July 1, 2025

Dear reader,

Shubh Gurupurnima month.

Among the many gifts that time bestows, one of them must surely be that July comes after June. This is my conclusion, at least, as we approach the peak of the summer months here in Shree Muktananda Ashram. We have just completed our celebration of Gurumayi’s birthday month. We have studied and practiced the sadguna, the virtues. We have wished for peace on real and fantastically imagined dandelions. We have been contemplating what it means to exhibit spashtatā, clarity, in our thoughts, words, and actions.

I love celebrating my Guru. If it were up to me, I’d probably have us continue our celebration into the next month, and the next, and the next. In a sense, though, I’ve gotten my wish. Because after June comes July—and in July (or, more specifically, the lunar month of Ashadha in the Indian calendar, which often corresponds to July), we are celebrating Gurupurnima.

Gurupurnima will be taking place on July 10 this year. This is when the moon will reach fullness, and its perfection, its wholeness and luminosity, are emblematic of the Guru-disciple relationship. One reason I’ve always been drawn to Gurupurnima, a celebration with origins in ancient India, is that it was initiated by disciples. It was out of the disciples’ love for the Guru, out of their recognition of what the Guru had given them and their gratitude for these blessings, that this yearly celebration of the Guru came into being.

Many millennia on, as we prepare to celebrate Gurupurnima on the Siddha Yoga path, I find myself pondering what it means to be a disciple in this day and age. Of course, just as the knowledge the Guru imparts is eternal, so too the essence of the Guru-disciple relationship is unchanging. There’s also nothing new about life in this world being challenging. Those “halcyon days of yore” that we sometimes like to call up, whether they occurred ten, twenty, or fifty years ago, were probably more difficult and nuanced than we tend to remember. After all, the nature of human beings has always been the same—our incredible capacity for good, our competing susceptibility to distraction.

What is distinctive about the time we’re living in is that the means by which we can distract ourselves have grown in both number and complexity. In so many ways, our attention has become diffuse—or at least, it’s easier for it to become diffuse. And this dispersal of our collective attention lends itself to division, even discord. It can be hard to be unified when everyone is saying different things, hearing different things, purporting to want different things.

Given this context, I feel acutely aware—and I’m sure many of you do as well—of the privilege and responsibility we have of following the path shown by Shri Guru. And I feel so deeply grateful to have a Guru—that through whatever combination of fate and good karma and my family’s foresight in following the Siddha Yoga path, I have been brought here, to the feet of my Guru.

This year, 2025, Gurumayi has given us the Message: Make your time worth your time. As I consider what it means to embody discipleship, and how best to honor my Guru during this month of Gurupurnima, I feel resolved to make good on what Gurumayi has given to me. I want to nurture the shakti that Gurumayi has awakened in me—by practicing her Message.

One way I plan to do this is by revisiting Shri Guru Vachan, Gurumayi’s teachings from Gurupurnima month a couple of years ago. Shri Guru Vachan comprises nine teachings from Gurumayi, each of which indicates a specific action that we can take to put our time to its best possible use. As with all the practices we do on the Siddha Yoga path, the effects are cumulative and universal. Changing and improving our relationship to time will prompt a corresponding shift in our relationships with people and with the world around us. We perceive a difference, and others can too.

As I reflect on Gurupurnima and its importance to me as a Siddha Yogi, there’s a point at which my mind seems to stumble over itself. Thought and language dissolve into a burgeoning sentiment—like a feeling but so much more. It’s love. It’s awe. It’s gratitude. It’s some wonderful amalgam of all these things.

Part of being a disciple is giving expression to this sentiment. Wouldn’t you agree? And it’s not because this may be a prescribed practice; it’s not because it may be prudent to do so. It’s because it is the impulse of the heart. This upwelling of love, of devotion, requires a destination.

I have written before about my fascination with the Siddha Yoga teaching that God, the Guru, and the Self are one. It’s a teaching that I often think about around the time of Gurupurnima, this holiday that’s dedicated to honoring the Guru and the Guru-shakti. On the one hand, I can’t believe I’m fortunate enough to receive the darshan and teachings of a Sadguru. It will forever be astonishing to me. On the other hand, it’s the most natural thing in the world! There are so many times when I experience Gurumayi’s presence being as close to me as my own heart.

Still, as wondrous as these glimpses of oneness are, I find myself relating just as much to what the great poet-saints of India, like Tukaram Maharaj, would say. Even after attaining enlightenment, these saints would pray to their chosen deity and ask to retain some sense of separation. They wished for the ability to continue worshiping their Lord; they wanted to preserve the dynamic of discipleship.

So when it comes to the question I have been asking throughout this letter—what it means to be a disciple and how best to honor the Guru during Gurupurnima—there are many answers. I’ve spoken about implementing the Guru’s teachings, and how this is a direct acknowledgment of the value we accord the Guru’s words. In addition to this, we can practice Guru-puja, worship of the Guru. We can set aside time to chant the Guru’s name, to meditate on the Guru, to journal about our experiences of the Guru’s darshan. And we can do what I am sure many of you have begun planning for already: we can participate in the practice of Guru-dakshina.

During Gurupurnima month, we give homage to the three Gurus of the Siddha Yoga lineage: Gurumayi, Baba Muktananda (who was Gurumayi’s Guru), and Bhagavan Nityananda (who was Baba’s Guru). It feels fitting, therefore—it feels right—that on July 21, we will observe yet another auspicious occasion which honors the Guru. And that is Bhagavan Nityananda’s Lunar Punyatithi.

Bade Baba’s punyatithi is the day on which he left his physical body to merge with the Consciousness that makes up this world. We are reminded on this occasion that although in one way, Bade Baba has left the world, he is also vibrantly present. His grace is perceptible in the very molecules of the atmosphere.

The moon phase on the Lunar Punyatithi will be a waning crescent, a sliver of light like the one said to sit in Lord Shiva’s hair. I find this to be beautifully symbolic. The full moon, whose darshan we will have received earlier in the month, will still be there behind its velvet-black cloak. We may not see all of it, but we can still witness its light.

God, the Guru, and the Self are one. The light within is the light without. There is no separation, even if it seems like it at times—and even if we relish that separation, since it can allow for a fuller expression of our devotion. It’s a mystifying prospect, is it not? It is mystical philosophy. And with each holiday we celebrate on the Siddha Yoga path, with each new opportunity to remember and experience God, it is also the truth that we return to.

Sincerely,

Eesha Sardesai