The Inner Mood of Gurudeva

Srila Gurudeva: There was a Guru, a very bona-fide Guru, and there was a kanistha-adhikari disciple. That kanistha-adhikari disciple wanted to serve his Gurudeva, but there were so many defects. He could not understand the interior mood of Gurudeva because at that time his intelligence and heart was not purified and not transcendental. Any disciple cannot touch the inner heart of Gurudeva unless he is purified and he has attraction for hari-katha. If anyone is chanting, but they have no attraction, no taste for hari-katha, his chanting of the holy name, all his seva, everything is like zero. You should know this
because it has been explained in Srimad-Bhagavatam. You should all hear very attentively.

It is very hard to touch the internal mood of Gurudeva. This disciple was sincere, but only sincerity will not do. He could not touch the inner moods of Gurudeva, but he was trying.

He was following Gurudeva, how he chants, how he remembers, how he behaves with others, all these things. He saw that very early in the morning, Gurudeva wakes up and chants his sandhya ahnik. Sitting up, he takes acamana and then applies tilaka to all twelve parts of his body. Then he wraps his brahmana thread around his thumb three times and chants the mantras given by his Gurudeva.

Then, after that, he would himself perform the arati of Thakurji to do arati. That disciple thought, “I should do like my Gurudeva. If Gurudeva sits for half an hour, then I should sit for one hour. If Gurudeva sits straight like this, then I should sit even straighter.” We cannot understand Gurudeva with our intelligence. If he will see that Gurudeva is doing acamana three times, then he will do acamana fifty times because he thinks, “This is good for me.”

But that disciple will not think, “Why is he doing all these things? What is he doing?” He is not asking his Gurudeva all these things. One day, his disciple was sitting with him and he was doing his normal morning duties. Gurudeva took his tilaka and acamana. Gurudeva did acamana ten times now instead of three times. After that he took his asana and began to swing it around his head about fifteen times.
[devotees laugh]

His disciple saw this and thought, “Oh, this is a very good thing to do. If he is doing this fifteen times, then I should do it twenty five times.” That disciple took his asana and did like so. After that, whatever his Gurudeva would do, he was only watching and copying him. But he was not knowing anything about why Gurudeva is doing all of these things and what he is doing. He was not touching the internal mood of Gurudeva. Why should we take acamana? What is the real process? What is the real process of chanting our ahnik? We don’t know all these things. We should try to realize all these things. We should try to realize the internal mood of Gurudeva. We are doing arati, but why are we doing all these things? We are doing, doing, doing, but we have no idea.

[Spoken by Srila Gurudeva on December 5th, 1998, Malaysia, published as part of the Bhakta Bandhav Anthology, Volume 25]