A young
boy had been observing for quite some time a medicine man who claimed to cure
snakebites. He was greatly influenced by
the medicine man’s fame and wealth. So
the boy went to him and requested that he be told about the secret of snakebite
cure. The Guru (medicine man) told him
to become his disciple and observe how he cures the patients. Many years passed and the young boy grew to
be a man. Yet he felt that the guru
never taught him the real secret of curing snakebites and most of his time was
therefore spent in doing menial chores and seva of the guru. Finally when the guru was about to die he
called his disciple and said, “Since my time is up I will now tell you the
secret of snakebite cure. Remember that
90% of snakes are non-poisonous and the patients bitten by 10% of poisonous
snakes came too late”. The disciple was aghast and devastated and told his guru
that this simple information could have been told to him years ago in the
beginning. The guru replied “But who
would have taken care of me for so many years and now you should also find a
similar disciple for yourself!”
Most so-called
self-professed gurus are teachers not in the real sense but are mostly
interested in self-aggrandizement and acquiring wealth. There are large numbers of such people in our
midst.
Disciples go with
tremendous faith to such gurus for getting solace and answers but most of them
prey upon disciple's insecurities. The
higher the stakes are, the higher is the insecurity and thus one sees mostly
politicians and financial gamblers frequenting such gurus. These gurus generally prescribe the disciples
to wear rings, talismans, holy necklaces etc. Wearing them creates even more
insecurities because if by chance a ring or a necklace is lost then the wearer
thinks that some calamity will befall him/her.
A real guru is the one
who will remove the fear from the mind of the disciple. Fear is the greatest obstacle to happiness
and one of the major attributes of deep faith is removal of fear, which a real
guru can provide. Most of the charlatans or so-called gurus in fact create more
fear and insecurities since they derive benefit from feeding on these
insecurities. A faith in a person, which creates fear and brings harm to
oneself is not a proper faith and should be changed.
A real guru takes upon
himself/herself the pain, hurdles of a disciple, and tries to show and lead
him/her on to the correct path. This is
very different from so-called gurus who just point in the general direction
which is akin to directions given by passerby. A truly great guru is a rare
commodity and extremely difficult to find and one is very lucky to come across
such enlightened souls.
If one does not come
across a genuine guru then the next best thing to do is to think about all the
great attributes of such a guru and assume that he/she resides in our heart and
is helping us to reach our destination.
This will provide a great faith in oneself for carrying forward one’s
task. Besides building the faith, the advantage of such imaginary guru is that
there is no other commitment and strings attached. The famous example of Eklavya from Mahabharat
comes to mind. He put the statue of Dronacharya in his compound (Dronacharya
refused to teach Eklavya as he was a shudra and not a Brahman) and practiced
his archery thinking that Dronacharya himself is teaching him and in the
process became an extremely accomplished archer.
Similarly,
Sri Ramakrishna used to say that a luminous being used to come out of his body
and teach him all the scriptures and Yoga before his physical gurus came.
Ramkrishna being a highly evolved person had these fantastic and vivid visions.
Imaginary
guru provides a great anchor to one’s life and produces similar results as
those from deep faith. Adopting such a
guru also allows us to package mentally most of our worries and problems to be
handed over to him/her. Mind has a powerful imagination mechanism and this
process has been known to produce great faith and achievements in people.
©Anil K
Rajvanshi. 2004