Gurus we do not need=

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A young boy had been observing for quite some time a medicine man who claimed= to cure snakebites. He was great= ly influenced by the medicine man’s fame and wealth. So the boy went to him and request= ed 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 bo= y 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 sa= id, “Since my time is up I will now tell you the secret of snakebite cure. Remember that 90% of sn= akes are non-poisonous and the patients bitten by 10% of poisonous snakes came t= oo 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.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> The guru replied “But who wo= uld have taken care of me for so many years and now you should also find a simi= lar 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 pe= ople in our midst. With problems increasing on financial and other fronts their numbers will increase.<= /o:p>

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Disciples go with tremendous faith to such gurus for getting solace and answers but most of t= hem prey upon disciple's insecurities. The higher the stakes, 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 th= en the wearer thinks that some calamity will befall him.

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 feedi= ng on these insecurities. A faith in a person, which creates fear and brings h= arm 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 gr= eat guru is a rare commodity and extremely difficult to find and one is very lu= cky to come across such enlightened souls.

If one does not co= me 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.&nb= sp; This will provide a great faith in oneself for carrying forward one’s task. Besides building the faith, the advantage of such imagina= ry guru is that there is no other commitment and strings attached. The famous example of Eklavya from= Mahabharata 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 pr= ocess became an extremely accomplished archer.

Similarly Sri Ramakrishna used to say that a luminous being used to come out of his b= ody and teach him all the scriptures and Yoga before his physical gurus came. R= amakrishna being a highly evolved person had these fantastic and vivid visions.

Imaginary guru provides a great anchor to one’s life and produces similar resul= ts as those from deep faith. Ado= pting such a guru also allows us to package mentally most of our worries and prob= lems 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 peop= le.

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