We cannot deny the fact that we are all lost in this world. Which philosophy is which, what to do, no one really knows. Even more dangerous is the fact that we have the inclination to mentally concoct our own ideas and start believing that it is true. This, for some extent is there in everybody, but when it reaches beyond a certain limit, it jumps over to insanity, schizophrenia. But the bottomline is we are all lost. We all think differently, this is why we have quarrels and fights, basically because of misunderstanding between people. Since different people believe in different things, we can naturally conclude that not all of people’s thoughts are true.
The very essence of spirituality is in figuring out and enquiring into the basic questions of life. We desire to no longer be lost, but to find the way. But when we are essentially lost, how can we find the way on our own? If you are stuck in an alien land without a map, and make up your own ideas as to where the exit is, can you get out? Not at all. Now here is where the need for external help comes in. Help from a person who is not lost, or no longer lost.
So the arguing party might ask: fine, you may have external help. But why should it be in the form of a personal guru? Why can’t it be books? Now consider our position as that of the patient. We have a mental disease. The disease is that we are lost in this world. We don’t know what our business here is, why we have to go through miseries, and where we are to essentially go. Now we want to get cured. Can we read books, go to holy places, and try curing ourselves? It can be used to improve the general health. However, each of our individual mental make ups is different. Although everybody is supposed to eat fruits and vegetables to improve general health, a doctor advises some patients to eat more, and others to eat less, some to drink milk, some to stay away from milk and so on. For physical health, if such specific instructions are needed to cure the similar body, why not for mental health, when we have already seen previously, that we have different thoughts? For example, some spiritual aspirants are told to get married, as they are not emotionally stable enough to handle sanyas. For others, it is advised that sanyas or celibacy is the best method. This diagnosis can only be given by an expert guru.
Now we come to the third question, which is especially relevant in the Kali Yuga, with a plethora of bogus gurus, claiming to be God, and promoting weird ideas and customs; how to we know the right guru? If we go to a wrong doctor, it may prove fatal; if we invest our faith in the wrong guru, we would be abjectly misdirected. This is the trickiest question, as there is no cut and right formula for what a true blue guru looks like. Obviously if there was, the bogus people would copy these symptoms, and they would no longer represent the true blue guru. However, it is true that a lot of people have their own idea about what spirituality should be, and with that in mind, they try to match a guru to their own criteria. Don’t forget, the very reason why we look for a guru is because we are lost. If we look for a suitable guru that fulfills our own ideas (and believe me, at this day and age, there is a guru that fulfills every single idea a person may have) we might as well dig up our own spiritual path; what is the point in a guru? As a simple example, I used to think that a guru should look calm and serene in all his photographs, and should always have a smile on his face. On seeing people who didn’t have these characteristics, I would automatically say they are not gurus. Later I realized that a true blue guru wouldn’t even care to put a serene look on the photos.
The truth is we are lost. And we don’t have the capability of recognizing the guru. To this, I have to revert to saying something which the ‘logical’ population of today’s youth wouldn’t agree too well with. Pray to God that you would get a guru. Pray that when a real guru comes across your way, you would be able to recognize him. If you say this is illogical, let me ask you a question: when you are faced with a desperate situation, where you are completely helpless, and don’t see a way out, whom do you turn to? Don’t you pray? Well, this IS a desperate situation - it’s just that no body realizes how bad things are. We are all lost, we don’t know what we are doing here, and to add to the misery there are so many imposters claiming to give us directions, in order to fulfill their selfish motives. And we don’t even know how to recognize which is which. So there IS nothing we can do but pray. Like the other prayers that you know have been fulfilled in your life, why wouldn’t a sincere prayer help this time?
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