*IMPORTANCE of GURU in Our LIFE*PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA

*IMPORTANCE of GURU in Our LIFE*PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA

Why We should find A GURU First ?

The method of finding God is different from the methods demanded by most colleges for any kind of specific training. Even in medical training, the student never learns if he roams from college to college, joining different medical institutions, and listening to a few lectures, but without going through intensive training in materia media, physiology, dissection, and other studies in one college. Also, it is true that a student cannot join all the universities at the same time.

A student should follow one course in one college until he receives a certificate that he has completed certain studies, but alas, in spiritual denominations even the loyalty the usual intellectual college expects is not given to the denomination by the aspirant, nor is the time necessary for Self-Realization given to the practice of the spiritual lessons by thousands of students in the Western world. Such people continue taking lessons from any new, good, bad, or indifferent teachers, who happen to come to town and advertise. I say that people should discriminate between the so-called teacher who uses religion only to make money or just a living and the real teacher who may use business methods in his religion in order to serve his brethren with real spirituality.

It is extremely necessary to remember that in the beginning it is wise to compare many spiritual paths and teachers, but when the real GURU (Preceptor) and the real teaching is found, then the restless searching must cease. The thirsty one should not keep seeking wells, but should go to the best well and daily drink its nectar. That is why in India, in the beginning we seek many until we find the right path, and the right master, and then remain loyal to him through death and eternity, until final emancipation.

Guru and Teacher

We can have many teachers first, but only one GURU, and no more teachers afterwards. Teachers call those who come to learn from them students, but a GURU calls the spiritual aspirant who comes to him a disciple. Jesus himself said, “None cometh unto the Father but by me.” This signifies that human souls are mostly truant children of God roaming away from Him in the wilderness of suffering. Such souls are impelled by the scourge of sorrow to have faint glimpses of their lost home of spiritual blessedness. They begin to long for God, and inwardly pray for a way out of the conundrum of life. Then when the prayers of such errant children become deep and strong enough, God is touched and sends help. It is then that the One Father of All sends a superman on earth to give help to the lost seeking souls. Such a man, ordained by God, to help the individual in response to deep prayer, is not an ordinary teacher, but a GURU or a vehicle, whose body, speech, mind, and spirituality God Himself uses to bring the lost souls back to the Home of Immortality.

In the Hindu scriptures and “Whispers from Eternity” it is written: “As a naughty baby, I cried for my Mother Divine, and she came to me as my GURU. My Guru, I found Thee in response to my soul cries. If all the gods are displeased and yet, O Guru, if Thou art pleased, I am safe in the fortress of Thy pleasure; but if all the gods protect me by the parapets of their blessings, and yet I receive not Thy benedictions, I am an orphan, left to pine spiritually in the ruins of Thy displeasure. Together, Guru and Disciple, we will fly to His Shores, and then we will smash our planes of finitude forever and vanish in our Infinite Life.”

The above conception of Guru and Disciple depicts the only real way to retrace the truant soul’s footsteps back to God. This Guru and Disciple relationship is not the enslaving relationship between the blind church or temple members and an ignorant so-called priest of a temple or church, elected, not by God, but by the temple or church organization, or by a higher church dignitary, honored by orthodox followers, but unknown to God