Who is the guru?

I’ve been thinking about the four options concerning who Jesus was, according to biblical scholar Bart Ehrman: a liar, a lunatic, the Lord, or a legend. When it comes to a long-dead historical figure like Jesus, these options make sense. But what about a modern-day guru who is similarly proclaimed to be God in human form?

I was initiated by such a guru, Charan Singh Grewal. I sat at his feet, literally. I had two personal interviews with him. I heard him speak many times. I saw him worshipped by tens of thousands of devotees as a divine incarnation.

And yet, I still don’t know what to make of him. Or his successor, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Who is the guru? A philosophically-inclined friend of mine likes to say, “There’s only one question to ask a guru who is supposedly God in human form: Are you who people claim you are?”

But given Ehrman’s four options, the answer wouldn’t be all that revealing. If the guru was a liar, you couldn’t believe what he said. Ditto if he was a lunatic. And even if he truly was the Lord, and said as much, what reason would there be to believe him? Plus, one could argue that a God-man would be so humble, you’d never hear a claim to divinity pass his lips.

With living gurus the legend option doesn’t come into play. They’re alive and kicking, not legendary. Quite a few men (and a few women) of recent vintage are considered by the faithful to be manifestations of God. For example, Meher Baba, Ramakrishna, and Lokenath.

So I muse over my recollections of Charan Singh and Gurinder Singh, trying to decide whether they’re best described as liars, lunatics, or the Lord.

None of the three appellations seem to fit, lunatic least of all. Each of them clearly was/is of sound mind (Charan Singh died in 1990). They could be liars, but their essential good-heartedness and decency argues against this. On the other hand, their evident imperfections prevent me from grabbing onto the “Lord” hypothesis.

Is there another L-word that better fills the bill? One springs to mind: loyalist. Perhaps when a successor is appointed to fill the shoes of a highly-regarded guru, loyalty both to his predecessor and to the surrounding organization prevents the newcomer from crying out, “Hey, I’m not God! I’m just a man filling the role of a guru.”

Gurinder Singh is fond of saying, “How do you know that I’m not a fraud?” and “Maybe I just have the gift of gab.” Devotees consider statements like these to be Zen-like pointers toward his divinity. But who knows? Maybe he’s pointing toward his humanity without being able to explicitly speak of who he directly knows himself to be.

Faqir Chand (1886-1981) is noteworthy in that he was a guru who was worshipped as God in human form by his disciples, yet denied that he had the powers attributed to him. I’ve read some of Faqir Chand’s writings, which are available here. Yet I don’t claim to have a firm grasp of either the man or his spiritual philosophy.

From what I know, he believed that a guru was essential. Or at least highly desirable. Yet the guru wasn’t a miracle worker. Everything that the disciple needed for realization already was part of his self. In fact, it is the self. Better termed, the Self.

Thus inner visions of the guru aren’t the result of any external higher power. They are manifestations of the disciple’s own mind. All is within, but the disciple mistakenly locates his newfound insights as emanating from outside himself.

Faqir Chand apparently considered that loyalty to the truth was more important than loyalty to a guru-tradition. So he spoke bluntly about what he was, and what he wasn’t. In his autobiography, he writes about a talk with Sawan Singh, a guru who was a predecessor of Charan Singh and Gurinder Singh, after Faqir Chand had realized that his disciples were ascribing powers to him that he didn’t have:

But, still, I remained undecided about what I should do? Because I had a lurking fear in my mind that if I disclosed the Truth in plain words the narrow minded, orthodox and illiterate amongst the Satsangis [disciples], would turn against me. Thus in 1942 A.D. I got leave and went straight to Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji at Beas to explain my fears and difficulties in person. I had great reverence for Hazur Baba Sawan Singh Ji and I identified him with Hazur Data Dayal Ji Maharaj.

With utmost reverence I submitted to Baba Ji, “Your Holiness, Kindly relieve me from the duty assigned to me by my Guru Maharaj Ji. Pray, take this burden off my conscience, so that I may get released from the sin of disobedience to my Guru.” Hazur Maharaj placed his loving hand on my back and said, “Faqir, I could not disclose the truth in its totality, because of two reasons (i) Satsangis in general do not deserve it, (ii) I am bound by the institutional exigencies.”

