"LETTERS FROM A BAUL" written in English by SRI ANIRVAN himself. Copyright.
Chapter IV
MASTERS AND DISCIPLES
The disciples, in no matter what ashram, are not attracted primarily by pure metaphysical research, but by the person and the radiance of the Guru, who becomes for them the beacon-light on the path, the ideal made real. Thus the rule of “loyalty to the Guru” immediately comes into play. The Guru’s authority (gurudom) is boundless.
Traditionally, without even being expressed, the Guru’s promise to his disciples is as follows: “I am here to lead you toward liberation. Do my work obediently and you will be saved. You will know the highest ecstasy and will be freed from the round of births and death (samsara). If I go to heaven, you will come to heaven with me; if I go to hell, you will come to hell with me…”
The Guru’s responsibility is immense; he takes upon himself the karma of all those he accepts. For their part the disciples are happy to throw their burden on his shoulders. Is the Master great enough to wish that one of his disciples would one day be more renowned than himself? If he does not wish it, a descending Law immediately operates. Owing to the Guru’s hold over his disciple, there is often something morbid in their relationship, like that of father to son when the son is doomed to remain a son without ever becoming a father.
In the preliminary part of the Samkhya discipline, the disciple’s relationship to the Guru is compared to a seed that has been buried in the earth. The seed is left to develop by itself in the heart of what feeds it. It absorbs the Guru. It will become a plant, bearing foliage, flowers, fruit and seeds. In so doing, it transcends the ground in which it grew and becomes directly responsible for its relation with Great Nature and the life it contains in itself.
An attitude particularly conducive to rapid progress is that of total obedience to the Guru in all things: thoughts, attitudes and actions. The aim is to become the well-tilled ground the Master needs. From tradition, everyone knows that with rare exceptions this field, ploughed with such care, will only be used in a future life when the right impulse will take possession of it. This slow and deep preparation is most important.
Great is the illusion of the man who believes that he can reach the goal after a few months of efforts! His ambition will be stopped at precisely the point where he becomes conscious of his personal destination (svadharma), of his own law as it seeks its own way in the midst of cosmic Laws. This is equivalent to discovering the Divine that lives in the heart, to serve it, to worship it but nothing more. A wild rosebush can be forced to produce big flowers of its kind, but a wild rosebush will never be able to produce anything but wild roses; any grafting promised by a Guru would mean that he is an impostor. And pseudo-Gurus are legion! This moment of self-knowledge is crucial. It means the death of the illusory ideal and often brings violent reactions. But if the ideal becomes interiorized, that moment of consciousness will be a feeling of unity on the level of the understanding attained. Here we are in the very heart of the living power.
At the beginning, a Guru and his disciple are like a mother and child, joined together by the umbilical cord. There is no tension whatsoever in this attachment. If there were any, it would mean that the “psychic being” which is to grow and develop between them until it becomes the “heat” of their blood, would never take shape for the lack of necessary substances.
This psychic being must be nourished with care. It is both cause and effect meaning that it exists out of time. That is the reason why there is no longer any “why” or “how” in a well established relationship between Guru and disciple. Master and disciple can each say to the other: “I am you…” the same vibration animates them. One day, the “child” between them will disappear, when certain vibrations mathematically reach a known point of reabsorption. Then life in its reality becomes the Guru.
There are four kinds of devotees:
1. He who becomes a devotee because he is in danger.
2. He who wants to obtain grace, help, health, security from the master, or simply to live close to him, for his own sake.
3. He who has a thirst for knowledge. In such a case, the Master’s physical person and way of life are of little importance to him.
4. He who knows without being aware of it, who by nature is good soil. Such a devotee welcomes obstacles on his path because they increase his determination. He has his own roots. For him, what matters is to live an experience, no matter how difficult.
Does a Master care for this last kind of devotee? The situation is illustrated by the story of Lord Narayan, who one day was resting after having stationed two faithful guardians at his door. Jaya (victory) and Vijaya (total victory), to drive off intruders. Two risis arrive from afar and ask to see Narayan. A violent quarrel breaks out at the door of the God, so much so that the risis curse the two guardians. Awakened by the noise, Lord Narayan appears, bowing to the risis; at the same time he is also greatly upset, for nothing can erase the curse the risis have called down. It must take effect. So Narayan says to his two guardians, “Since you have been cursed, you must enter the round of births and deaths, but I can allow you to choose your fate. Do you wish to be born among my enemies?”
“What will be the difference?” ask Jaya and Vijaya.
