by Greg Goode
So is it necessary or not?
In a nutshell, I interpret the insistence upon a guru as a kind of prakriya, or “teaching method.” But before going into detail about the question of the guru’s necessity, I’d like to look into some background on this particular teaching. Where does it come from, this emphasis on the personal connection with a living guru? Primarily it comes from Notes.
The emphasis on the guru takes a strong form in Notes, which is why our Bulgarian friend wrote to me in the first place. According to the strong form of this teaching, personal contact with the guru is a necessity for self-realization. I’ll call this claim the “guru doctrine.” The guru doctrine comes across in Shri Atmananda’s talks themselves but is conveyed perhaps even more insistently in the supporting material written by Notes compiler and editor Nitya Tripta. Tripta is the author of a short chapter in Notes called “On Devotion to a Living Guru.” In a section called “Need of a Guru (and Danger of More Than One),” Tripta discusses the necessity of the Karana-guru. Karana comes from the Sanskrit word karanam (“reason” or “cause”). Karana-guru is a term used by Shri Atmananda for the guru who’s established in the Truth and who’s able to cause the student to visualize this same Truth. Tripta writes that
[Shri Atmananda] asserted most emphatically that no aspirant, however great, could ever attain liberation without the help of a Karana-guru in person.24
Contact isn’t necessarily a matter of words. It can be non-verbal, as Tripta explains.
This Karana-guru in person is indispensable for Self-realization, though in some very mature cases of uttamadhikaris the contact might be only for a few seconds, by a word or a touch or even a look.25
Shri Atmananda is considerably more nuanced in his approach to the guru doctrine. He doesn’t mention it in every single one of his talks. He mentions the importance of the guru in response to particular questions from beginners or in contexts in which it seems that self-inquiry isn’t the preferred method of attaining self-knowledge. I’ll come back to this point later in this chapter.
The guru doctrine makes a particular kind of logical claim, stressing the absolute necessity of face-to-face contact with a living human guru. This is a much stronger claim than merely saying that a guru is helpful or useful in reaching self-realization.
There’s no doubt that a guru can be helpful. The guru can personalize spiritual teachings in a skillful way that makes them intuitive for a particular person. The guru can respond in a flexible way to a seeker’s deepest and most idiosyncratic questions, whereas a book or video can’t.
But is the stronger claim true? Is it impossible for an aspirant to reach self-knowledge without direct contact with a living human guru? And does Shri Atmananda really mean to assert this as a principle that applies to all aspirants everywhere?
Gurus vs. Books
According to several of Shri Atmananda’s statements in Notes, the aspirant receives something essential and mysterious from the guru: love, light, and the force of truth,26 and these qualities, which only the guru possesses, are more transformational than mere words. When the student sees the guru not as a person but as the Truth beyond phenomenality, the student’s ego and sense of embodiment disappear, and he or she can visualize the Truth directly. Shri Atmananda says:
But the disciple, as long as he feels himself embodied, sees the Guru only as a personality. Slowly, the disciple realizes that he is that living principle beyond the body, senses and mind. Then he finds the Guru also correspondingly exalted.
At last, when the disciple, taken thus to the brink of the mind, listens to the words of the Guru explaining the nature of the positive Self, he is suddenly thrown into that supreme experience of the ultimate. It is only then that he realizes the state of the Guru to be that always, whether in apparent activity or inactivity. Thus alone can Truth be ever realized.27
Reading books alone won’t help, according to Shri Atmananda. Unless you’ve met the guru and heard the Truth expounded, the force of Truth won’t be present. Books can’t provide that experience of egolessness that allows the Truth to be visualized.
