A Jaya Kula student from the U.S. asked:

How can devotion to a teacher help bring about Self-realization?

Devotion and humble service are like kneading a lump of heavy, cold dough until it becomes soft, pliable and warm. Inquiry, asking questions and freely using your mind and your senses to explore and discover your real condition, is like the yeast allowing the softened dough to rise above dogma and fixation. Guru is the heat that cooks the bread.

We all know that without kneading and yeast, no amount of heat will make a loaf of bread cook properly. A lump will remain a lump. So, when we are not softened by a feeling of devotion and relieved of our dogma by a spirit of free inquiry, we cannot fully receive transmission from Guru or from Reality at large. Our senses are too gross to receive more subtle communications.

Simultaneously, the Guru provides the shock of Self recognition, transmission of the natural state of awareness and continually challenges us to let go of our limitations. This chemistry of cooking between student and teacher is the mechanism that our own enlightened Self has given to us. We become more aware of our grossness, and our senses become more subtle just by being around Guru and doing our sadhana with that person’s guidance.

Guru and disciple is one natural technology, a perfectly natural “recipe.” But even in the company of Guru, we still must learn through our own senses, the mind being also a sense. No teacher can make us become more aware if we are not doing some “kneading and rising.” Gurus lead us to our Self, but they cannot save us from our selves.

As our senses become less clogged, we receive more and more understanding directly from our teacher, and from the world at large. Eventually, perhaps after many lifetimes, we are in no need of one teacher because our senses are more fully alive. We discover that all knowledge is knowledge of our own Self, given by Self to Self in the magnificent play of life.

In Ma’s love,
Shambhavi

Posted by Shambhavi on July 16th, 2009 | Explore More! Tags: Guru yoga, teachers and students, transmission