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Meditation
Support
Why
a Guru?
By Swami Kriyananda, from Blessings of Discipleship
Clarity Magazine,
July 1993
Many people have misconceptions about the whole concept of being
a disciple and of having a guru…
In the Bible
we read, "As many as received him, to them gave he power to
become the sons of God." The receiving of this power is what
many people are afraid of, because they think it constitutes an
invasion of their own spiritual privacy, or giving over their free
will to another human being. This isn't what happens at all. The
best illustration I've hit upon to explain this came in writing
The Path, where we talk about the way a bar of steel acquires
magnetism.
One way to magnetize
a bar of steel is to place it in proximity to another magnet. The
reason ordinary steel is not magnetized is not that it doesn't have
that magnetism potentially inside it. Rather, it is because every
molecule cancels out the north-south polarity of the others. When
you can get all the molecules pointing in one direction, then the
bar of steel becomes a magnet.
Human beings
also have a divine power locked within them, but every desire, every
impulse, every conflicting tendency that we have cancels out the
flow of our inner magnetism. Lacking in magnetism, we don't have
the power to succeed in anything, much less the spiritual quest.
You will notice that there are some people who are extremely magnetic.
You don't know how to define their magnetism, and yet you know it's
there.
In the true
guru-disciple relationship, the guru helps the disciple to bring
out his own spiritual magnetism. There are so-called gurus who have
set the bad example of trying to dominate their disciples. A true
guru would never try to do that, because his purpose is to bring
out your own inner freedom and to develop your own inner magnetism
to release your highest potential. When Master was with his guru,
he didn't take on Sri Yukteswar's personality. Master developed
his own magnetism and found a great increase in his devotional power,
even though Sri Yukteswar's spiritual expression was primarily toward
wisdom.
Next: The
Spiritual Power of Yogananda by Swami Kriyananda
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