The Mercy of the Spiritual Master

om ajnana timirandhasya jnananjana salakaya
caksur unmilitam yena tasmai sri gurave namah
"O Gurudeva, you are so merciful. I offer my humble pranama unto you and am praying from the core of my heart that, with the torchlight of divine knowledge, you open my eyes which have been blinded by the darkness of ignorance."


Today I am very happy to be posting again, after nearly one year away. This will be a good encouragement for me to keep reading spiritual books and keep me accountable. Today, I am sharing from Srila Gour Govinda Maharaja.

Srila Gour Govinda Swami Maharaja: Guru, the spiritual master, is the representative of Krsna. He is a very dear devotee of Krsna, who is caitya-guru, seated in the heart as Supersoul. The spiritual master is always there. Don't think that he is not physically present...He is always there. If you have developed love for the spiritual master, if you have developed that eye, ten you can see him, you can talk to him. And he is also present in the form of books, vani-rupa; his instructions are there.

<Katha Upanisad 1.2.23 quoted>

You cannot understand the absolute truth through your own mundane scholarship, you own mundane intelligence....those who are not devotees, who never come under a bona fide disciplic succession, cannot know it. 

 Then how can you know? ...Assuming a body, He personally comes as spiritiual master to teach paramatma tattva. He is caitya-guru. Unless He speaks, you cannot understand.

 ...by Krsna's mercy you get a bona fide spiritiual master, and by the mercy of the spiritual master you get Krsna. Paramatma arranges that meeting. So we must be very eager, very inquisitive, as Dhruva Maharaja was, to get the Lord. Paramatma arranged for Narada Muni to appear before him. "All right, he is very eager now. You go and show him the path, help him."

Similarly, for that disciple who is crying, "O my spiritual master has disappeared. How can I be helped? Who will teach me? How can I know? His instructions, books are there, but I cannot understand the purport. Although it is there, it is very difficult for me to understand it."

When you become very, very inquisitive, sastra has its mercy.......One who is very, very eager and very, very inquisitive, prays to his spiritual master, "O my spiritual master, you have departed. You are not physically present, so I cannot understand. I am such an ignorant fool. I have not qualification. Though your instructions are there, I cannot understand what you have said. Please help me."

- from After the Disappearance of Sri Guru, a darsana, 18 July 1986, Paris, France