Bhakti Yoga and the Guru
Yogi Sean: What happens is, at the beginning of our path, at our initial meeting with this Guru, we experience this resonance, and we say much as what you’re saying the ’shaktipat’, the power, is coming from the Guru. He or she is planting it in me. And this is the first step of devotion, the first step of Bhakti Yoga. What is this doing? What this is doing is saying that a sense of Who, a sense of home, a sense of belonging, a sense of continuity, is being awakened within you. And you’re doing it with an external source.
Interviewer: Okay, so you’re saying that this phase is normal, then.
Yogi Sean: It’s very, very normal, and for 99 percent of us, it’s essential. We need to become a follower first. We need to feel, to feel the sense of Wholeness arising in us. We need to get acquainted with it.
Interviewer: So it’s okay to be a devotee in the beginning, then.
Yogi Sean: It is wonderful to be a devotee. It is majestic to be a devotee.
Interviewer: Well, I like the word majestic. That’s a great term. It’s almost like in the beginning, I’d like to be a devotee, because I don’t have to do the driving. In other words, I can actually listen and learn.
Yogi Sean: And the difficulty, of course, is that a lot of people just stay right there.
Interviewer: Even though we live in this incredibly autonomous, independent country, you’re saying that some American students are perfectly happy to just let their teacher drive? “Leave the driving to us, and never progress beyond that.”
Yogi Sean: Yes, I am saying that, and it happens in many different ways. People will memorize the Sadhanas, the teachings, the methods of meditation, and they will hold strictly, without variation, to every single word, to every single visualization, exactly.
Interviewer: And of course, that never makes it theirs. It’s just like in the Dancing with the Dakinis series, you said “Well, you may not want to use a Tibetan dakini from a tonka. You might want for your practice to have a picture of a beautiful girl from Cosmopolitan.”
Yogi Sean: Or even from Playboy. In other words, what you want to do is understand that you’re supposed to get excited by the picture of this woman. That’s part of it, too. It’s so fascinating because we get hung up on these terms peaceful deity, wrathful deity, semi-wrathful deity.