[Advaita-l] Guru - yoga -jnana

[Satish Arigela]

>>"A person who acquires Yoga siddhis is not necessarily a good guru."
>Who is a good Guru?  I would like to know how you certify a Guru as 
Good,
>bad and neutral - both Yogic and otherwise.

Anbuji,

This is indeed the case. One can attain yoga siddhis without having the necessary Jnana.
Such guru-s are charismatic and can perform things like healing or removing afflictions etc but they necessarily cannot lead one towards brahma Jnana.

On the other hand there are teachers who are vidvAn-s without the yogic siddhi-s and they may be able to guide one towards the final Jnana.

The tAntrika scholar abhinavagupta says that if one has to choose between a teacher who is a yoga-siddha and a teacher who is a jnAni (in this context a jnani is one who is well versed in the vast shaiva lore), it is always wise to choose the later.
What I say above is in the tAntrika context

>I fully agree with Sri Vidyasankar Sundaresan's points. I would like to 
add one more: a >person with true yoga siddhi will not come out in the 
open to state that he has the power.

Not necessarily. There are a few yogi-s with true siddhi-s who display them without being shy. But such display is not that common. In a good number of cases the display will often lead to downfall..just like we are a witnessing one now...


>"A person who acquires Yoga siddhis is not necessarily a good guru."

--- On Sun, 3/21/10, Anbu sivam2 <anbesivam2 at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Anbu sivam2 <anbesivam2 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Swami Nithyananda
To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Date: Sunday, March 21, 2010, 9:55 AM

"A person who acquires Yoga siddhis is not necessarily a good guru."

Who is a good Guru?  I would like to know how you certify a Guru as Good,
bad and neutral - both Yogic and otherwise.

Regards,
Anbu

On Fri, Mar 19, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > This is was a nice and neutral article....
> >
> > Though one thing that has always perplexed me...
> >
> > Why do all these gurus, who have achieved all these siddhis fall into
> > this trap....
> >
> > One of the biggest thing that a yogi is said to accomplish is strong
> > intuition, and a developed third eye, which means he can kindof look
> > into the future.... that is one of the biggest power all spiritual
> > gurus claim..
> >
> > If that is so, why do they fall into such trap...
> >
> > I am very curious to discuss this... any comments are most welcome.
> >
> > Thanks
> > Hitanshu
> >
>
>
> Without commenting on the particular instance of the scandals currently
> associated with this Swami Nityananda, let me just make a few general
> comments.
>
>
>
> 1. A person who acquires Yoga siddhis is not necessarily a good guru.
> 2. A person who acquires some Yoga siddhis is not necessarily a master
>   of all Yoga siddhis.
> 3. Even a person who has mastered all the powerful Yoga siddhis is not a
>   role model if he has not given up attachment to sense objects.
> 4. The powers that gurus claim and the powers that they actually have
>   can be very different things! It is up to those who are looking for
> gurus,
>   to check for the gap between what is claimed and what is actually there.
> 4. A person who wears saffron robes, but does not have a time-tested and
>   authentic guru-paramparA behind him/her, has to be treated with caution.
> 5. My own thumb-rule: if some person amasses a lot of material wealth and
>   fame within a few years of arriving in public as a guru, or if some guru
> has
>   a penchant for being in the news all the time, it is suspicious, to say
> the
>   least. Guru-dom is not a tradeable commodity to be marketed and
> publicized
>   via media outlets.
>
>
>
> I am engaging in this thread not because this topic of is worthy of
> discussion
> here, but only because this list has a lot of sincere seekers after truth,
> who
> may have similar questions in their minds.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Vidyasankar
>
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