CWTVKS Volume 2

7) Guru—Grace—Fulfilment

Guru

That personal effort, purusakara, alone cannot achieve success in sadhana (spiritual life) is a truth that has been voiced since the Vedic times. In the Vedas, it is the Gods who are invoked to work out the path. This continues till the advent of Buddha. Even Buddha, when he said everything could be reduced to a Zero and propounded what amounted to practical Nihilism, put his own Influence in the disciple which helped him through in the sadhana. If in the Vedic ages it was the Gods whose help was felt and proclaimed as indispensable, later it was the Guru, the Guru's grace that was looked up to as the supreme Help. Shankaracharya has hymned the greatness of the Grace of his Guru Govindapada in all his works; it shows the importance he attached to the Influence emanating from the Guru. To this day Indian tradition has continued to recognise the indispensability of the Influence from outside the range of oneself, whether it is from the Guru or the Jagadguru.

18 February 1948

The Guru can effortlessly spot his potential disciple in a multitude the moment he sees him. Saint Nammalwar once said that the Divine Grace finds the recipient with the natural ease and certainty of a cow recognising her calf among hundreds of cattle.

18 September 1948

When the Guru puts his influence or helps any one, it is as it were an emanation from him (as the Mother says) that goes and touches the recepient. It is about or within him and if he is conscious he can be aware of its workings. It (the emanation) goes 9n with its work and guides him at each step. When the Master wishes to know anything of the person, the particular emanation reports to its centre.

26 February 1949

The Guru, if he is wise, does not decide all things for the disciple. He sees to it that the disciple gets the correct guidance from within; he helps him to come to correct decisions by inner means.

25 April 1951

Mantra

With regard to the Mantra there are three things to be noted:

(1) The Guru who communicates the Mantra must have the power to put its influence in the disciple.

(2) The Mantra itself is no mere composition. It is a power; the words or letters are just its clothing.

(3) The disciple must have the capacity to receive the influence.

However, even if the Guru lacks in sufficient competence for the task, if the Mantra is forceful enough it will do its work in the disciple by its own power—Shakti.

Or even if the disciple be not ready enough to take full advantage, the influence of the Guru will effect the necessary upliftment in him so as to meet the demands of the situation.

But if the Mantra lacks power, nothing could be expected. Also little can be effected by a Mantra from the pages of a book (when not communicated from a competent Guru).

The effectiveness of the protective Grace of the Guru depends upon two factors: (1) sankalpa of the Guru and (2) maintenance of a living contact with the Guru by the disciple.

23 September 1948

In the spiritual ether distance does not really count. That illusion is only in the physical.

28 October 1948

In some cases, physical distance can be a help instead of a hindrance (as commonly supposed) for the effective working of the Guru's Grace. For, in physical proximity the mind, the physical envelope may interfere between the Guru and the soul in need of help.

28 December 1948

If one who has taken to spiritual life maintains a spiritually healthy condition and poise, those that have faith in him or look to him for help are automatically benefited. The extent of the good they reap depends upon their longing or faith in him. The important thing is that he should not cling to them or be always worrying about them; that is attachment; it blocks spiritual progress and in consequence those for whom he is anxious are the losers. They can gain nothing from such an imperfect yogin. It is also necessary that they must have faith or strong affection for him; merely a pull from his side is not effective in the long run.

7 October 1949

To benefit fully from the Guru there are certain conditions to be fulfilled.

First surrender the ego and then all your life from within to the Guru. Do not keep behind any special burdens to be shouldered by yourself. This done, take care to enter completely in the boat of the Master's journey; take care also to see that you are always inside the boat and never outside of it. Movements contrary to the principle of the Guru draw away from the tethering of safety, and one cannot be over-cautious. You can usually feel and know, by observing the workings within, where you stand —within or without.

29 October 1948

If one is securely seated in the Boat of the life of the Guru, movements in the inner life of the Guru cannot fail to evoke corresponding vibrations or impress identical lines in the sadhana of the disciple.

31 October 1948

Swami X, from what we know of him, clearly appears to have received a touch of the Divine Consciousness.

Y does not seem to have had any such thing. Still, if people who worshipped or had faith in him got benefited, it is due to the Divine in the individual worshipped. It always happens that even if the person, who is looked upon as Guru, happens to lack the necessary competence spiritually, the Divine in him responds to the devotee. Of course if the devotee is thinking of the deficiencies of the Guru, there can be no response to his prayers in any manner.

9 December 1948

One's faith in his Guru is something solid; it is not made piecemeal. It is compact. Once a dent is allowed to be made (by forces using doubt, disbelief etc.) an opening has been effected in the structure and it is just a question of time before the whole thing crumbles down.

4 September 1949

It is a misfortune for a devotee or an aspirant if any critical slant is allowed to tarnish his reverent attitude or devotion to the Guru.

