If aspiring disciples feel that they can’t get their guru’s association, what can we tell them?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
If somebody feels that they don’t get the association of their spiritual master at all, then what can we tell them? Actually it’s true, even in Prabhupada’s times, the spiritual master, Prabhupada was accessible for a few devotees in the early years, but afterwards he was not accessible. And traditionally there have been two kinds of gurus. One is sanyasi gurus who just keep travelling from place to place.
And say for example, Advaita Acharya was initiated by Madhavendra Puri. But Madhavendra Puri only once came to Mayapur. At that time Advaita Acharya was very inspired to see his great devotion.
He asked him for initiation. He gave him initiation and afterwards they never met again. And others we call as something like grahastha gurus.
So grahastha gurus would be more like the priests of the local temples. And they would give initiation, they would be regularly available. Now they may not be that spiritually exalted, they may not as sanyasis and that kind of aura which is there, that might not be there.
They would be there to do the namakaran of their children, they would be doing all the various, the vivaha and all that, they would be available. They would be local priests. So if you look at the Mahabharata, it’s 110,000 verses.
And Vyasadev doesn’t even spare half a verse to tell us who is the guru of the Pandavas. So it isn’t, Drona is their martial guru. They go to the forest, they hear from Narada, they hear from Vyasa, they hear from Markandeya, they hear from many great sages.
But there is no mention of whom they were initiated from. So what we see in the Mahabharata is an overall respect for Brahminical culture and a mood of submission and learning from many different sages. So when our movement started, it was in a very historically unusual or almost anomalous conditions.
Where Prabhupada went from India to the West and he was the only Gauri Vaishnav in the West at that time. He was the only person available for his disciples. So there is a devotee who has studied like Prabhupada’s instructions on some topics and previous, say, Bhaktisanta Thakur and Bhaktivinoda Thakur’s instructions on the same topic.
So he says three things on the position of guru, on the refutation of Mayavada and on sense gratification. Prabhupada’s intensity of speaking is much more than the previous acharyas. Because Prabhupada needed to drive home the position of the guru.
Because he was the only guide available for his disciples at that time. So, of course, the principles Prabhupada has given in his books are eternal. But the specific intensity of certain principles, that could be contextual.
So now, traditionally, if we see Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself, Ishwara Puri just met him twice. Once in Varanasi, Kashi, when he had gone for doing the last rites of his father. Not the last rites, the Shraddha of his father.
And then after that, Ishwara Puri came to Mayapur. And that’s the time he took initiation. But apart from that, there’s no meetings.
Those two times, one of them was first, other was second. There’s no regular meetings or cultivation or follow-up like that. So, generally in Chaitanya Charitam also we see that, we may say this person was initiated by this person, this person was initiated by this person.
But they have a very loving community overall. So I feel our movement started in an unusual circumstance, where the Guru’s position was elevated way, way above what are the standard. And now we are moving more and more towards the standard.
And the standard is that, yes, we have one initiating Guru, but we have many other Gurus. And we take inspiration and instruction from many of them. So that’s basically like what I said in Mahabharata, a general reverence for Brahminical culture.
And practically speaking, we will see that we get inspiration from a lot of devotees. We learn from them, they may be our God brothers, they may be from a God family, they may not be from our God family, they may be our spiritual master, they may be our God uncles. So many people we get inspiration from.
And in that sense, this over-emphasis on the spiritual master that was there in the first generation of our movement. I think that was unusual, it was essential, but it was unusual. And that cannot be the standard.
So traditionally, it is not that the disciples had constant association with the spiritual master. And we are reverting towards the tradition now, from a historically anomalous situation. So it’s to some extent in our education, we have to start emphasizing.
And there is Shivram Maharaj has written a book on the Shiksha Guru. And there are others also emphasizing that, that Shiksha Guru is also extremely important in our lives. And through them also, by learning from them also, we can, by serving them also, we can grow.
So it is Prabhupada’s famous essay, is Vyasaji offering to a Bhakti Sanskrit Akhura was that the spiritual master is one, but manifests as many. So, in general, if we can educate devotees in such a way that, yes, you may or may not get the personal association with your spiritual master, if that’s what you want, if that is what is most important for you, then it is best that you select a spiritual master who doesn’t have many disciples and who can give you personal time. But even such spiritual masters also, may be 10 years, 20 years down the line, they may also not be able to give.
So, in general, if you could say that we have multiple sources of inspiration and there is a general reverence towards Brahminical culture. If you look at the Sanskrit, there is a well-known verse, padviddhi pranipatena paripashyena sevaya, upadekshinti te jnanam jnaninas tattva darshinah. The Sanskrit word is jnaninas.
It is not jnani. Jnani is singular. Jnaninas is plural.
So, he is saying, you learn from the self-realized souls. They will impart the truth to you. Vandeham shri guru, shri guru uttapakamala.
Guru ono uttapakamala. So, gurun is there in that. So, we have multiple spiritual teachers.
So, if you emphasize that, then the devotees won’t feel deprived. Otherwise, now what happens is, the way we educate is, this one person is your saviour and this person is the only gateway for Krishna’s mercy. And that person is completely unavailable for you.
We just set people up for disappointment and frustration. And I have talked with the spiritual masters also and they say that they are surrounded by a superhuman expectation around them. It’s very difficult to actually be a spiritual master.
So, we don’t want to minimize the spiritual master’s role in our life, but we have to also contextualize the instruction that we have got and then we have to see how best we can move forward in our spiritual life.