śrī śrī guru gaurāṅga jayataḥ!
Year 13, Issue 11
Posted: 5 December 2020
Dedicated to
nitya-līlā praviṣṭa oṁ viṣṇupāda
Śrī Śrīmad Bhakti Prajñāna Keśava Gosvāmī Mahārāja
Inspired by and under the guidance of
Śrī Śrīmad Bhaktivedānta Nārāyaṇa Gosvāmī Mahārāja
Don’t Choose a Mere Flatterer As Your Guru
by Śrīla Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura Prabhupāda
The sincere activities of the spiritual guru always tend to give permanent relief to his disciples. The guru aims at extending their knowledge of the Absolute and removing the foreign obstacles of double layers of dirt that cover that knowledge.
In selecting a real and true guru, one should never aim for a mere flatterer, who lulls and encourages the wrong aptitudes of a disciple. The disciple’s submissive attitude and unconditional surrender to the All-love will evoke Bhagavān’s mercy, and He will kindly fulfil our prayer. The cogent but loving potency of the All-love will then operate on us, to pacify the turmoil arising out of our baneful activities.
The preceptor will never let us fall into the extensive snare of māyā, as he has no ulterior motive to dissuade us from having sure access to transcendental treasures. He will show us – for our inspection or examination – a comparative chart of the magnitude of time, space and entity.
When we submit to measurement [using our own senses and intelligence], we see no necessity of any outside help, but when we consider the true preceptor to be our most intimate friend who has come down to us out of causeless mercy, while simultaneously being a bona fide and sure healer of our present maladies, we find that his activities are identical with those of the All-love.
We will also find that he is not only superior to us in every respect, but he remains in the direction toward Godhead. He is a transparent, pure entity by which we can approach the Absolute.
Other so-called preceptors, however, always have an impure opacity with which they impede our impressions of that entity – the All-love – who is full of knowledge and incessant bliss.
Our inherent, eternal function is to associate ourselves with the Eternal, to sever our connection with everything temporal, engage ourselves in the entirety of knowledge, completely dispel the darkness of ignorance and develop and progress, with our inherent enthusiasm, toward the transcendental.
I myself have individual business with the integral All-love. I do not require a second person whose position is not that of my Object. I need not trouble myself with the company of one who cannot show true kindness to me or who does not have whole-hearted love for the All-love.
Adapted from The Gaudiya, Vol.36, Issue 2
By the Rays of The Harmonist Team
