Our Real Master

To be around a spiritual master and to be in his company is to receive a continuous stream of spiritual inspiration. His spiritual wisdom, his focus and dedication, his example, his approach to the difficulties of life, his sense of fun and laughter, and above all the powerful atmosphere of spirituality that surrounds him, combine to lift up the aspiring soul, with seemingly little effort being needed. For the beginner and veteran alike, it can feel that there is no better place to be, and this may well be so.

Yet such proximity has its own dangers, for the real guide and master is not the physical human form, however entrancing that may be, but the formless and universal spirit that dwells within and which pervades every being, every form, indeed every particle of creation. Too much focus on the human form of the master can distract the mind from the universal, nameless spirit which is the true guide of the soul. …This universal spirit … transcends all doctrines and religions, mystical or otherwise, and which is the common heritage of every human being…. As Maharaj Ji himself wrote, shortly before he died, to a devoted disciple who had spent many years in his personal company, “May your love of the form culminate in the love of the formless.”
_{John Davidson, Awareness of the Divine}