When you listen to the spoken word of the Guru, even on the first occasion your ego takes leave of you and you visualize the Truth at once, being left alone in your real nature. But when you read the same words by yourself, your ego lingers on in the form of the word, its meaning, etc., and you fail to transcend them. To visualize the Truth, the only condition needed is the elimination of the ego. This is never possible by mere reading, before meeting the Guru.28
Shri Atmananda sometimes expressed very conservative attitudes toward reading. When asked by a doctor what philosophy books to read, Atmananda replied:
A Sage alone can show you the Truth. But after understanding the Truth from the Sage, you may read only the few books he suggests, to keep you in the groove he has chalked out. After some time, when you are established in the Truth yourself, you may read any book, good or bad.29
I’ll return to the issue of reading and books a bit later as well.
The Guru Doctrine vs. Bhakti Yoga
Although the guru stands at the center of both concepts, Shri Atmananda promotes only the guru doctrine, not bhakti yoga.
The guru doctrine only requires you to hear the Truth expounded by the guru. It doesn’t require you to worship the guru, as does bhakti yoga. Actually, Shri Atmananda was a proponent of self-inquiry and cautioned against bhakti yoga for most people. However, for those already doing bhakti yoga, he recommends that
you attach greater reality to the Lord in your vision than to the objects of this gross world. The more you emphasize the Lord, you are indirectly and unknowingly emphasizing your own personal self as the perceiver. This can never be a help to the attainment of the impersonal.
It is the experience of all Sages who have had dualistic bhakti or yogic training in their early days that all that training had really been, in one sense, an obstacle to their progress to the ultimate Truth.30
So if you don’t already practice bhakti yoga, you have no obligation to begin practicing it. Atmananda’s point is rather that if you do happen to be devotionally inclined, the object of your devotion matters. Your bhakti energies should be directed not toward deities such as Krishna or Shiva but rather toward the guru or toward consciousness itself. According to Shri Atmananda,
a real devotee can only and need only direct his attention to the Consciousness in him. This is real bhakti; and it immediately yields Peace or ananda, which is Consciousness itself… Bhakti for anything other than this is really unworthy of the name. It may, at the most, be called a fascination as unreal as the object itself.31
There are times when Shri Atmananda recommended the aspirant focus on the guru as a main practice. These included cases in which consciousness and contemplation would be too abstract for the person. Here’s a letter from Atmananda to a thirteen-year-old student he called Ponnu, who was a Krishna devotee. He stresses the importance of the guru and the importance of not having more than one.
Peace thou be,
Letter received. The unconditioned love towards one’s own Guru is the only ladder to the goal of Truth. That prema-bhakti is not something which could be shared. No other kind of love or devotion should be capable of bearing comparison to it. A disciple should never bow allegiance to two Gurus at the same time.
May the Lord Bhagavan who is the embodiment of sat-citananda abide in Ponnu for ever.
With love and blessings
(signed)
P. Krishna Menon32
Self-Realization According to the Guru Doctrine
According to the guru doctrine, the process of self-realization may be divided informally into four stages.
Contact. Whether you read books, cultivate spiritual practices, or begin merely with an interest, you should at some point come into personal contact with a Karana-guru. You may need the entire exposition of the truth from beginning to end (which is called tattvopadesha). Or, depending on your readiness, you may need ju
st a few words or a glance. Tattvopadesha carries an extra power. This is the unassailable logic that forces you beyond the usual personal perspective and compels your focus into the perspective of the Absolute.
Visualization. You’re made to feel something magical that escapes your ability to describe. This wordless magical feeling will assist in your visualization of your true nature.
Stabilization. You might need to apply some effort. After your moment of visualization with the guru, you need to “cling on to the Truth so visualized.”33 You may do this by listening to the guru again, as well as by visualizing the Truth over and over. Or you may go over the arguments heard from the guru, or parallel arguments. You may also read books by the guru containing similar arguments. These arguments can take you to the same Truth you experienced in the guru’s presence. Go over them again and again.
Establishment. Through your stabilizing efforts, your knowledge of the Truth of your being becomes unshakable. Your old perspective, in which you misinterpreted the “I” as the mind or body, evaporates. Your new perspective becomes established, in which the self becomes the self of all. The self is realized as awareness.
So according to the guru doctrine, it’s imperative for the seeker to come into contact with a living guru. Without this contact, self-realization is impossible.
