Everyone will ultimately arrive
At God’s Heart-Palace,
But those who aspire
Will definitely arrive
Infinitely sooner.
– Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 26, Agni Press, 2002
A real spiritual Master is one who has attained God-realisation. Everyone is one with God, but the real spiritual Master has established his conscious oneness with God. At any moment he can enter into a higher consciousness and bring down messages from God to those disciples who have faith in him. The Master, if he is genuine, represents God on earth for those seekers who have real aspiration and faith in him. He has been authorised or commissioned by God to help them. The real Teacher, the real Guru, is God Himself. But on earth He will often operate in and through a spiritual Master. The Master energises the seeker with inspiration and, in the course of time, through the infinite Grace of the Supreme, offers the seeker illumination. 1
When a Master accepts someone as a disciple, he accepts that person as part of himself. If the disciple is imperfect, then the Master also remains imperfect. In the disciple's perfection lies the Master's perfection. I always say that I have no individuality, no personality. It is my disciples' achievements that will take me either to Heaven or to hell. I have the capacity to remain all the time in Heaven, but they can easily drag me to hell at every moment because I have accepted them as my own.
A real spiritual Master tries to bring to the fore the inner divinity of the disciple from deep within the disciple's heart. He knocks at the disciple's heart-door and awakens the divine child in him, which we call the soul. He tells the soul, "You will look after the other members of the family — the physical, the mind and the vital — and take care of them. They are making mistakes constantly. Now give them new life, new meaning, new purpose."
It is the spiritual Master's job to make his disciples feel that without love, without truth and light, life is meaningless and fruitless. The most important thing a spiritual Master does for his spiritual children is to make them consciously aware of something vast and infinite within themselves, which is nothing other than God Himself. 2
He who inspires you
Is your real teacher.He who loves you
Is your real teacher.He who forces you
Is your real teacher.He who perfects you
Is your real teacher.He who treasures you
Is your real teacher.Sri Chinmoy 3
How can an aspirant know if a Master professing to be realised is actually realised? A God-realised spiritual Master is not someone with wings and a halo to identify him. He is normal, except that in his inner life he has abundant Peace, Light and Bliss. So if you come to a spiritual Master expecting something other than boundless Peace, Light, Bliss and Power, then you will be disappointed. But again, you must know if you are fit to judge. If I know nothing about medical science, how am I going to judge a great doctor? Only another doctor will know how to judge him properly.
In the spiritual life, a real seeker who has sincere aspiration and dedication has already achieved a little bit of inner Light. Because of his aspiration, God has endowed him with an iota of Light, and with that Light he is bound to see and feel something in a true spiritual Master. If one is really advanced in the spiritual life and is making fast progress in his inner journey, then his aspiration will be the best judge as to whether a spiritual Master is genuine or not. The best judge is one's sincere aspiration. 4
Related pages
Sri Chinmoy, The Master and the disciple, Agni Press, 1985.↩︎
Sri Chinmoy, The Master and the disciple, Agni Press, 1985.↩︎
Sri Chinmoy, The Dance of Life, part 19, Agni Press, 1973.↩︎
Sri Chinmoy, The Master and the disciple, Agni Press, 1985.↩︎