The Guru is a path to the Divine
To know and experience the Divine means evolving our energies to higher possibilities, evolving our energies to subtler dimensions within ourselves. If your energies are in Muladhara, the most dominant factors in your life will be food and sleep. If your energies move into Swadhistana, then you are a pleasure-seeker; you want to enjoy the world in so many ways. If your energies move into Manipuraka, you are a doer in the world, you are always doing something. If your energies move into Anahatha, you become a very creative person. If your energies move into Vishuddhi, you become a very powerful being. If your energies move into Agna, then you are intellectually fully enlightened. You have attained to peace. When your energies move to Sahasrar, you will burst into ecstasy; unexplained ecstasies for which there is no external reason.
From Muladhara to Agna, there are many ways, but from Agna to Sahasrar, there is no particular way; it is just a jump. It is because of this, that so much stress has been laid on the Guru-shishya relationship. The master-disciple relationship has been held as the most sacred relationship in this culture because of this jump. If you have to take this jump, you need deep trust in the Guru.
Let us say you are seeking to go to some distant place right now. If you are alone and there were no proper directions, definitely you would have wished, ‘I wish there was a map to tell me how to get there.’ On one level, a Guru is just a live map. If you can read the map, you know the way, you can go. A Guru can also be like your bus driver. You sit here and doze and he will take you to your destination; but to sit in the bus joyfully, you need to trust the bus driver. If every moment, with every curve in this road, you go on thinking, ‘will this man go off the road?’ then you will go mad sitting here. We are talking about trust, not because a Guru needs your trust, it is just that if there is no trust you will drive yourself mad.
This is not just for sitting in a bus or going on a spiritual journey. To live on this planet, you need trust. Right now, you trust unconsciously. Let us say you are sitting in a bus, which is just a bundle of nuts and bolts and pieces of metal. Unknowingly, you trust this vehicle so much. The same trust, if it arises consciously, would do miracles to you. When we say trust, we are not talking about anything new to life. To be here, to take every breath in and out, you need trust.
So if you can draw your own map, if you can drive your own bus, that is wonderful. But on an uncharted path, if you go without a map, it may take lifetimes to find a certain place. It may take lifetimes to cross. If you go with a map you will cross easily. If you go with a good bus driver you will cross very easily; that is the difference.
Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and a bestselling author. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 2017. Isha.sadhguru.org