EXCERPTS FROM A DIALOGUE BETWEEN GURU NITYA AND DON BERRY
August 28, 1977

Guru Nitya: "Naturally, each student in the wisdom context has specific, individual aspects. The teacher, even if he is representative of the purest wisdom, if he does not take into account the need of his student, if he does not, with his empathy, come to the level of the student and understand what emotional conflicts he has, what intellectual blocks he has, what spiritual needs he has, and if he does not understand what idea or concept the student already has of what he seeks and how it is wrong and to what direction he should be lead -- without these pure wisdom can never be brought to the student.

So the teacher, with pure wisdom remaining as such right in the core of his heart, has to meddle with things which are not pure and which are part of this world and the problems of people. At that level, what do you expect a teacher to do? Just to say, 'This is my pure wisdom,' and leave it at that? Or to say, 'This is pure wisdom, but this man also has these certain needs to be fulfilled, these trainings to be given and this much work to be done with him'? You are an artist, a sculptor, and if you take a piece of marble or granite and you see the pure form that has to come from it and how much to chisel off, that chiseling off is not anything pure. It is the impure aspect that you are dealing with to arrive at the pure."

Guru Nitya: "If there is a spiritual teaching which is beneficial to people, it should be beneficial when one sits in a closed room where there is no one to offend him and it should be beneficial right in the market place where he is confronted by so many problems and people. All through he should be able to keep up his spiritual light as his eternal guide, under all circumstances, in all places, and in all kinds of social and nonsocial situations.

Otherwise I do not see any value to that wisdom."

Guru Nitya: "In every spiritual discipline you are one with that Supreme --whether you call it God, Jesus, That ,Silence -- where there is no society. The next moment you bring that oneness to society. In the Bible it says, 'You love thy Father thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and love thy neighbor as thine own self.' You are bringing that oneness and love to your neighbor and to the society. There is no spiritual life where there is not a Jesus going to the mount alone and coming back to the multitude. This we all do. We go away, we ascend the mount, and we come back to the multitude. Again and again and again.

"And when one is going to the mount he is a sannyasin, when he is coming to the multitude he is a tyagi. That is why in the Gita tyaga and sannyas are unified as one discipline. That is a revaluation of the old discipline of running away from society and calling it sannyas. .A sannyasin is equated with a tyagi in the Gita. So I am not taught by my Guru to sit in a cave and be lost to the world. There are many bodhisattvas who believe that by being in their meditation of universal goodness, say the amitabha, the unlimited light that is emanating from them will go to all sentient beings, and everybody will be benefited without going and studying with a teacher.

That is one way; but the choice that is given to me is to live with the multitude but not become one of the multitude. The example that is usually given is of a lotus leaf where the stalk of the leaf is in water, its roots are in mud and water, and all the time it is touching water, and yet if you pull the leaf and look behind it, it is as dry as toasted bread. Like that a sannyasin lives in society, all the time dealing with society, and yet he is not wet."

Guru Nitya: "I don't believe or think that truth is monopolized by someone and that it should go only to a negligent minority of people. It should be made available to all. Even to the extent that someone can receive a little of it it will benefit his life. So why should we say ,'This is very precious, you are unworthy for this, so I cannot give this to you?' In the Gita it says, 'Even if you take only a fragment of this, that will help you.' And in the Bible it says, 'This is the leaven that leaveneth the whole lump.' So I believe in that leaven that leaveneth the whole lump, and in that little fragment of dharma which can save you. So I am willing to go to the level of anyone who comes to me."

Guru Nitya: "Buddhi, or the intellect, is the greatest friend to take us up to the door of realization. And then it becomes the greatest stumbling block. It won't leave you, it holds on to you, making demands for one more logical ramification. And thus you are caught by the very reason that was helping you to come that far. For this reason Sankara and Narayana Guru have called it the grandham; grandham is a grandhi which means that a book becomes a binding knot.

The scripture itself, which is meant to guide, finally becomes the bondage, you won't be able to get away from it. But if you cut across that limiting barrier of hidebound dogma and go to the other side and become illuminated, then you have to jump again to this side of the murky world and ask for your old friend and enemy, the intellect, to come back to you so that what you have now gained can be related to others."