Be True to Your Guru

Be True to Your Guru

The spiritual master who initiates us is called our diksha guru or our initiating guru. According to the great Vaisnava acharya, ISKCON Founder-Acharya: His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, just as we have only one father, we have only one guru, the spiritual master who initiates us. Others who teach us purely what our initiating guru has taught can also be considered spiritual masters. This is called the siksha guru or the instructing spiritual master. The instructing guru assists the spiritual master in delivering the disciple back to home, back to Godhead.  If someone teaches differently from what our spiritual master has taught us, he cannot be accepted as an instructing guru. At the time of our initiation our spiritual master absorbs the karma from our previous sinful activities to facilitate our becoming purely absorbed in Krishna consciousness. In this way he gives us a karmic clean slate so that we can practice Krishna consciousness without being impeded by our previous sinful reactions. Once initiated we must be very careful not to disobey the orders of our spiritual master because if we deviate from the path of bhakti our spiritual master will suffer reactions. Therefore once we take shelter and initiation from the bona fide spiritual master we must be very careful to always faithfully follow his instructions without any deviation. In this way by remaining true to our guru we will rapidly advance on the pathway back to home, back to Godhead.