The Other Atmananda
A much different picture emerges if we look at Shri Atmananda’s other works. Besides Notes, his most relevant works available in English are Atma Darshan, Atma Nirvriti, Atmananda Tattwa Samhita,34 and his commentary on Ashtavakra Samhita.35 In fact, Notes is a publication that doesn’t even carry Shri Atmananda’s byline. The only byline is Nitya Tripta’s.36 (The other works do carry Atmananda’s byline.)
The Guru Doctrine Is Never Mentioned
In these other works, the guru doctrine is never articulated. There’s ample opportunity in all of these works to mention it. But we simply don’t find it in works other than Notes. This would be a stunningly irresponsible omission if contact with the guru were actually indispensable for self-realization.
The reason for the difference, it seems, is that Shri Atmananda stressed the necessity of the guru in person but not in writing. In his written works, Atmananda never mentions the guru doctrine, and in one case (to be examined below) he even challenges it.
And even in spoken communication, he doesn’t always mention the guru doctrine. For example, in the lesser-known set of dialogues Atmananda Tattwa Samhita, the guru doctrine is never mentioned. This work, edited by Shri Atmananda’s son Shri Adwayananda, is a transcription of recorded talks with advanced disciples. It even contains an entire chapter on the guru-disciple relationship. The purpose of this conversation is to clarify the true meaning of the guru-disciple relationship. It explores this notion by shuttling back and forth between relative and absolute perspectives. But nowhere in the chapter is it stated or even hinted that personal contact with the guru is necessary for self-realization. The section titled “Life Sketch” and other matter contributed by the editor similarly make no mention of the necessity of personal contact.
But it’s in Shri Atmananda’s written work that the omission of the guru principle becomes most significant. Atma Darshan and Atma Nirvriti are his best-known written works. Composed in Malayalam using sloka-like verses that read like sutras, these two booklets are among the most deeply insightful Advaitic works ever written. They were even translated into English by Shri Atmananda himself.
But the guru doctrine isn’t mentioned in either of these works. Shri Atmananda doesn’t even mention it in either book’s preface, in which he talks about the book and sets forth his purpose in writing it. He never says, “This is only a summary of the teaching. To make it really work for you, you must go see a guru in person so that you can be made to visualize the Truth.”
The word “guru” does occur one time in Atma Nirvriti (20:VII), but in a way that almost makes the guru seem superfluous. It’s never stated that the seeker needs a special form of communication that’s only available through personal contact. The text makes it clear that the seeker is already standing in the Truth and just needs reminding. The chapter itself accomplishes the reminding.
Other Methods Are Given as Sufficient for Self-Realization
Not only do Shri Atmananda’s written works fail to mention the guru principle, they also provide several other methods that are given as sufficient for realizing the truth. Chapters 10 and 12 of Atma Darshan recommend discrimination, analysis, and contemplation.37 For example, with discrimination (called viveka in traditional Vedanta), you intuitively recognize the essential difference between subject and object, seer and seen, permanent and passing, awareness and the objects that appear to awareness.
Discrimination, analysis, and contemplation aren’t merely theoretical or intellectual; they belong to the overall process that Atmananda calls “higher reason” (which he provides traditional Vedantic terms for: vidya-vritti or viveka-vritti).38 Higher reason is “reason” because it proceeds similarly to logic and inference. It’s “higher” because its source is awareness itself. It transcends the mind. In higher reason, premises are not learned concepts but the experiences of your own being, which can’t seem unreasonable. The conclusion of higher reasoning is a non-conceptual knowledge of your true nature. Higher reason allows you to do self-inquiry without getting caught in the logical paradox of a mind trying to realize its own unreality. That would be like a knife trying to cut itself. Because higher reason emanates from a source beyond the mind, it can examine the mind to discover its true nature.
