THE IMPRESSIONS RECEIVED FROM THE SADGURU

 
Love for the Sadguru or Perfect Master is particularly important because it invites contact with the Sadguru. Through such contact the aspirant receives from the Sadguru impressions which have the special potency of undoing other past impressions, thus completely transforming the tenor of his life. The recipient of the impressions may entirely give up old habits of life and ways of thought. Such contact changes and elevates the tone of the most depraved life. A person might have been leading a life of reckless dissipation without ever thinking of anything other than the fulfillment of mundane desires. He might have been caught up in the thirst for possession and power, with no ideal other than that of acquiring and hoarding money and making merry.

But even such a person, who cannot by any stretch of imagination think of freedom from earthly fetters, may find that the sanskaras which he catches from his contact with the Sadguru are potent enough to drop forever a curtain on his old manner of thought and existence, and open for him entirely new vistas of a higher and freer life.

The impressions received from the Sadguru might be equally beneficial to an intellectual and cultured person whose vision is nevertheless circumscribed, whose imagination can at best appreciate the beauty of art and literature and whose altruism cannot go beyond the limits of his neighbourhood or the boundaries of his country. Such a person would, on receiving impressions from a Sadguru, be lifted to still higher modes of life.

The Sadguru can raise the aspirant from the ordinary intellectual level of consciousness to the level of consciousness where there is inspiration and intuition, and then onwards to the level of insight and illumination which culminates in his merging into the Infinite.