The Nature and Functions of Spiritual Guides

CONTENTS

Spiritual teachers are Dynamic Personalities of Universal Love and Divine Wisdom

Pattern of the Help they Provide for the Development and Perfection of Human Consciousness

Their services are a constitutional need of our growth: if teachers and professors are needed for the education of the young humanity, the Spiritual Guides are indispensable for the evolution of all mankind.

Spiritual Teachers and Guides are Embodiments of Excellent Moral Qualities and Divine Perfection

By their own example, and by their words of illuminating wisdom, they lead us from the darkness of human perfections and unhappiness into the peace, joy and perfections of Divine Life

They surrender to humanity the methods by which they have experienced God, and also the benefits of their efforts and their successes on the Path of Evolution

Who is the Real Benefactor of Mankind?  

 Comment: The Design between each chapter leads back to the index.


 Spiritual teachers are Dynamic Personalities
of Universal Love and Divine Wisdom

Saints, masters, mystics, sages, teachers of universal love and divine wisdom, have always been in human history, real builders of human peace, happiness, illumination, perfection. They have always been more dynamic, more fruitful in their endeavours to uplift humanity than the greatest of the secular leaders. They are the truest and most practical democrats who love and serve all equally, who find in the great and the small, the good and the bad, the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the Jews and the Christians, the Europeans and the Asiatics, the selfsame God, Reality, Existence. To them, all mankind is one family; all races carry one single Soul, Being, Essence; all religions are but the one Path to the selfsame Truth; all cultures have only one aim of exalting human life, conduct and experience to a higher level.

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Pattern of the Help they Provide
for the Development and Perfection
of Human Consciousness

These Great Ones of God-Consciousness persuade mankind by love, by sweetness and by light. They are called masters, - they are, in fact and in action, servants of all. They teach by their own example. They transform by the beauty and example of their own life. They speak what they are, in order humanity may be what it is not, and aspires to be. Their help, their guidance, their love, is indispensable for the growth of the inner human mind, heart, soul, consciousness.

True spiritual guides are the fountains of illuminating ideas, inspiring thoughts, uplifting ideals and transforming practices. Like Copernicus revolutionising our conception of earth, they revolutionise our conception, view and outlook of life. They are the revealers of the Reality.

They dispel the darkness of ignorance which is the cause of all human error and unhappiness. They liberate us from the distorting passions, and grant us the pleasure of perceiving the Beauty of the Divine here, there, everywhere. They break the physical and psychic limitations of our vision, and permit us to see illimitably, and therefore truly.

Spiritual teachers are, in their love for us, like our mothers; in their kind care for us, like our fathers; in their gentle patience with our limping ignorance, like our noble professors; and in themselves and in all their inner being, like the Light of God we seek, like the ocean of Peace we look for, like the illimitable Joy something in our soul constantly searches.

They serve us, and do not demand our services. They seek nothing from us, but give everything to us. They are truly free, and therefore can render us free. They are really peaceful, and therefore can grant us peace that passeth understanding. They make us masters of the world, by making us masters of ourselves, of our mind, of our will, of our nature. -And we gain more happiness from self-control than from sense-indulgence, more power from self-rule than from rule over others.

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Their services are a constitutional need of
our growth: if teachers and professors are
needed for the education of the young humanity,
the Spiritual Guides are indispensable
for the evolution of all mankind.

Every type of education is essential, but above all, the education of all educations, the supreme education, the most fundamental education consists in presenting to man a knowledge of himself, a deep insight into the meaning and higher possibilities and spiritual resources of life.

Intellectual development, social status and economic success, - all these are very essential. But they, by themselves, do not fulfil life, nor grant any true and lasting happiness. Therefore mankind urgently needs spiritual guidance which can make man's life richest from within himself.

The desire to seek help, to search for light, to look up to higher powers, is inborn in all beings. The incapacity to achieve the ideals of the aspirations that spring from the heart, the anguish which accompanies such incapacity, and the knowledge of the existence of the superior powers, obliges the individuals to take shelter under those who are endowed with the ability to lift them up to higher levels. The sun-flower of humanity needs the Sun of spiritual guides and God. The soul in the sun-flower is not different from the soul in the Sun. Each delights in the other, each needs the other.

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Spiritual Teachers and Guides are Embodiments
of Excellent Moral Qualities and Divine Perfection

The saints of high spiritual stature and consummate spiritual perfection, are repositories of every conceivable excellence and beauty of character.

We can perceive in the self-expressions of their inner life, soul and thought, the marvellous beauty of the qualities of God. By a peep into the inner life of these saints, we gain a glimpse into the Reality and the Nature of God.

They manifest here on Earth the Nature that is of God in Heaven.

They conceal in themselves something of the character of the Divine in Itself.

To men in spiritual ignorance, and to aspirants after perfection, entrapped in the limitations of senses, mind and body, they express their boundless love, - all-inclusive and all-transforming love, their truly cosmic and divine love. Mankind needs them for tasting something of that love which is nowhere visible in the imperfections of daily life.

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By their own example, and by their words
of illuminating wisdom, they lead us from
the darkness of human perfections and
unhappiness into the peace, joy and
perfections of Divine Life

As the human consciousness is entwined with animal instincts and drives, as man is liable to be confused and deluded by experiences of the surface-consciousness, propelling the impetuous worldly will and riotous emotions, - the aid of a higher power of knowledge is solicited. This power of knowledge is embodied in the saints, the masters, the mystics, the sages, the spiritual guides. A glance, a touch, a word from them, suffices to lift the soul of the spiritual seeker. Their love for the seekers is proverbial: it is illimitable love that is wisdom, wisdom that is the very nature of God.

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They surrender to humanity the methods
by which they have experienced God, and
also the benefits of their efforts and their
successes on the Path of Evolution

These great spiritual guides embody in themselves the Light of the divine Consciousness that is fully manifest. In the spontaneous play of its attributes, in the fullness of its radiance, its wisdom, its love, this Light embodies something of the Nature of the Godhead. The Light that they are awakens in the seeking intelligence of mankind the urge to know the real nature of the imperishable Background of all existence. It not only awakens in the aspirants the longing for rapid God-Experience, for quick obtainment of the perfections of the divine Consciousness, but also delivers to them the time-tried, universally and eternally valid methods for arriving at their high spiritual objectives.

They elevate the human mind to the heights of spiritual vision. They grant the human heart a foretaste of divine Love. They require from us nothing but our own growth in knowledge, in goodness, in wisdom. They demand from us nothing but a continued exercise of ourselves in the best of spiritual disciplines. They surrender to us a teaching that fills us with joy, that pours into us a supernormal power, and grants us peacefulness, fearlessness, and increasing experience of God.

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Who is the Real Benefactor of Mankind?

The long scrolls of the history of human experience record that it is not a scholar however great, nor a formal philosopher however well-known, nor a writer of best-selling fiction, nor a mathematical prodigy, nor yet a first-rate scientific genius, who brings real peace and happiness to all mankind. It is not a builder of imposing humanistic systems, nor a laborious social worker, nor a great moral preacher, nor yet a powerful political leader, but a Lord of wisdom, a Man of God-experience, a Being of universal compassion expressing itself in dynamic service, a person of transforming divine Power, a Jesus the Christ, who engenders in the lives of all peoples love and light, and wields an uplifting and illuminating Power upon their affections, thoughts and activities.

 

Swami Omkarananda

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