Gurus

 The Search for Shri Krishna,   has since been translated into several languages, including Spanish, German, French, Hungarian, and Russian and is still in print today. The Search for Sri Krishna epub edition. 

The next book we  published at  Guardian of Devotion Press was called 

Sri Guru and His Grace

Sri Guru and His Grace epub edition.

Sri Guru and His Grace explores the idea of Guru. What is a real Guru? What is the relative and absolute position of Guru? How to avoid being cheated?

As a kid growing up in the 60s I was exposed to different gurus.

My first guru was this man, Father Thaddeus Yang.

My first guru was a Benedictine monk, Father Yang. He was the 2nd in command at Valyermo, an Abbey in the Mohave Desert.  Valyermo was founded in China in 1929 by the Abbey of Sint Andries Zevenkerken in Brugge, Belgium. The monks prayed, taught, and worked in China until they were expelled by the communists in 1952. In 1955 the community relocated at Valyermo in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. Since that time the monks have sought to live out St. Benedict's precept to "prefer nothing to the love of Christ" in the High Desert of Southern California. 

http://www.valyermo.com/

Father Yang with Chinese Calligraphy in background.

Father Yang was a kindly man took shelter of the Benedictine friars during the invasion of Nanking, which was  ravaged and burned by the Japanese during the Second World War.  His deep oriental insight tempered his interpretations of the Christian tradition for me, when I was a child. He had a great sense of humor and dedicated himself to wood sculptures. He could be found in the desert, burning huge pieces of driftwood with a blow-torch, a camel cigarette hanging from his mouth. I asked him, "How could the whole human race have descended from Adam and Eve?" To which he responded, "It never says there is only one Adam and one Eve." I found great peace there in the desert in the winter of 1965. It was my first experience with monastic life. Father Yang was a compassionate man who helped my family when we were going through some tough times.

In the 1960s there were a lot of gurus. Television had just been invented. After the second world war, the atom bomb and the space race had changed the old paradigms. The Beatles blew everyone's minds. I wasn't happy in the Catholic Church and felt I could go deeper.

Timothy Leary told everyone to "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out."Timothy Leary Speaks 

Another famous guru was Alan Watts.  I listened to his lectures at UCLA. 

Alan Watts

Alan Watts was a Christian Theologian who had taken up Zen Buddhism. He made a big sensation with his lectures. He was a deep, erudite and thoughtful man, who kept people spell-bound with his talks. Later syndicated by Pacifica Radio, his voice was a fascinating alternative to the establishment way of thinking. Alan Watts Speaks 

While outlandish and flamboyant, both Leary and Watts were still quite within the mainstream. Leary was a Doctor of Psychology at Harvard University, and Watts was an episcopal priest for 6 years before leaving the church. Alan Watts website

While these men were groundbreaking in promoting new ways of viewing reality, their points of view were distorted. Leary's  by wide use of marijuana, mescaline, LSD, Watts was a notorious alcoholic who also experimented with mescaline and LSD. Their ideas remain controversial. Leary was interested in using chemistry to open the doors of perception. Watts took his ideas further with the hope of uniting psychedelic drug use with Eastern Philosophy. Still, after all they were mainstream white men raging against the establishment machine. People wanted to go to original sources.

The Beatles were the ones who really put Gurus on the map back in the 1960s, by introducing this man, the  Maharishi. In the end, the Beatles rejected his teachings when the Maharishi tried to seduce Mia Farrow, a Hollywood actress married to Frank Sinatra.

Maharishi with Mia Farrow

They wrote the song, "Fool on the Hill" especially for the Maharishi.

In the 70s, The Maharishi wold be succeeded by a number of so-called gurus from the East:

 There was Baba Muktananda, of "Siddha-ayoga." http://www.leavingsiddhayoga.net/secret.htm,  I was approached by friends to attend his lectures in Los Angeles, but a "weekend intensive" yoga session cost 800 $ dollars at the time. That was a lot of money back then. I felt that Baba Muktananda's Siddha-Yoga was rich man's yoga. Maybe it worked for Hollywood. 

