Surrender and Dissolve

You never claimed the title of Guru. You had a more important mission: to initiate seekers into the most intimate relationship of all, betrothal to the Beloved Within. Therefore I can only surrender and dissolve.

When anyone tried to worship you as Guru, you turned away and bowed to your own Guru, who represented the timeless lineage of the Shankaracharya tradition, the stream of wisdom flowing down from Lord Narayana and the sage Vashishta at the dawn of history. You did not call me to worship a form, but to drink the formless nectar of bliss poured through the ages, into the grail of my own heart.

When you initiated me, you gave me a gift much more profound than a personal guru. You gave me an immediate effortless connection with Being, the source of creation. A personal guru may be a comfort, a soothing consolation, but your gift was more precious by far: the practice, the Sadhana, to taste the Divine as direct experience, without an intermediary.

You personally introduced me to the Creator of All, who became in a single fiery drop of silence, falling into the ocean of love with the whisper of this breath. You bathed me in the all-pervading luminous foam of Ananda, softer than space, gentler than emptiness. And somehow the vastness of heaven crystalized into a diamond more solid than the earth. I can only surrender and dissolve.

Where is this Chittamani jewel, this diamond hologram of unbounded consciousness? On an alter, in an ashram, in the red dot on the forehead of a saint? No, it glows in the hollow of my yearning heart. It is you, it is I, it is God.

In your gift I fall asleep, witnessing the birth and death of a trillion stars. They swirl around my stillness all through the night. In your gift I wake at dawn, witnessing the dream of the world. Morning gleams through vanishing mist. But I am no longer the mist, I am the sun, a teardrop of devotion without circumference. In your gift of graceful meditation, I no longer look for this place, I look from this place. I can only surrender and dissolve: in you, beloved Friend, in you.

Therefore I do not worship a white robe, a pair of sandals, a string of rudhraksha beads, seated on a dais surrounded by thousands of chanting devotees. Such guru-worship may be a pleasant distraction, but it is like trying to warm yourself with a melting candle, instead of central heating. The One whom I adore is unspeakably more intimate: the Guru-Tattva, the Beloved Teacher who dwells in the very core of my soul.

And because you dwell here, in this small hut, in this secret cell of prayer, which is my own frail human body, I meet you in the glance of every stranger, every face etched with tears, the eyes of a hungry child, the sound of a cricket, the golden fur of a shelter pup, lips of a lover, petals of a wild poppy, green shadows of the ancient forest, cry of the owl at 3 a.m., ever one yet never lonely.

O Master of my rising falling chest, you gave me so much more than a personal guru. You gave me the ineffable eternal radiance of my own Self. That is why I can only surrender and dissolve, only bow and whisper, "Jai Guru Dev."