choosing and accepting someone as Guru.

This is a very important aspect in a disciple's sadhana. 

We often get carried away emotionally when one talks about such and such Guru / master who does great things, who removes all ignorance, who knows about one's past, present, future etc and then we rush to such a master.

Once we are not satisfied fully with that Guru, we jump from one Guru to another, like monkey jumps from one tree to another, never settled in one tree. 

A true Guru is the one who wants only our spiritual transformation and nothing else whatsoever ever. Such a Guru will not even expect you to prostrate to Him, leave alone any other expectation of comforts / wealth / fame / your dependence on Him etc. 

Such a Guru has no other hidden agenda. He will never want you to be a slave to Him, He will never expect you to praise Him, talk about Him to all others etc.  He will give whatever He has to give to you, in the depth of silence, without any publicity, without any pomp, without seeking anything in return from you.

Note - We are talking about Guru and we should not apply these points to divine incarnations. For Divine incarnations, we cannot prescribe / describe any rules / any nature, as in essence, an incarnation is beyond any one's comprehension.

Third summary point

Even if one has accepted some mantra (Lord's name) from a Guru and later on, find that the Guru is not genuine, even then, one must not give up the mantra (of Lord's name) given by that Guru. Swami beautifully says, such giving up the mantra is casting the fault of another on the sacred name of God.

Dear All,

There was a case in North India where, a Guru / Preceptor, acclaimed by many, turned out to be in-genuine later on.

The author had doubt of the genuineness of  that Guru even when people close to him were totally surrendering to that Guru.

Even at that time and even after the disciple themselves came to know about the real face of that person, the author had only one thing to tell them.

"Just think of what ever good you have received from that person. Just think of what ever transformation you have gone through due to your association with him / her.  Do not give room to any negativity in your heart about that person. Such negative feelings only will add to your Karma. You move on with a clear mind with gratitude to that person for what ever changes his / her association has brought within you.

As for that person's in genuineness , it is between him / her and Swami. You have no role in that. Let Swami decide how to deal with that. "

Author hopes that the above practical example more than clarifies what Swami has given in the third summary point.

Love.