The preface to Atma Nirvriti is particularly meaningful in its wholehearted endorsement of texts as helpful in realizing the truth.39 The preface encourages the study of Atma Nirvriti so that the aspirant may stabilize the knowledge of the truth gained through earlier study of Atma Darshan. Study of Atma Nirvriti is recommended so that knowledge of one’s nature will become unshakable, which in turn will result in the attainment of lasting peace. If Shri Atmananda thought a face-to-face encounter with the guru were necessary, the preface would be the ideal place to say so. But he didn’t say so. How could Shri Atmananda fail to mention this if it’s as important as Nitya Tripta says?
The Guru Doctrine Is Challenged
In one of his works, a short commentary on Ashtavakra Samhita, Shri Atmananda comes very close to directly refuting the guru principle. As far as I know, this commentary has never been published or publicly disseminated. Instead, it has only been privately circulated among Atmananda’s students. This short work consists of a tiny introduction by Shri Atmananda followed by verses of Ashtavakra Samhita in English. After many of the verses, Atmananda inserts his own commentary.
Shri Atmananda uses the English translation of Ashtavakra Samhita by Swami Nityaswarupananda (1899–1992) of the Sri Ramakrishna Math.40 The Swami Nityaswarupananda edition features its own substantial introduction, which may have been written by Swami Nityaswarupananda himself.
Swami Nityaswarupananda’s introduction cautions the reader not to interpret Ashtavakra Samhita or Vedanta as mere intellectual philosophy. Vedanta uses philosophy, yes, but it’s able to transcend mere intellectuality by means of a “supra-rational organon called self-realization, which directly intuits the Truth.”41 This “supra-rational organon” is very similar to Atmananda’s “higher reason.”
It’s in Shri Atmananda’s own introduction to his Ashtavakra Samhita commentary that he takes issue with the guru principle. First, he quotes from Swami Nityaswarupananda’s introduction, which assumes a version of the guru principle, saying that “the spiritual aspirant must undergo a course of Sadhana under the guidance and supervision of the Guru, who has himself gone through the grind and envisaged the Truth face to face.”42
Then Atmananda says that, although the classic view is that there’s a need to do sadhana with a guru (as Swami Nityaswarupananda asserts), in the direct path, there’s no need to work with a guru and do sadhana. All you need is higher reason. With hi
gher reason, you transcend the normal limits of intellectual reason, because you directly intuit the truth. Higher reason is sufficient.
The Presence of the Guru in Speech vs. Writing
There’s no doubt that the Shri Atmananda of Notes asserts the guru principle. And there’s no doubt that the Atmananda of Atma Darshan, Atma Nirvriti, and the Ashtavakra Samhita commentary doesn’t endorse the guru principle. In fact, in these three works, he actually provides other means to self-realization that he states as sufficient.
It appears that Shri Atmananda didn’t interpret the principle the same way as Nitya Tripta did. Tripta’s “Life Sketch” of Shri Atmananda at the end of Notes offers a bibliography. Discussing Atma Darshan as a book, Tripta says:
A close study of this book, even by an ordinary aspirant, enables him to have an indirect knowledge of Atma, the Self. This indirect knowledge of the Truth in turn intensifies his earnestness and sincerity to know the Truth directly, and thus transforms him into a genuine jijnyasu or a true aspirant, thereby guaranteeing the attainment of a Karana-guru and liberation.43
This passage makes a distinction between indirect knowledge of the self that we attain through studying Atma Darshan and direct knowledge of the self that comes through a Karana-guru. But this distinction isn’t made anywhere in Atma Darshan. Why not? If Shri Atmananda thought that the book was to be merely a springboard to a Karana-guru, he didn’t say so in the book.
Instead, the sense we get from a close study of Atma Darshan is that the book itself is self-sufficient. Atma Darshan doesn’t teach us about the Self. It doesn’t give us indirect factual or philosophical knowledge. Rather, it invites us to do the inquiries and reminders provided by the text. These inquiries are brilliant portals to direct experience. It’s through these direct means that we’re able to know the self in a direct way. What takes place is much more than just reading.
