[Advaita-l] HOW CAN GURU, MANTRA, DEITY BE ONE?

[KAMESWARARAO MULA]

Dear Friends,                      From the feet of Sri Sri Sitaramdas Omkarnath, To a devotees question:  How can the three, Guru, Mantra and the deity be one? TheGuru is human in form, the deity conforms to the description embodied in theformula for meditation; the Mantra consists of a few letters of the alphabet.How can they be one?The very same question had occurred to Parvati in theMundamala grantha.
Sri SitaramDas Omkarnath answers this in the following way:
It is Mahakala who in essence is one being formless thathappens to be every body’s Guru. As for Mantra, it is sound and the deity’sform is self-assumed. All three are therefore formless. That explains why thethree are one and the same. Out of Guru comes Mantra; out of Mantra, the deity.So Mantra is the deity’s father while Guru is his grandfa­ther. Meditation onthe father pleases the grandfather as well. As the approach to each of thethree is the same, Guru, Mantra and the Deity can be described as one.
In the Matrika bheda Tantra Shiva says: “The best of the sadhakasobtain the supreme Mantra from the lips of the Guru, and out of the Bija growsthe form of the deity. Other forms however may evolve at the Guru’s bidding. 
“One can realise the idea that Guru is the Origin, if one seeks to do so”. Thatis why I affirm the identity of the three, Guru, Mantra and the Deity. Withoutknowledge of this identity, there cannot be fulfilment of Mantra. The Guru,undoubtedly, is Mantra; the Guru, of course, is the Deity.
To rescue these creatures lord assumes determinate forms suchas Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwar, Rama, Krishna, Sita, Radha, Durga, and so on. Thenagain to demonstrate how the ever elusive may be seized, he incarnates himselfas Guru. As it is not always possible to remain with the Guru, he installshimself in the seeker as Mantra, in the form of mystic syllables like “Kling”,“hreeng”, etc. The sound of Mantra awakens the “Parapara” Guru i.e., thegreat-great-Guru namely the Kundalini. Her awakening is another name for theMantra getting instilled with life. Many psychic experiences occur, bothwithout and within. The deity grants vision of himself (or herself). The Mantraloses itself in the deity’s body, the seeker is admitted to the sushumna. Hebecomes a liberated spirit. Going into sushumna, Hamsa resolves into Soham,Soham passes yielding place to (Om). Then A and U leave the pada M that isleft is of Naadall compact. Naadcontinues. Then come the stages called Bindu,Kala, Kalateeta, bindu is ahamkara, kala is Mahat tattva, Kalateeta isPrakriti. At the final stage the supreme Brahman appears. Every faculty ofperception gets dissolved and merged. What that stage is like can hardly beconceived. The yogi turns stiff as a log. He wakes up only to feel baffled andbewildered. Words fail him to express his joy.

The sphere called swar is his head, the sky is his navel,the sun and the moon are his eyes, the different directions are his ears, andthe earth is His foot. So we reside right within himIf a man is thrown into the sea, he is immersed in it andhas nothing but the sea on all sides; it is the sea that lies above, beneath,beside and before him. Similarly all creatures are immersed in the sea of thesupreme. The only difference between this sea and that is that the supreme isnot just outside us but also inside us, even as the sky is. Immersed in him asman is, he believes himself to be separate and the precise point of sadhana (orspiritual exercise) is to eliminate this sense of being separate. The mind getsdissolved in samadhi; the poor doll of salt loses itself while trying to plumbthe depths of the sea.

Shiva Purana says-Yatrananda prabodhova nalpamapyupalabyata
vatsaradapi sishyena so nyam gurumupashrayet.


“If initiation by a Guru does not fetcheven a slight joy or enlight­enment, the disciple may, on the expiry of a year,approach another Guru.”

What if the second too should fail? And then the third, thefourth, and so on? Should Guru after Guru fail? Is the seeker to pass from Guruto Guru ad infinitum? If all life is spent in quest of the Guru, when willspiritual exercise commence? How can one serve so many Gurus?  how can onemanage with so many Mantras? If a man abandons his Mantra, he meets  with death; if he abandons his Guru, he is punished, I was told with poverty;in case both are abandoned the result is, confinement berth in Raurava hell.To lend one’s ears to whomsoever one meets is to pave the way to the hellcalled Raurava. Can even a Siddha Guru prevent it?
It is the seekers vision & vijnata which are prescribed in sastras/nature and the good disciple never abandon his guru no matter however competent he is.
Please contribute your views co-ordially
Sri Guru Padaravindarpana MastuKameswara