Choosing a Spiritual Master 71

one guru, who appears in an infinity of forms to teach you, me, and all
others.

The guru, or dcdryadeva, 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: mahdjano yena gatah sa
panthah (‘‘Traverse the trail which your previous dcdrya has passed’’),
but we have hardly tried to understand the real purport of this sloka. If we
scrutinizingly study this proposition, we understand that the mahdjana is
one, and the royal road to the transcendental world is also one. In the
Mundaka Upanisad [1.2.12] it is said:

samit-panih Srotriyam brahma-nistham

“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 tran-
scendental 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 Acaryadeva for whom we have
assembled tonight to offer our humble homage is not the guru of a sec-
tarian 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 dif-
ference is that some obey him wholeheartedly, while others do not obey
tum directly.

In the Srimad-Bhagavatam [11.17.27] it is said:

acaryam mam vijaniyan
navamanyeta karhicit

na martya-buddhydastyeta
sarva-devamayo guruh

“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
@unk of him as an ordinary man, because the spiritual master is the sum
total of all demigods.’’ That is, the dcdrya 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
