The world can redeem itself only by placing the highest value on the Guru || Acharya Prashant (2015)

Questioner: The question is: Who is a Guru? Is a Guru different from a Teacher right? Can a Guru bring together — Knowledge and spirituality in one domain? And what is this contradiction between Osho and J. Krishnamurti?

Acharya Prashant: See, there has to be something which makes you feel that there is a difference between a Teacher and a Guru. What is that thing? Because language and dictionary will tell you that these two words are almost synonymous: ‘Teacher and Guru’. Yet something within you tells you that they are not. Indeed there may be a huge difference; a dimensional difference between these two.

Teaching, in the way we know it, in the way it is used in contemporary society, is analogous to filling up the brain, guiding the intellect in a predetermined direction. Now it’s a very important function: to bring a child or a young student up to date, to the point where evolution has brought mankind is important. If a child has born today, he must know the languages that are prevalent today. He must know the sciences, he must know the traffic rules, he must know the political environment, he must know computers and electronics, he must know the way the various societies are built and are operated.

Now, all this knowledge has to come to him, so obviously somebody has to provide this knowledge. And it is a vast quantity of knowledge — it has to be structured, it has to be refined, it has to be codified, one has to see what needs to be brought to the student at what level of absorption and what grade of time. And then, this becomes the roll of the teacher: to ensure that the brain which is born just as a biological entity becomes a socially up to date entity.