The Means Is as Important as the End

Acharya Prashant

3 min
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The Means Is as Important as the End
And then there are those who actually really practically want liberation. Those who really and practically want liberation, find out the means to be liberated. The Guru is the means. Nanak sahab says, “Now that you know so much about God, the absolute, you must also know how the absolute is to be reached.” This summary has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation

Acharya Prashant: God is God, seated on his high throne, and we mere mortals would have remained where we are, wallowing in our lowly places…Aasman pe hai khuda aur zameen par hum (God is on the sky and we are on earth). And no relation, no ladder to connect the two worlds.

The Guru is the ladder. And, therefore those who have really wanted to ascend to the heavens, have actually valued the ladder even more than the heaven. They say, “Without the ladder we had been consigned to a very basal experience.” And, who had consigned us to this lowly life? They say, “If God is the real doer of everything, surely it was God, who had sentenced us to Maya. Had the Guru not been there, then we would have remained perennial victims of Maya.” Therefore, we thank the Guru and we will say that even God is just a gift of the Guru, Guru Prasad.

So, after describing God in all the possible ways, we are also told, how to get him. How to get him? There is just one way. What is that way? Guru Prasad.

If you go deeper into this, the exact opposite is also true. That’s the mark of the great truth, it contains opposites. The Guru is the prasad of God, because the great one sits in your heart as your deep urge for liberation, therefore, you bow down to the Guru. It’s as if God has gifted you with the Guru so that you can attain God. It is as if somebody who loves you so much, has sent you a guide to bring you to him, the Guru is the gift of God.

And to the living being, God is the gift of Guru. Prasad does not exactly mean gift. Prasad is a holy thing, it is sacredness bestowed.

There are those who content themselves with just intellectually knowing the attributes of godliness. They are the ones, who are more interested in winning debates and fooling themselves.

And then there are those who actually really practically want liberation. Those who really and practically want liberation, find out the means to be liberated. The Guru is the means, the Guru is therefore not for those whose yearning is superficial, those who just want to know the name or the address they never want to reach, they can avoid and bypass the Guru.

But those who are interested in actual attainment, for them are the words Guru Prasad. Nanak sahab says, “Now that you know so much about God, the absolute, you must also know how the absolute is to be reached.”

This article has been created by volunteers of the PrashantAdvait Foundation from transcriptions of sessions by Acharya Prashant
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