A God-realised Guru has the capacity to make an inner link with each of their disciples. It is through this link that the inner guidance happens.

A spiritual Master is someone who has mastered the inner worlds, and has a free access at any time to any level of consciousness from the lowest to the highest. Through their tremendous meditative capacities, spiritual Masters are able to connect with our inner world, with our essential spiritual nature which is termed ‘the soul’.

The Guru patiently helps us to awaken to our own soul. For many of us the soul lies fairly dormant. Each one of us has a unique soul, with unique qualities. The soul is the spark of divinity within us, the God-like part of our being, that is said to reside inside the anahata centre (the heart chakra) in the centre of the chest and a little above. One person’s soul may represent peace, another personís power, another joy and so forth.

Although we all have the capacity to access and experience every divine quality, each one of us represents one or two aspects of divinity very powerfully in a unique way. Through our Yoga practises we come more and more into contact with our soul. We learn to listen to its guidance and come to learn more of who we truly are and therefore what special qualities we have to offer to the world around us. Over time our blossoming soul helps us to know with utmost clarity and confidence, our special role or mission here on earth.

A Guru has a free access to our soul and is able to commune with our souls. Our soul can communicate with the Master about what it needs and about any obstacles in our nature that are slowing our progress. This communication may occur during our meditation or sometimes while we are sleeping. The messages between our soul and our Guru, our mind may not even be aware of until it develops more purity, light and stillness. A Guru operates like a matchmaker, helping us to eventually have the same free access to our own souls. “Every day the Master is communicating with the souls of his disciples, feeding them with Light, Peace and Bliss. Every day the Master is telling the souls how they can please the Supreme, and the souls are bringing the message to the disciples conscious mind.” – from The Master and the Disciple by Sri Chinmoy.

One of the very special ways that a Guru helps their students is through a process of transmitting consciousness. Through their meditation, a Master can access infinite peace, light or bliss or any other divine quality, and offer it to a student in silence through their meditation. A Master knows precisely what each student needs at any time for their spiritual growth and development. One soul may need peace, while another needs love or joy. Sri Chinmoy for example, meditates on all of his disciples between 2 am and 5 am each morning so there is a daily transmission of consciousness between him as the teacher and his students.

We all transmit consciousness to some degree but are often largely unaware of it. If we are happy, we are transmitting a consciousness that will elevate others around us or if we are angry or depressed we will transmit a consciousness that will lower the vibration of others around us. A Guru’s work, is in the worlds of consciousness, in a very highly refined and developed way beyond most ordinary human beings comprehension or perception.

A spiritual Masters inner guidance is primarily working with the three internal limbs of Yoga; concentration, meditation and for those very advanced students, samadhi. It is through the stilling and silencing of our mind in concentration, and the expansion of our consciousness in meditation, that a Guru can begin to be of service to us in elevating our consciousness. Even if it is only for a short period of time, we need to be able to practise concentration and meditation on a daily basis, so that we can create receptivity in our inner life. Without receptivity we could not actually absorb anything the Guru wishes to offer. If our minds are constantly filled with busy thoughts, and preoccupied with outer world activities, we are in effect, creating a barrier to our inner world where the Guru’s guidance operates and can be received. Our meditation is like a telephone line to our Guru and ultimately to God. The Guru over days, months, years and even lifetimes helps us to deepen our meditation until we too can enter into our own divinity, into samadhi and beyond to eventually realise God.

When one is in the presence of a Guru of a very high calibre, in meditation, there is much non-verbal learning that occurs like a kind of spiritual osmosis. On a deep level of our being there is a process of identification. As we observe the Guru meditating, our deeper nature starts to ëtune iní to the high consciousness emanating from the Guru. This is not an intellectual process at all, in fact being in the presence of someone in samadhi seems to bring an awestruck silence to the mind! Our inner being or soul starts to spontaneously awaken in response to the Guruís meditation. The Guru’s elevated consciousness is like a magnet that draws our own divinity forward.

In the Guru we see and feel the most inspiring example of the lofty heights that we as human beings have the capacity to become spiritually. In essence the Guru represents our highest self. Each time we identify with the Guru’s consciousness, we are mixing our consciousness with theirs, and through this mixing, our own meditation is lifted far beyond what we could have achieved on our own. It is like catching the large wave, of the Guru’s consciousness or like the drop of our own meditation merging for some time with the ocean of the Gurus meditation.