Sri Bhagavan YanchiGuruji is a Living Spiritual Master; one who has not only Realised Consciousness-Itself but who also consents to speak of this Realisation to others. The Living Spiritual Master comes always to restore people to their natural state, the joy and freedom of Inherent Being.

In the West, we do not have a tradition of Living Masters. In a secular society, we do not enter a temple to receive instruction on how to recognize one in whom the highest functions of human Consciousness have Awakened. We tend to be singularly unprepared to come into the Presence of a True Spiritual Master; we do not even know how to approach such a one. Although we are taught to revere knowledge and ideas, nothing in our education prepares us to relate to one who has Realised the very Heart.

Christianity is based on the teachings of a great Spiritual Master, who lived and died more than two thousand years ago. Through the centuries, the Divine has become disembodied, a living truth reduced to ideas and ideals. In our minds, the long dead body of Christ may well be sacred but a body of flesh and blood is a very different matter. For a human being with a body to claim Divinity is tantamount to heresy! A legacy of bodily negativity has separated us from the Divine; unwittingly, we have banished ourselves from the Garden of Eden.

Eastern traditions, though, celebrate the Divine in human form. For Buddhists, the goal of all spiritual practice is enlightenment or Spiritual Awakening, a concept now familiar in the West. Many schools of Buddhism have acknowledged the existence of enlightened teachers and Masters who came after Buddha, men and women who attained the ultimate Realisation, Consciousness-Itself.

In Hinduism, there is a tradition of reverence for God-Conscious men and women. The role of the Spiritual Master is acknowledged; the Guru function is understood to be part of the established order of Consciousness. Originally from the Sanskrit, the word “Guru” means “spiritually weighty,” or one who turns darkness into Light. The function of the Guru, or Spiritual Master, is to Awaken people to Transcendental Consciousness, to turn people from the darkness of suffering (egoic consciousness) to the Light of their own Inherent Being (Consciousness-Itself). Gurus traditionally appear at times in human history when people are mired in materialism, and have turned away from Spirit. The Guru, aflame with God, is a catalyst for the Divine spark in others, calling humans back to True Being.

The appearance of a Spiritual Adept is always a Grace. Even to come into the physical Presence of the Spiritual Master is a blessing, for one is coming not merely to a spiritual teacher, but to Consciousness Itself. The True Spiritual Master calls everyone and everything back into God, always and only to re-turning us to the paradise of inherent happiness that is our natural state. ~