The Enduring Magic of the Path
The Love Games of Krishna and the Gopis. Deep in the forest Krishna’s lovers, the gopis, have gone to bathe in the Yamuna River, leaving their clothes hanging on the Punnai tree on the bank of the river. Krishna steals in quietly to trick them by hiding their clothes up in the branches of the tree. Soon enough they discover their clothing is gone! In the end, after much searching and an enigmatic exchange with Krishna, he joins them in the river for a time of playful, sweet games. This traditional myth is a symbolic story of the soul’s (the gopi’s) relationship with the Divine in the “love games” of awakening.
Reflections on Guru and Self
Our human experience is an invitation to transformation through cycles of constant change. In moments of wonder and awe, in times of fulfillment and belonging as well as in times of disappointment, loss and grief, our journey unravels a unique path for each of us. Through it all there is an enduring magic and a golden thread to follow. The challenge is to keep looking for the golden thread—no matter what happens or how hard it gets.
When we commit to the way of transformation, the path itself awakens and rises to meet us. When we follow the unfolding of our golden thread, ordinary daily life becomes a sacred way, even as we navigate the sometimes-shattering landscape of our current times. Along the way, we come to a moment when we know: “I can’t do this alone.” We all need help along the way, from each other, in community, and from those great-hearted beings who inspire or instruct by virtue of their lives, teachings, and actions. My journey has been accompanied by a kaleidoscope of relationships with those who have inspired and instructed me. In these reflections I’ll focus on one relationship that has withstood the patterns of karma and the whims of time.
In 1987 the guru came into my life; I remained close with him until his death in 2010. Today, the memory of Lee, as I knew him during his life, is vivid and real. For me, he was many things—he was a visionary, a prophet and a creative fire that burned bright in a suffering world. In many ways he was a paradox of contrasts. His blessings were both tender and, at times, troubling—that is, they gave me the best kind of trouble, forcing me to grow, to expand, to question concepts and go deeper. Since his death I have discovered that the presence of the guru is alive far beyond the limits of incarnation. This post is a tribute to the lineage of gurus—Lee, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, Swami Ramdas and Mother Krishnabai—who are the original inspiration for the Sahaja blog, and for all those great beings who enrich the world with their presence.
Who (or What) is the Guru?
Guru is an ancient Sanskrit term meaning a knowledgeable guide or expert in a field of activity, like a music teacher or artisan. In the Hindu and Buddhist religious traditions, the guru is a person of spiritual mastery—a saint, adept, or holy one. In this context, the guru is understood as a universal archetype, a primordial, living, awakened essence or tattva. The function of the guru tattva (guru essence) is to awaken this same divine essence or Self within all created beings, amplifying and bringing to life one’s true nature and place in Creation. The job of the human guru is to initiate and usher us toward a revelation of the Self or true nature within.
In this way, the human guru is a living symbol of the universal Self; he or she provides a mirror for us. Actively cultivating this perspective is necessary when we collaborate with a guru on the path—otherwise, it is far too easy to become lost in the guru’s person and charismatic personality. As a relationship of love and mutual recognition, our Western-style ideas of guru and path are often very romantic. Because it’s an affair of the heart between guru and disciple, in the East this path is cloaked in classic myths, such as the story of Krishna, symbolizing the Divine, and the Gopis—the “milkmaids” who symbolize the human soul.
Together, Krishna and the Gopis live in the enchanted forest of Vraj, where they enact the “love games” of their relationship. This mythopoetic story of Krishna and the Gopis has tremendous symbolic power. For me, over the years it captured in symbolic images the patterns of divine love at the origins of Creation and offered us the possibility of a direct experience of divine reciprocity with the Supreme Reality as the Beloved.
Krishna (the Divine) and Radha (the human soul) together in a moment of blissful communion.
For many years the story of Radha (a Gopi) and Krishna spoke to my deepest longing for the Beloved of the Heart. Over time I came to a more unified view and a deeper insight into both the guru and Krishna as symbolic of the divine Self within. In the myth, Radha is abandoned by Krishna precisely so that she can realize the truth of her own nature. In this way, Radha becomes reunited with her Beloved. Another way to say this is that human beings are called to live in the dynamic play between nondual reality or oneness and an enlightened duality, which is the awakened field of the Creation, where one may discover the Beloved of the Heart.
How can nondual reality coexist with the dualistic play between lover and Beloved? This is a great mystery. But an even greater mystery is that we can only catch a glimpse of this Self as Beloved if we have a self in ordinary human terms. This requires a great deal of inner work in a process of individuation (C.G. Jung), in which one matures into the natural and unique pattern of potential that is true for that individual, created being. Through a lifelong process of maturation and integration of experience, the individual realizes the spiritual “gold” within.
