You must be won­der­ing why I chose to write on this topic. Well… I have seen many peo­ple fall into the trap of gurU Wor­ship or idol­iza­tion of their gurU to such an extent that they got into finan­cial hard­ships, and rela­tion­ship prob­lems with oth­ers and with them­selves. Hence it is only fit­ting for me to share my knowl­edge of what or who guruis and is not, in hopes that this may help some of you. I will also talk about what or who a dis­ci­ple or SishyA is.

I will write all the san­skrit words in ital­ics using this translit­er­a­tion scheme (cour­tesy of Sad­hana School of Arts).

In a world where there are UNIX gurUs, HTML gurus in addi­tion to spir­i­tual gurus who promise sal­va­tion (what­ever that means), the mean­ing of the word guru has been lost.

Merriam-Webster Online gives the fol­low­ing definition:

Main Entry: gu​.ru
Func­tion: noun
Ety­mol­ogy: ulti­mately from San­skrit guru, from guru, adjec­tive, heavy, venerable

1. A per­sonal reli­gious teacher and spir­i­tual guide in Hinduism
2. A teacher and espe­cially intel­lec­tual guide in mat­ters of fun­da­men­tal concern
3. One who is an acknowl­edged leader or chief proponent
4. A per­son with knowl­edge or expertise

Look­ing at the mean­ings given above, we will con­clude that a guru is a per­son with knowl­edge or exper­tise and is a leader in his/her field, and some­one who imparts the intel­lec­tual knowl­edge about mat­ters of worldly con­cerns. The first mean­ing of spir­i­tual guide as given in Hindu tra­di­tion, is totally lost and so the pro­lif­er­a­tion of var­i­ous forms of gurus. Even this mean­ing of spir­i­tual guide is some­what mis­lead­ing. Does this mean that a spir­i­tual guide only imparts the the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge or does some­thing more? Let’s explore that in the fol­low­ing paragraphs.

A Model for the Cre­ation of the Universe

Hindu Phi­los­o­phy pro­pounds the fol­low­ing model of the uni­verse. I am giv­ing a very sim­pli­fied model here for the pur­pose of dis­cus­sion. All these per­cep­ti­ble and imper­cep­ti­ble uni­verses came from a sin­gle source that is, simul­ta­ne­ously, every­thing and noth­ing (it is known as a sin­gu­lar­ity in mod­ern physics). It is called by sev­eral names parabrah­man, brah­man, Self, the Absolute, Being, Supreme Being, Supreme or Cos­mic Con­scious­ness, Cos­mic Mind, etc. I will use the words brah­man and Self, from now on, to describe this source. From this source the whole of this and many uni­verses emerge. This is called lIlA or play of brah­man. It is also known as swapna or dream of the cos­mic mind.

From this brah­man first emerges Sakti which is the dynamic cre­ative force that man­i­fests the innu­mer­able seen and unseen uni­verses and tril­lions of galax­ies, stars, plan­ets in them and then every­thing on these plan­ets includ­ing
human beings. We, human beings, are now so caught up in con­stant uncon­trolled think­ing that we for­got our source and are iden­ti­fied with our thoughts and objects that these thoughts refer to, as being the “true us.” There­fore, we address our­selves as “I am an engi­neer,” “I am a father,” etc., iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves with the roles we play in our day-to-day life. This is called mAya. In the Bible, this con­cept of for­get­ting, who we truly are, is known as falling from grace.

Since every­thing comes from brah­man every­thing is brah­man and the essence of brah­man is in every­thing, as the ever-shining Self, includ­ing our human form. Because of this veil or mAya of thought we are unable to real­ize brah­man by our­selves, like the bot­tom of the ocean can­not be seen clearly because of the inces­sant waves at the sur­face. Because of this a need for a guru arises.

Scrip­tural Views on guru

In the vEdAs and upan­ishads sev­eral def­i­n­i­tions are given for the word guru.

1. Accord­ing to one definition
   • gu means Dark­ness
   • ru means Light

   So, a guru is one that dis­pels dark­ness of igno­rance and leads one into the light of con­scious­ness and wisdom.

2. The san­skrit root gur means, to uplift.
3. In the tantrAs,
   • gu means that which gives suc­cess
   • ra means that which cleanses all the impurities
   • u means sadA­Siva or brah­man. sadA­Siva is another name given to brah­man and is not the same as the Siva with the form that is often depicted,

   mean­ing the one that cleanses all impu­ri­ties and gives suc­cess is brah­man and is the guru.

4. In the purANAs,
   • gu means guNAtItA, being beyond all qual­i­ties of the man­i­fest nature.
   • ru mean rUpa-varjitAH being beyond all forms,

   mean­ing the one that is beyond all qual­i­ties and forms in the man­i­fest nature, which is brah­man is the guru.

There­fore, from the above def­i­n­i­tions brah­man that cleanses all impu­ri­ties, dis­pels dark­ness of igno­rance and pushes us towards suc­cess and light of con­scious­ness, and that which is beyond all man­i­fest qual­i­ties and forms, is the only guru.

