Today is the auspicious day of Guru Poornima – a Hindu festival that is celebrated as per the Hindu Moon Sign calendar to express reverence towards one’s Guru who is a teacher or mentor. The syllable “gu” is darkness, and the syllable ‘ru’ is said to be light. Swallowing the darkness of ignorance, that Guru is indeed, without doubt, that supreme knowledge. The first syllable “gu” represents the illusory principles such as maya. The second syllable “ru” is the supreme knowledge that destroys the illusion of maya. Thus the Guru’s state is the highest in the Vedic tradition.
According to the Guru Gita:
The source of all meditation is Guru’s form. The source of all worship is Guru’s feet. The source of all mantras is Guru’s words. The source of liberation is Guru’s grace.
I just had a blissful experience of offering Pratyakshak Pada Puja (a puja to offer gratitude) to my Guru, Paramahamsa Nithyananda (fondly known as Swamiji) on this special day this morning. Filled with a deep gratitude of the Guru’s grace, I hereby share the excerpts from the book “Rising in love with the master” by Swamiji. This book sums up the Guru’s alchemy process of discovering your consciousness – the search for your Self and falling into the emptiness of oneness!
Here is a Master who speaks into the listening of the disciples who are ready to receive His grace:
SIMPLY LET GO! When you become a seeker, it means you have begun your search for the ultimate; you have begun your search to find yourself. It is at this time that all your desires which pull you to the outside world leave you. The only desire that remains is the desire for deep fulfilment. Once this happens, there will be no need to depend on anyone or anything because in order to experience deep fulfilment, you are the only one that needs to be present. Fulfilment can happen only because of yourself, never because of others. It is the most personal and individual quest possible; the quest to find yourself.
WAKE UP! As of now, your candle is unlit, your flame is unlit. Coming close to the Master, becoming the disciple lights your inner flame. Coming close is enough. It spurs you to become alive. Once the flame happens, you have become a disciple. Then, the flame starts burning and spreads until it merges with the flame that surrounds it; then there are no longer two entities. There is only ONENESS.
LET GO OF IT ALL. The only thing holding you back from the Ultimate is your ego. Simply surrender yourself. That’s all. I mean simply surrender all your ideologies and all of your conditioning to me. Then, your individuality will be revealed to you.
FROM THE HEAD TO THE HEART. The very nature of true love is unconditional. It is directed to no one and nothing. It simply flows for no reason. It is an overflowing because you feel the deep connection between you and Existence. Until this happens, your love is always directed to a particular thing and this cannot be called love at all.
SILENCING THE MIND. To be with the Master means to just be playful. The moment you become serious, you have missed it. The Master is there to simply take away this seriousness in you and show you the way to enjoy!
SHOVELING THE MIND. The mind is artificial, it is pseudo. And I am trying to get you to drop the pseudo and move on to reality. If you again run behind the pseudo, what is the point? You must simply make the transition from the artificial to the natural; from logic to spontaneity; from the outside to your inner most core.
BREAK THE WALLS. Being a disciple means to be open enough to feel the grace of the Master. The moment the disciple falls in tune with the Master, the transformation has already started. But you must have the courage to drop the past and all that you have thought yourself to know and simply live in the here and now because that is the only way the grace of the Master can be experienced fully.
NOW YOU HAVE IT! You have to realize your own presence. No one is going to help you. It must happen by yourself and only yourself. I can support you, but I can do no more than this. It is a long journey which you will have to go through, and you have to go through it alone.
THE OPERATION ROOM. Life with me will be ecstatic but equally challenging as well because my work is to cause chaos in you, break all your social conditioning and past patterns and show what you are really made up of.
UNCOVER YOURSELF. To tell you honestly, you are not going to surrender to me. The disciple never surrenders to the Master. He only surrenders to himself. But as of now, you do not know who you are, so if I tell you to surrender to yourself, you will not be able to fully understand. The moment you surrender to the Master, you will be thrown back to your Self. Guru Bhakti – devotion towards the Master – suddenly leads to Atma Bhakti – devotion towards the Self.
BECOMING ONE. The moment you become my disciple, it means you are dropping all ideas of separation. In the beginning, you will drop the idea of separation from me; you will experience oneness. And soon, this oneness will grow and you will start feeling it with the whole of Existence. Then everything will be one; there will be no separation. There will only be one cosmic whole.
When I first read this book in 2009, many of the truths didn’t click with me at the being level. After 6 years of alchemy by Swamiji, reading it again makes me realize that I am on the right track of falling in tune with the oneness. I can say that this is possible only with Guru’s grace. Namaste! 😀