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Articles: Devotion | The Eternal Guru
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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On July 29th 2007 falls Guru Poornima, the festival celebrating the birth of revered Sage Vyasa and the occasion to express our love, reverence and gratitude to our teachers and preceptors. Swami, most often, gives a revealing discourse on this occasion every year, and let us recapitulate now one such His discourse delivered two decades ago in 1987.
Become Truly Human :
By being endowed with the human form, men do not become really human. The evolution from animal to the human being has taken millennia. The world is peopled today by billions of human beings. But how many of them display genuine human qualities? Man is still going through birth-pangs of real humanness. Only when human qualities are manifest can man claim to be truly human. In that humanness there is Divinity. It will wear the mantle of Truth. It will be the embodiment of Dharma (Righteousness), Prema (Love) and Santhi (Peace). It is only when men display these qualities that they can be regarded as human. If mankind is able to achieve at least this level of humanness, it would be sufficient.
Celebrating Gurupoornima is usually observed as an occasion for offering worship to the Guru (the religious or other preceptor). There are eight different types of gurus, who impart spiritual instructions of different kinds. Among these, the really important guru is 'Vihitha Guru', the preceptor who removes the doubts in the minds of the disciples and reveals to them the process of Self-discovery and Self-realisation. The guru should destroy the darkness of ignorance (about one's Reality) and illumine the mind of the disciple. The illumination must result in the perception of the One Reality that is beyond name and form and attributes.
What Does Vibhuti Signify? :
Swami often gives to devotees Vibhuti or Bhasma (the sacred ash). Many people smear their foreheads with this ash. What is the inner significance of this ash? When any object that has a name and form is completely burnt, it is reduced to ashes. The name and form are gone. All things are one and the same in the final state as ashes. When Vibhuti is given, Swami wants the recipient to understand this Advaitam (basic oneness). The devotee should get rid of Ahamkara (ego arising from the feeling of separateness) and sense of Mamakara ('mine' and 'thine'). These two are based on name and form and when they are destroyed, the underlying unity of the Divine can be realised.
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