The fol­low­ing prayer to the guru from the upan­ishads,

gurUr brahmA gurUr vish­nuhU
gurUr dEvO mah­ESwarahA
gurUr sAk­shAt parabrahmA
tas­maiSrI guravE namahA

is inter­preted as,

guru is brahma the cre­ator, guru is vishnu the pro­tec­tor and guru is Siva the dis­solver and guru is parabrah­man itself. Oh! revered guru, I bow to you.

In light of the pre­ced­ing dis­cus­sion, it is clear that the above prayer is not refer­ring to the phys­i­cal form of the human guru, but to the tran­scen­den­tal brah­man that is shin­ing through that phys­i­cal form.

Since every­thing in exis­tence is brah­man, the guru can man­i­fest in any form. For exam­ple, Sri Ramana Maharshi said that Mount Arunachala (in South India) was his guru. When this light of con­scious­ness shines forth inces­santly and con­sis­tently through a per­son, that per­son is also called a guru. How­ever, the phys­i­cal form should not be mis­taken for the con­scious­ness that is shin­ing through. For an enlight­ened per­son, there is no dif­fer­ence between the two. For such a per­son, there is also no dif­fer­ence between him and the oth­ers. For a non-Self-realized per­son, how­ever, the dual­ity still exists and that’s where the prob­lem starts. We think some­how the guru is dif­fer­ent from us. That he (for ease of dis­cus­sion I will use he, but there are also female gurUs) has some­thing that we do not. There are gen­uine gurus, though very rare. If not care­ful, one will mostly fall into the trap of false gurus who exploit the gulli­bil­ity of the inno­cent seek­ers of the Truth.

It is said that when the suf­fer­ing of the seeker inten­si­fies and prays inces­santly for guid­ance from God (I regard this term as being syn­ony­mous with brah­man) because he does not know how to know the Self or brah­man, the Self itself appears as a guru with an exter­nal form. The exter­nal guru pushes the seeker to look inward, whereas the inter­nal guru, the Self, pulls the seeker inward for Self-realization. So, one should not con­fuse the exter­nal form of the guru with the brah­man. Even while look­ing at the form of the guru one should remem­ber the essence behind that form. The exter­nal form is not the guru but the all-pervading indwelling Self is the only guru. When the seeker truly starts look­ing inward, the inter­nal guru will take over. At that point, the neces­sity for the exter­nal guru will dimin­ish and he may auto­mat­i­cally van­ish from the seek­ers exter­nal life.

Char­ac­ter­is­tics of a True guru

How does one know if a guru is a gen­uine one? SAs­trAs or scrip­tures say that a dis­ci­ple should be very dis­crim­i­na­tive while choos­ing a human guru.

In tiru­man­ti­ram, Sidda tiru­mU­lar describes the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a true guru.

• He has incli­na­tion to teach and impart wis­dom of the tradition.
• He is silent within and with­out, mean­ing he has achieved self-realization.
• He feels indebt­ed­ness and grat­i­tude to his own gurUs that he wants share his knowl­edge with his disciples.
• He has gen­uine com­pas­sion and love for every­thing in existence.
• He has no greed. He does not demand money or other worldly possessions.
• He leads his dis­ci­ples by example.
• He does not encour­age idol­iza­tion and wor­ship of him.
• He gen­tly, but some­times swiftly, guides his dis­ci­ples to look inward.
• He treats his dis­ci­ples as his equals, because he sees no dual­ity between him­self and others.
• He will not pro­mote in his dis­ci­ples, any attach­ment to him­self, and encour­ages them to look inward for answers.

Char­ac­ter­is­tics of a True SishyA or Dis­ci­ple

In tiru­man­ti­ram, Sidda tiru­mU­lar describes the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a true dis­ci­ple.

• He will not idol­ize or wor­ship the phys­i­cal form of the guru for he knows that the true guru is within. Even if he does, he keeps in mind that he is not pray­ing to the phys­i­cal form but the essence behind it.
• He knows that the self-realization comes from within and not without.
• He exudes self-confidence.
• He is com­pas­sion­ate and honest.
• He will not bur­den his guru by request­ing answers for sim­ple, mun­dane day-to-day problems.
• He will prac­tice the tech­niques given to him by his guru with inter­est and focus, for they help him to look inward for guidance.
• He will per­form intro­spec­tion, self-examination, med­i­ta­tion and pur­sue right atti­tudes, to resolve his inter­nal conflicts.
• He will not shop around for tech­niques and remain just a col­lec­tor of tech­niques instead of becom­ing a mas­ter himself.

A true guru will aid a true dis­ci­ple in clear­ing and still­ing the sur­face waves of thought so that Self deep within can shine forth unen­cum­bered. That is the true mean­ing of yOgA. A true guru will make sure that the dis­ci­ple is trans­formed to another mas­ter and not remain a dis­ci­ple forever.