THE BONA FIDE SPIRITUAL MASTER (part3)
…One of the important arguments presented is by our Acharyas is found in the verse of Srimad Bhagavatam, it is the verse…..sanskrit…..so that verse is describing that the Supreme Lord is manifesting as Brahman which is described in the Upanisads: He is manifesting Himself as Paratma and He is manifesting Himself as Bhagavan and it is Bhagavan who is established as the Original of all.
In the Bhagavad Gita….sanskrit….. it is said in 7.23 that the impersonal is coming from the personal feature of the Lord. So these things must be very very clear, Prabhupada said that the impersonal, it is like looking at the Lord from a great distance, we remember the analogy of the sun ; the rays of the sun, the sun disk, and the sun god and in this way it is compared to the different manifestations of the same sun. the rays of the rahma jayoti, the Paratama the disk of the sun and Bhagavan compared to the sun god so in this way at different levels we can relate to the sun. the sun shines in the window, well if it was the sun was really in the window, the window would be on fire for sure!…but the rays of the sun…yes so when we speak of Brahman we are speaking about the rays of the Supreme Lord, not the Supreme lord……….
That is further explained in the Isopanisad, the Isopanisad is establishing this very clearly and is explaining…..sanskrit…. please take away this effulgence , this Brahman effulgence, this golden effulgence and show me behind………..Your true face…so the effulgence of the Lord is covering His true face.
So a bona fide spiritual master must establish that Krishna is the origin and everything is resting from him. A bona fide spiritual master is a servant of Krishna always the servant of Krishna, still he is worshipped as good as Krishna…sanskrit…he is acting as the representative of Krishna… so I guess this was the introductory philosophy.
I had to give this to establish clearly what is the Vedic view point and I gave many verses to establish that these facts are not just ideas from ones opinion but clearly established in the sastra.
Now, alright , how do we choose a spiritual master that is the next question after knowing this philosophy after having heard it, it is all good and well, but how do we know how do we know who’s a bona fide spiritual master and how should we judge him, we can try and judge him upon the junctions of the scripture but what is our qualification to understand… how can we truly understand the qualifications of the spiritual master.
Still it is said that the disciple should test the spiritual master and the spiritual master should test the disciple…. The Padma Purana says for one year and during that one year they should sort of test each other to see if they are both qualified.
Not only the spiritual master has to be qualified, the disciple also ….it’s not that the guru has to do everything and the disciple is sort of alright we’re waiting…. NO…. the disciple has to do lot of the work actually!…..that is the case …because we may think that well the spiritual master is suppose to come and inspire us, he comes and he speaks in a very inspiring way, his devotion to Krishna is so clearly visible and we all feel our healt melting and we feel totally inspired and that is really the main thing…..No…… that is the secondary thing,….. then what is the primary thing?
The primary thing is actually the instruction of the spiritual master and us following it, that is actually the main thing…. The spiritual master may come and may give a lot of inspiration but how long does it last?
On Sunday very inspired, on Monday a little less, on Tuesday wearing out, by Wednesday forgotten, by Thursday depressed, Friday hangin in there and waiting for the weekened and thank God leave at 3 0clock and thank God ..it agains is weekend phewwwww and my spiritual master thank God he has given me email, at least I can chant my rounds today!….
In this way we have made the spiritual master in to something like the flying doctor…..the flying doctor! quick quick quick call him in…. we feel like the tyre of enthusiasm is leaking. Sometimes you have a car tyre with a slow leak and what to do , you pump it up and you keep on driving and say fix it tommorrow but today keep on driving, keep on pumping right.. so in spiritual life we sometimes feel that the duty of the spiritual master is to pump up our tyre of leaking enthusiasm,
I haven’t seen him for two months…quick..he pumps up our enthusiasm , yeah it’s all wonderful again, yes yes yes I can do it again and two months later again almost flat tyre……. Is that the role of the spiritual master to constantly revive our fleeting enthusiasm…..NO!….. that’s a bonus…. The essence is that we become what I would call spiritually self sufficient, that we are able to ourselves be spiritually strong, to ourselves be spiritually enlivened on …… the strength of his direction.
Not that we become completely.. one might say I am completely depended on my spiritual master, …yesss one must be completely dependent on the spiritual master but through his instructions, through following his instructions…one knows without his instruction I can’t do anything …………….but that doesn’t mean we need our spiritual master every step in our life so that he sort of tells us what to do, give us mental support…. “Yes you can do it, yes you must do it, yes it really is your Krishna conscious duty”…..
(Maharaja in a dopey voice): “should I really follow what it saysin Bhagavad Gita?”
yes, you should follow what it says in the Bhagavad Gita.!
(Maharaja in a dopey voice) “ oh I see, I never thought of it like that”
Obviously we should follow what’s in the Bhagavad Gita simple as that.. so the spiritual master he is giving us a vision, a vision of what we can be in this life, a vision that is greater than a vision we had ourselves…. We ourselves had a vision of what we wanted to be in our life .. and the spiritual master comes and he has a greater vision…. He wants something greater from us than what we thought we would be….that is actually the relationship….we thought well at least I’m a member of Iskcon, that’s pretty good you know… at least I’m chanting my rounds, I do my level best that’s quite good…. NO …. The spiritual master is jot at all satisfied with that…that’s sort of luke warm….is he pleased….( ina hesistant way) “ he’s pleased”
But how pleased…but how pleased?
I’ve read many times that one should try to please the spiritual master but I never thought about it until I became a spiritual master.. then I stated to think what does it mean to that: one should please the spiritual master?….. does it mean one should follow the scripture and live reasonably up to the spitirual standards, then the spiritual master should be pleased ?
Or does it mean that the spiritual master should be really pleased in his heart?....what do you think that it means….that one should please the spiritual master? ............. contd tomo
