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The Guru and the Disciple
Questioner: It is said:
“Guru Govind dono khadey, kisko laagoo paaya?
“Guru and God both stand here, whom do I bow to?
Balihari Guru aapki, Govind deeyo bataayi.”
The greatness is Yours my Guru, who showed me the Lord.”
~Saint Kabir
Dadashri: Yes, but who will you call a gurudev? A real
gurudev is the one who shows you God; this is what they are
saying. Nowadays the gurus recite these lines to establish their
status as a guru. But should you not ask them, “Sahib, I will call
you ‘gurudev’ when you show me God, just as it is written. Then
I will establish you as my guru. You yourself are still searching for
the Lord and so am I, so how can we both attain God?”
Otherwise, all the gurus today point to this very thing. Even
if they have not shown you God, they will make you sing about it.
Doing it this way, at least the gurus get some prasad (offering of
food)! All other ‘shops’ benefit from these words too, do they
not?
Questioner: But here, on this scale, the importance of the
guru is greater than God.
Dadashri: It is greater, but there have not been such gurus.
Actually, the “probationers” (trainee gurus) have benefited from
this. These raw gurus believe, ‘Now I am a guru, I showed you
God, so you should worship me.’ But of what use are these
probationers? God is one in whom the ego is gone. If there is any
state that is worthy of greater worship, it is of the one whose ego
is gone, the one whose ‘I-ness’ (potapanu) is gone. Where the
‘I-ness is gone,’ everything is gone.
These ones who recite, ‘guru Brahma, guru Vishnu and
guru devo Maheshvara’ are not gurus. They exploit others in the
names of Brahma and Vishnu. People worship them because of
this mantra. This discussion is about a satguru. Satguru means