Love of Guru

I often share with my students my love of teachers and everything that comprises the Guru principle or tattva. I have not so readily spoken about this in public.

Tattva means element, essence, or principle in Sanskrit.

“Tat” means ”that” and is often used on its own to point toward the essence of reality or existence itself. My Guru, Anandamayi Ma, often called all of reality tat.

“Tva” indicates the most fundamental state of beingness.

Tattva means a fundamental aspect of the living expressiveness and intelligence of reality.

Guru tattva is the manifesting, creative intelligence that helps us to realize who we are and what’s happening here. This includes all teachers, students, scripture, practices, structures and circumstances that help us to wake up.

Here’s another way of saying this:

Wisdom is the fundamental nature of reality. Guru tattva is the vehicle for the game of waking up being played by⁠ that fundamental reality. It is wisdom in the form of a path of awakening.

I say “game” because all of reality is already fully awake. But it expresses itself by exploring all of the more limited experiential forms and circumstances it creates.

Each of our lives and the overlapping forms of life in all worlds are creative episodes. Self-realization is the arc story. Guru tattva and its disciples are the players in that arc story.

These days, we are “treated” to many revelations about the harmful behaviors of spiritual teachers and their lack of actual realization.

The phenomena of abuse, lying, exaggeration, and manipulation among “teachers” are so widespread, I sometimes wonder: If I hadn’t been gifted certain experiences by my own teachers, would I have concluded that these practices just do not work?

I don’t know if this level of abuse and self-inflation is as old as humankind or a relatively recent circumstance. Certainly, in ancient Tantrik texts, there are references to men who pose as teachers in order to lure others into having sex with them.

But my point here is that as a teacher and a student who has always been in love with the student-teacher relationship, and who at this point has unshakeable confidence in the Guru aspect of reality, it’s hard to come out in our current context without running the risk being read as self-promoting or manipulative.

Or even just misguided—a dupe, behind the times.

So I want to say that this is a public love letter, pure and simple, to that aspect of reality called Guru, especially as it manifests in relatable, human forms.

I’m writing this mainly as a disciple of my teachers, not as a teacher of students.

It comes in the wake of another declaration by a hurting student of an abusive teacher. Their conclusion is that the wisdom we seek can only reside within or in the community and that the Guru phenomenon must be jettisoned.

I doubt it can be jettisoned as a natural phenomenon, but I certainly understand and respect the motivation for this and similar declarations. It’s just not where I live.

I’ve been aware since I was a young child that I’m not experiencing everything that reality is. I’ve also been aware that help is available.

I called this help “the Friend.” The Friend was both something I sensed in myself and something I longed to meet outside of myself.

When I wasn’t too messed up in ordinary ways, I felt I was following something. Something unerring. Something that superseded all mentally generated schemes and plans.

Since I started doing formal practice 45 years ago, I have learned more about what I’m following, and I have learned to follow more consistently.

I’ve had extraordinary help from a number of external teachers. A couple of them were abusive in different ways. Most were not.

But through no effort of my own, I have never questioned the fundamental principles that govern the Guru-disciple relationship, principles I seem to have arrived understanding.

And more than this, I never have felt far from the thrill and sense of magic and frankly disbelief at how lucky and engaging it is to have help in this form.

“Horripilation” is an old-school translation of Sanskrit words meaning variously spiritual excitement, fear, awe, overwhelm, and hairs standing on end as a result of the above.

I encountered it in translations of texts when I was a grad student haunting the Tantrik corners of my university’s library.

Even though it’s a fusty old word, I understood it immediately, viscerally.

My relationships with my teachers have been without exception the most thrilling, magnetizing, adventurous, creative, surprising, and at times scary in my entire life.

No ordinary romance has been as captivating. No therapist has been as transforming. No one has ever asked as much from me or given as much to me. And none, absolutely none, have been as much fun.

If I imagine life without teachers who have more realization than I do, I really cannot think that would be anything but deeply depressing. And boring.

A life without that encounter with blazing clarity and off-the-charts humor and unbounded compassion? A life without the adventure of following over the cliff of the known someone utterly unpredictable, but somehow also the only ground?

Every path is made of and by God, and all of the various paths speak to different people. But I thank God every day that I get to be on the path of horripilation with Guru.

Maybe through this painful process of experiencing abuse and betrayals and disappointments, we students will gain more clarity about what is and is not actual realization.

What I’ve learned through the grace of my teachers, a couple of negative examples, and my own sadhana is that people with a certain degree of realization never intentionally harm others. They might blunder, but they have no desire to hurt, manipulate, or use anyone for their personal gain or self-aggrandizement.

Realization means becoming more for others. Period. If you feel the energy is being sucked out of the room by someone who needs your money, your admiration, or your loyalty, no matter what their story is or how educated they are or how energetically powerful they might feel, that ain’t it.

Realization is about embodying wisdom-virtue: compassion, mercy, tenderness, clarity, creativity, playfulness, humor, devotion, and a kind of intelligence that is far beyond ordinary intellect.

I wish that all sincere students could meet at least one embodiment of this. Even if you have rejected the whole Guru thing, I still wish it for you. I just can’t help myself.

with infinite love to Guru and you,
Shambhavi

Please join Shambhavi and the Jaya Kula community for satsang & kirtan every Sunday at 3:00pm Pacific. Come in person to 1215 SE 8th Ave, Portland, OR, or join Jaya Kula’s newsletter to get the Zoom link for satsang. You can also listen to my podcast—Satsang with Shambhavi—wherever podcasts are found.