Swami Nityananda's talks
Excerpts from past issues of "Eternally Blissful"
AUGUST 1999 ISSUE NO. 14
The mystery of the Guru-Disciple relationship
Reproduced below are edited extracts from Mahamandaleshwar Swami Nityananda’s talk at a Living Meditation Intensive in the Pine Bush ashram on May 29, celebrating the 91st anniversary of Baba Muktananda’s birth.
Yoga teaches us to turn within so that we can gain the knowledge that is beyond the mind. We always think, "I will gain knowledge if I read more books." But have you traveled with twenty or thirty books in your suitcase? It is very heavy. Imagine the burden that many books create in our mind.
The sages have always said that the only way to gain true knowledge is from within, not from whatever is on the outside. For those living in that inner space of the supreme principal, the Self or Absolute, both the perceiver and perceived are its forms.
Baba Muktananda taught that if a person gives up their ego through right understanding they naturally uplift themselves and become the true Absolute. It is the ego that stops us from experiencing that supreme principle. When we let go of the ego through right understanding, the consciousness of the Absolute vibrates as our own experience. Otherwise, like a silkworm growing in its own cocoon, we become trapped in the beauty of our own body, forget who we are and become our own enemy.
Yoga gives us the way, the scissors to cut through the cocoon in which we have trapped ourselves and to realize that everything is the supreme principle.
When I ask what a Master or Guru really gives us I realize it is the teaching, "Become free of what limits you, that to which you are attached or bound - the ego - and experience the one Self."
I very much agree with our emcee (Veda) that we must run away from anyone who claims to have understood the whole mystery of spirituality, grace and God. They live in their own confusion and create more confusion. Truly, what is a mystery? It is something you cannot understand or resolve through the limited mind.
Grace and God can be understood but you have to go to the space beyond the mind. Then, having understood it, you can no longer come back to the space of the mind and explain it.
When we let go of the ego through right understanding, the consciousness of the Absolute vibrates as our own experience.
Imagine trying to fit into this 40 by 20 feet room a framed photo 160 by 80 feet. No matter how hard we try it will not fit. Of course, we can cut it into pieces but we will be forever trying to explain what the photo looks like when the pieces are joined.
It is the same with this whole mystery of Grace and God. When you go beyond the mind, you go to the space of pure being where words as we know them do not exist. When we return and try to explain, we cannot. Kabir says, "It is like a mute person trying to describe the sweetness of candy to someone who has never tasted it."
When a celebration day such as this arrives I usually sit and write a message to everyone in the different places where people gather for satsang. The message on this occasion of the celebration of Baba’s 91st (lunar) birthday, says in part,
"We offer our heartfelt gratitude to Baba for giving us the inner wisdom, the understanding about life and the many gifts we are unable to express in words."
If someone was to ask what makes us feel gratitude to Baba I don’t think I could explain. Everything that happens is an unfolding of what we received from the time with him.
For me - this year marks twenty-one years of ashram life – meditating, studying, chanting, working, doing all the things we do, and thirty-seven years of being associated with this path. In that time the mystery has become no clearer. Yet it has become a joy, a part of life. It brings great experiences. Where do they come from and why? It is a mystery.
Who can explain the mystery of the Guru? These days most people want a concrete answer, proof of whatever they are thinking of following. But yoga is a matter of the heart not the mind. As the scriptures say, "God dwells within our own feeling." When there is true feeling, true love and devotion, there exists God, the supreme principle.
What is the meaning of the word "feeling"? It comes from the word bhava which means "to be." It means to simply be. We always think we have to become somebody or something yet Baba’s message was, "God dwells within you as you." Whoever or whatever we are, if we do nothing other than accept our divinity and that of all, there is no need to do or become anything. We can simply be.
So what does the true Guru do? What happens when we sit in the presence of such a great being? We may not understand what transpires physically but we feel something in the heart, something that cannot be described with words.
Recently, I opened Baba’s book, Secret of the Siddhas at random and read this passage:
"My attainment is Gurudev. My sadhana is Gurudev. My realization is Gurudev. My mantra is Gurudev. What is the formless or the attributeless? What is the realization of the form? It is all delusion created by words. When two sticks are rubbed together, an exquisite flame arises. By the churning of milk, butter is produced. Similarly, joy arises from the love of Guru Om, and from the churning of the love between the Guru and the disciple. Only the Guru can know that delight and taste the elixir which arises in every pore of the body. This love cannot be attained through the mere practicing of yoga, through indulging the sense pleasures, or through prattling about knowledge.
