A Conversation with Professor Bill Mahony

William K. Mahony is Professor of Religion at Davidson College in North Carolina. He met Gurumayi Childvilasananda in 1993 at Shree Muktananda Ashram. Since then, he has offered much time, love, and service, both as a teacher of scriptural courses in Siddha Yoga retreats and as a consultant for the Siddha Yoga curriculum development. Professor Mahony is the author of several works, including The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination and The Guru. He is also one of the authors of Meditation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha Yoga Lineage. This interview took place on November 17, 1999.

Q: What is the Guru-disciple relationship?

Prof. Mahony: The Guru-disciple relationship is the setting in which the disciple is able to express who he or she truly is. It is based on the fact that the Guru knows, recognizes, and draws forth the disciple's truest nature.

At our deepest center, at the level of soul, we hold within us the potential for great compassion, love, forbearance, courage, and gentleness. We may not always be aware of these and many other virtues inherent in the human spirit, but the Guru sees them within us and draws them out of us. The Guru outwardly and inwardly guides us in the spiritual practices that uncover, nourish, refine, and strengthen those dimensions of our being that allow us to know the divine presence within us as the light of the soul. Being in relationship with the Guru, a disciple thereby more fully expresses the truest self.

Q: How do you explain the whole concept of the Guru?

Prof. Mahony: Put most succinctly, the Guru is the effective spiritual guide. Having said this, I explain the concept in different ways, or at different levels of meaning.

At the first level, I speak of the Guru primarily in historical and comparative terms. Throughout history, spiritual seekers have come to see that in order to progress on the path they need a teacher. They encounter walls of various sorts that block their spiritual journey and see that they need a guide to help them. This is true in religions and spiritual traditions from around the world.

The guide could be a spiritual tradition, or a collection of stories, or a sacred text, or a set of ethical standards. In any case, genuine seekers need someone or something to illumine the way, to bring light to outward confusion and inward darkness.

Then, at the second level, I look into the nature, qualities, and qualifications of the Guru as a human teacher whose guiding wisdom transforms disciples' understanding and whose love opens, purifies, and emboldens disciples' hearts as they go deeper and further into their journey. I also look at the perspectives, attitudes, and values that disciples must have regarding their relationship with that teacher. At the third level I ask: well, who, finally, is the teacher? When everything else is said and done, God is the ultimate teacher, for all truths have their source in God. I then try to share my conviction that God as the ParamaGuru (the supreme teacher), the AdiGuru (the original teacher), teaches through the intuitions of the soul and that God's guidance is revealed in the awakening of the disciple's own inner wisdom. And so the real teacher, the highest divine teacher dwells within the disciple's own heart.

Understood from this latter perspective, the Guru is inseparable from the whole grace-filled process of awakening. Here, the Guru is not so much a person, or a text, or a tradition, but rather the holy power of transformation itself. As an 11th century theologian from India has said, "The Guru is the grace-bestowing power of God."

GRACE TAKES A HUMAN FORM

Q: You've said in another context that your life has always been guided by the Guru. What do you mean by that? What is the relationship here between the Guru and the living master?

Prof. Mahony: What I'm trying to say is that my life is utterly dependent on the Guru as the divine power of grace. Without the ongoing grace of God I don't exist. I mean this quite literally. From moment to passing moment, my life is sustained through God's grace.

Q: What do you mean by that?

Prof. Mahony: I mean it quite literally. Here we are. I'm sitting in a chair. My heart is beating, blood is moving through my body, my cells are being nourished. I'm not telling my heart to do that. It does so out of an obedience of sorts to a higher and benevolent consciousness that pulsates within, sustains, and guides all that exists. I tend to think that I am living my life, but it's not true. God is living my life.

From the most visceral, physical level, I don't exist without a power that charges my being, that supports my very life. This is the graceful, affirming power of existence itself, and its nature is of unconditional love. It is God's intimate, active engagement in my life, as my life.

That power of grace is the Guru. So when I say that my life has been directed by the Guru, I'm saying it in the sense that my life has been directed by the power of anugraha shakti, that is, by the power of God's grace.

The living master, the outer Guru, is a human being who has become totally at one with the Guru tattva, the Guru principle. Totally at one with that power of divine grace, she is identical with divine grace itself. There is no difference between the two. She is the Guru.

And on the other hand, the Guru is infinite in scope and cannot be limited to one single being.

Q: So is there a paradox here?

Prof. Mahony: Yes, in some ways it is a paradox, for how is it that an infinite Consciousness and power is revealed in time and in space, in a physical body? What is the process of divine embodiment? How is it that a human being can reveal God's graceful purpose in the world?

I think that rather than calling it a paradox, I would say that it is a divine Mystery, and I would capitalize the word because I think it is the absolute, ultimate mystery of existence itself: that God is, truly, with us, within us, as us. The Guru reveals that Mystery to us.

Q: In the Intensive we receive shaktipat, which is the spiritual awakening propelled by the grace of the Guru. We talk about the Guru as the incarnate principle of grace. This awakening happens through her sankalpa, her intention, and it's not reliant upon her physical presence.

Prof. Mahony: You used the word sankalpa. This is an important term. The Guru's intention is not simply a desire among other desires. It's not merely that the Guru wishes that we all get shaktipat, although that is also true. The Guru's sankalpa is an expression of a divine intention that unfolds in the most profoundly mysterious and wonderful way. A bulb buried in the soil becomes a bright yellow daffodil because it is true to a mysterious inner intention that it do so. It expresses God's sankalpa.

Q: It's almost like an energetic contract, isn't it?

Prof. Mahony: Yes. You could almost call it a command. A divine sankalpa possesses an impelling power that allows something to become what it truly is or is intended to be.

So when we say, "Come to the Intensive this weekend because the Guru's sankalpa will bring you shaktipat," we're not merely saying that the Guru's sankalpa will open your heart. It will do that. But it is also much, much deeper than this. It's that your entire life has been a preparation for this moment, just as the opening of a flower is the culmination of all moments in the process of germination and growth that preceded it. Everything in our lives -- all of our thoughts and relationships and experiences -- has lead up to this moment in which there is an opening and unfolding into our true nature. And it is the Guru's sankalpa, her wish, that this awakening take place. She wishes us to be who we truly are.

Interviewer: Thank you!