What is a Guru?

[Guest guest]

There is a conversation which took place between him and Dilip Kumar

Roy of Sri Aurobindo Ashram in the late forties which reads as under:

 

Dilip : Some people report that Maharshi denies the need of a Guru.

Others say the reverse. What does Maharshi say?

Bhagavan : I have never said that there is no need for a Guru.

Dilip : Sri Aurobindo often refers to you as having had no Guru.

Bhagavan : That depends on what you call Guru. He need not necessarily

be in human form. Dattatreya had twenty four Gurus-the elements, etc.

That means that every form in the world was his Guru. A Guru is

absolutely necessary. The Upanishads say that none but a Guru can

take a man out of a jungle of mental and sense perceptions, so there

must be a Guru.

Dilip : I mean a human Guru. The Maharshi didn't have one.

Bhagavan : I might have had sometime or other. And didn't I sing hymns

of Arunachala? What is a Guru? Guru is God or the Self. First a man

prays to God to fulfil his desires, then a time comes when he does

not pray for the fulfillment of a desire but for God himself. So God

appears to him in some form or other, human or non-human, to guide as

a Guru in answer to his prayer.