18 October 1949

One must be careful not to evoke unfavourable reactions from Mahapurushas. For, the moment anything painful on your account reaches, say the Guru, an automatic series of vibrations is set going from him. Distance does not count. The vibrations reach where you are and their results are relentlessly worked out. The question may be asked what if a false report reaches the Guru and on receipt of it the unfavourable reactions follow. Well, if the report in question is not true, the deeper consciousness in the Guru or the Mahapurusha rejects it spontaneously, for that consciousness is one with the higher Truth-consciousness and its rejection of untruth is instant and automatic. Whatever may be the vibrations of the frontal personality, if they lack the support from the deeper consciousness, the vibrations are feeble and do not cause much harm.

It is the same process that operates when you are helped or cured of illness by a thought, prayer, will in the Guru. A vibration or rather a series of vibrations go to the higher or deeper layers of the Consciousness which pervades all and so reach the sufferer or the artin and help.

17 February 1949

When one is already under a spiritual influence, it is wrong to come into contact with another figure leading or professing to lead spiritual life. For the possibility of clash of forces or influences is very real. Even if the other figure is a ‘pseudo’ it is so; it is even more dangerous. Because behind every ‘pseudo’ there are malign forces operating and they are always bent on mischief.

22 September 1950

Generally help extended from any Centre (viz. Guru) cannot be fully effective if the recipient has sympathy for any one who is hostile or ill-disposed to that Source of Help.

23 September 1948

Grace

The Divine Will is active in all. It is the desires, passions and their movements that act as smoke covering the flame. The Flame cannot grow and shine until the coverings of smoke are removed.

The Divine Grace and help are there like the Sun. If you seek to dry yourself and your wet garments it will not do to shut up yourself in the shaded rooms; you have to come out of the shade, stand in the sun freely and in no time you get the desired result. Similarly you must not tarry any more in the shades or corners of tamasic darkness if you mean to let the Sun of Grace enter into you and dry up all the damp left by the erstwhile surroundings.

1 October 1948

The final and crucial touch, which brings about the radical change of consciousness and gives the release, can only come from the Divine, the Sarvesvara. The touch may come through the Guru; it may communicate itself from within or come upon the seeker through a totally unexpected source in the world around. Till that touch, which gives the switch-over as it were, arrives, all that the seeker does or finds done in him is only a preparation, paripaka, which is indispensable to acquire the necessary competence for receiving the illumining touch of Grace.

January 1949

Fulfilment

It has been said, and with truth, that a sustained and earnest spiritual seeking is bound to win the unmistakable touch of the Ishwara at the end of the third year at the latest. This period is certainly brief when compared to the importance of the object achieved. If after an endeavour of three years one can feel the sure touch of the Divine, it is an irony that even a hundred years of dealing with men and things cannot bring an unmistakable appreciation of the world and the men within it.

9 March 1949

Decisive changes in spiritual life are invariably effected and worked out by movements which are not one's own. It is an avesa, a movement which possesses you from head to toe and makes you do this or that. The analogy of anger may help illustrate the point. When motivated by anger man is simply carried away and does things which one would not suppose him to be normally capable of Similarly when there is this movement of the higher, the seeker does things helplessly as it were and undergoes consequent changes which leave a permanent mark on his being. Meditation, prayer—all these are simply preparations to open oneself to this avesa which comes from outside the range of personal effort and works out results inconceivable to the human striving.

29 March 1949

Trnikrta brahmapurandaranam kim durlabham sankarakinkaranam.²⁰

The Lord gives what the seeker asks for. To the Bhakta he gives joy in plenty; to the Jnanin who pours out in offering his knowledge, the Lord gives more knowledge, more light; to the Karmin, the doer of action for Him, He gives enlightened power; to each what he expects and in the form he expects. But to that rare type of seeker who seeks nothing for himself but only prays, ‘For Thee, my Lord, is my being ready. Do receive me, let me be entirely Thine', the Lord gives Himself, in receiving his surrender the Lord surrenders Himself and fills the being of the devotee with Himself.

1 April 1949

The problem of immortality of the body is not immediate. Death is a necessity as long as our consciousness is subject to the normal workings of the triple nature. The question assumes a different hue when our consciousness is liberated. The consciousness is said to be liberated when it has freed itself from the meshes of the triple bonds of nature viz. physical, vital and mental and stands above their domain, freed and large. In that condition the consciousness does not feel itself limited to this particular case of the body. It extends and covers all the rest; all others it feels as its own other selves. Instead of the body holding the self within it the feeling then is of the Self holding this body within itself; the body becomes just a movement in the life of the soul. Death cannot touch it in the way it normally does. The body is held, continued to be held or cast off according to the needs of the spirit which has chosen the embodiment for its manifestation.

Even in such cases, danger from accidents is quite formidable. For the forces of accident are being operated upon from levels higher than the vital worlds and unless they who set these forces of accident in action are conquered, accidents can and do harm the body.

The svacchanda-mrtyu we hear spoken of in the Mahabharata etc. is not a legend. It is a fact, a living fact in the case of Siddhas.

26 April 1949