How can we know if a particular guru is an uttama-adhikari or not?

Transcript

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that a guru is on the uttama adhikari stage we are not on that stage and if we take a decision from a guru who is madhyam adhikari what happens thereafter will we advance there are three different issues over here first is that in general Prabhupada when he is talking about the point he is making a philosophical principle now this kind of analysis it is very difficult to make from externals broadly the gives some criteria for understanding the level of a guru for example it says that there is no wasting of time there is constant absorption in Krishna constant eagerness to glorify Krishna namagani sadaruchi samutkantha so the ashtasatvika kar the symptoms of ecstasy may be imitated anybody can put on a show occasionally but steadily constantly committing oneself to Krishna is not that easy at all so if somebody is doing that then that itself is indicative of a very high level of devotion so if you look at broadly the life of a person and we learn more about them from those who are close to them then you can understand how dedicated they are to Krishna so the more time we get to spend with them not just in terms of hearing their classes but may be serving them or at least serving those who are close to them that is very helpful overall my understanding is that that needn’t be the primary criteria because even if say our Guru is at the madhyamadhikari level right now and say we are at the kanishta, now does that mean that we will rise from kanishta to madhyama but the Guru will stay at madhyama the spiritual master is also practicing bhakti and they are practicing bhakti, they are also going to grow so even if the spiritual master is one step ahead of us and if they are moving forward then they will always be one step ahead of us and to guide us how to take that step carefully and we can certainly say that our potential spiritual masters those whom we are considering as spiritual masters, they are certainly more than one step ahead of us so we don’t have to in that sense worry so much about the present level of the spiritual master as the overall two things, commitment of the spiritual master to the practice of bhakti and in my understanding the most important factor is how much they inspire us in our practice of bhakti because even if the spiritual master is at the uttama level but somehow if we don’t connect with them if we don’t feel inspired by them then we won’t be able to grow much so if a particular saintly devotee whom we are considering from whom we are considering taking initiation if they inspire us that they inspire us to practice bhakti more committedly I think that is the surest criteria guarantor for our spiritual advancement and it’s a strong indicator that we would be well off taking initiation from them another point would be the last point I’ll make is that if somebody takes initiation from uttama adhikari guru and then that spiritual master is very advanced but may be very aged also and they depart from the world then what is going to happen there were some devotees in our movement who felt that actually after prabhupada departed none of prabhupada’s disciples were at uttama adhikari level so they decided to go to gaudiya mat and take initiation over there and somebody genuinely inspired by a particular vaishnava whatever be their organizational institution that’s fine ultimately we want everyone to go towards krishna but if one goes out of suspicion or fear then eventually what happened was that vaishnava departed from the world these devotees were from a particular cultural milieu and the other disciples of that vaishnava were from a very different cultural milieu these devotees were western they are indian I am not saying this happened with everyone but eventually having uttama adhikari spiritual master who is not so accessible for us because either they are too busy or they have departed from the world and then having a community of devotees where we are not able to connect so well where we don’t feel inspired by that may not be the best for our long term sustained enthusiastic spiritual practice so we need as a spiritual master of vaishnava who inspires us themselves and who inspires us through the legacy that they are creating and their foremost legacy will probably be their followers their disciples and that’s how we all can keep progressing in our lives