Discipline Behind Compassion: Guruji’s Inner Rigour and Outer Freedom

Guruji with Meru model atop his head for the Sagara Giri Durga procession, October 17, 1982.

 (from "The Goddess and the Guru"):

But while compassion, openness and nonjudgment have loomed large in Guruji’s teachings from the beginning, he rarely allowed himself similar latitude or leniency in his personal spiritual practice.

“Partially because of his background, Guruji did operate in a mode of exceptional freedom,” explained longtime disciple Alok Baveja, a professor of business management at Rutgers University. “He flourished under freedom and, by his nature, he wanted his disciples to enjoy the same level of freedom. But in his personal sadhana, he was always extremely disciplined. Not expecting others to do disciplined sadhana doesn’t mean that he himself was not disciplined.”

Especially in those early years, few would have made the mistake of assuming so.

Guruji in the 1980s was a formidable, even slightly intimidating figure with a powerful, focused gaze that hinted at an intensity, passion and force of will that he rarely displayed in later years. By the early 2000s, Guruji was projecting a much warmer, more grandfatherly personality, becoming almost disarmingly casual and approachable. It became common to hear visitors and disciples refer to him in fond diminutives involving terms such as “cute,” “sweet” and even “like an Indian Santa Claus.”

“When you looked at Guruji in the last 10 years of his life, he just seemed like this nice old guy, in the usual, next-door-neighbor sort of a way,” said Megha Chatterjee, a New Delhi journalist based in Toronto. “You really had to keep reminding yourself, ‘Wait a minute, he was this important nuclear scientist! He’s a guru; thousands of people come and fall at his feet!’”

And this was, in many ways, exactly how Guruji liked it—this sort of humble accessibility helped defuse people’s self-consciousness and self-doubts, removing some of the primary barriers to spiritual practice. But at the same time, it could also lead them to underestimate the depth and breadth of his accomplishment.

“He does seem very unassuming nowadays,” said Balasingam Janahan, or “Jana,” a business executive based in Irvine, CA, and a seasoned Vedic priest for the area’s Hindu community. “He basically dismisses a lot of his own spiritual achievements and downplays a lot of the abilities that he used to share with us. But back then, you immediately knew there was something very unusual about him. He wasn’t so famous yet, but he had an extremely charismatic, even magnetic personality. His eyes had an almost hypnotic intensity.”

This “stricter” version of Guruji emerged most strongly when he worked with disciples displaying high aptitude, or promise as teachers themselves.

“Let me tell you unequivocally, Guruji in those days was not the way he is now,” Jana said. “You almost wouldn’t recognize him as the same Guruji that I first met in the 1980s.”

Haran Aiya, however, argued that—despite appearances to the contrary—Guruji remained essentially the same.

“He really never changed,” Aiya said. “It may sometimes have appeared on the surface that he was stricter in the beginning and gradually became more permissive and open with the passage of time—but in truth, he didn’t change. He simply measured what should be given to different people in different times and circumstances. Remember, ‘Sri Matre Namah’—‘the one who measures’—is the first name in the Lalita Sahasranama.”

Jana conceded that, even in the early days, Guruji modulated his approach to suit the capacity of his audience.

“Yes, he always kind of knew the level of people he was dealing with,” he said. “In later times, he left it to individual students to make their own choices about sadhana once they were initiated. But back then, he would tell you his orders exactly. He would give precise directions on how you must do this and do that, detailed to the minutest point.”

Jana was still a teenager when Guruji taught him his first puja, the Mahanyasam.

“He was a very strict teacher, with a very intense manner,” he said. “He actually got short with me at a couple of points, to the extent that I felt kind of bad; I thought I was upsetting him.”

When Guruji noticed his student’s distress, however, he explained, “No Jana, I am not angry at all. The reason I am hard on you is because I know you can do better, and I want you to get this exactly right.”

“In those days,” Jana added, “once you were initiated as Guruji’s disciple—particularly if he saw you as someone who could pass along his teachings—he would always check to make sure you were chanting the mantra, the number of times you were chanting it, the placement of your concentration—he would nurture you along every step of the way. And he would follow up frequently, asking questions about how your sadhana was progressing. Even when he was away, he would keep in touch by letters or ask you to call once in a while and bring him up to date on your sadhana.”

Even novices sometimes enjoyed a high level of one-on-one attention.

“During Guruji’s first visit to Toronto, I explained that I didn’t know Sanskrit,” recalled Sundhara Arasaratnam, a retired management consultant in Newmarket, Ontario. “I was worried I wasn’t pronouncing the mantras correctly. Instead of pointing me to ‘teach-yourself’ books, he sat down beside me and patiently taught me the basic Sanskrit letters—the vowels and the sets of consonants. Then he made a beautiful drawing that showed the locations of the chakras in our body, and how the Sanskrit letters map onto each of those chakras.”