A person of knowledge becomes arrogant and refuses to acknowledge the limitations of knowledge. Sacrificing knowledge is far more difficult than sacrificing wealth. For a scholar to admit that he does not know is to commit suicide. He is losing his identity.

Kṛṣṇa advises the seeker to sacrifice one’s knowledge and one’s intellect at His feet, at the feet of the Master, to experience the ultimate Truth. Beautifully He says, ‘tad viddhi praṇipātena paripraśnena sevayā (4.34).’ A Master is one who has experienced the truth and who can simply transfer his experience of truth to you. He communes with you. A teacher, on the other hand, is one who imparts knowledge through communication.

In Saṃskṛit, there are three beautiful words to describe this. You are born in the bhūgarbha, the womb of the mother; this signifies your physical birth. The teacher with his love and teachings gives birth to you in the hridgarbha, the womb of the heart. The master gives birth to a completely new you, a transformed being in the jñānagarbha, the womb of knowledge. You then become re-born, dvijā!

Understand, Masters have no vested interest for themselves; they have no karma to exhaust. They descend on this planet Earth out of sheer love and compassion for humanity. Just like a low-pressure region attracts winds, a depression created in the world attracts the formless energy of Existence. This energy is what is known in different forms like Kṛṣṇa, Rāma, Buddha etc.

Actually, the Master lives in three dimensions of energies: the body, His teachings and His mission. Masters come to dispel the ignorance of seekers, to show them the path. Only one third of the Master’s energy is in the physical body. The other third is in the teachings and another third is in the mission.

Nithyananda is nitya-dhyāna-ānanda, all in one. Nithya, the Master in the body as Nithyananda, dhyāna, my teaching and message of meditation and ānanda, my mission of bringing forth the fountain of bliss that is lying latent in you, all the three together constitute the energy called Nithyananda. Understand that.

It is easy to do the first step, which is to follow the Master in his physical form because Masters are so attractive by nature and they do not expect anything in return. The next level is to follow the dharma, teachings of the Master. This is slightly more difficult because you have to not only listen to his teachings but you also have to do something; you have to live his teachings, practice them. Though it is only for your own growth, your laziness (tamas) causes you to not do this. The final level is where you infuse your life with the truth that life is for others. Life is for Enriching! You give your life to the sanga, mission and become the cause of spreading the Master’s teachings. This is the most difficult, since it requires from you the ultimate commitment for life.

When you surrender to the Master, you surrender to his mission, sanga and to his teachings, dharma as well. When you surrender at the physical level, you surrender your comforts to the Master like desires for luxury, wealth, food or sleep to imbibe and spread his teachings and mission. I cannot call it sacrifice because you will feel from your very being that this is what you really want to do. I tell you, when you take up the responsibility of the mission, you will realize that what seemed to you as a load is actually a blissful experience. How can the mission of the Master give anything other than pure bliss? The moment you surrender to the Master and his mission and you stand up taking responsibility, you will find that the divine energy simply flows through you and you just flow effortlessly and express yourself most gracefully and powerfully.

All you need to do is to be stable and available, and the divine energy will make you able! On the mental level, you surrender your intellect, your mental pursuits, your incompletions to serve the Master and the mission. You become like a liquid, flowing into the shapes and moulds created by the Master. The Master knows the best way in which you can grow. He creates the moulds for each of you according to your needs and abilities. Trust him, drop your solid ego and become fluid so you can fill in the spaces he creates for you.

At the being level, when your very being surrenders to the Master, your being clearly recognizes the call of the Master. You become a part of the Master. You no longer carry any separate identity. This process of transformation automatically happens when you surrender to the Master, his teachings and his mission. The water is converted into formless steam. Like steam, you now explode in all directions. There are no limitations because all limitations exist only in the mind. You now transcend the mind and express your peak potential. The Master tirelessly and compassionately pushes you in different ways so you can also experience and be in the same state of eternal bliss as he is. The only emotion that a Master knows is love. I always tell people, ‘When I show compassion to you, I cheat you. When I fire you, I teach you. Either way, you grow.’

The Vedas also clearly declare that a living Master is needed. You may have access to all the books, the recorded teachings of all the great masters. But, you have only the words; where is the body language? For example, yoga as it is taught now has been reduced to just a form of physical exercise. But physical health is just one of its benefits. Yoga as taught by Patañjali is a means to enlightenment. But the body language of Patañjali no longer exists; only his words exist. You need a living Master who is in the same consciousness as Patañjali, to transmit the essence and experience of the words.

A beautiful verse in the Guru Gītā says, ‘The Guru just wipes off with the big toe of his left foot your fate which Brahma has written on your forehead.’ The Master can change your very destiny and take you to a new dimension. An astrologer may be able to predict your future, but a Master can simply recreate your future. He is one with Existence, which is operating this whole Universe. Can the energy which runs the planets and stars not have the power to handle your life?

It is very difficult to relate with a living Master. You see, it is very easy to relate with dead masters. You can project all your imaginations about God on him. When Kṛṣṇa promises that He descends again and again—sambhavāmi yuge yuge—what He means is the Kṛṣṇa energy will descend. People think Kṛṣṇa will come down in the same form with the yellow clothes, the flute and the two peacock feathers. Again and again, Kṛṣṇa happens on planet Earth, but our incompletions are so cunning, they manage in making us miss Him in any form. We miss all the living Masters. It is easy to fool yourself, escaping from a living Master and just worshipping a Master who has left the body. You escape all the possibilities of transformation.

You can just say, ‘Amayaṁ anahaṁkāraṁ arāgaṁ amadaṁ tathā…’ ‘I offer my non-attachment to you’, ‘I offer my ego to you.’ You can say that to an idol and that idol will be just standing. But, if you tell me that, I will simply catch your neck and say, ‘Hey! Where is your non-attachment? Give it. Where is your ego? Surrender it!’ With the living Master, he will be constantly working on you, to cut your ego and to show you your true Self. But the ego is afraid to die at the Master’s hands, so you try to escape. Just being open to his energy can get rid of the biggest cancer in you, your ego.

When you realize the truth that you too are one with the Universe, there is nothing more to desire; nothing to be attached to. There is no longer any differentiation between who you are and what the Universe is. Māyā, the illusion of that separation, disappears. That is why the Master is called Guru, one who leads you from ‘gu’, which is darkness, to ‘ru’, that is light; one who leads you from ignorance to bliss.

A Master does not differentiate between good and bad. He is not care if what you do is considered meritorious by society or sinful. Here, Kṛṣṇa says beautifully, ‘Even if you are the most sinful of all sinners—sarvebhyaḥ pāpa-krt-tamaḥ, you will certainly completely cross the ocean of miseries with the boat of knowledge—sarvam jñāna-plavenaiva vṛjinaṁ santariṣyasi (4.36).’

At the spiritual level, the concept of sin does not exist. It is a creation of man-made institutions, of societal and political organizations to control others through fear. When you have the true knowledge, the intelligence of why you are doing what you are doing, the very knowledge will make the action divine, the act will no longer be just a ritual but a means to reach the Ultimate. Automatically, you will cross the ocean of miseries because misery itself is a result of ignorance of your true self. When ‘spirit’ is added to a ‘ritual’, it becomes ‘spirituality’.

source: Bhagavadgita Decoded