For the disciple, coming to a lived experience of the guru principle as Self takes years of inner work. Along the way, we project our own spiritual gold “out there” on the form and personality of the human guru. We project our mothers and fathers and lovers on to the guru; we hope for the love we never received to come from this spiritual luminary who has inspired our deepest longing and who mirrors our true nature for us. Many of us must work through a lifetime of healing our deepest wounds and traumas to arrive at the necessary clarity to begin this inner work of reclaiming our projections. Even then, there is the fiery path of letting go of calcified religious concept, beliefs, and habits.
Reclaiming the inner gold allows us to follow the golden thread of the Self, and so we begin to realize an inner wholeness. In very basic terms, it’s about becoming whole as adult human beings—a path that must be walked to experience the very liberation that the true guru offers. Navigating reality as it is, being true to oneself, the relationship with the guru evolves in wondrous ways. Being strong enough and adult enough to hold the tension between the two polarities of human and divine—which exist within both the guru and the disciple—gives rise to an ongoing expansion and wisdom of the heart that makes us more reliable and functional in daily life. With freedom comes responsibility. As we expand into greater awareness, each one of us “grows up” to carry the beautiful and sacred burden of Life.
Radha (the human soul) has discovered Krishna (the Divine) within herself. In ecstatic union with all that is, the soul exults in awakened exictance.
Every human being has the potential to realize the freedom and liberation that the guru holds out as the promise of the path. In the process, we come to realize that the guru lives within us as the divine presence that abides through heartbreak, worry, sorrows, the surprising upwelling of joy, gratitude and wonder. This divine force is often called Grace. We could say that the Self is Grace, made of Divine Love, and it is that very Grace and Love that will destroy again and again the fortress of our illusions. At other times, Divine Presence gives birth to our becomings, the cascade of ecstasy, or a vast simplicity and peace.
The Guru Mystery
Lee met his guru in the mid-1970s on his first of many trips to India. At the time, he was a spiritual teacher in the budding field of consciousness and personal transformation. These were the years when many Westerners were urgently seeking out the wisdom of the East. Like many people of his times, Lee was an avid student and yogi who plunged into the traditions of India. His passion for transformation brought with it a radical awakening of consciousness in 1976, after which Lee took on the role of guru to a collection of seekers on the East Coast of the United States.
Soon after, Lee made two pilgrimages to India (winters of 1977 and 1979) along with a handful of students. On each of these journeys, he met a local beggar saint on the streets of Tiruvannamalai. Lee and his companions sat with the Indian beggar over a span of several days in the mandapam (outdoor pavilion) where the yogi-beggar often hung out when not wandering upon the flanks of Mt. Arunachala. The American pilgrims basked in the warm presence and welcoming embraces of the radiant old yogi, then went on about their travels. There were days of conversation and sitting in silent communion as well as teachings given that rocked Lee to his core.
Once back in the States, the radiant presence of the beggar remained with Lee. In an ongoing series of mystical revelations, their relationship became palpable and immediate, as tacit and obvious as the sun rising in the morning for Lee. He realized that the old beggar saint of Tiru was the source of everything in his life. Touched by Grace, inexplicable feelings of love began to flow. Devotional poetry, fiery and sweet, streamed from Lee’s pen and flew across the miles to India, and yet not a word returned from India.
The beggar saint of Tiruvannamalai was Lee’s guru, personal Beloved, and embodiment of the Divine. Eager to see him again, seven years after his last journey, Lee made a third pilgrimage to India, but he did not receive the warm welcome of his early visits with his guru.
“This beggar knows what you want, Lee,” the enigmatic yogi said to the American pilgrim who stood, a humble supplicant, at his door in 1986. “You want a guru. This beggar is not a guru. Go away. Find a guru somewhere else. Don’t come back.”
Lee returned to the West disappointed and heartbroken, but his ardent, fevered poetry to Yogi Ramsuratkumar, continued to arrive in the beggar’s hands, just as it had for almost a decade. Despite the ordeal of rejection, Lee was determined to honor and praise his guru, even if he never saw or heard from Yogi Ramsuratkumar again.
Two years later, Lee received an extraordinary invitation from the beggar himself. In November 1988, Lee made the journey to India for a tender and joyous reunion with Yogi Ramsuratkumar. After the “rejection” of only two years before, suddenly now the beggar saint showered affection on Lee.
Lee’s journal writings during this trip reflected candid revelations of his own human limitations (his self-proclaimed arrogance) as well as the wonder and awe he felt for his own guru, a human man. He speaks of Yogi Ramsuratkumar as the Ultimate Reality or “Just This”—and a tangent point between human and divine. In handwritten, ink-penned pages, Lee wrote from a heart on fire with love, even while he mused on the paradox that Yogi Ramsuratkumar was both a divine incarnation, the universal Mother and Father, and at the same time an ordinary human being. Lee wrote:
Yogi Ramsuratkumar is considered here in India to be the Father of the Universe, and his claim to be a beggar is seen as His infinite play. It is almost taken for granted that his “beggarship” is merely his divine game. I think that the truly great, maybe even unique, aspect of Yogi Ramsuratkumar’s presence is that in fact he actually is a beggar. That is the great Mystery. (Lee’s Journal, Kanya Kumari, India, on November 30, 1988.)
