1) Sadhan Bhakti has to be performed under the guidance of a guru or spiritual master.

2) In this context, the guru's role is more important than God.

3) God can guide us to a guru. But it is the guru who guides us to God. Therefore, guru is essential for bhakti/devotion and God-realization.

4) What is the need for a guru? Who is a guru? How can one recognize a true guru?

5) From time immemorial, we've have been battling one disease. In one sense, it's the only disease that afflicts the world. And that is, ignorance.

6) If we are still battling sins like anger, envy, greed, lust, etc, it only means we still have ignorance within us.

7) Ignorance manifests in several ways. For example, if you think someone has insulted or abused you, you will feel insulted or abused only if you accept such perceived insult.

8) An illustration will help us to understand this point.

8a) Once, a man started heaping insults on Lord Buddha. He called Him all sorts of names. He belittled Him in every possible manner and compared Him to animals and worse. This went on for a long time. Buddha never lost His patience. Neither did He retort. When the man seemed tired after a while, Buddha, with all kindness, asked the onlookers to offer some food to the tired man so he can regain some energy and start afresh. This astonished the man. He sought to know why, despite the insults, Buddha was not angry. Buddha replied that He would have got angry only if He had accepted all the things that were said. But, since He chose not to accept them, all the bad things that were said, still remained with the person who uttered them.

9) Not everyone can be as sensible as the Buddha. No human being can destroy one's ignorance with one's self effort.

10) This is so because our intellect in this material world is defective. It cannot, therefore, destroy one's own ignorance. Hence we need a guru, one who belongs to the spiritual world where the intellect is superior.

11) There are five maladies of the intellect in the material world. They are known as Panch Klesh.

12) One, fear of death: it beseeches everyone.

13) Two, asmita -- pride -- about bodily designations and aspects like beauty, knowledge, official status, so on. There is an Arab saying that suggests that when God makes a man, He sends him to earth after whispering in his ear that he "is the best". So every man thinks he indeed is the best, and behaves as if the rest of the world is inferior to him. Such is the man's pride.

14) Three, raag or attachment to people, objects and worldly things.

15) Four, dwesh, or reversal of attachment, or hatred/malice.

16) Five, avidya, or basic ignorance of soul and body.

17) Ved Vyasji says, you can never destroy your ignorance by your own effort.

18) One cannot acquire knowledge by reading the Scriptures in which apparent contradictions abound.

19) Scriptures are divine, and to understand them, you need the help of those who have divine intellect.

20) Vedas themselves say that one can understand the Vedas only through a guru.

21) And the way to get a true guru is to find one, and then surrender your intellect totally to him.

22) So what makes one a true guru?

23) He should be well-versed in Scriptures and aware of the Eternal Truth. Only such a guru can help you to cross the Ocean of Maya and destroy ignorance.

24) Bhagawan Sri Krishna tells Arjun that a guru is essential to understand the Gita. Although Krishna and Arjun shared sakhya bhaav (friendly relationship), when the God decided to deliver the Gita, it was in His capacity as Arjun's guru, not as God. By then, friend Arjun had accepted Him as guru.

25) So we need a guru who can help us to cross the ocean of the material world and for the welfare of the soul.

26) We need a God-realised saint in front of us to inspire us, to guide us. We need a guru who is awake and can wake us up.

27) One might ask, why should we not pray directly to God? Where is the need for a middleman between God and His devotee?

28) Well, one can certainly pray to God directly, but when one tries to understand the Scriptures, and, in the process, gets some doubts, the God won't present Himself to clear one's doubts. And God Himself will never play your guru.

29) So a living person, a God-realized saint, is necessary.  Even Lord Shri Ram and Bhagawan Sri Krishna had gurus. Ram and Krishna were Gods themselves, but in their human form, they were like any other human being. So they had to seek knowledge through the medium of the guru.

30) So, this bring us back to the question: who is a guru? How can one define a true guru?

31) A guru is one who destroys our ignorance and brings us divine knowledge, taking us toward God.

32) What should we do if we find such a person?

33) We should accept the authority of the guru and surrender to him totally. Submit to him totally, whole-heartedly. Surrender your intellect to him. When one surrenders wholeheartedly, genuinely, the sheer act of such surrender itself is enough to get the knowledge one is seeking. No more training or practice is necessary. The sheer surrender itself will give one the knowledge from within.