“If you are among my devotees, it will take you seven lives to reach me; if you are among my enemies, it will only take you three!”
And so it happened that Jaya and Vijaya willingly became great enemies of Narayan, constantly aware of their hate and therefore constantly remembering the god in spite of the severe obstacles they had to overcome to draw near him.
The relationship between Master and disciple is established by an infallible Law, with a view to the esoteric transmission of the cosmic Laws and their functioning. Once this relationship is clearly established, one can neither break out of it nor make decisions for oneself, nor wish to sidestep the Law once it has been recognized and one’s part in it discovered. That would only be mental self-deception.
In this connection what is most difficult to attain is the surrender of the mind, because for some time, until a real new birth takes place on a different plane, this surrender seems to be a state of alarming torpor. To accept this state of passivity is always painful.
During all this period the subjective attachment of the disciple to the Guru exists in contract to the objective love of the Guru for his disciple. What the Master can transmit is neither an idea nor a form, but a means. The Kaushitaki Upanishad describes the traditional way in which the dying “father” passes on his power to his “son.”
It can be interpreted as the passing on of power from the Guru to his disciple: “Let me place within you my word, my breath, and my vision; what I perceive, what I taste, likewise my actions, pains and pleasures; the concepts to which I have been attached, and my search itself. In you I place my spirit and my consciousness. I gave you the breath of my life (prana). May power, sanctity and honors go with you…” The son or disciple answers, “May your words be fulfilled…Go in peace!”
In the life of the Buddha, this moment is the one when he set the wheel of the Law in motion within those around him, saying, “Go, and speak of the Law for the benefit of many. When the soil is well tilled, sow one seed of knowledge in it, nothing else, and go on further.”
Every Guru has only a very few key ideas at the root of his teaching. These ideas are the very ones that brought him to his realisation. No others. He will constantly bring his teaching back to the fruits of his personal effort, which keep his spiritual experience alive.
Some Masters try to express these ideas by a single key word, others dilute them with explicit formulations in order to pass them on to a larger number of disciples. So there are two methods, that of interiorisation and that of exteriorisation, which the orthodox Hindu recognises at once. Both of them are traditional. Both of them demand total sacrifice and cost dearly.
No Master transmits the totality of what he has received. As soon as he feels in accordance with the Laws known to him, he utilises them like chemical formulae, transmitting only fragments to those around him. On the other hand, no fragment of knowledge is ever transmitted before the disciple has perceived it or had a foretaste of it. In summary, the Master is nothing other than an indispensible intermediary between the Laws and those who are ready to discover them. Nor does he ever teach more than a tenth of what he knows. Likewise, air is only a tenth part of ether, and water only a tenth part of air, and so forth. It cannot be otherwise. The Master cannot allow his strength to be further utilised. This explains why there is such a rapid degradation between the level of the Guru and that of the third generation of his disciples. A well-known cosmic Law comes into play here.
What is important to the Master, after having consciously reached the zenith of his upward curve, it is to see the downward curve with equal consciousness and to choose the point from which he will teach. This point will keep constantly moving in response to his living search.
Every saint or Guru speaks according to a particular “principle” adopted and faithfully served in which lives a hidden Truth. The Guru is perfectly aware of this. This fragment of truth belonging to ultimate reality is the only thing of real value whereas the principle in itself, on the human level, merely helps to create the strict form of a discipline.
Certain sacred formulas (mantras) have been revealed and many commentaries written. Their form is known, even to the number of vibrations in each letter. But only the Guru knows their bijas, which are his potent semen or seed. He never reveals them. Were he to do so, he himself would become like an empty vessel. Whether the death of the Guru occurs after he has passed on his seed or after he has let it be reabsorbed in himself is of no importance, for the disciple who is a Master by nature will have found by himself the exact resonance of the bijas in his Guru’s mantra.
In the Tantras, the mantra has four forms:
1. It is given in a detailed form as in a hymn (stotra).
2. It is condensed into one formula (mala).
3. This formula is condensed into a single word (nama).
4. This word becomes only a pure sound (bija).
The mind must be led from the hymn to the bija, which is the seed, the pure vibration that gives birth to the psychic body of the disciple.
There are great Masters and small Masters. Both of them do exactly the same work, for great Masters are for great disciples and small Masters for small disciples. The relationship between Master and disciple is the same in both cases.
The disciples, because of their avidity and competitive spirit, are always anxious to discover the sources from which their Master has drawn his knowledge. Some of them ask questions, discuss and argue; others even demand proof.
