Question: Can the Guru help the aspirant even after the Guru has left the body?

Sri Chinmoy: If the Guru is really a realised person, then he can and he has to. Now, suppose I die today, all the disciples that have accepted me as their Master, genuinely and devotedly, (and these do not include my followers, admirers and friends, but only my true disciples) would be served by me and would be taken care of by me. I am bound. I am the conscious slave of all my disciples. I shall have to be at the beck and call of all my disciples. No matter where I go. Wherever I go after I leave the earth plane, I shall have to be inside you, within you, my disciples. This is always the case if the Guru is a fully realised soul.

Otherwise, you know, there are many Gurus, like school-teachers. If an ordinary Guru dies, he will not be able to keep any inner contact with you. In fact, even while he is in the body, the ordinary Guru does not have much inner connection with the disciples. If you are here in Puerto Rico, and the ordinary Guru is on the Continent, he will not be able to have any inner knowledge of you. Even here, if you are in this room and he is in the other room, he will not be able to maintain an inner connection. And when he leaves the body, it will be simply impossible for him to have the slightest possible connection with you.

But if the Master is a realised soul, he can easily maintain an inner contact with his disciples. And he has to do it because he has made a solemn and soulful promise to the aspirant that he will take him to God. The Master has gone back to Heaven and the disciple is still on earth. Yet the Master has to fulfil his promise.

Now there are some Gurus who are very sincere and dedicated, but at the same time, they are not fully realised. What they do sometimes, is this: when they leave the body, they feel that their disciples who are still on earth need a particular kind of help in their quest for self-realisation or God-realisation. If the Guru has no jealousy (a truly God-realised person has no jealousy), he will come to his disciples in a dream and say, “Go to that particular Guru and become his disciple. I have played my part. But you need further help and I know that So-and-so is a sincere person. He will help you in your God-realisation.” But a mean and possessive Guru would say, “Wait my son, until I come back again to earth. I shall recognise you and you will recognise me. Don’t go to any other Guru. You stay alone.”

As I have said, there are some Gurus who, after having left the body, advise their disciples in this very incarnation to go to another Guru who is still on earth, who can teach them how they can realise God. They are undoubtedly noble and wise Gurus.

In New York, I have six or seven followers who have been asked by their own Guru to come to me. And they came. The first thing that happened was that they saw in me their own Master who had left his body three years earlier. The truly selfless Gurus let others carry on for them.

But if the original Guru made a promise to you, no matter where he lives, after leaving the earth, he has to be within you and with you to help you, even if you stay on earth for another forty or fifty years. In this case, it is just like having two rooms. Here is one room (life) and there is another room (death). Ordinary people cannot open the door. So when the Guru opens the door, he sees you, and when he goes back to his own room, he still has free access to this door. So once the Guru has made a promise, he is bound to keep it. He will not leave you until he has given you full realisation and has brought you to God.