A Satguru is Your Doorway

 

Photo Credit: Sant Mat Radhasoami

A Satguru is Your Doorway

Swamiji has spoken about the ‘dasham dwara’ (tenth doorway) also known as the ‘Gurudwara’ (a Gurudwara is the Sikh place of worship) – as Swamiji has explained the region just below the Sahastrara or crown chakra is the Gurudwara or the entrance or doorway to liberation. For uninitiated individuals it is impossible to open the tenth doorway in a single birth and required rigorous spiritual practice over several births to attain that state. But if one is initiated as a disciple of a Satguru then the Satguru helps in showing the path to opening of this doorway.

A Satguru is only an instrument, a means, a doorway to the beyond. Why is this called a doorway? What do you think a doorway is? It could have been called anything – but a doorway even in the physical sense is nothing but empty space – you open the door and you go from this side to the other literally through empty space, isn’t it! Hence, when a doorway opens and you see what is beyond, the doorway becomes important to you because it is through the frame of the doorway that you see. The Satguru is only important because of what is beyond him. The door is important because it gives you access to the beyond. If you are locked in a room, then the door is the possibility to the beyond.

Swamiji keeps telling us not to look at his physical body, not to be attracted to his physical body, his radiance, his presence, but to look beyond, look at what he really is; and if through your spiritual practice you do ‘see’, then what you see is literally ‘nothing’ – you see a void and a golden-pink light around that void. Swamiji has attained that state of nothingness and therefore it would be best to look beyond Swamiji’s physical body and get a taste of what is beyond that. Once you do that, it is possible that your own doorway to the beyond will open.

No Satguru gives you self-realisation, but only instils the seed into you, it is your own spiritual practice that germinates the seed and gives you self-realisation. The Satguru removes all the obstacles to it. The Self is always realised, though our physical body lives in ignorance of it.

A Satguru only takes you to the doorway of self-realisation – your human ‘freewill’ demands that you take the final step alone. This is the most critical part of the journey. This is the time when the ego tries every way it knows to distract you from the path.

Whether one chooses to follow a Satguru or ‘go alone’, eventually all have to return home to the Source. Ultimately, you have to reach the Guru within you, viz. the soul, and all Satgurus do nothing but hold the mirror to try and show you who you really are. 

The Light we see in these Divine Beings is a reflection of our own Light. You cannot surrender or bow to any external Satguru, without first bowing to your own Self. The pause in the journey happens after we rediscover the Enlightened Guru that is none other than one’s own Self. There after the unending journey continues in its blissful glory.