And what do they find? Nothing worthwhile, for the Master transmits what has become his own substance. It is through this substance that the disciple will taste what he is able to assimilate of any given Law.
No matter what stage he has reached, a disciple must learn not to talk about what he has received. All experiences, spectacular and fleeting, are no more than the vision of the level he trying to reach. To believe in them and talk about them is a pure illusion of the ego. Because of this, a period of silence after each experience is a wise measure of protection
Sometimes, faced with a difficulty of understanding, the disciple blames this on his Guru and goes away; he is driven downward without being aware of it, caught by law of gravity. And so he becomes a parasite in the spiritual search fed by his ego.
Every great Guru, when the time comes, drives away, from himself and from those close to him, the disciple to whom over a long period he has given a great deal. He releases him from all bonds, blesses him and entrusts him with a special task to fulfill, for “ there cannot be two tigers in the same forest.”
The disciple who is called to leave is fundamentally different from the disciples who live under the direct inspiration of the Master. He takes away with him a seed to be sown where he goes. He leaves without anyone knowing it, after he has secretly received from the Master the “gift of power” which will be his support in life.
This is the origin of the tradition of wandering. The one who goes away changes his name. His trace is lost. No one asks about him. On the lower vital plane, the wildcat, when the right time comes, drives her kittens away from her. At the risk of their lives, they must find their own living space and hunting ground.
The disciple who leaves possesses nothing except the fact of his belonging to the Laws, for he has been fed by the Guru’s essence. Either he grows and develops with fresh vigour because of the very separation he has lived through and the difficulties that await him, or he will perish without anyone hearing about it. In the latter case, he becomes humus useful to prakriti, a humus with a definite function to fulfill, however humble.
On the other hand, most of a Master’s disciples remain close to him all their lives. They are a necessity for the Guru, just as the presence of the Guru is a necessity for them. These disciples have a precise role to fill. They are the fine matter, which the Master uses to manifest his work in Prakriti. Without them, the Master would be merely radiance, but through their presence these disciples establish the circle in which the Master’s vibrations create the ferment of possible evolution.
Until the disciple assumes his responsibilities, it is the Master’s stomach that works and digests for him. But the disciple continues to question his Master: “Who are you?” Krishnamurti answers by saying: “I have never read any sacred books……” the disciples of Ma Anandamayi cut things short with the words: “She has never received anything from anyone, since she already knew everything when she was born!” Also, one could answer with another question: “Who can tell what the Pathans, that proud people of the Northern Frontier, are made of?” They were originally Aryans who become Muslims after having been Buddhist; but above all, they are to this day the vigorous children of their own land.
Some of the disciples who left their ashram have acted like all the mystics who, at a given moment, called the crowds to them. Likewise, Sri Ramakrishna in his exaltation used to climb to the roof of the temple at Dakshineshvar near Calcutta and, weeping, would cry out, “Come to me from everywhere, disciples! So that I may teach you…I am ready!” others, like Sri Ramana Maharshi, through their silence and concentration have compelled those who approached them to ask themselves the question, “Who am I?”
Among “the independents” wandering about, there were those called Carvakas because they rebelled against all learned, expounded orthodoxies. Some have found fame without looking for it. Some have allowed followers to gather around them. Others have repeatedly fled from the slavery created by the excessive solicitude of their disciples. Still others have accepted this bondage with a definite aim known to them alone. Many of them have lived incognito in the midst of the world, hidden in the crowd and have died without leaving any apparent trace. Since the Carvakas have never been written about, it is only indirectly, through the reactions they aroused, that their name has circulated by word of mouth. The orthodox followers of every tradition have pursued and persecuted them, considering their freedom and influence too great.
Should one attempt to say what Carvakas are? It is written that Brihaspati, a Vedic sage, was their ancestor. Fragments of their teachings are scattered throughout the Katha Upanishad, the Mahabharata, and also the Buddhist texts, since in the time of the Buddha, their voice was listened to very attentively. But their enemies gave such distorted descriptions of their positivist, anti-ritualistic philosophy centered on the search for the “I” that later hid themselves with their well-guarded secret. They knew the paths leading to knowledge.
There is an enormous disparity between quality and quantity; quality hides within, whereas quantity spreads outward.
He who possesses the gift of captivating the imagination of the many and transforming it into creative imagination is a born Guru. When a lamp is used, its light loses none of its brilliance, but when one takes a pound of sugar out of a bag of provisions it leaves an empty space in the mass of material. When receiving the darshan of the Master, one touches the spirit itself, but as soon as one makes arrangements to stay close to him, the “downward curve” begins and the Law of gravity immobilises the spirit.