Only when a river merges in the ocean can it fully know the splendor of the ocean. Only when I lost myself in the ecstasy of Nityananda did I realize who he was. He is the nectar of love which arises when everything, sentient and insentient, becomes one. He is the beauty of the world. He pervades all forms, conscious and inert. He is the luminous sun, the moon, and the stars in the heavens. He frolics and sways with love in the blowing of the wind. His consciousness glimmers in men and women. There is only Nityananda, nothing but Nityananda. He is the bliss of the Absolute, the bliss of the Self, the bliss of freedom and the bliss of love. There is only love, love, nothing but love."
Whoever or whatever we are, if we do nothing other than accept our divinity and that of all, there is no need to do anything. We can simply be.
When I read this again I think of the times Baba sat in his room. There would be a picture of Bhagawan Nityananda in front of him and he would just gaze at it, sometimes for hours. You could walk in and out of the room and he would know what was happening but his gaze and inner focus never shifted.
Often, when we visit someone’s place for a few hours they will ask, "Can you quickly share the best story of your times with Baba?" But how can I? Each occurrence or situation was the best or most beautiful for its time and place.
The mind and senses always wants a form to worship, however, the inner being knows that consciousness exists now, has always existed and will always exist. It is only the mind that thinks we are not always sitting in Baba’s presence. Whether or not the physical presence exists, the consciousness always exists, especially that of a saint.
After all, what are we really worshipping when we worship a photo, statue or idol? It is not the inert object but the divine consciousness. The purpose of the external object is to act as a means to connect to that divine consciousness which is always very much there, that space where the worshipper, object of worship and act of worship are one.
Though Baba’s Guru, Bhagawan Nityananda, left his body nearly thirty-eight years ago people still visit his shrine. They hear about him, have read something or are simply pulled there for whatever reason. They come, make an offering and leave.
Who or what brought them there and who continues to give them the experience of consciousness, of divinity? What is that touches the heart of a person who sees a statue rather than a living saint. It is the consciousness of that Saint or Guru and the devotion of those who visit or stay there.
Of course, we all know that Baba no longer exists physically, yet as consciousness, as the Guru Principle, he existed then and exists now. When we invoke Baba as the Guru, it is that principle we worship within, it is that being who answers us.
In his introduction to the book, Secret of the Siddhas, Paul Zweig tells of a celebration that took place in Baba’s Ganeshpuri ashram. Thousands of visitors were arriving and tents were being erected all over the ashram, even on the rooftops. Preparations were going on everywhere with a great clatter of activity. Sitting on his porch, Baba turned to one of his disciples and said. "You see, I am just going to sit here, twirling my stick, but everything will get done."
Paul continues, "And as always, it did. I have never ceased to have that image of Baba: sitting casually, twirling his stick, in Ganeshpuri or New York, alone or surrounded by thousands of busy devotees, speaking in Carnegie Hall or talking to a single person in his garden. Just twirling his stick but, with steadiness and grace, becoming a center around which activity whirls: ‘a hub of the wheeled universe,’ as Walt Whitman wrote."
We think, "I have to do so many things for that to happen." We focus on all the actions that "I" need to do. We think of "I" as the instrument performing those actions. But the sage sits, simply being. He thinks of doing nothing and from that state of simply being everything happens.
People often talked of Bhagawan Nityananda as "just laying there." We think a saint must get out and change the world, stop all the killings and violence. For people, it is a waste of time for a saint to just to lay around.
Someone once asked Baba, "Why doesn’t the saint go out and save the world?" Baba replied, "What makes you think that the saint is not already doing that? It might seem that he is just lying in one place doing nothing, but he is doing a lot. Connected to the universal consciousness he is connected to everything. Wherever he plugs in he is one with that consciousness, one with everything in this universe. What makes you think he is doing nothing." Unlike the saint, however, we are always feeling separate having to think of what we must do.
One of Baba’s most priceless gifts to us was inner contentment, the capacity to be happy at all times in all places and situations. What a joy no longer having to think, "I must do this or that, I must go here or there." Instead, wherever one is, whatever is happening, feeling content, complete, whole. As Kabir remarked, "There is nothing to give and nothing to take. To be intoxicated, absorbed within, that is everything."
One of Baba’s most priceless gifts to us was inner contentment, the capacity to be happy at all times in all places and situations.