“Institutional exigencies.” This supports the loyalist theory. The plain truth isn’t spoken because it would threaten tradition and an organizational heritage.

Faqir Chand boldly told it like it was. I only wish every guru would do the same.

(Courtesy of David Lane, here’s an interesting short video about Faqir Chand and how he first disclosed his “unknowing” status to disciples).

Comments

[Nick]

Brian,
I think mere loyalty is a bit slight in attempting to describe the leader of a large religious-spiritual group. May as well call the Dalai Lama merely loyal. I don’t sense that that alone even comes close to a complete assessment. Dogs are loyal. Humans are a bit more complex than that. Even divinised humans.

Regarding the god in human form thing: my understanding is that if someone ramps up their consciousness to being in touch with vibrations of the spiritual life current and of transcending duality through intimation of oneness, then such a one then becomes god + man or godman.

This is clear in the writings of Paltu sahib and does not for one minute mean that the whole of the unknowable godhead is squeezed into a mortal human form.

This can apply to anyone with that realisation not just a spiritual master who has the task of working with student’s karma to help them realise the same said state.

Further to this; are any of us merely human? By human, we mean a biologically determined lump of meat that scuttles around on the earths surface for a period of time and then dies? Or do we also have multi dimensional and cosmic components that plug us deep into the heart of the universe? The present RS master is always saying that no one is merely human. All of us are cosmic creatures undergoing a human experience. The guru’s role is thus to expand our horizons and suggest that we are more than we think of in terms of body, mind, role, gender, conditioning.

Whether any particular guru has that realisation is really a matter of pure speculation on the part of the observer. It cannot be known with certainty.

Yes it is admirable that Faqir came clean on his perspective on the guru role. It is also clear why modern guru’s do not choose to, even if that were their opinion also. What possible benefit would it be to the vast majority of Indian followers to do so?

Yes it would appease the intellectual critique of us overly sceptical westerners who just cannot do the whole bhakti thing. But how and why would it benefit the vast majority? It would not, plain and simple. From our post-modern westernised perspective we can say that the guru is keeping people in the dark and not admitting the reality. But is that the truth? What is reality? Is it always referenced as ultimate, or can it be contingent and relative at the same time?

The truth is that sant mat works on many levels. If someone wishes to see the guru as their Ishatdeva or embodiment of the divine and a focus for bhakti then that has been shown to work very effectively at creating spiritual realisations throughout religious history. For the bkakta it does even enter the equation that their beloved is or is not what they are or are not said to be. They simply are devoted through love.

In this regard Saint Francis in his devotion to Christ was a bhakta.

Those of us who think we are more intelligent than all that can go into our intellects and explore the metaphysics and theology of it all and how meditative states link to physiological states and quantum states, and there is enough of this in sant mat to last a lifetime.

In this regard Meister Eckhart is the supreme theologian and metaphysician.

For this writer the master represents the teachings and as such is an‘incarnation’ of the teachings and is guide to meditation and senior traveller on the path. He takes the role of spiritual director as in the monastic tradition of Catholicism. Beyond that he may or may not be fully one with the divine. That somehow seems less important to me and is no barrier to feeling warmth, affection and care for the guru, which is its own form of bhakti.

I am interested Brian in why you wish that all guru’s would come clean like we seem to think that Faqir did? To who’s satisfaction? To mollify our sense of intellectual rightness? To what ends? In the interests of absolute truth?
If so what is that? What about relative truth relative to where someone is on a scale of moral, intellectual and interior development?

If the guru widely suggested some of these things to a wider audience it would be like feeding solid food to infants (to paraphrase St Paul in his letters to Christians at all stages of moral, intellectual and interior development). Not everyone is at the level where they can digest that ‘apparent’ truth of Faqir and neither would they wish to be fed it in the first place.
We need to bear in mind the work of Ken Wilber and other developmental psychologists, on individual and collective development through the value spheres to get some kind of handle on this.

