When I first met Gurudev, I saw him on stage at an advanced course I was attending. Though I couldn’t quite fathom who or what he was, I admired the wisdom of his words and his humor and was filled with gratitude for the practices and knowledge with which he had transformed my life.
I saw him as a wise and wonderful man. Later that evening, he did “darshan,” i.e. going around to every person and handing them a little bag of nuts. When he came around to me to give me a little bag of nuts, he looked in my eyes, it must have been for half a second.
I stood transfixed. I felt such a wave of love coming from him that I quite nearly fell over! In that split second, which seemed like an hour due to its power, I realized why people say that “love conquers all” and that love is the most powerful thing in the world. In that moment, I realized that these sayings were all true. And that a being so full of love is capable of transforming the whole world…because what everyone WANTS…is Love… I felt in that moment that Gurudev could transform and bring out the best in anyone, even Saddam Hussein, through his very gaze of love…
Though we see Love in him, Gurudev tells us that we are the source of Love. We keep looking for it outside of us, but Gurudev points his finger back inside us. Our need to look outside of us is SO strong that he has come here to be with us, to manifest love, so that we would pay attention to his message – the message to turn back inside and seek for the divine where we had not yet looked for it: inside. Gurudev is a manifestation of love, and in his essence, he is a manifestation of our true potential as human beings. He does not tell us that we can be like him, he tells us that we are like him. He is here to show us who we really are. Do not make any excuses to miss the opportunity to meet Gurudev and to encounter yourself. There is no excuse.
