If you have not been benefitting from the Guru, either you are too full of yourself or you are not really devoted and putting in the right efforts. Ashtavakra puts it very simply: Even if Brahma, Vishnu, or Shiva are your teachers, yet if you cannot get rid of yourself, you will not benefit. Only somebody who has seen the total failure of his ways is so determined to get rid of suffering that he can sacrifice anything, anybody — only such a person, such a mind, can be helped by the Guru.
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Even if Shiva, Vishnu or Brahma be your instructor yet, unless you forget everything you cannot achieve abidance in the Self.
~ Ashtavakra Gita Chapter 16, Verse-11 ~
Acharya Prashant: You are spoken to, not so that you can know more. The instructor may be the highest and wisest that you can get, yet he will use words and actions which are all going to be perceived by you through mental activity.
The whole effort of the Guru is to rid you of your unnecessary self. Your effort is to use the words of the Guru to protect and extend the same self that the Guru is trying to annihilate. So in that sense, you are always at the war with the Guru.