Basically, the guru is what you want him or her to be at whatever respective level you are coming from. You can argue that the most developed level is where you forgo the outer guru as saviour and go inwards to realise the principle of Guru as abiding Self as Ramana suggested. But that doesn’t discount the usefulness of guru bhakti and outer devotion for many on their long road to that stage.
Brian, when are you going to write a book on the unknowing principle; a sort of flesh out of your 24 page essay on science and unknowing that you posted some little time back? It would be solid food for many of us churchless visitors, whether sceptical and agnostic Christians, Satsangi's, Vedantists or whatever?
Regards
Nick

[Edward]

Excellent points Nick: recognition of our role within, and dedication to, the delicate architecture of devotional society over decades is not simply loyalty. That recognition along with the acceptance of an illusion of separation from the student becomes the guru's lot. Acting from that mind is being truthful.

I'm not turning the question on its head. The mechanism at work is that the seeker can not get what they seek from someone else, so the teacher shows them until they see for themselves.

Extending that function to divintity, and Eckhart knew it, is that the seeker starts out as divine. The guru is godman as much as is required by such an absence in the student. All along is the illusion of separation, that this is "my" dharma, that such a one is or is not "a god". The divine participates, as Nick says, "on many levels".

Yet Faqir Chand was afraid he would be shunned for telling the truth. Would that make him more or less a guru? More or less true?

[Peter Holleran]

Mike, Nietzche and others:

Kirpal Singh freed me from seeking for a personal salvation or a world denying path. That's why for 35 years I have been sort of an oddity and outsider in any satsang, but freed to explore any teaching I wanted, without worrying if I was leaving my teacher. He called me his 'friend'. I came to learn that 'friend' meant someone who he felt could handle having his balls/ego broken without running away fast.

I don't know of any other Sant Mat guru who worked like him.

Anyway, with the intention of adding some levity to this blog site, here is something I wrote that may give you ex-cultists a chuckle. I hope you like it. It was written for any cult in mind, but specifically to ex-Daists (Da Free John- AKA Adi Da followers) who were disenchanted when his path turned more and more corrupt (the usual sex, drugs, money scandals, and idol worship) from what started out as a pretty good path of simply 'radical understanding', and no-seeking.

http://www.mountainrunnerdoc.com/page/page/4515330.htm

-Peter

[Peter Holleran]

What's the big deal about the Master coming for you at the time of death? Petty, self-concern. Zen master Bankei, in classic non-dual fashion, belittled concern over one's physical death:

"When it comes to the idea of being free in birth and death, people are apt to misunderstand. There are some who, beforehand, announce they're going to die in a certain number of days, while others go so far as to express their intention to die, say, next year, in such-and-such a month and on such-and-such a day. When the time arrives, some of them, even though they are not ill, die just as they said, while others put it off for another day, or a month, and then pass away. There are lots of people who consider this being free in birth and death. Not that I say this isn't so. So far as freedom goes, they're terribly free! But things of this sort are only a result of the strength of people's ascetic practices, and often they haven't opened the Eye of the Way. Even among ordinary people, you frequently find this. While they may know [the time of their] death, they haven't opened the Eye of the Way, and that's why I don't accept this kind of thing. The man of the Unborn transcends birth and death.

Now, I'm sure you're all wondering just what it means to transcend birth and death. That which is unborn is imperishable; and since what doesn't perish doesn't die, it transcends birth and death. So, what I call a man who's free in birth and death is one who dies unconcerned with birth and death. What's more, the matter of birth and death is something that's with us all day long -- it doesn't mean only once in a lifetime when we confront the moment of death itself. A man who's free in birth and death is one who always remains unconcerned with birth and death, knowing that so long as we're allowed to live, we live; and when the time comes to die -- even if death comes right now -- we just die, [realizing] that when we die isn't of great importance. Such a person is also one who has conclusively realized the marvelously illuminating Unborn Buddha Mind. Talking and thinking about something like what hour of what day you're going to die is really narrow-minded, don't you think?"

[Josephine Later]

It all depends on one's definition of "TRUTH".
The "Truth" of Faqir may not be the "Truth" of a satsangi following Gurinder.
My objection is to that awful "Positivity" of the adherent to whatever "Truth" is being expounded.......v152