My Guru has asked me to move from having only my Guru as a link, toward having him in the formless energy of love, and also to feel it in other people and things. So my question is this - Is worshiping His creation, and the beings in it, the same as worshiping the Guru? Are they as much love as my beloved Guru is? And also - How should I worship the Guru in the formless energy?
—A., Sweden
Dear A.,
I don’t know your Guru and his/her teachings, so I can only tell you what Yogananda might have intended if he had spoken these words to you.
We easily get stuck in the personality of the Guru, not realizing the vast formless consciousness, and the vast infinte love and energy, which is behind that form. The Guru might therefore tell you: “Get to my essence. And that essence is the same which you see everywhere in creation, and in the core of all people.”
Your Guru probably doesn’t want you to worship creation and people as such. Rather he wants you to worship the hidden God, his divine formless energy, which is within creation and within people. That is very different.
God is the essence of every true Guru.
Yogananda taught a similar lesson to Swami Kriyananda, who describes it in his book, The New Path: “At first, unaware as yet of how deeply impersonal his consciousness was, I saw him rather as a great and wise man. He sought to help me expand my mental horizons. Looking deeply into my eyes one day, he said, ‘If you knew my consciousness!’”
Later Swami Kriyananda understood: “Master, that great Guru whose consciousness was in the very air I breathed!”
So the next time you see your Guru, try to have a real darshan, which means “seeing the Infinite.” Later on try to see that same Infinite (the formless energy, the absolute love, the pure consciousness) in creation, in people, everywhere. That Infinite is also your own essence.
All the best for your new way of worshipping your Guru,
Jayadev
