The Greatest One of All - Sadhguru’s Encounter with His Guru

There have been many absolutely fabulous Gurus. Each one of them functioned in different ways. Their ways were so different that every time a Guru came, people compared him to the one that had been there before and they said, “No, this is not how a Guru should be. He must be like that…” They had said the same thing about the Guru who had come before, because the previous one had not been like that one either. So what is the nature of a Guru? If he has his own nature, he is not a Guru. He has no nature of his own. He carefully constructs his personality, attitude and everything as he feels it will be most effective, and also depending on how he evolved. It has nothing to do with him being a person. The other day, somebody asked me, “What kind of a person are you really?” Really, I am not a person, because in different situations, I am a different kind of person. “So are you acting all the time?” No. I really make myself like that. You too make yourself in a certain way, but you are doing it compulsively. I do it consciously, that is all the difference – and that is a world of difference. When two people are together, what you experience as suppression or imposition by others is always their compulsion. What you call as personality is a certain limitation that you establish. You have to establish some framework, otherwise you cannot function.

This needs to be understood – a Guru is not a person, it is a certain possibility. Let me talk about the greatest of all of them – that is my Guru. [Applause] “Now, what is this nonsense, you think your Guru is the greatest?” – Yes. Only because in my experience, I saw him as the greatest, I aspired for him. If I thought there was somebody better than him, I would have gone to that one.

My physical proximity with my Guru was just for a few minutes. He is that kind of a ruthless man that he waited for me to go through a lifetime of heartbreaking sadhana. I explored various possibilities and dimensions, went to any number of places, did absolutely intense sadhana, experienced various states of samadhis, acquired various capabilities, the kind of capabilities with which people today would easily set up a shop and make a big thing out of it. Almost two lifetimes I had spent in such intense spiritual pursuit and was almost there, but not quite there. So I explored various occult sciences, just to track down somebody who could push me across the final step. The journey took various directions; I sourced all kinds of people. When a sadhaka becomes so burningly intense, finding an appropriate Guru becomes a big problem. If you are lukewarm, you can find many. When you raise your pitch beyond a certain point, finding an appropriate one becomes rare.

So in this state, because of a certain understanding of and mastery over the system, knowing the process of creation within me on many levels, I decided to leave my body and do the search without the body. There are any number of beings like that who, because they could not find the necessary push when they were in the body, have left and searched because being without a body gives you a little more freedom to look around. So it was at such a point that my Guru entered my life and obviously, he came with his own game plan, and I got all that from him. He did not even care to touch me with his foot – I always thought, “Why didn’t he at least use his foot?” He used his stick. [Laughs] And in those few minutes – maybe in my experience it was a few minutes, but maybe it was a long time – everything that can happen to a human being happened to me.

The culture and the nature of my sadhana had exposed me to a certain dimension, a certain form which has been a gateway for millions of spiritual seekers – that which is referred to as Shiva. Though the Ultimate had happened, there was still a trace of – I don’t know what to call it – maybe discontent that this did not come in the form of Shiva. So on seeing that he [Sadhguru’s Guru] took on this form and stood there in the traditional form of what we have known as Shiva, everything settled. And it was in these few moments that this fabulous, crafty man enslaved me for his project. [Laughs] And, if not for that project which he wanted to be fulfilled through me, my physical presence here would be out of question. Especially in that particular life I wondered, why didn’t he do it himself? His capability, the legend around him, was so big. He could have manifested it in so many ways. Why didn’t he do it himself? Maybe, when he could find a dumbo like me to do it, why should he do it himself? [Laughs]

I am sure his ability to do it was absolute. It took me two more lifetimes. In my enthusiasm to make it happen, in my longing to fulfill his vision and dream, I unnecessarily worked too hard in those two lifetimes. I could have just relaxed and waited for this moment and made it happen, but I could not rest for a moment, because I wanted to make it happen as soon as possible. When the [Dhyanalinga] consecration process was coming close, in many ways I clearly saw that my whole effort of two lifetimes had been wasteful, simply because he had set the time as to when the Dhyanalinga should happen. Now I clearly see that it was just timed right.

- Excerpted from a talk by Sadhguru on Guru Pournima