Mbodying Wareness: Peter Wilberg
Mbodying Wareness: Peter Wilberg
Mbodying Wareness: Peter Wilberg
EMBODYING AWARENESS
Peter Wilberg
ON THE MEANINGS OF ‘GURU’
2
SOME QUESTIONS:
Who is ‘guru’?
3
What is ‘guru’?
Guru is first of all simply a word – one whose meaning derives from
specific cultural contexts and traditions, and which is actually, currently
and commonly applied to hundreds of thousands of people of different
types, including Hindu priests and educators, and spiritual mentors and
teachers of all sorts. Such spiritual teachers are all called guru even
though they may be engaged in many different types of spiritual
teaching (for example teaching music as a spiritual tradition), draw on
many different Hindu religious or cultural traditions, and possess
enormously varying levels and types of knowledge, awareness, ability
and power.
A ‘PRECEPTOR’ (ACHARYA):
4
preceptor (Adicharya) can also be a genuine teacher of truth or
satguru.
5
RELATED TERMS:
Gurukul
Guruseva
Guruyoga / Gurudarshan
6
Dikshaguru / Gurudiksha
Gurupuja
If the guru performs puja within the shrine of the ashram or gurukul this
brings great benefits not only to the guru, renewing and enhancing his
health, powers and wisdom. It can bring immense benefits to all
members of his spiritual family or kula - providing a medium of
transmission to all his students and allowing guru to act as a channel
through which the clarifying light and awareness bliss (chitananda) of
the divine can pervade the household.
7
CITATIONS
For most Western students, guru-yoga is the great stumbling block in their
discipleship. … The goal is not being swallowed by the teacher’s personality
but merging with his or her true nature, which is the singular Reality that also is
one’s own true nature.
Georg Feuerstein
The attitude of the student towards his teacher is of great importance to the
student, because it lays an unseen cable from him to the teacher, and along
that cable pass to and fro the messages and help which the teacher has to
give. The teacher can never lose contact with the student by going to another
part of the world. That unseen cable is elastic and it will stretch for thousands
of miles, because the World-Mind consciousness will travel almost instantly
and anywhere. Contact is not broken by increasing physical distance. It is
broken by the change of heart, the alteration of mental attitude by the
student towards the teacher. If the attitude is wrong, then the cable is first
weakened and finally snapped. Nothing can then pass through and the
student is really alone.
The projected ideas and concentrated thoughts of a man who has made a
permanent connection with his Overself are powerful enough to affect
beneficently the inner life of other men. But even here nature requires the latter
to establish their own inner connection with him in turn. And this can be done
only by the right mental attitude of trust and devotion.
The Master may add his spiritual vitality or inspiration temporarily to the
disciple's by merely wishing him well. If this is done during the Master's prayer
or meditation, the disciple's subconscious will spontaneously pick up the
telepathically projected flow and sooner or later bring it into consciousness. If,
however, something more precise and more positive is required, he may
consciously will and focus it to the disciple while both are in a state of
meditation at the same time.
Paul Brunton
8
Acquire the transcendental knowledge from a Self-realized master by humble
reverence, by sincere inquiry, and by service.
Bhagavad Gita
The first sign of success is confidence that [one’s efforts] will bear fruit. The
second is being firm in that faith. The third is devotion to the Guru.
Shiva-Samhita
Gurus who know petty mantras and herbal concoctions are numerous. But
difficult to find here on earth is a Guru who knows the mantras described in
the Nigamas, Agamas and Tantras.
O Beloved, he who really knows the identity of the body and macrocosm … is
a Guru and none other.
Kula-Anarva-Tantra
Abhinavagupta
All the sages and seers look upon Guru as an embodiment of the trinity of
Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshvara [Shiva] … The Guru is Maheshvara when he
destroys the world of concepts stirring in his disciple’s heart. The Guru is
Brahma, the creator, when he purifies his disciple’s heart and sows in it the
seed of highest truth. He is Vishnu when he protects this newly created
wisdom of yoga within the disciple.
Guru Muktananda
9
Guru Shankaracharya and his four disciples:
‘GURU’
Peter Wilberg
10
Victory to the ancient Gurus … who are faultless pilots
through the turbulence of the waves of the sea of sacred texts.
The Lord has set in motion the heart of the Guru with
compassion for lifting up those who have taken refuge [at his
feet]. That glorious Guru has set me on the path of truth.
11
THE PLACE OF ‘GURU’ IN THE NEW YOGA
In THE NEW YOGA, being Guru has many dimensions - Guru
being both a person, a practice exercised through spiritual
powers, a relational principle and a responsibility exercised
with a definite purpose. As a person, Guru is a human
embodiment of the Awareness Self. Guru is not simply a
person with mature awareness however, but one who by
virtue of this is empowered to help others to expand,
deepen, express and embody their own awareness. The
practice of Guru – that of being, embodying and imparting
awareness - is based on a heightened capacity for BEING
AWARE and for BECOMING OTHER – for aware identification with
the souls of others. Guru is one who has the necessary soul
powers or Siddhis to shape-shift their soul body in resonance
with anything and anyone, and to “enter the body of
another without leaving their own” (Abhinavagupta). The
Guru principle is that of educating people in awareness
through mutual devotion and meditation – Guru devoting
him- or herself to meditating each student’s experience with
awareness, and the disciples in turn meditating Guru as an
embodiment of their true identity - the divine Awareness Self
within them. Just as it is the responsibility of the parent to
cultivate the healthy development of the child’s
potentialities and of the adult self latent within the child, so it
is the responsibility of the Guru to cultivate the disciple’s
potentialities of awareness and deepen the maturity of their
awareness. To do so requires that Guru possess powers of
initiation (Diksha) through which they can both destroy the
disciple’s accumulation of unaware identifications (Karma)
and bestow the disciple with a new and more aware
experience of self – and to identification with their divine
Awareness Self. The aim of Guru is not to either annihilate the
student’s current self-experience or ego identity - or force
them to surrender it to their own - but rather to become
someone aware of their own ego identity as but one small
expression and embodiment of their Awareness Self. Guru
can be either man or woman, but like awareness and its
powers, the inner self and body is neither male nor female –
and also both.
12
THE ‘SIDDHA GURU’ IN THE NEW YOGA
13
• The ability to experience the sensory qualities as the expression
of soul qualities: shapes, tones and textures of awareness or soul.
• The ability to feel the soul of another in our own body and our
soul in theirs.
• The ability to shift the bodily shape, tone and texture of one’s
soul.
• The ability to let one’s awareness or soul flow into the body of
another, imparting new shapes, tones and textures to it.
• The ability to ‘meld’ one’s soul with that of another, dissolving the
apparent physical boundaries that separate us as beings.
• The ability to attune to and identify with the soul qualities of all
beings, to shape-shift one’s soul body in resonance with them,
and reveal them through one’s physical form.
14
• The ability to feel one’s awareness or soul extending beyond the
boundaries of the physical body into an infinite cosmic space of
awareness - to experience the entire universe as our body.
• The ability to let one’s awareness rise up from the crown of one’s
head and expand into the great, all encompassing sky of
awareness that is the all-surrounding space of the outer universe.
• The ability to let one’s awareness flow down from our heads and
mind space into an unbounded inner soul space of awareness
that is the true womb of all outer universes.
• The ability to take the awareness of others down into the depths
of their soul and to release the pure power of awareness rise from
those depths as ‘serpent power’ in their body – ‘Kundalini’.
15