Guru Gita 24

Gurucharanam Saranam

Guru Vaktre Sthitam Brahm, Praapyate Tat Prasaadatah

Guror Dhyaanam Tatthaa Kuryaat, Naarii Pativritaa Yatthaa

The grace of the Absolute Brahman present in the Guru’s face can be received only if Guru is pleased. (For this) engage in meditation on the Guru as intensely as a chaste woman would engross in the thought of her husband.

That Supreme Truth is anchored in the physical form of Guru for the spiritual direction of humanity! O’ Soul! Why do you run away from the benign light of Guru and reside in dark celestial regions? Open your eyes to the bright dawn of resplendent light in the settings of a new age. Witness that beauty and wisdom and constantly contemplate on Guru, like the unending meditations of a chaste wife on her husband.

The intimate physical and soul contact between the husband and wife attains a spiritual dimension. A woman’s life is at great stake when she enters into marriage as it is related to her spiritual elevation and life fulfillment. Likewise, if the husband does not find in his wife the spiritual support that he requires very badly, complications would arise in the family. Therefore, in ancient India, the enlightened rishis gave great importance to marriage. Ignorant of these soul intricacies and the genetic engineering of the rishis, the parents and pundits alike risk the lives of their children solely on material considerations like caste, creed, education, wealth etc.

Today, the practice of this precious genetic engineering rests with Navajyoti Sri Karunakara Guru. Guru permitted marriages only after ensuring spiritual balancing of the souls, looking into the spiritual, ancestral and karmic influences of the concerned couple and their families (gotras) through the astral eye of the Guru or His empowered disciples. The disqualifying spiritual backgrounds of the matched couples are astrally cleansed and synchronized by the sankalpam of the Guru and necessary instructions given before and after marriage so that the life of the husband and wife becomes a combined prayer for begetting a good progeny. The families can thus remain blessed by the birth of virtuous children and the society protected from the birth of a wicked generation.

Those who seek God without realizing the truth of Guru-manifestation are like people who merely enjoy watching of the distant birds, gliding above golden clouds. We can describe their beauty but can never fondle it. O’ soul! On what wings, other than Guru, will you travel to those forbidding heights?

Guru Gita 23

Gurucharanam Saranam

Gurumoortim Smaret Nityam, Guror Naama Sadaa Japet

Guroraajnaam Prakurveeta, Guroranyam Na Bhaavayet

Remember the form of Guru daily. Repeat Guru’s name always. Follow Guru’s instruction. Do not think (in prayer) on anything other than Guru.

You float like a withered leaf in the indescribable spiritual sky without the support of Guru, the personified abstraction of the Supreme Light. Can a little infant walk without the finger of its father? The faith in Guru is the sublimation of one’s ego. Each soul is connected to certain astral skies from where manifests the Guru of his life; it may be in the form of a person or ideology. For our spiritual growth, it becomes necessary to absolutely identify with the omniscient Supreme Guru. Very less people understand the true Guru concept. Majority of Hindus follow temple worship and mightn’t have even got a Guru as such. Adi Sankaracharya once mentioned: ‘blessed is the life of one who has got three things in life – birth in Bharat, desire for liberation and getting of an enlightened Guru’.

We have innumerable Gurus belonging to Saiva, Sakteya and Vaishnava cults or paths like Yoga, Jnana or Bhakti. But the Guru of Guru Gita is above all sects and traditions. So long as there are different creeds, sects and traditions, there cannot be spiritual unity. The basic cause of India’s disunity lies in her heterodox spiritual tradition. Her heart is spiritually fragmented or compartmentalized. Following one or the other Guru is not as important as its social and spiritual impact. The Guru should be the catalyst for social change, not just a retail vendor of spirituality, like the pandas do sitting on the Ghats of Varanasi. This type of spirituality will not help to forge unity of mankind. The cumulative effect of all this spiritual degradation is that very few people know about the epochal Guru regime in Sanatana Dharma as different from popular religion. Each epoch has a Guru of its own, a Kaalaanthara Guru, like Navajyoti Sri Karunakara Guru in Kaliyuga, who has been empowered by the Supreme Light of Brahman. The exhortation of Guru Gita becomes a reality only when India installs the concept of Supreme Guru-hood in its altar of spirituality as being repeatedly stated here by Lord Siva in Guru Gita.

Guru Gita 22

Gurucharanam Saranam

Sirah Paadankitam Kritvaa, Yatha the chaakshayovatah:

Teertha Raajah Prayaago-asau, Gurumuurtyai Namo Namah

Prayag is considered the most holy of all holy waters and it is here the akshayavata - the everlasting banyan tree--stands. Devotion to the form of that Guru by prostrating at whose feet one earns the immortality (of the akshayavata) and the merit of taking a dip in the holiest of all holy waters.

Prayag, the confluence of three sacred rivers – Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati, which we may (arbitrarily though) attribute to three sects of Hinduism, namely, Saiva, Vaishnava and Sakteya, because of their symbolic connections with Siva (to Ganga), Yamuna (to Krishna- associated with the myths of Vishnu) and a phonetic connection with goddess Saraswati, which we may associate with female deity worship). There stands an immortal tree on the banks of Prayag - the Jnana Vriksha, the fourth path of the transcendent Rishis who meditate under it. Without this tree of knowledge, the holy waters of Ganga and Yamuna, like the pale sun affected by an eclipse, might be just cold and colorless streams.

The all knowing Guru is the Jnana Vriksha on the banks of holy waters and it is by prostrations at the feet of Guru one earns immortality. Hindus seem to have neglected this jnana vriksha, this sage living on the banks of the holy rivers and teerthas. This is about the fourth face of the Vedas, the Jnana Kanda, about which people generally know very little or have they chosen to remain satisfied with the appeasement of celestial gods? Like mirthful children, they swish, swim and splash in the river of ritualism, each immersed in their own world, without a real spiritual leadership. When will Hindus graduate to the immortal spiritual wisdom of the Rishis?

Guru Gita 21

Gurucharanam Saranam

Kaasi Kshetram Nivaasascha, Jaahnavi Charanodakam

Guruh Visweswarah Saakshaat, Taarakam Brahma Nishchitam

Kaasi is where Guru is present; the water that washes Guru’s feet is the holy water of Ganges. Guru is verily the Lord of the Universe and the Supreme Power that takes one (and all) across (the ocean of worldly existence).

The spiritually inclined are drawn to the holy city of Kashi, the sacred Ganga and the god lording over it, Siva, the ascetic of ascetics. Those who hunger after spiritual virtues settle down there. Still, Guru is required to open the door to spiritual realization. The real truth of holy places like Kashi, sacred rivers like Ganga and gods such as Siva is understood only when connected with a mystical eye by the grace of Guru.

In the ancient city of Kashi lived Sant Kabir, who said that he would first salute Guru if Guru and God were to manifest together in front of him. He firmly believed that only by the grace of Guru, God, the formless mystery could be experienced. While Kabir said this, he had in mind the impossible scenario of the manifestation of formless, nameless, infinite God in front of the devotee and the perennial truth of Guru’s mediacy in God realization. Therefore Guru is the liberating attribute of impersonal God. Without an authoritative liberated Guru, a spiritual seeker will get bewildered in challenging astral dimensions. According to Navajyoti Sri Karunakara Guru, millions and millions of such souls are caught in astral dimensions unable to attain the final sublimation or salvation.