What is a Guru like?

Recently, the Head of the Spiritual practice that my wife follows had come to our city.  It was a big occassion for the initiates and people drove many hours to reach the city to be in his company and listen to his talk as well as clarify their thoughts.  Among the coordinators there was special energy – they wanted to make sure everything was perfect and everyone wanted to do his/her bit to make the Master feel comfortable.

I sat with the kids in the room adjoining the main hall, and my wife got to see her Master up close.  It was a special moment.

The lecture started and ended very soon.  Short, succinct and full of messages for those who were listening.  Unfortunately most did not.  Heard him, yes.  Listened no.  The topic was “Prayer” and he emphasized that real prayer was “beyond words and actions”.  It was the silent prayer – which was beyond all the mental constructs that was the real experience.  Clearly, form  and words bring limitations and the assigning of meaning, qualities, character etc to them does not further your journey to “Truth” in any way!  That was his main message – intellectually understanding it.

As soon as the Q&A started, it became amply clear that no one was really listening to him.  Everyone was busy with their own mental constructs that they had come with … and they were busy bumping up their own prejudices against his message and feeling vindicated.  The message was not important for anyone – but how much of it justified one’s own prejudices.  It was like “see, thats what I keep saying and now the Master has said it too!”.  It was as if the Master was being USED for upholding our own prejudices!  Everyone showed that failing, including me (and I may have been the biggest culprit actually).

As the talk ended and the congregation was dispersing, I went to my three and a half year old son, who had been playing all along.  Before the talk, the Master had come to the “Kid’s room” so those who wanted his “darshan” or viewing could have the happiness of that.  So, I was curious if my son, who I thought had been playing all along that time, had even noticed the presence of the Master.  Here is how the short conversation went:

– “Son, did you see Babaji?”
– Yes.
– “Hmm.. so, what was he like?”
– He was like himself!

The last two words stunned me and the complete truth of the Masters message was finally clear!  In the entire congregation, only ONE person actually got the message – and he was hardly even listening!!  The rest of us were just pretending to, while we were playing the game of prejudice-justification!