34) What are the qualities of a true guru? One, he must be shrothreeya; two, he must be brahma-nisth. In other words, he must be well-versed in Scriptures and on the platform of God-realisation.

35) A man (purush) becomes great (mahapurush) by his good deeds; and when he attains divinity, he is regarded as Parampurush. Likewise, soul (jeevatma), when it purifies itself, becomes (mahatma), and upon realising God, becomes Paramatma.

36) Guru is situated between soul and God. His purpose is simply to take other souls towards God.

37) A guru with both theoretical and practical knowledge is the best kind of guru one can get.

38) A guru with practical knowledge is also fine, but not as good as a guru with both theoretical and practical knowledge.

39) Simply meeting or finding a guru is not enough. Without detachment, you cannot gain knowledge.

40) The guru will accept only such people as his disciples whose attitude is that "my goal is not the world, my goal is God".

41) Scriptures suggest there's no one equal to  guru. They also imply there's no one greater than guru. This raises a question: Is God bigger than the guru?

42) Yes, God is bigger than the guru.  Scriptures do say that God is the greatest.

43) Yet, it is equally true that God and guru are equal. A true guru is one who is a God-realized person. To such a God-realized soul, God bestows all His powers, making him an equal.

44) The third view is also right that guru is bigger than God. This seems a contradiction. Is it? No. God manifests Himself to only those devotees whose hearts are absolutely pure. But the guru accepts even sinners, those whose hearts are not totally pure. He helps purify their hearts and takes them toward God. In this context, guru is greater than God.

45) But, just as you may begin to accept that all the three views are indeed right, you will have to wait to realize that in reality, all the three views are wrong! There's a fourth view, which is the actual reality. And that is....

1) A spiritual master is one who completely surrenders to God. Before one's surrender, one is still under the spell of Maya. Till such surrender, the soul nurses the pride of being the doer.

2) This makes the ego to adopt misconceived pride -- "I can do this", "I can do that".

3) Once the soul surrenders to God, it becomes nothing , a non-doer. Later, after God-realisation, whatever the soul does is actually the action of God.

4) Every action by a God-realized soul is inspired by God -- God acts through such a soul. And such a soul is known as satguru.

5) This brings us to the fourth view. God and guru are not different personalities; they are not separate. They are but one and the same.

6) Guru is absolute, all his actions are divine.

7) Sadhana will be productive only when the devotee / disciple accepts this fact. Else, it will be like bathing of elephant. The mahout takes the elephant to the river (or the local source of water), spends a lot of time scrubbing the elephant and cleaning it, helping it to have a good bath. Elephants in the wild also spend a lot of time cleaning themselves. But all to no avail. The moment it's out of the water, the elephant sprays dust and mud all over itself, dirtying itself again, undoing all the good work.

8) We've understood what makes one a true guru. He must be a God-realised saint. Scriptures talk of eight stages an aspirant goes through to realise God.

9)  One, subdecha -- the realisation that "the body is not mine".

10) Two, vicharan -- the thought that the body is not his, is always in his mind.

11) Three, tanu manasi -- when the mind becomes thin like a thread, straight, unwavering, not scattered.

12) Four, sadha patthi -- when worldly desires are eliminated from the root.

13) Five, asama shakti -- there is no more the sensation of the body.

14) Six, padharth bhavana -- one understands and experiences Sri Krishna's various rasas / leelas.

15) Seven, thurya -- goes beyond mind and intellect.

16) And eight, God-realisation.

17) But do not think that to realize God, one has to be extraordinary and renounce the world, accept sanyas, etc.

18) Many god-realized saints were in the household way -- grihast. They married, raised family, and discharged all worldly duties and responsibilities.

19) The point to remember is, make no evaluation of a genuine saint through external personality. Do not let external factors like the color of the skin, the looks, the physical appearance, the clothes, the gait, the facial expressions, the voice, the language and so on mislead you.

20) Try to understand the internal personality.

21) Understand that it is very difficult to recognize a god-realized saint with our material world intellect.

22) We may not succeed in understanding them at first.

23) But we do have to try to recognize such a saint. How can we do that?

24) To start with, external evaluation is NOT the way.

25) There's no clear-cut way to go about recognizing God-realized saints.

