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How I found my teacher
Once, it was still in early youth, some indefinite thought about bright Light on my life way appeared for the first time. That Light seemed to appear from nothing. It caused no associations and was not connected to anything experienced by me earlier, but nonetheless it was absolutely real.
When I became a young woman, this thought began to appear more often; and for the last years it began to come still more intensely especially in hard situations, but as before I could not connect it with somebody or something. It became my consolation and hope which encouraged me to proceed my fife way.
In my late years already I had had two infarctions. When I got such diagnosis for the first time, the thought of the Light again appeared spontaneously. If to turn back this idea runs all through my life. But that time it was more clear and definite. What was it all about?
I grew up in Germany, in former GDR, without any spiritual education. I was searching for spiritual way, but church did not give the answer to my issues while they were becoming more and more pressing. I started my outward search which was going on about twenty years more.
In 1989 after the falling of Berlin Wall there appeared a lot of possibilities for spiritual pursuit and meetings. For some more or less periods I visited several spiritual groups. Sometimes there I got a kind of inner satisfaction. But I felt a lack of some essential thing. What exactly?
I remember that on my fourtieth birthday I shed tears gushing from my eyes, “I do not have love, I feel estranged from life.” Nobody and nothing could comfort me.
Time was passing. There came 2006, I was over seventy – so long it all lasted. With strong inner understanding I persistently prayed God about the Teacher with whom I could have the personal contact and who could give me a hint about what I lack of and how I could attain it. This request I repeated lots of times during several months.
At the end of March 2006 near the metro station on the wall among the old posters I suddenly saw a very small advertisement. Usually I do not notice such advertisements as a rule, but something attracted my attention to it. It announced about coming to Berlin Shri Gurudev Shri Prakash Ji – the Spiritual Teacher. I got in touch by telephone with the group of his disciples that were organizing the visit. Some days later I had a first meeting with my Teacher.
What namely should I tell him from my long life? In the course if our short meeting he asked me again and again of what I thought after my first infarction. And again the Thought flashed! “The Light is behind this,” I answered. The Teacher rejoiced at my words very much. I never saw such radiating; we may say divinely smiling man as the Teacher before. Later in the talk with his disciples I learnt that his name Prakash is translated as “Light”. Now I had the explanation of his joy.
Is it possible that then it was also my Teacher?
The answers to many questions began to come soon; they as if the parts in mosaic matched and supplemented each other. When I started to visit spiritual talks (satsangs) regularly, I have learnt that in the spring of 2006 only a single advertisement about Guru Ji’s visit was clued at that place. And I was the only one who came by this way to him. I know today that if God wants, even a camel will pass through the eye of a needle.
It’s amazing how the life is going on! My disappointment at my fourtieth birthday…And then many years later the meeting with the Teacher who teaches us just the Love – bhakti-yogi. My heart has brought me to him…
I deeply moved that under the guidance of my Teacher sufferings are gradually transformed into beauty and joy. I have some feeling that the connection with my Teacher has got some deep sources in past lives; now it manifested itself on a physical plane. My inner confidence that all my life was the preparation to my late meeting with my Teacher becomes stronger and stronger.
I came at last!
Two years later...
When I wrote this article I understood that it becomes very personal, but this is the single way to share my experience with other people. At that time I regularly attended satsangs at our center of meditation, but my personal practice, sadhana did not come out. Concentration did not turn out – the thoughts led me astray. Why? I was quite unsatisfied with this and started searching for the reason. Day by day I tried to meditate. Little by little I understood that the feelings rising up from the depth of my consciousness and prevented me from concentration had been caused by the fears and anxieties of past years. After this sadhana became improving. Anyway I did not know how to get rid of those my feelings, all my endeavours were in vain.
In spring of the same year I went to Russia to Guru once again. Being in Ashram I felt clearly that my inner state at immediate presence of Guru Ji differs greately from that one when he is far away. That time the Teacher literally flooded me with his love. His first words addressed to me and his sight caused in me the mixture of feelings. – tears of joy, great anguish of God and at the same time a kind of releasing inner laugh. I do not know how it happened, but my stiff crystallized thoughts and feelings, which created in me impenetrable bars, began gradually melting in the light of his love.
For the first time in my life I met a man whom I can ask any question; a man who touches the very depths of my heart. And I accepted him as my Spiritual Teacher. One can compare My trust to the Teacher with a belief of a child: I am ready to follow him and put myself into his hands. Future is not in my hands, I can only try to support the permanent connection with the Teacher and turn to sadhana all my thoughts, words and actions.
In this article I share my private experience with you. The process of inner transformations never is over, so I can speak only about the stages of my development. In a conclusion I want to tell: significant changes occur in a man in a short time under the protection and guidance of the Teacher. I appreciated that sadhana rises all thoughts and feelings hidden inside and as if forgotten to the surface of the consciousness, but at the same time Guru Ji helps to sooth them and do not let them possess a man.
I noticed that some new trait appeared in me – much deeper sympathy to other people. My thoughts and feelings no more limited me in my spiritual advancement.
Bhakti-yoga is the straight way to the Divine, just as straight, as the way from the heart of the Teacher to my own. In spite of the fact that we live far from each other – I live in Germany thousand kilometers from Ashram, and I see him only a few times a year, despite my speaking other language – not Russian, but German – spiritual discipline is a great cognitive process, based on intuition. It can be compared with movement on unknown and never untrodden paths… the paces by touch…sudden flash of inspiration and again the paces into unknown.
Krista-Mariya Kun, Germany , 2009 г.