Communicating with the Guru

Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati

No disciple is capable enough to establish internal contact or connection with the guru. If you are thinking that the guru is saying something in your mind, that is your delusion. What is your relation with the guru? Have you surrendered yourself? Do you follow his teachings one hundred percent?

You are only connected with the guru so that he can save you while you are drowning. There is no true relationship if the guru is there only to remove the distresses and difficulties from your life. When these distresses and difficulties are gone from your life, you bow down to the guru and move on.

Faith and surrender

Are the people, who take mantra diksha and other forms of diksha, connected completely with the energy of the guru? No, they only close their eyes and think about their problems. Then they start believing that their words and thoughts are reaching the guru and their own answer is the answer of the guru. Many people ask me how to communicate with the guru. I clearly say that the consciousness of human beings is not sensitive enough to establish an internal contact and connection with the guru.

Even a sannyasin disciple cannot have an internal dialogue with the guru, although he lives with the guru and practises sadhana under his guidance. The reason is that the person whom you call your guru is the essence of the Supreme Being, the paramtattwa. To connect with the paramtattwa you need shraddha, faith. You need total surrender so that the guru becomes everything for you. If your faith is strong enough, you can receive commands from the guru. If you have surrendered yourself, and that surrender is total, the connection with the guru is forever. When you connect with the guru, there is no difference between the two.

Towards union

In the life of a disciple there are three stages. Once Hanuman was asked, "What is your relationship with Sri Rama?" Hanuman replied, "If you see me as my body, then I am his servant. To be a servant is my duty, my work and my dharma. If Sri Rama says go to Lanka, I will go there. If Sri Rama says sweep the palace, I will do that. If Sri Rama tells me to prepare food, I will cook. Therefore, physically I am his servant and in this manner we are connected to each other at the physical level. However, if you see us at the mental level, then the bhava, the feeling, is of friendship, and if you look at the level of the soul, then we are one."

When a disciple can see his guru within himself, a direct connection can be established. Until then a disciple sees his guru as a means to serve his own ambitions, higher aspirations and desires, and there is and will be no reflection of the guru in his life. Whatever the disciple thinks is his own illusion.

The relationship between guru and disciple is pure, and in that relationship there is no place for ahamkara, self-centred ego, and desire.

When atmabhava, the feeling of oneness, comes, then the guru and disciple become one. Until that moment you can establish a link or a relationship with the guru with the help of faith and surrender. Ultimately, there is atmabhava and devabhava, seeing oneself and seeing divinity in the guru, where everything culminates into one and there is nothing else. This is the state of Advaita.

18 September 2014, Tyagaraj Sports Stadium, Delhi, India