Question: Only Krishna as my Guru?You are humbly requested with the folded hands, please quench my thirst of this disturbing question. This question comes again and again in my mind: Can't I just accept Krishna Himself as my guru by following His teachings in Bhagavad-gita? Why should I accept a human being as my guru, why not just Krishna Himself?Yours Sincerely,Hare KrishnaAnswer: Krishna Says Accept His Devotee as Guru AlsoYour question is not at all disturbing. In fact, it is a very nice question. Lord Sri Krishna certainly is our spiritual master. In fact, He is called Adi Guru, the original spiritual master. Because He is our spiritual master we are meant to fully surrender ourselves to Him. This is what He instructs us to do this in the Bhagavad-gita. Surrender means that whatever instructions He has given to us we must follow. It does not mean that we can pick and choose which instructions we would like to follow and which we would like to ignore. No. We must follow each and every one of His instructions if we actually accept Him as our spiritual master. So since Krishna has ordered us in the Bhagavad-gita that we must accept a spiritual master we therefore we must accept a spiritual master if indeed we are actually devotees of Krishna. If we refuse to accept a spiritual master, we are not devotees of Krishna. In that case, we are simply the devotees of our own mental concoctions. Therefore we should show Krishna that we are His real devotees by fully surrendering to His order that we should accept a spiritual master. Otherwise our so-called bhakti is simply a farce. Farcical bhakti should be avoided because it will not deliver us from the cycle of birth and death.This point is further clarified by Lord Sri Krishna in the Adi Purana as follows:ye me bhakta-janah parthana me bhaktas ca te janahmad-bhaktanam ca ye bhaktaste me bhakta-tama matah"Those who are My direct devotees are actually not My devotees, but those who are the devotees of My devotee are factually My devotees."So in conclusion, we can understand that if refuse to accept a guru on the plea that only Krishna is our guru, our so-called bhakti will be rejected by Krishna. Therefore in addition to accepting Krishna as our guru we must also accept His devotee as our guru.
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Just be careful only to accept a pure devotee as your guru, as instructed by Srila Prabhupada in the Nectar of Devotion: “One should not become a spiritual master unless he has attained the platform of uttama-adhikari. A neophyte Vaisnava or a Vaisnava situated on the intermediate platform can also accept disciples, but such disciples must be on the same platform, and it should be understood that they cannot advance very well toward the ultimate goal of life under his insufficient guidance. Therefore a disciple should be careful to accept an uttama-adhikari as a spiritual master.” (Nectar of Instruction, Text 5, Purport)
Does it mean that we actually make some one as our guru by formal process or it would suffice if we just follow senior devotee in preaching Krishna ????
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Just be careful only to accept a pure devotee as your guru, as instructed by Srila Prabhupada in the Nectar of Devotion: “One should not become a spiritual master unless he has attained the platform of uttama-adhikari. A neophyte Vaisnava or a Vaisnava situated on the intermediate platform can also accept disciples, but such disciples must be on the same platform, and it should be understood that they cannot advance very well toward the ultimate goal of life under his insufficient guidance. Therefore a disciple should be careful to accept an uttama-adhikari as a spiritual master.” (Nectar of Instruction, Text 5, Purport)
Anuttama