Choosing a Spiritual Master
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one guru, who appears in an infinity of forms to teach you, me, and all others.
The guru, or  ācāryadeva , as we learn from the bona fide scriptures, delivers the message of the absolute world, the transcendental abode of the Absolute Personality, where everything nondifferentially serves the Absolute Truth. We have heard so many times:  mahājano yena gataḥ sa panthāḥ  (“Traverse the trail which your previous  ācārya  has passed”), but we have hardly tried to understand the real purport of this  śloka . If we scrutinizingly study this proposition, we understand that the  mahājana  is one, and the royal road to the transcendental world is also one. In the  Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad  [1.2.12] it is said:
tad-vijñānārthaṁ sa gurum evābhigacchet samit-pāṇiḥ śrotriyaṁ brahma-niṣṭham
“In order to learn the transcendental science, one must approach the bona fide spiritual master in disciplic succession, who is fixed in the Absolute Truth.”
Thus it has been enjoined herewith that in order to receive that transcendental knowledge, one must approach the guru. Therefore, if the Absolute Truth is one, about which we think there is no difference of opinion, the guru also cannot be two. The  Ācāryadeva  for whom we have assembled tonight to offer our humble homage is not the guru of a sectionary institution or one out of many differing exponents of the truth. On the contrary, he is the Jagad-guru, or the guru of all of us; the only difference is that some obey him wholeheartedly, while others do not obey him directly.
In the  Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam  [11.17.27] it is said:
ācāryaṁ māṁ vijānīyān nāvamanyeta karhicit na martya-buddhyāsūyeta sarva-devamayo guruḥ
“One should understand the spiritual master to be as good as I am,” said the Blessed Lord. “Nobody should be jealous of the spiritual master or think of him as an ordinary man, because the spiritual master is the sum total of all demigods.” That is, the  ācārya  has been identified with God Himself. He has nothing to do with the affairs of this mundane world. He does not descend here to meddle with the affairs of temporary