He was no ordinary sadhak or an ‘intellectual philosopher’. I
believed I was in the presence of a great sage from eons ago, who had repeatedly striven
to know truth and reality and had achieved what he wanted. He had lived it; he truly
was a seer of everything.
In another interaction, when I was slow to answer a question he had posed to me,
he scolded me saying, “Which acharya is standing between you and me, that you
hesitate so?” Somewhere in me I was yet to accept him as my guru, as a person who’s
order, direction and message I would unequivocally follow with no alternative thoughts
or goals. This is also a teacher’s way of showing you where you stand and how long a
way you still have to progress.
A quiet evening, May of 2014, in Achoti, he was lying down and doing his
exercises. I requested Shriram to be my spokesperson, as I could not gather the
courage to ask him myself, and pose to him this question, “Have I been able to accept you as my guru?” He smiled and said, “Where has that happened? No, not yet. These
days nobody is able to accept a guru, it is not that easy. To accept, means to follow his
every command, his direction, without question, like I did.” Probably to encourage me
he added, “But you are on the right track”.
Gowri Srihari
Amarkantak, 2016
This is a real story,taken as an extract from the book “Saanidhya” first published online in 2020.
सानिध्य