Seeing Everyone as the Goddess: From Teaching to Learning, From Authority to Mutual Recognition

 

(from "The Goddess and the Guru"):

The last and perhaps the most fundamental reason for Guruji’s increasingly “un-guru-like” interactions with disciples and visitors was a profound evolution in the way he saw other people. Increasingly, he was experiencing everyone he met as embodiments of the Goddess, each one expressing some beautifully unique facet of her totality. As such it had become much less interesting to simply teach them what he knew—instead, he wanted to learn from them as well, to see the world as they saw it. “He began to see himself more as the student,” Jana said. “He began to balance teaching with learning.”

This dynamic was strikingly apparent whenever Guruji met visitors at Devipuram: his intent focus on their words; his thoughtful and pertinent questions about their lives, projects, interests, talents and expertise; his habit of introducing them to others who might share complementary interests. In short, though he clearly remained the man whom everyone had come to see, he seemed genuinely unable (or unwilling) to consider himself “the most fascinating guy in the room”—quite the contrary, it was everyone else who fascinated him.

In a sense, he was always seeking connections, searching for people who shared an interest in the questions that consumed him.

“Guruji sometimes spoke of being a ‘lonely traveler,’” Ahalya said. “He would say he still had so many questions yet to be answered; for example, what happens in the absence of time? How can one look at the world in four dimensions? How and to exactly what extent are we limited by our senses? Can we train our consciousness to travel backward in time—or is that attempting to separate time from space, subject from object, or Shakti from Shiva, in a way that is fundamentally impossible?”

More worldly matters engaged him just as thoroughly.

“Guruji was always wanting and willing to learn from all,” said Sundhara. “For example, during the period from 1999 to 2006, I remember Guruji putting a lot of effort into studying the fundamentals of Reiki.” To the end, whenever someone with knowledge of Reiki arrived at Devipuram, Guruji would frequently spend hours with them, comparing notes, asking questions and further refining his own understanding and practical skills. He also invested a great deal of time mapping the correspondences between Reiki’s understanding of energy flow and the chakra system of Kundalini Yoga.

In all cases, Sri Vidya remained his baseline—the filter through which he tried to assimilate wisdom and teachings from other sources, whether they were major religions or self-help advice books. Every person, every piece of knowledge presented an opportunity to peer more deeply into the Goddess’s infinite kaleidoscope of manifestation.

“Guruji does not operate from the principle, ‘I am up here, you are down there,’” Alok explained. “When you talked to him, he would often ask you as many questions as you asked him. He might request your guidance on as many things as you wanted his guidance for. Why? Because he always believed that there was something precious you had to offer. He had an intrinsic faith that everyone had something to contribute. He always searched for their strengths and then worked with them.”

Alok continued: “For example, Aiya’s focus and strength is in ritual, so that is what Guruji brought forth in Lusaka. By contrast, when Sudhir Mylavarapu, a former British Council administrator, came to Devipuram, he was not much interested in ritual but fascinated by dome technology—and Guruji engaged his interest and competence accordingly. When he observed that the local women workers from the villages had natural bhakti and an interest in learning, he focused on that. When Guruji got involved in developing village schools, it was because those were the needs in the area where he was physically located. Guru never had his own agenda. He was a medium, a catalyst who brought forth what was needed in any particular situation.”

Sometimes that could lead to concentrated activity, sometimes to intense intellectual engagements—and sometimes to silence.

“When I sat with Guruji, it was often in silence,” said Megha, the Toronto writer. “His gaze and presence alone engaged me—you’d look at him, he’d look at you and you’d know that some exchange had happened. Maybe you didn’t really understand what it was, but you were very comfortable with it. You never felt threatened; you knew it was nothing wrong.”

Haran Aiya confirmed it was often at such moments that Guruji’s efforts were at their most powerful.

“That’s when things really got done,” he said. “He was like Dakshinamurthi: even if he was silent when you were sitting next to him, volumes were being revealed to you.”

Asked how he managed to deal with so many different sorts of visitors and disciples—the ritualists, the intellectuals, the devotionalists, the skeptics—at so many different levels of spiritual development and understanding, Guruji replied that he made no real distinction at all. “They’re all equally valuable,” he said. “All that I experience is me. They are all the Goddess. There are no levels. I find it very hard to believe that any one is better than any other.”

When Saru was younger, Guruji sometimes used to tell her she was “like a fourth daughter to him.” This, she emphasized, denoted no special status—it was, rather, a typical expression of affection that Guruji shared with many disciples over the years. “That was the whole point,” Saru said. “We were all his fourth daughter.”