After 1988 the relationship between Yogi Ramsuratkumar and Lee flourished in annual visits and many beautiful stories of the reciprocal love between the two. In the bhakti tradition, it is the delight of the devotee/disciple to see and directly experience the guru as an expression or revelation of God. This is a play of the heart that occurs while there is, simultaneously, the knowledge or recognition that there is perfect unity between the two. In the eyes of unity, there is no guru and no disciple, for the two are one. And yet, and yet…something precious happens when we love the human guru.*
The Gift of Being Human
When we see and experience communion with the spiritual power and beauty of another person, our deepest longing is ignited. Seeing the essence of the guru is called darshan in Sanskrit. When we truly see a beloved guru, saint, or spiritual master—or the divinity in any “other,” loved one, friend or family—we are looking into the mirror of our own true nature. This lived moment connects us to the origins of love, whets our appetite for more and more of this nectar of Reality. The greater our hunger, the more we are drawn to the magnet of Grace.
For me, it was easy to project my own yearnings and deepest longings for Divinity as the Beloved of the Heart on my mahaguru, Yogi Ramsuratkumar. And yet, on trips to India, it was Yogiji’s humanity that my teacher Lee often pointed out to me, saying, “You must understand—he is a dirty beggar. He is a human being who feels pain and suffers just like you and me.” At the time I wondered—why is Lee emphasizing this so much? Could it be that I had missed something essential? After Lee’s death in 2010, I began to ponder the multi-faceted treasure of the guru as human being, divinity and one’s very Self.
During his lifetime, Yogi Ramsuratkumar expressed the full play of being both human and divine. His radiant divinity touched our hearts, even while he was a human man who referred to himself humbly, as “a mad sinner” and “a dirty beggar,” until the end of his life. A homeless mendicant who renounced householder life, fame and fortune, he wore rags and rarely bathed. For decades the wanderer, Yogi Ramsuratkumar, begged for his food and ate only what was given to him in charity. Even in his rags—and paradoxically because of them—his presence conveyed a magnificent mood of beauty, love, and Grace.
Though he was revered as a mahatma and a great guru, Yogi Ramsuratkumar did not live like a god on a distant star, untouched by the sufferings of the world. Instead, I had the sense that he carried the world’s soul. He felt the pain and burden of incarnation—just as you and I do in moments when our karmas crash down upon us, or we are overwhelmed by the suffering of a close loved one, even while we feel deeply for the people in war-torn Gaza and Ukraine and the heartbreak of climate crisis, both present and future.
One of my most poignant memories of Yogi Ramsuratkumar was how he sometimes wept quietly. Lee used to say that Yogi Ramsuratkumar was a “lightning rod for the suffering of the world.” This was not only poetic or metaphorical; it was the truth. He was truly suffering in compassion, feeling the pain, because he participated fully in life. He was “in the streets” with us.
Death is perhaps the greatest and final teacher of human beings. Every person must face the limitations of age and the moment of utter dissolution into Mystery. In his last months, Yogi Ramsuratkumar was unable to walk. Still, he sat propped up on a rolling “bed” in the ashram temple, where everyone could see him and he could see all of us. Even in his extreme moment, he found joy in asking me and many others to sing and dance for him.
Sitting with him in darshan during those six weeks before he left his physical form, I saw him endure moments of pain and grave difficulty. At those times I had to wipe away my own tears. Like Jesus on the Cross, even Yogi Ramsuratkumar endured a tribulation before the great bliss of his mahasamadhi. And yet, equally present during those weeks in his company the atmosphere became as rare as diamond dust, and a bhava (mood) of great peace, love and compassion touched my heart. These two extremes co-existed. The power of joy lived beside sorrow, and my broken heart gave rise to inspiration and praise.
This interplay of human and divine was true of Lee as well, and this is the most sublime and essential transmission that the human guru makes to a disciple—that the transcendent and immanent coexist, here and now, within each of us, even in our darkest moments. The guru is a human person with karmas, preferences and a path, a golden thread, to follow. As a human being, he or she is sometimes in pain, experiences disappointment, obstacles, good days, bad days and everything in between. Both the human guru and the human disciple are always changing, growing, a “work in progress.” To not see the beauty of this is to also miss the gift that lies hidden but inherent within our own humanity.
This endless road of becoming is what Lee called, “The Great Process of Divine Evolution.” It happens in the reciprocity between divine and human, guru and disciple. Sublime moments of revelation on the path come in unexpected ways, always pointing beyond the expectations and assumptions of the mind. The moment of our ongoing transformation arrives, then, in a café over coffee, or at dinner as we gather to share food, attending to chores or business, when we weep tears of grief or sit beside a dying friend. In this way, day-to-day we may discover the golden thread and the enduring magic of the Path.
Dia
May 2, 2025
*For more details of their story, read Under the Punnai Tree: A Biography of Yogi Ramsuratkumar (Hohm Press, 2002.)
Krishna (the Divine) and Radha (the human soul) together in a moment of blissful communion.