|
Swamiji remembered his Guru on this celebration of Guru Purnima, welcoming the satsang ‘with great respect and love’.
‘It is an auspicious day for me, too, as 36 years ago on my first Guru Purnima with Baba, I received shaktipat (kundalini awakening),’ Swamiji said.
‘In my life, the Guru has been the essential thing: the method and the goal,’ he said.
A questioner had asked of Baba, ‘What is a Guru?’ Baba replied that ‘there is really no one with whom the Guru can be compared. The Guru is one who awakens the inner Shakti of a seeker’.
The questioner asked Baba how the Guru does this. Baba responded: ‘The skill he has in this field is unique and mysterious and no other person can see what he does. The energy the Guru uses that he has realised within himself is the energy of Consciousness. By means of this, he touches the same energy in another person.’
Swamiji observed that ‘it is not that the Guru gives you something that you don’t already have. You have it, but it’s like a tuning vibration. The Guru is a teacher of the most subtle and highest and most intimate and essential part of you’.
Swamiji explained: ‘To know the Self is to strengthen the mind for no other reason than to be in contact with the Self. It puts you in touch with peace, puts you in touch with joy and puts you in touch with love.’
Baba stated that the ‘Guru keeps his mind under control and is also very particular about his actions. He keeps his mind and his body pure … Though a Guru may appear to be a normal human being, from head to toe he becomes pure kundalini energy; his entire body consists of particles of kundalini energy.’ He added: ‘The Guru’s main practice is that he doesn’t allow any impure thoughts in his mind.’
Swamiji noted that Baba is referring to ‘tearing thoughts that diminish you, thoughts of self-hatred, particularly thoughts that limit you’. Swamiji added: ‘The Guru is the enemy of limitation, the Guru wants us to expand and know who we really are. When the mind goes down those paths, attacking ourselves, that’s where the discipline comes in. The Guru gives them the gate and keeps his mind in a space of love, a space of peace.’
Another questioner asked of Baba, ‘What is your Consciousness like? What do you want?’ Baba answered: ‘All I want is that unconscious people should become conscious.’
Swamiji noted that he is saying, ‘get rid of limitations’. He added: ‘We impute our own limitation to God. God is grace itself, abundance itself.’
Baba said of his own shaktipat experience: ‘For a long time India was under the control of England, however on August 15, 1947 it became liberated. Just as India was a slave of another power, in the same way I was a slave of my own senses. On the very same day that Lord Mountbatten said India has become free, my Gurudev told me that I had also become free.’
Baba continued: ‘On this day, my Gurudev offered me his padukas (sandals). He came very close to me. I closed my eyes. Then he said, “Put these padukas on”. I became extremely happy. I put them on my head and as I did this I almost lost consciousness. He was still standing in front of me and he went inside to get something. I left. After that, I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how I walked to the little temple. Maybe I sat there so long since it was the place I was supposed to be. I’m still sitting here. I carried those padukas and sat down in this place. Until the end of time I’m going to be sitting here.’
Baba added: ‘As long as you don’t receive initiation from the Guru, you don’t attain anything, everything is nothing …The Guru protects you from time, from fear and from death.’
Swamiji observed: ‘It’s a potential we all have in us. We make a mistake to think it only belongs to the great beings; it makes their ministry useless because what their ministry is about is for us to value that, seek that and find that within ourselves. We get lost in the details and our priorities get confused, but the great beings bear witness to the highest priority. The Guru is the embodiment of that and shows us the way to that. When we meditate on the Guru, we are actually meditating on our true Self.’
‘The Guru authentically and genuinely shows us the way to the Self, he said.
Swamiji then led the closing meditation, saying: ‘That same Self that dwells within Jesus, within Muktananda, within Bhagawan dwells within you. As Baba said, “God dwells within you as you”. Your own true nature is that Self. Go to that place inside that is the most intimate, the most identifiable as you – that place is the Guru, is Shiva, is Krishna, is Jesus. Let’s mediate on the Self.’
|
