Spiritual Master

Generally, Buddhists do not consider Gautama Buddha-who lived from about 623 BC to 543 BC and attained enlightenment around 588 BC--to have been the first or the last Buddha.

Guru Nanak

Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji (20 October1469 – 7 May1539), the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Gurus of the Sikhs, was born in the village of Talwandi,

Jesus Christ

The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus, the Christ of the Piscean Age transcribed by Levi H. Dowling. The Greatest Book Ever Written. The Greatest Story Ever Told

Lahiri Mahasaya

Lahiri Mahasaya (1828 – 1898) was one of India’s foremost Spiritual Masters. His original family name was Shyama Lahiri. Mahasaya is an honorary Sanskrit prefix meaning “magnanimous one”.

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

It is said that Mahesh Prasad Varma was born on Friday, January 12. 1917 into a comfortably well-off family, the third of four children. He is of the Kshetriya (warrior or 'protector') caste, with his father believed to have been a minor official in the Department of Forestry.

Mahavir

Mahavir was born on the thirteenth day under the rising moon of Chaitra, in the ancient republic of Vaishali, now a district of Bihar state, India. According to the Gregorian calendar...

Meher Baba

The events of Meher Baba's life are well documented. Typically he lived and travelled in company with the circle of his closest disciples ('mandali'), both men and women, from whom he demanded absolute obedience.

Paramahansa Yogananda

Paramahansa Yogananda is one of the greatest spiritual figures of the twentieth century, and also was one of the first Spiritual Masters to bring the Yoga of the East to the aspiring West.

Ramana Maharshi

Ramana Maharshi was born in a village called Tirucculi near Madurai in southern India. He was given the name Venkataraman.

Sri Anandamayi Ma

Born in 1896 in Kheora, a small village in Bengal, now Bangladesh, Nirmala Sundari Devi was realized from birth. Though from outer appearances she had a normal childhood, even from this early age, she saw only with a divine vision.

Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo was born on the 15th August 1872, in Calcutta. As a child of 7 years he was sent to England for his education where he studied at St. Paul's in London and at King's College, Cambridge.

Swami Vivekananda

In 1897 Swami Vivekananda arrived in America as an anonymous and penniless sannyasin (wandering monk). He had travelled to America as a representative of Hinduism and the ancient Indian tradition of Vedanta.

Sri Chaitanya

Pundit Jagannath Misra, alias Purandar Misra, a pious Brahmin of the Vaidik sub-caste, had migrated from Sylhet and settled at Nadia or Nabadwip,

Sri Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy was born on August 27, 1931 as Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in the village of Shakpura, Chittagong, in East Bengal (now Bangladesh).

Sri Krishna

Lord Krishna is the matchless hero who held the fate of the emperors in the palm of his hand but himself never desired a throne. The great hero who was born in a prison and died in solitude in a forest. He gave the world the Bhagavad- Gita

Sri Rama

The Ramayana: A "Telling" of the Ancient Indian Epic

Sri Ramakrishna

Sri Ramakrishna, the God-man of modern India, was born at Kamarpukur. This village in the Hooghly District preserved during the last century the idyllic simplicity of the rural areas of Bengal.

Sri Sathya Saibaba

Sathya Sai Baba (his real name is Sathya Narayana Raju) was born in the remote village of Puttaparthi, in south-central India, on November 23, 1926.

Sri Yukteshwar

Sri Yukteswar (1855 – 1936) was a Spiritual Master from India, who was originally named Priya Nath Karar. Sri Yukteswar took his monastic name when he became a Swami of the Giri order.

Swami Sivananda

Swami Sivananda, one of the greatest Yoga masters of the 20th century, is the inspiration behind the Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centers.

A spiritual Master comes to you with a boat. He says "Come! if you want to go to the Golden Shore, I will take you. Moreover, once you get into my boat, you can sing in the boat, you can dance, you can even sleep; but I will bring you safely to the Goal.”

For millennia we have been swimming in the sea of ignorance. When we become awakened, we want to swim across that sea into the ocean of Light and Delight. If we know that there is a boatman, and that there is a boat which can safely carry us to our goal, then naturally we will try to get help from him. A genuine spiritual Master knows the way and is bound to help us reach the goal. Like a boatman, he will carry us to the other shore.

If anybody helps you in the outer world—a lawyer or a doctor, for example—he will charge you something. But when the Guru takes you to your goal, he will not take anything for himself. You don’t have to give even an iota of your wealth to the Guru because he has his own infinite wealth. Eventually you will see that it is all the same wealth. His goal, your goal, everybody’s goal is the same: Infinite Peace, Light and Bliss. The spiritual Master says, “You are hungry. I have an infinite supply of the divine food that you want, so I don’t have to take any of yours.”

In human life, if people see that someone has taken help, then they may say, “Oh, he could not do it alone.” But a person who is really hungry for God will say, “No matter who offers the food, I am hungry and I want to eat immediately. This is the food that I have been crying for all my life and he is supplying me with it. As long as he is feeding true Divinity to me, let me eat.”

If you feel that by accepting a Master you are avoiding your own responsibilities, you are making a mistake. For at that time you are separating yourself from your Master. Those who are my very devoted disciples do not feel that they are strangers. They feel their oneness with me. They feel that I have more capacity than they do, so they identify their little capacity with my greater capacity. When they enter into my capacity, they feel that it is their own capacity that they are entering into, for inside me they see all love and concern.

It is only by feeling your oneness with your Master that you can make real progress. If you feel that you are a stranger or an intruder in your Master’s heart, or even if you think that you are just a guest, then you will never succeed in your spiritual life. How long can you stay at your friend’s place as a guest? A few days or a month, and then you will have to go away. Even if you feel that you are coming as a friend, still you may go away. But if you feel that his house is your house, then you are safe, eternally safe.

A real spiritual Master is he who has inseparable oneness with the Highest. On the strength of this oneness, he can easily enter into the seeker, see his development and aspiration, and know everything about his inner and outer life. When the Master meditates in front of his disciples, he brings down Peace, Light and Bliss from Above and these enter into them. Then automatically they learn how to meditate from within. All real spiritual Masters teach meditation in silence. A genuine Master does not have to explain outwardly how to meditate or give you a specific form of meditation. He can simply meditate on you and his silent gaze will teach you how to meditate. Your soul will enter into his soul and bring the message, the knowledge of how to meditate, from his soul.

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.

If you have an inner connection with a genuine Master, it most likely has existed for many incarnations. So the moment you see that Master, you will get boundless, overwhelmig joy. Your whole being will be surcharged with inner joy and delight. You will feel that your life has at last found its source in the Master. The spiritual Master who gives you immediate joy, spontaneous joy, boundless joy, is your Master.

There is no seeker on earth who will remain without a Master if he or she is desperately in need of one. If his aspiration is intense, if his inner cry is constantly mounting, how can God remain asleep? It is God who has kindled the flame of aspiration in that particular seeker, and it is God who will bring a Master to him or place him at the feet of a genuine spiritual Master.