Guru Stories

[Master Sun]

I agreed with Peteyzen. When one claimed as guru, there is always challenges with their ego and while trying to be a guru of a difference status.

[Miss Hepburn]

Guru stories....I remember sitting in front of my Guru....with
10,000 people watching...sitting maybe 25 ft away...as he looked into my eyes for 5 full slow complete breathes...just shy of a minute...never been the same since.

[django]

Originally Posted by The Necromancer

Pretty much.

Those times you see an ashram turn from a place of bare necessity, piety, satsanga, worship and free meals into a place of being a 'guru temple' with lavish and expensive furnishings, manicured and landscaped gardens, $10 meals in the 'Ashram Cafe' and $1,000 a weekend 'yoga retreats' with nobody I even know...

Maybe it's just me though.

Aum Namah Shivaya

I came across this on SYDA today (the article was written in 2010), now I know why there's so little info about where she's at nowadays.

Shetty [Gurumai] displayed many of the same traits as her mentor. She ran a hate campaign against her brother, who had been named as a co-successor by Muktananda, beating him and isolating him until he finally gave up his claim on the SYDA’s spiritual mantle. She denied all allegations of Muktananda’s sexual abuse and shielded other sexual predators inside the ashram, including a man called George Afif, who was convicted of statutory rape. Harris’ piece even hinted that Shetty herself had had sexual relations with Afif. “While I was working on the story,” Harris told Salon, “I was constantly followed [inside the ashram]. Men with walkie-talkies wouldn’t let me go anywhere on my own. They were always asking my driver questions. A woman who I worked with in the ashram’s kitchen was even noting down every word I said. It was very Big Brother-like.”

SYDA is now a shell of its former mid-’90s self, despite the bestseller and newfangled Hollywood associations. The South Fallsburg ashram, which once hummed with as many as 4,000 devotees, looks forlorn. Many defectors say that they left because of Shetty’s increasingly authoritarian behavior and her subtle attempts at control and manipulation. “She was just mean. She humiliated me in public. She certainly wasn’t enlightened,” says Szabo, who was once part of a team that edited and rewrote parts of the public talks for which Shetty was revered.

http://www.salon.com/2010/08/14/eat_..._sex_scandals/

[django]

Reading about Muktananda again today, I think he had attained some level of 'spirituality', but when this was put to the test with free access to young girls and young women and all the money he could ever want, basically he had not realised his True Self or True Nature and he fell back into the world of Maya.

It is in the testing that their attainment is revealed, before being tested many may appear to be quite highly realised, saying the right thing, even thinking the right thing, but their attainment is only skin deep, and can only pass muster when untested.

I think it might be best to not declare oneself a guru or teacher until all vestiges of unhealthy ego have been cleared away, or that same ego will simply don the mantle of guru and be in ego heaven.

[Bindu*]

When it comes to Guru's and their organisations and levels of attainment and so forth. It is not an easy issue to be clear about. Even though the mind wants that kind of clarity. Almost all Guru's have rumours about misconduct going on. Whether it is true or not is hard to estimate.

The Guru principle (Gurutattva). Is a cosmic principle that is inherent in the unmanifest and manifest universe as a force of evolution. It is generally a more "inner" phenomena existing inside the true seeker. And in fact Guru's of a lineage can be transmitters of this principle, even though their karmic plate is not 100 percent clear. It is more the lineage that matters.

So in the Guru market it can be wise to be cautious. But one can still have immense benefit by "plugging in" in such a lineage. It is a universal principle that the universal consiousness have 5 principles in action.

1. Creation.
2. Preservation.
3. Transformation
4. Maya (Hiding of the truth for the cause of the Lila, the play going on).
5. Grace (Revealing the truth...intitiation).

The Guru is a cosmic function for the transmission of this last function of grace. It is not for all to have access to a Guru in physical form for this initiation to occur. But as the true Guru is within it is not necessary for the physical meeting with a Guru to occur. The intiation can occur just by the inner impulse of the inherent Self in man.

When it comes to the lineage from Nityananda. Thousands of seekers have got their Kundalini shakti awakened by various teachers with Nityananda as the root guru. That is also important to be aware of.
So one measure of the value of a Guru may be the effects of their prescence of the earth.

We have different lineages that have caused much good to a vast number of people spiritually.

For example some of these lineages are:

-Ramakrishna lineage with all descent teachers.
-Shivananda lineage with the branches coming forth with such teachers as satyananda, Vishnudevananda, satchidananda et.c
-Nityananda lineage with associated teachers.
- Neem Karoli baba lineage. (Ram Dass and others).
- Ramana Maharshi lineage (many teachers).

The teachers who come from these root guru's are many, and there is many rumours and sayings about misconduct et.c there. But still so many people have benefitted by plugging in to a lineage. It seems like the play of the game of cosmic evolution and coming to spiritual development is often coming through the Guru principle as a awakening shakti. Even if the transmitter is not pure 100 percent ?

This is not an easy question. It is complex.
Reading all that is on the net it is not easy to recommend any teacher really, with perhaps the exception of Ammachi.

So what should seekers after enlightenment do ? Disregard Guru's and teacher altogether ?
Everyone should have Amma as a teacher ?

Discrimination and faith have to be combined I think.

Reading the net I would never go to a Guru or teacher. Still there is many advanced spiritual people still treading the path of such lineages like siddha yoga even though the rumours are still there. The effects of the teachings and the undenying power of the spiritual experiences and the living shakti transmitted through that path is enough it seems.

Just posting to give a more nuanced wiew.

[Shivani Devi]

Well, I am following the teachings of Swami Satyananda at the moment.

It seems the whole Saraswati line/lineage has been corrupted and broken.

Yes, there is more need for Gurus in todays society, but there seem to be less genuine seekers now...so less genuine seekers mean less gurus.

Hence the shortage.

Aum Shanti

[Bindu*]

I am very familiar with swami satyananda as I took my yogateacher training in that tradition.
It was also my first contact with yoga when I bought a secondhand book by his dansish disciple swami Janakananda.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janakananda_Saraswati
Good tantric teachings....