Letter 5:
The Significance of the Guru
One day, Latu, the future Swami Adbhutananda, was sat at the feet of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna leaned forwards and asked him, "do you know what your God is doing now?" "No." "He is passing an elephant through the eye of a needle." What does this mean?
It is said in India that if you enter a room in which both God and your guru are sitting, you should bow down first to your guru, not to God. God is living on the Moon, which is a paradise. He invites everybody, but as he lives on the Moon, it seems impossible for us to go, and it is just the same as if God and Paradise did not exist. The guru is the pilot that takes us there. God does indeed exist for everyone, but is untouchable for people that do not have a guru, so it is just the same as if he did not exist. It is the guru that makes him attainable.
What the guru does
Knowing how to pass an elephant through the eye of a needle is very surprising, however, what the guru does is at least equally surprising. This life is not the first that we have lived. It is traditionally said that we have to pass through 840,000 lives just to reach a human body, in which it is possible to achieve self-realisation. As so few people seem realised, one surely needs very many more to realise oneself. Naughty souls, like me, probably need some two million lives for the whole journey. Throughout all these lives, we are circling outwards from the centre, which is our soul, following the senses into the material world. Circling outwards, following the senses, is called, "pravritti". In the initiation, the guru turns us through 180 degrees, so that we begin to circle back inside. Circling inwards, returning to the soul, is called ‘nivritti’, during which we begin to detach ourselves from the senses, and return to the Divine in our own hearts.
The day of your initiation is your real birthday. We have had so many births, and identifying ourselves with the body, every life has ended only with death. We no longer remember the pleasures of past lives. We have had to return so many times in order to suffer again because, circling outwards, we were unable to learn what is necessary from life. Living, we were dead. The day of your initiation is the most important day of all your 840,000 lives, because this day is the day when you begin to walk towards the light and escape from the vicious circle of materialism. The initiation seems so contrary to what beings normally experience that it is said to be as surprising as seeing an elephant pass through the eye of a needle.
The guru is an incarnation of Ishwara
After the initiation, the spiritual life begins. Previously, there is not really any spiritual life, as only after initiation is it possible to begin to get major results from spiritual practices. What we do beforehand can only be a preparation for starting the spiritual path. If we do spiritual practices before being initiated, we may reach a certain level. However, if we continue enough, we will see that we have reached a ceiling beyond which it is impossible to go. Maya is too powerful. If it is true that everything is inside ourselves, why can we not realise ourselves alone? We are not realised because we do not believe on a profound enough level that we are the Divine. As we do not believe, we do not open ourselves up sufficiently to let the divine power pass through. As there is insufficient power to clean up our minds, we cannot believe on a deep enough level. However, if the aspirant has enough sincerity, and his ego accepts that he cannot achieve a high enough level alone, Ishwara gives him his grace and sends him the guru. To us it seems but a chance occurrence, nevertheless, every detail in the universe, however small, is planned by the Divine Intelligence, Ishwara. The guru is an incarnation of Ishwara as he has a sufficiently deep realisation to be an instrument of God, and because of this he has the power to make others realise themselves.
Second meaning of incarnation of Ishwara
There is a second way in which someone may be an incarnation of Ishwara. That is the case of Bhagavan. When an avatar has the realisation of mahabhava and so becomes Bhagavan, what is descending into the mind is Ishwara.
Relative existence is like the layers of sediment at the bottom of a river. The rock at the bottom is Brahman. It is eternal, it is always there, and without it nothing can exist, as it is the substratum of everything. On top, we may say, there are three layers of sediment. The first layer is Ishwara, the causal level, which is the substratum of the levels above. Then there is the subtle level, Hiranyagarbha, and on top the gross one, Vaishvanara, which is made up of physical matter. Without Ishwara, the other levels cannot exist. Ishwara is the cause of the other levels as it contains the blueprint of everything and projects everything, therefore everything is contained within Ishwara in potential form, as a person in a strand of DNA. If there is a change in Ishwara, there is a change in the other levels.
Sometimes, this Ishwara, instead of making changes on the gross level by changing the blueprint, injects itself directly into the gross plane. The Divine Intelligence is now contained in a gross body, seeing everything through the eyes of a human being, and that person will have incredible powers as he is the cause of everything with the blueprint of the universe within himself. With his grace, aspirants become spiritualised much more quickly than usual, as all Ishwara is concentrated in one single body, as opposed to being omnipresent. This means that it is much easier to obtain the grace of God, as it is easier and quicker to connect ourselves with a person than with the Omnipresent Invisible.
Guru and God in One
Ramakrishna was the guru, and as he was also Bhagavan, the God of Latu, and when he asked what Latu's God was doing at that moment, he was turning him through 180 degrees, passing him through the eye of a needle. Through the grace of Ramakrishna, Latu became immortal in that lifetime.
May we, too, through the grace of Bhagavan become immortal.
Lots of love,
Hare Krishna
Koji