Sharanagati

Shri Guru is our best friend, always working and praying for our benefit. Guru has only one desire – that his disciples achieve perfection, pure love of Godhead. So guru is the way, Krishna is the goal.

Many people think that by accepting a spiritual master they have accomplished the process. But that is only the beginning. And usually we consider our spiritual master as our ishta-deva, so to say, as our worshipable object. Because we want to be same good devotee as he is. We want to have such a nice life what he has.

But this is a very illusory part of the disciple’s life. Because usually people has very wrong vision about sannyas life or guru life. I don’t recommend to you the same life-career… May be this is not your competence. May be what is tolerable for an advanced person would kill you on the moment, on the spot.

But naturally we want to be like our masters. O Gurudev! Your heart-beat is the rhythm of the rasa-dance. We want to find every beauty and every interesting spiritual thing in our master. He is like our idol. But don’t imitate. Try to serve, try to follow. Because that is his life and this is your life. What we can do – we can try to have the same INTENSITY what he had in his personal life. So live your life with the same intensity, as Gurudev is living his life. Then you will come to the ultimate platform of YOUR life. May be this is different, but you can perform best in this way.

Still the spiritual master is very important. Because usually people feel that God is far away, but guru is very close. Therefore guru means a connection. He connects us to the Supreme. If God stays in His place and I stay in my place, how can you establish a contact? But if somebody is standing between you and Him, catching both hands then he can create this connection. So guru does not separate us, but he unites us. Guru separates us only from our false ego.

Guru is only for those, who want to finish with the material wandering life. Only for those, who want to return back home, back to Godhead. Not for those, who want to spend more and more lifetimes here. So from this we can understand that although guru is a universal principle, still this is not for everyone. If we are not ready to follow the instruction, this means guru is not for us.

I agree, a living guru is a risky job. Because he might tell me something that I should do! If my guru is only a picture, hanging on my wall or standing on my shelf – sometimes turned upside-down, I had seen that – then he will not interfere in our life. We can live as we want – claiming that we have our spiritual master.

Anyway, I don’t want to criticize even that attitude. But the other extreme is when someone is in the so to say “guruism”. This is another type of personality cult in a spiritual garb. So we should understand this principle correctly. But it is simple – guru is given by Krishna to help us. Guru is a function of God, it’s a divine function.

Ultimately the spiritual master is just like a guide. If you want to go to an unknown place, you have some different methods to apply. There are three methods to find the place which you don’t know. Check out on a map, ask someone who knows, or you should know. So guru is the guide who knows, who can guide you. If you enter the spiritual sky, enter Goloka Vrindavan you feel lost there: “It’s a new place for me! Where am I to go!?” But then you see: “O! But here is Gurudev! I’m safe! He will guide me further.”

Of course we can go on describing and glorifying the role of the spiritual master for a long time. But whole our life should be such a glorification.