27th July 2018, Guru Poornima evening celebrations with Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar ji at San Mateo, California
If you analyze, people who come to Guru have three things:
• Either they want something or they have desires, so they come to the Guru.
• Or they have some problem so they come to the Guru.
• And you can come to the Guru with anything, with fear. People may have fear, uncertainty so they seek a Guru.
But once you come to the Guru, you have to drop all that.
You drive in a car to your home. Whatever car it is, it could be Benz, BMW, Tesla. But once you reach your driveway, you don’t keep sitting in them. Similarly, whatever has brought you to the path, but once you come home you see that you come out of that.
That is when you blossom.
There is a beautiful couplet:
deh dharan ko dand hai, sab ko ek so hoye.
Gyaani kaate gyaan se, moorakh kaate roye.
…Our body is like that paper plate. What is the use of the plate? To eat the food. Once you have eaten, then you throw it. Similarly, in life different experiences, both material and spiritual, come to you through the body. So take care of the body. Taking care doesn’t mean after eating you want to preserve the used paper plate. Nobody does that. If you say, ‘I have eaten food, let me keep the paper plate also in my pocket.’ No. Every situation, event, in life leads you to the infinite presence. And soaking in the infinite presence is coming to the Guru.
Let’s revise the knowledge that we were discussing in the morning.
Life gives you a million opportunities to be grateful and a billion opportunities to grumble. Among this, there will be an opportunity to stand up for knowledge, for wisdom. Wisdom is rising above this grumbling mind to find the inner beauty that you are.
Inside you is a beautiful flower. Beyond emotions, beyond pleasures there is a beauty inside you. To reach there, the inner core, you need the Guru. Because the vibration of the Guru helps you be in touch with that.
So we said the story of four seekers. There are seekers who just want knowledge. It is like you go to school and study and then you move on. However good the teacher is, you don’t stay with the teacher, right? You move to the higher class. Suppose your Kindergarten teacher is so good…. You don’t say, ‘My kindergarten teacher is so good, I am staying here.’ You go to the higher school. There is some knowledge that you learn and move on.
There is the ultimate spiritual knowledge. Here, when you graduate, you stay.
That is Guru.
A teacher (shikshak) is one from whom you just gain knowledge and move. A Guru is one where you lose that I and become we - when the small I, I, I, I dissolves and becomes we (universality, fullness). When the fullness comes there is nowhere else to go. When you come to the Guru, when you graduate, there you stay.
And I said a story of four seekers (in the morning) who went in search of a Guru. They went to Bramha Loka (the world of creation). They found the creator busy in making all different species. They stayed there for some time and got frustrated. It was not complete. They went to the maintainer, Vishnu. There there was a lot of wealth. Everything was there, but the seekers didn’t stay there. All the desires were fulfilled, then what else next? That leaves you in a vacuum so they went to Shiva. Shiva is the powerhouse but then they found that was not complete. Then they got so tired that they came and rested under a peepul tree. They found a young person there with a big smile. He didn’t say a word. He just looked at them and they just looked at him and all their questions vanished, all the doubts vanished, they simply dissolved. He is the Guru. Guru is complete. Bramha, Vishnu, Mahesh – all three are there in him. Guru said, “You were going with your mind and intellect on that search. But when you got so tired and you settled down, what you find that something which is beyond our intellect, our ego, from there you see that there is nothing other than me. Everything is me. That is So Hum. I am that.”
Chin mudra is when the I bends down to meet the divinity (thumb).
(Gurudev shows a thumb-up sign.) When you win, what do you show? The V is only in the English language. Usually, the universal sign of victory is thumb up. When the ego bends, it achieves victory. When the I bends, it achieves the victory, and it goes beyond the three states of consciousness: the waking, dreaming, and sleeping states. (Gurudev says pointing to the little, ring, and middle fingers.)