26) We have to be sensitive to certain indicators. Some indicators are:

• A God-realized saint does not offer or pretend to offer worldly things like gold chains, etc, to his devotees.
• External parameters are not a sign.
• He does not display any mystic abilities or sathvic, rajasic and  tamasic siddhis.

27) Tamasic siddhis are those gimmicks performed by tantric babas who go straight to hell. And those who visit such babas also go along to hell.

28) Rajasic siddhis are the powers acquired by some people through severe austerities. Such people can help in improving one's health, business, fortune.

29) Sathvic siddhis are the powers that help some people to walk on water and become antaryami -- the ability to read thoughts in other people's minds.

30) All the three kinds of siddhis are within the realm of Maya; they are NOT divine.

31) People with control over mind can attain these siddhis, but these are not God-realised saints. They merely perform gimmicks that are sought to be portrayed as miracles.

32) But a true miracle is one where a God-realized saint transforms a totally worldly person into a devotee of God who is totally detached from the world.

33) "Disciple, get me this flight ticket." And if the disciple fails to get it for whatever reason, he may think his guru might curse him. Such a "guru" who curses or pretends to curse people for not fulfilling his wishes or for not extending the necessary courtesies or for perceived slights, is not a guru at all. A saint is one who does not go about cursing everyone.

34) A saint is also one who does not go about offering the blessings sought freely. "Guruji, please bless me so that I win in this election", "Guruji, please bless me that I should acquire a lot of property". People usually make such requests.

35) A true guru would tell such disciples that blessings like that must not be sought. Each person has to do his sadhana, devotion or practice, and the guru can only guide you toward God.

36) You can recognize true gurus if you are sensitive to certain positive signs.

37) A true guru's words have tremendous strength -- they touch us from within, they get embedded in our hearts. They change us; they transform our thinking, our attitudes, our lives.

38)  If we have doubts on path to God-realisation, theoretical knowledge cannot resolve such doubts. A saint, with his practical knowledge, can dispel any doubt.

39) By sheer association with a God-realized saint, we begin detachment from the world and attachment with God.

40) A saint impacts different people differently, depending on the purity of one's heart.

41) To figure out who is your true guru, visit several saints. Listen to them. Hear what they say. Understand what they preach and teach. Find out where you develop maximum love for God and maximum detachment from the world. Then go associate with such a guru.

42) This is the thing to do when you feel you are not fully convinced, when you don't know whether your own heart is impure or whether your guru is not a genuine saint.

43) A God-realized saint has divine love of God, prema shakti. Such shakti (power) has no external signboard, no clear indicator. But it manifests externally occasionally, much like the steam in a pressure cooker. In a conducive environment, the divine love overflows from the saint; it comes out in torrents and in waves.

44) Saints keep their love suppressed. But in a right setting, there's no stopping it. It comes out. The astth sathvic bhaav manifest themselves. He sweats profusely. His hair stand up (goose-pimples). His colour changes. His face becomes white. He trembles, finally faints and loses consciousness.

==================<11 MAY 2003>===================

1) To cleanse one's heart, one has to do sadhan bhakti.

2) To do sadhan bhakti, one can focus on the many forms of God. Such an approach helps the mind to concentrate on God, keeping it from distractions.

3) God has many forms. He is also formless. God manifested in various forms for specific purposes. If He wants form, He can assume one. He is all pervasive.

4) Why does God assume form (avatar) and descend on this planet in the first place?

5)  The Scriptures say there are three main purposes for which God assumes avatars:

·         For establishing religion

·         For protecting His devotees

·         To kill demons who threaten religion or His devotees.

6) But then, the Scriptures also say religion is eternal (sanatan dharma). If you take a second look at the above three reasons, you will realize that achieving one purpose is enough; it would entail the other two tasks as well. If God establishes religion, He is protecting devotees anyway, which requires elimination of demons. Likewise, if God wants to protect the devotees, He will have to eliminate the demons, which will pave the way for the establishment of religion. And, if God eliminates the demons, He will have protected the devotees, which will help protect and propagate religion.

7) So to understand why God assumes avatars, you must realize that the above three reasons are not really the primary reasons.

8) To understand this better, the point to remember is that where the Gita ends, the Bhagavatham begins.

(The Gita is the God's word on what constitutes dharma in any given situation and how everyone should go about performing one's dharma, irrespective of the circumstances. The Bhagavatham is the epic that describes God's actions and leelas.)

9) The Bhagavatham says God descends for Jeev Kalyan -- human welfare.