Amid all these so-called gurus was one who stood apart from the rest: A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami. 

Bhaktivedanta Swami (Prabhupada) in Thompkins Square Park, 1965

He didn't ask for money. All he wanted was that you read his books and understood the ancient philosophy of India from the Upanishads. His message was straight-forward. No drugs, no intoxication, no meat-eating. Clean yourself up. You can find inner truth. Use the mantra as a path to self-discovery. My mother had gone to Transcendental Meditation. She paid 35$ to be initiated as a disciple of the Maharishi and receive her official meditation mantra. At the time, I thought that was cheating. I liked the idea that spiritual truth should be free. 

I read the Bhagavad-gita and felt inspired. Later I would join his disciples in Los Angeles. We worked hard to promote his books. He lived humbly, taught tirelessly. He spent his time translating the Sanskrit Bhagavat Purana, writing thousands of letters to his followers around the world, and promoting the construction of temples in India to glorify Krishna.

He was a man of the utmost integrity. Unlike the false gurus who promoted drugs and sex openly or secretly, he was dedicated to his mission.

Unfortunately, his passing left a void, a vacuum. Those who tried to fill the void lacked his realization, his charm, his integrity, and his dedication. We went to Shridhar Maharaja for guidance.

How to recognize a real guru?

 Here's an excerpt from the Introduction to this powerful book by Bhakti Rakshak Shridhar Dev Goswami. His message is as timeless today as when it was first spoken:

To err is human. To err is inevitable for all, being not perfect. Still, no one wants to remain imperfect. There is an element within all that is animate that tends towards perfection. If it were not so, we would feel no want at all. Our tendency towards perfection is certainly very weak and limited; otherwise we could attain the goal at once. Our limited capacity and tendency for perfection makes room for the guide or guru. 

The imperfect is not so if it is not in need of help, and that also from beyond itself. The perfect is not perfect if  He cannot assert Himself or help others, and that too, of His own accord. So the guidance to perfection or Absolute Truth is necessarily a function of the absolute Himself, and the divine agent through whom this function manifests is Sri Guru or the divine guide. For a seeker of the Absolute Truth, submission to the guru is unavoidable. 

A class of thinkers believes, however, that when scientific research is possible, why cannot higher spiritual knowledge also be evolved from within? Such people are ignorant of the most essential nature of absolute Knowledge, that He alone is the Absolute Subject and all else including ourselves constitutionally stand only as an object to His omniscient vision. It is impossible for the eye to see the mind; it can have some connection with the mind only when the latter cares to mind it. In a similar way, our connection with absolute knowledge depends mainly on His sweet will. We must solely depend on His agent, or the spiritual master, through whom He likes to distribute Himself. 

Our human society with its finest culture forms but an infinitesimal part of the dynamic absolute. How, except by the direct and positive method of revelation, dare we hope to comprehend or evolve any conception of the supernatural knowledge of the unconditioned infinite? All intellectual giants prove themselves but pygmies before the absolute omniscient omnipotence who reserves the right to give Himself away through His own agents alone. 

To our best knowledge and sincerity, however, we should see not to submit to a false agent. Here of course, we can't help ourselves very much; because in our present state we are mainly guided by our previous samskara or acquired nature. "Birds of the same feather flock together." Yet, although we are generally overpowered by habit, there is still the possibility of free choice to a certain extent, specially in the human species, otherwise correction becomes impossible, and punishment mere vengeance. Reality can assert itself. Light does not require darkness for its positive proof. 

The sun by itself can establish its supremacy over all other lights. Before an open and unbiased eye, the sad guru (real guide) shines above all professors of phenomenon. Sri Guru manifests himself mainly in a twofold way - as the director from within and the preceptor from without. Both functions of the absolute help an individual soul - a disciple - to reach the absolute goal. In our fallen state we cannot catch the proper direction of the inner guide, so the merciful manifestation of the preceptor without is our sole help and hope. But at the same time it is only by the grace of the guru within that we can recognize the real preceptor without and submit to his holy feet.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/237aigqkahyan2l/Sri_Guru_and_His_Grace.epub?dl=0