Who Is Guruji-Ma?

Put simply, Guruji-Ma is the vastness of universal love pouring through a human form. She is total surrender and self-giving exemplified in a human life. She is compassion, clarity, and hope that doesn’t fluctuate from day to day or situation to situation.

I met Guruji-Ma in 2003. I met her through a friend who was devoted to her, and who made the connection for me. I had called Guruji-Ma to make an appointment to come and meet her, and I was standing in my living room anticipating a call back. Suddenly, everything was light. To put an experience like this into words is essentialy impossible, but I’ll try to give a sense as best as I can.

I was there, my usual familiar self, standing and saying goodbye to Corinne who was about to leave the house to go out somewhere. Suddenly, my heart was as big as the universe. There was no personality self, or it was engulfed by something so vast that it was indistinguishable in the midst of the radiance and joy that overtook me. And Corinne saw it. She started weeping and I was smilling and shining and endless.

The experience diminished, and I gradually came back into the familiar, and the phone rang. It was Guruji-Ma, and her voice was the sky. We arranged for me to come and see her, and I did a few days later. Over 15 years later, I still hold that experience close to my heart and lean on it in times of difficulty. It has helped me to trust and surrender in a way that has expanded my heart and my life’s purpose.

I don’t remember much about my first meeting with Guruji-Ma, other than the fact that she used the word “sadhu” in relation to me, which I liked, since I felt very connected to India. What I do remember is that after meeting with her, I couldn’t talk for the rest of the day. I remember driving in the car with Corinne and being unable to formulate words. It was like my consciousness had shifted so far away from the usual that I couldn’t link it back up to my thinking mind.

Recently she described herself as “transparent to the breath of God”, which is what I often feel when I sit with her and look into the oceans of her eyes and feel seen in a way that can be both marvelous and terrifying. Sometimes I’m washed away by the love and compassion I see there, and sometimes every lurking resistance to surrender within me, every egoic attachment and inclination, every bit of shame and self-hatred rises up and shines in the light of her gaze. It’s not a particularly comfortable experience, but enduring it without turning away can lead to these artifacts of my separative self dissolving or weakening, or melting like wax in the sun.

Guruji-Ma radiates light. That’s not even really the best articulation; perhaps it’s better to say that she is light. The illuminative and holy power that flows endlessly from her is herself, moreso than the physical form that we see and touch. Partly this is because when we see her, or anyone else, we create a persona in our minds through projection and assumption. It’s natural and we do it all the time, but it becomes more problematic when we’re dealing with someone who doesn’t at all fit the ordinary frame of our habitual assumptions.

Guruji-Ma is light, a light that is love and truth simultaneously. This light flows from her and has real and observable effects on the space around her. Anyone who comes close to her is effected by this light. We might tend to assume that in the presence of an illuminating force of love and truth, we would feel uplifted and expanded, but this is not always the case. Our own inner obscurities, the persona that we inhabit, the experience of being a separate and thus vulnerable self, what we might refer to as our ego and its fortress and defenses, asserts itself within us and is not in a hurry to give up its dominion. The light of love and truth that is Guruji-Ma threatens to reveal the ego’s game, it’s pretenses and manipulations, its self-deceptions and distortions. And so a great deal of subtle and insidious resistance tends to rise up within us in the face of spiritual light.

We need to trust in order to know – if we assume a protective stance, then we obscure our vision and perception. But we don’t need to put our trust in something outside. We need to trust ourselves and the Universal Heart that embraces and infuses us. Often we have a sense that we aren’t trustworthy, that we are hiding something from ourselves, and so we feel confused and entangled. When we can face our own inner subterfuge and self-deception, see it for what it is – just a layer covering our essential self, then we can begin to trust our intuitions and inner wisdom. And when we trust ourselves, then we can discern the degrees of love and truth in the world around us.

I have always trusted Guruji-Ma, not because she tells me I should, but because there’s something in my heart, in my gut, in my bones, in my being that tells me I should. And because I have trusted her I have opened to her. I’ve opened my heart, I’ve taken her advice and applied it in my life, I’ve taken her words seriously as teachings, and as a result I have been transformed so profoundly that it’s hard to believe. I haven’t been transformed from myself into something else, but from a smaller, confined, confused, resentful version of myself into a more free, open, joyful, trusting, grateful me. She has tirelessly and unfailingly taken me by the hand and led me through the quagmire of my own karma, poitning out pitfalls and patterns, reassuring me and coaxing me forward, and always pointing me back to the most expanded version of myself conceivable, even when I couldn’t conceive it.

The more I have come to trust myself, the more I have seen that Guruji-Ma is the light of truth, the light of love. She is a beacon and an inspiration to all who would embody love and truth. In order to see her clearly, we need to be willing to be seen by her, to face ourselves. When we are willing to bear the discomfort of being seen so thoroughly, through all our masks and pretenses, we open to the immeasurable gift of receiving infinite and unconditional love that seeks nothing but our own freedom to shine.

This is the process of awakening to who we are: as we take off the armor that we thought was protecting us, as we release the personas and beliefs that we’ve taken refuge behind, we find that what we are is actually infinite radiance, unable to be harmed or diminished in any way. And Guruji-Ma’s presence cultivates and nurtures this process of awakening. Her embodied light is nourishment for awakening.

When I hold Guruji-Ma’s hand, pain is drawn out of my body, confusion is drawn out of my mind, and love floods my heart. And this is the thing that can’t be explained in words alone: her body, her being, her life is her teaching. Every word she speaks or writes is pointing us toward something that is constantly radiating from her. Her words are secondary to her radiance, the embodied light that flows out from her in an endless stream, offering drink to all who are thirsty. And in this way there is no argument, no duality, no particular perspective involved in her teaching, because the words are just reflections of the actual teaching which is Guruji-Ma.

Guruji-Ma’s light is the balm that heals this earth, this humanity. She is here to do just that – to heal and uplift us and carry us forward to the next phase of our collective development. She is here to introduce us to ourselves and to the Divine Beloved to whom she is wedded, and who witnesses our awakening with joy.