10) You might ask then, why did Shri Ram banish mata Sita to the forest? Why did He get Wali killed from behind his back? Why did Bhagawan Sri Krishna perform the leelas?

11) You may wonder how such acts are for Jeev Kalyan.

12) You may not understand these. But these are very much understandable.

13) The point to remember here is, intellect of the material world should not be used to understand the leelas and the nuances of the spiritual world.

14) Remember, in the discourse on second day at the temple, we had understood that the senses are governed by the mind, and the mind is governed by the intellect, the most subtle and the most powerful machine given to us by God? Mind and intellect are different. Intellect controls mind.

15) Intellect should not be used to understand the leelas. It should be used to get detached from the world.

16) And mind should be used to understand God.

17) Unfortunately, most, or at least some, of us seem to do it the reverse way!

18) We use intellect to question God's leelas, and we let mind to get attached to the world.

19) Can we overcome this aberration? Yes.

==================<12 MAY 2003>===================

1) Can we check our mind for getting attached to the world? Yes. There is a third condition for sadhan bhakti.. We are not to ask God for material things. Devotion aimed at seeking material things from God is no devotion at all.

2) You may ask, "Why is it that in India, the seat of spiritualism and the land of temples and religiosity, there is so much corruption and misery?"

3) The answer is, what is happening is NOT devotion to God but devotion to world.

4) God is the ocean of bliss, the ocean of Divine Love. All he asks from us is that we surrender to Him totally. That's all. Nothing more. If we surrender, He is willing to give us everything He has. What's more, He will become our servant, so to speak. God becomes enslaved to His true devotees, their wholehearted devotion and surrender. He resides in His devotees' hearts.

5) So the only thing we ought to be seeking from God is Divine Love, which is what He has,  which is what we need.

6) But people pray to God and seek material benefits!

7) This is a stupid thing to do. Do you enter a sweets shop, and ask the mithai-wala to give you chappals (slippers)? You enter the sweets shop to buy sweets. Not to buy slippers.

8) Likewise, you must enter God's zone to seek His most precious Divine Love, not ordinary material things.

9) But then, since the Scriptures say God is all powerful, let's examine whether God can or would bestow upon us the material things we crave.

10) Will He? No!

11) He runs His world according to His rules. And one of His rules is, "As you do, accordingly you will get the results." So, you will only get things that are commensurate with your actions. No amount of prayers will help you to get what you seek from God. Your actions alone, not your wishes or desires or prayers, will determine what you will get.

12) So, isn't there anyway, some sort of short-cut , to get what one wants, what one craves, through devotion to God?

13) Well, the first thing to understand is, devotion or bhakti is for only one purpose -- God-realisation, or attainment of Divine Love.

 14) But yes, to every rule, there might be an exception. God may grant the worldly things you crave, if at all, If He is convinced you have indeed established a proper relationship with Him.

15) What is proper relationship? Some devotees thank God alright, for granting them the worldly things sought, but later forget Him. In a mistaken show of false modesty or  gratitude, the pious or God-fearing devotee attributes his success or well-being to grace of God. That is NOT acceptable to God.

16) Realise that bhakti must not be based on fear but on love for God.

17) A true devotee is one who is thankful to God for bestowing His grace in the form of both success and failure, well-being and hardship. In other words, just like we thank God for success and happiness, we must also thank God for bestowing His grace upon us in the form of failures, setbacks, hardships, difficulties, distress, grief, unhappiness, so on.

18) We must thank God for giving us an opportunity to mature. We mature only in times of failures and distress and setbacks. By helping us cope with the downswings in life, God teaches us invaluable lessons. We should be grateful to Him for teaching us such priceless lessons. Without such lessons, no one can succeed in life. So, just like you thank God for success, thank Him for your failures as well. Realise that distress and happiness are both the grace of God. You should be thankful every time God bestows his grace upon you, be it in the form of success or failure.

19) We must realize that the nature and basis of true love is Divine Love. When one says one loves God, but if the motive is "take-and-take", it is not love but lust.

20) When one says one loves God, but if the motive is "give-and-take", then it becomes business, not love.

21) When one says one loves God, and seeks things from Him to only give, give, give, that is true love which is selfless. God becomes a slave to a devotee with selfless love.

==================<13 MAY 2003>===================

1) Another condition for sadhan bhakti is ananya bhakti.