Guru Purnima 5 July 2020

“I found Guru Dev by the grace of God and by my desire to find him. In India, it’s a very normal thing for a child to think of God and to find Him and converse with Him. God-realization is a very concrete experience in the Indian air, and this instills in every Indian heart a desire to find a way and to seek a good guide to help them reach the goal.

This situation was true in my case in the early days. One day I was led by those, who knew I was fond of meeting saints, to a house somewhere in the forest, and then I was led up some stairs to a terrace. It so happened that this was a very dark night and I could barely see a chair with a few people sitting around it, all quiet. The silence there was so great that one felt hesitant to even breathe properly, because breath was felt so horribly in that atmosphere. As I came close to the chair a car came down a nearby road, and its highlights lit up the porch for a moment. Then I saw Guru Dev and I thought: “Here is the sun” This was the flashing moment of light, which decided my destiny.

I somehow was able to speak with him. He asked me about everything I was doing, and when he heard I was student he said: “First finish your studies”. There was nothing to argue about or discuss.

By the time I had finished my studies, he had become Shankaracharya in Jyotir Math. I was told that many people were going to that place and I went there and found Guru Dev, and then I stayed.                                                 *

This devotion to Guru Dev, devotion to one’s Master, when you will go in detail of the Vedic tradition, to which we belong, it seems it has been of just this series of instances, where the disciple surrendered and got enlightened through surrender. And such surrender is not a thing on the thinking level or manipulation, no, it’s a very genuine, innocent, abstract yet very concrete contact with the reality. The history of this tradition is full of these values of surrender to the Master and this is what sustains knowledge generation after generation

The great impact of Guru Dev in his lifetime is in bringing out so clearly and in such simple worlds this technique of TM and his blessing for this Movement, which came out much after he left his body, because there was no occasion during his lifetime for any of his intimate blessed disciples to go out of his presence. That’s why any such Movement to bless the world could not have started during his time.

He was so divine, he was so sublime.  It was not possible to think of one day away from him. It was just not possible.

So his expression, his teachings, made the whole possibility of everyone to get onto this blessed state of unity through a scientific procedure, systematic procedure, because the truth is that not many people are at any time in any age in a position to follow this spontaneous and innocent path of surrender and get enlightenment. It is just not practical. It is not possible. And therefore a system, a procedure, a method, something very tangible, concrete yet based on the same spontaneous impulse of life which makes one surrender to his master-same spontaneous impulse of life. We just get sold out to something so sublime and so divine, same impulse takes the mind to the transcendent and getting this direct experience of this unboundedness. Same impulse of life, same tender innocent impulse of life seeking abundance is used spontaneously in that path of surrender to the master and living that unified state of life and the same tender impulse of life seeking for more and more is used in Transcendental Meditation in order to bring that unboundedness and rise eventually to unity. The same thing, the same value of life, used in this way bringing the same results; used in this way bringing the same results.

And this is the greatness of his teaching. This is the fullness of his value for the world for all times.

The same tender impulse of life to be used by every man in the world without having anything to do with anything else. Nothing to do with the master or teaching or anything or anything. Master is all right, Teacher is all right. As long as one thing has been learned and once one has learned it is on the level of life itself.

This do it yourself technique it doesn’t involve anything individual, anything other than what he himself is and then brings him enlightenment right there were he is.”              

–Maharishi, Guru Purnima  July 8, 1971