David: The guru is That. There’s no person in the guru no matter how he behaves, no matter what indication he may give that there’s a person operating. There’s no person. There’s just that Reality.
Yet that personhood that appears to be seen, likes and dislikes, preferences, the manifestation of his desires, the things which come to fulfill those desires, his acceptance of those things, his reveling totally in the field of desire is what makes realization concrete. So, that’s why the human life of the guru is so astounding in its potency to magnify the understanding and experience of the Absolute.
The guru is Parabrahman, beyond Brahman. That’s how Lord Krishna is referred to in the Gita. He’s not just a guru. Guru would be a demeaning thing to call Krishna. Krishna could create gurus. He creates Yanis. He fulfills Yanis, Bhakti or Bhaktas, karma yogis. They come to him for fulfillment. So, who is he? He’s Parabrahmin. He’s this whole Universe. He’s the manifestation of every spiritual path, and he’s the fulfillment of every spiritual path.
Participant 1: When you say the desires and all the preferences of the guru make the realization concrete, what do you mean by that? I don’t quite get that.
David: It means you can’t see the unmanifest only as being the be-all and end-all of the value of spending time with the guru, the master, the satguru, the avatar, whatever, that it’s his interaction in time and space in the midst of that vast cosmic Being that produces the magic antidote to the kind of relief human beings are craving through perception and interaction with reality itself. They need to see one of their own kind as God for them to get God in this unique way. Just as you were describing. That’s what you were describing to me.
P1: Just as a point of curiosity, does that happen outside the human realm? Do avatars come into the animal kingdom and liberate the animals too?
David: I’d like to think so. I don’t want to leave animals out. If you read the technical definition of an avatar, an animal can be an avatar. They can take on the full Universal Consciousness according to Vedic tradition.
That brings up an interesting memory for me with my dog Blacky traveling in my van from southern California to northern California still very much in southern California, pulling over, walking him. But on one particular day, something very astounding happened. What happened was irrefutable in terms of the reality that I beheld, which was his transformation into the Self, that he looked at me a certain way and it was unbelievable what happened.
That dog had gained everything, and it was in his eyes. Looking in his eyes were like looking into the most highly realized eyes that any human being can possess with the Self there in it, that the dog had been immersed as the Self looking at me like that. I received his transmission of the immortal. He became the immortal Bliss of the Universe radiating itself to me in his gaze.
It was all deliberate. I was driving and I was forced to look down away from the road for a few minutes, and he looked right into my eyes and that’s what happened. So, don’t underestimate animals.
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