One cannot escape from this Law, nor from its process of materialization. Owing to its constantly moving densities, matter will always be either somewhat more or somewhat less receptive to spirit.
The Guru sees what is happening with intelligence that is not the intelligence of his disciples. He dwells at the centre of an esoteric circle, which, of course, carries its own limitations; but this circle is far above the circle in which the disciples move. In comparison with them, he is living in knowledge.
However the Guru is well aware that this knowledge is relative, and that he himself is a seeker in relation to knowledge existing in the circle above him. A guru who thinks he has reached the end of his search would be an imposter; a disciple who imagines him thus to satisfy himself would be a fantastic, cutting himself off from the Laws, from the ascending and descending movements that support life.
Why would you want the moment of knowledge to last? Even Brahma cannot keep what he creates for himself! Everything springs from him and immediately flows out. Millions of gods or of Laws at once take possession of it. We are a humble part of those who are trying to swim up stream. And what do we find? Close by we hear the repeated calls of Krishnamurti, who is becoming impatient, because, despite the shocks he produces, Great Nature does not transform itself. He halts people caught in the circumstances of life and cries, “Stop! Understand who you are! Understand what you are doing!”
Elsewhere, in the sphere she governs, the Mother of Sri Aurobindo’s ashram declares, “O Nature, material Mother, you said that you would collaborate in the transformation of man; and there is no limit to splendor of such collaboration.” The unfolding of time enters into play here, in the very play of Prakriti.
Ma Anandamayi was the first in history, faithful, moreover, to the Buddhist tradition still widespread in Bengal, to roam about Northern India, stopping to sleep and eat only in temple rest houses, completely cut off from the rhythm of life. For years she lived almost continually in ecstasy without any relationship with her surroundings. She returned gradually to the human state, at first unconsciously through a known process. Now she has voluntarily returned within the rhythm of Prakriti to transmit her experience to those around her and teach a way of possible expansion.
What tools will the Master use? The ones that suit him best. What difference is there between a bare room like the one in which we are speaking together now and a room filled with a hodgepodge like a bazaar? The Master utilises the means that are needed to bring his disciple to him. Some day perhaps, if such is his wish and need, he will take the very bones of his disciple, crush them, make a pie out of them and offer them to the gods. He can make use of the trust the disciple has placed in him, his submission, and even the essence of his being (bhuta), to the uttermost limits.
So what remains of the disciple, once his bones have been crushed? Nothing. For him it is death. There are deliberate deaths in which the blood flows, as in many temple sacrifices where the bodies of the decapitated goats keep on jumping and twitching until all life departs.
What is it that is freed by death? There is also the secret of dogs, those beasts branded by the curse of impurity, who hide under a bush to die with a dignity the sannyasins envy and hope to have at the moment of their own death. One of the hardest commandments in the initiation into sannyasa is: “When the day comes, know how to die like the dog, with dignity, unnoticed.”
Does the disciple know that by his death he is serving the “essence of the Guru?” Can ashes know what use they have? If he so desires, the Guru can swallow up his disciple. He can use the liberated energy, just as we do in eating the food we need. The interdependence of functions exists; it is right and normal. The Bhagavad Gita states clearly how few out of a million pass through the narrow gate. But the aspiration is there. How can we know what is above us, since we only control the relationship of the planes of consciousness that we have acquired? That is why death in the Guru’s essence” is the highest goal we can desire. We cannot lift our prakriti any higher. The best we can do is to unify, in all our reactions, the raw material of our nature with the movements of the spirit and to place these reactions in the heart- the heart that becomes the “seat of the Guru” (gaddi). This movement in itself is the voluntary death of the ego. It is only in this voluntary death that the Guru sees what is permanent in us: the fact of existing (sat). He can only give it form and animate it. In this he is like the Creator in Genesis, removing one of Adam’s ribs to free the divine Sakti who is ready to give birth. Without this shock coming from above, no transformation is possible.
Another transformation is to give birth in ourselves to Sakti’s child. This child will manifest a different prakriti than ours, different in quality. The child will call right away for a plaything. He must hold something in his hands to have the pleasure of throwing it on the ground, of picking it up, of giving it away, and taking it back, without any logic in his movements, just for the sake of moving around and discovering what life is. So always surround yourselves with plenty of toys, for yourselves and for others…..
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