The Guru

Lalita Prasad Thakur (Babaji) was a very, hum­ble down to earth kind of per­son. He had no airs about him­self. He was very kind and gen­er­ous in his teach­ings and didn’t impose things on me. Like with ekadas bhav, he said I could make it up myself. I said I’d feel bet­ter if he helped me. He asked Bhakta Ma to help pick out my name. He asked me what age I wanted to be and what ser­vice I liked.

He wasn’t at all like some gurus who claim to go into trance, see your spir­i­tual body in Vrind­a­ban, and tell you who you are. He was a gov­ern­ment offi­cial until retire­ment as was his father, who I’m sure didn’t think of him­self as some super-human, divine being. I also asso­ci­ated with one of Babaji’s dis­ci­ples who worked for the post office and was said to have thou­sands of dis­ci­ples. He was also a very hum­ble guy. You don’t have to be some super­star to be a guru. You just have to rep­re­sent the tra­di­tion hon­estly, truth­fully, sin­cerely, lovingly.

A.C. Bhak­tivedanta Swami said there was no need for ekadas-bhav ini­ti­a­tion, one would real­ize one’s own spir­i­tual iden­tity in due time. Gau­ranga Das Babaji advised me to never leave Vrind­a­ban because every­one there was engaged in med­i­tat­ing on Radha Krishna and would strengthen my med­i­ta­tion. Sri Lalita Prasad Thakur ini­ti­ated me into ekadas-bhav and told me to go back to the West and preach. I learned a method of visu­al­iza­tion and med­i­ta­tion from him. I won­dered if Goloka Vrind­a­ban existed on its own, or did it exist because I imag­ined it.

After many years, I now con­clude that it doesn’t mat­ter. Every­thing we can imag­ine is real on some level of exis­tence. With so many per­sons imag­in­ing Radha Krishna and Goloka Vrind­a­ban for so many years, they must exist. What­ever we most desire, set our mind on, love, cher­ish and focus our life energy on, we will think of at the time of death and that will carry us on to the next life. I am still plac­ing my bets on Radha Krishna. Their eter­nal ser­vice is the be all and end all of my life. There is just noth­ing else more attrac­tive to me, and I have stud­ied many dif­fer­ent paths. I am also sure that when I fully real­ize the Divine Cou­ple and their abode, it will all be much more than I ever imagined.

Don’t stop doubt­ing and ques­tion­ing. Cer­tainly God is not offended by these things. Rather they are signs of a true seeker. It is through doubt­ing and ques­tion­ing that we are able to real­ize the truth in real­ity. Ques­tion the scrip­tures. Ques­tion the tra­di­tion. Ques­tion your guru. If your guru is offended by your ques­tions and does not want to answer them, he/she may not be the right guru for you. When I was in my twen­ties, an ISKCON devo­tee, I thought I knew it all. Now, I am not as cer­tain of things. There is much we do not know and many paths form­ing pieces of the puz­zle. Yet I know that for me Radha Krishna love and devo­tion can’t be wrong. Bless­ings. Jai Radhe!

Book­mark It

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 at 07:15 and is filed under Steve's Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.