Baba loved to tell the story of Hamid and his friend who decided to visit a Guru called Baba Musa. When they arrived at the Guru’s abode they said to him, "Please give us some spiritual knowledge." Baba Musa replied, "Certainly but first you must work in the field.
So the two seekers began working in Baba Musa’s field. They happily did the work each day but, after a few months, Hamid’s friend thought, "I have a field back home. I’ll go and work my own field. I don’t need to stay here working Baba Musa’s field."
Of course, when a disciple gets a little wise the rationalizations can begin. We know that the field is symbolic of the space the Guru uses to work on the disciple. When living under the watchful eye of the Guru or Master it may seem he is telling us about plowing and sowing the field, cultivating the crop etcetera, but the Guru is really telling us about our self. As the Gita explains, we are the field.
Anyway, while his friend left to cultivate his own field and make some money, Hamid stayed and continued working Baba Musa’s field. Years went by – the scriptures always use the number twelve. One day Baba Musa came and asked, "Hamid, is the work done?"
"It’s okay, I’ll continue to work in the field," he replied but Baba Musa said, "No, no, the work is done. You may go." So Hamid left and went to Turkey. There, people began to hear about this holy man and began to visit him to receive knowledge and understanding.
Hamid’s friend, who was still seeking, heard about this holy man in Turkey and decided to visit him. When he arrived he saw that it was his old friend, Hamid, with whom he had begun his seeking. When they were alone he said, "Hamid, what secrets did Baba Musa give you after I left?"
Hamid said, "Baba Musa gave me nothing more than what he gave you when you were there. I simply continued to work in the field. I realized I was not working for Baba Musa but was simply serving. When the duality vanished, the notion of "me," working for Baba Musa in "his" field, everything began speaking to me. I could hear what the earth and trees and all the creatures were saying. I began to have this inner connection. Then, one day, Baba Musa said to me, ‘Hamid you may go now. The work is done.’"
In the early days with Baba, when there were no talks or lectures, people came and simply sat before him. Often, there were no words. Sometimes, people asked, "What should I do?" Baba would say, "Work in the garden, work in the cow-shed." It didn’t matter whether they were a businessman or VIP.
Someone shared with me an incident that happened one day when they were visiting Baba. A Minister of State also came to visit that day. As the sun was blazing through the window Baba said to the Minister, "Please go and stand in front of that window and block the sun" This person told me, "I knew immediately that Baba was a true Guru. Who else would dare ask a Minister, someone of political power, to go stand in front of a window to block the sun? He had to be a saint."
When we go to Gurus or Masters we usually have ideas or concepts about what should happen. But the Guru might say, "Stand in front of the window and stop the sun from hitting me." And we might think, "What is he trying to tell me?" But I simply say, forget everything, forget about trying to figure out what he might be telling you symbolically. You will drive yourself crazy. Instead, just stand there, feel the joy and love, feel that you are of use or service, that you are able to do something for another being. It is not for you, it is not for him. When you look at the bigger picture it is for all.
We have a mind that calculates and weighs up the pros and cons. We are always thinking about the net gain in any situation. But a true disciple like Hamid simply does the work. And, of course, when we surrender, something does happen. The Guru is continually showering blessings on us and as we become more open that grace blossoms.
I am always grateful to Baba because I think that if he had not taken me and blessed my life, I would have been like the silkworm caught in its own cocoon waiting for the end to come. But with his grace and blessings, with that knowledge and understanding, life is wonderful; it is fun, a joy.
When we meet a Guru we don’t really know what happens. All we know is that something unique remains alive within us to the end of our life. We may call it grace or shaktipat or by any other word, but it is a live feeling. When the heart overflows with love, the eyes fill with tears and the hair stands on end, does it matter why?
Whenever I am undecided about something, I find that Bhagawan Nityananda comes, smiles and says something cryptic, as if to say, "Don’t worry, all will be fine." Baba, too, will often come and smile, knowing that we are all watched over by his Guru, protected by that Grace.
We pay our premium to the insurance company for protection but what is the premium to our Guru? It is to live our life according to his teachings. That is our offering to him. By chanting, meditating and studying, the knowledge we have received begins to be illumined within.
We pay our premium to the insurance company for protection but what is the premium to our Guru? It is to live our life according to his teachings. That is our offering to him. By chanting, meditating and studying, the knowledge we have received begins to be illumined within.
So, this is our offering of gratitude to Baba on his 91st birthday. We can only pray that the knowledge given to us may illumine itself more and more. May our minds be filled with that understanding and may we realize that there is nothing to do but simply be.
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