It is wrong to even slightly insult the Guru, even inadvertently, as it conduces to great spiritual harm. The disciple's holiest duty is to ever honour the spiritual preceptor as God, failing which spiritual realisation is an impossibility. Egotism surreptitiously creeps in, making the aspirant stray from the preferred path, and when the spiritual master admonishes and attempts to bring the errant disciple back to the path, the latter adversely reacts, if even in a subtle but unseemly way. This ought not to be. The submission to the Guru must be total and never fractional once initiation has been. Else, this roguish ego will ruin it all and render life sterile.
The path of the Spirit is slippery, narrow and steep. The pitfalls are precipitous. Absolute adherence to the teacher's instructions, total spiritual subservience in profound humility and reverence, and the ever-increasing thirst to please him through observance of the cardinal codes of conduct save the disciple from spiritual ruin. A moment's inadvertence can cost a steep fall. Deliberate denial of the preceptor's bidding and frequent transgression of the line of reverential reference in interaction are certainly damaging to the disciple's discipline in spiritual ascent. The latter must, therefore, ever be circumspect and alert to the slightest aberration in his or her behaviour when addressing the Guru or interacting with him. After all, reverence is the foundation of spirituality.
The preceptor, on his part, is ever forgiving, even if stern for the hour to rectify the erring pupil and set him up on the royal avenue of Godhead. His is an ocean of mercy that knows no bounds. It is a free giving, a showering of grace, causeless, divine. This relation has to be built up, this line of communication opened whereby luminous thought transference is possible from the Self of the Guru to the self of the disciple that will raise the latter to the former's spiritual altitude. Then loving sameness shall be, then illumination will spontaneously be even as the rising sun of knowledge spreads its lustre and brightens it all at the dawn of spiritual awakening.
May the divine Guru bless his disciples !
Written by Sugata Bose
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