Guru is Within

Sri Annamalai Swami

Q: Ramana Maharshi told you to leave his ashram because, you say, he wanted you not to be attached to his form. You had already contacted the formless, and you knew that the Maharshi was not the form you saw in the ashram.

It seems to me that the physical form is not that important. It seems to me that it is more important to find God, the Self, in the Heart. This leads me to the question of how important it is to have a physical master. In order to realize the Self, do we need to have a physical master? For myself, I am beginning to feel more and more that it has nothing to do with a physical form, but sometimes I have doubts. Am I just fooling myself that by believing that I can contact the Self within without the aid of an external physical master?

AS: If you go to a physical Guru and ask him how to realize the Self, he will probably tell you that you are already the Self, and that you should just hold onto the Self that you already are. If you can manage that you will be with the true Guru all the time, and you will not need the physical form of the Guru to keep reminding you of who you are. In that state you will be living with Bhagavan, staying as the Self, holding onto the real I at all times.

If you go to the physical form of the Guru and ask about Self-realization, you will not be told about the importance of the physical form of the Guru. You will be told to hold onto the real "I". You will be told that you should not fall into the trap of believing that the Guru is just a body. The Guru is inside you as the Self. If you follow the advice that the physical Guru gives, you will discover that the inner and outer Gurus are one and the same.

However, very few people can manage this by themselves.