The Heart – Concealing and Revealing the Light

The Heart – Concealing and Revealing the Light

Guru Purnima ~ Tribute to our Beloved Teacher

This whole Guru-shishya parampara is all there is – there’s nothing else. Everything is passed through that. And that is not only true to this – it’s true to every domain of human enterprise. The true transmission only takes place when there is a steady connection…

– Igor Kufayev

gururupaya
The Guru is the means.

– Shiva Sutras

Guru Purnima is the day of the Guru as represented by the fullest full moon of the year. Life is naturally full, but many people don’t live life in fullness. The Absolute Unbounded, Infinite Silence of Pure Awareness is at the basis of the whole infinite creation and it is also the basis of our own individual awareness and life. This the Guru knows, embodies, and lives. The Guru alone has the unique ability to bring anyone to their own Infinite Unbounded Self. The Guru is the dispeller of darkness, the dispeller of ignorance, the giver of the knowledge, and the experience of the Self.

Not all enlightened persons, who are enjoying living in the Bliss of the Self, are able to be Gurus. A Guru, a dispeller of ignorance, is a rare person residing in this world. Fortunately for us there has been a Holy Tradition of Masters who for thousands of years have kept both the Knowledge and the ability to give the experience of the Self to anyone – it could be a whisper of Infinity into the ear of their disciples; it could be their radiance of pure Being, enough to give anyone a glimpse of that unbounded, silent reality of Life; and it could even be the touch of a woolen shawl that bestows shaktipat to the fortunate ones.

Tonight, we are deeply grateful to Mother Inna for birthing Igor Vamadeva, for raising him with her motherly love and for guiding Him to Maharishi. Tonight, we honor and bow to the Holy Tradition and to the spiritual Masters of our Teacher, to Guru Dev and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

“The divinity of the Heaven dwells in our hearts as love. Love in the heart of man is the shrine of God on Earth. Blessed are those who carry the shrine of God in fullness of love in their hearts”.

~ HH Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

With the rise of the fullest full moon of the year, we fold our hands and bow at the feet of our beloved Teacher Vamadeva. Every year this bright moon comes around to remind us of the greatness of the Guru and of the Fullness of Life. This Fullness of Life is evident tonight everywhere we are. We dedicate and offer the Fullness and Beauty of the Heart that we are experiencing today to our beloved Teacher Vamadeva and the eternal lineage of the Siddhas. We silently give thanks to the greatest of all blessings and the highest of all gifts – the presence of the Guru’s Grace within our hearts…

May we always tend to the sacred responsibility of nurturing the inner awakening…
May we always offer ourselves in joyful service to the One Self that pours from the Heart of our beloved Teacher…
May our beings always sing the Glory of this sacred relationship that holds the world in place…
May we keep exploring the Mystery of what we have been given…
And may our own hearts be illumined by the pure Love that our Teacher embodies…

Om saha nāvavatu
Saha nau bhunaktu
Saha viryam karavavahai
Tejasvi nāvadhitam astu
Mā vidvisāvahai

Om. May we, Guru and disciple, be protected together. May we enjoy the fruits of our actions together. May we achieve strength together. May our knowledge be full of light. May we never have enmity for one another.

THE AUSPICIOUSNESS OF GURU PURNIMA

by Igor Kufayev

So this is a very auspicious time, a very auspicious day, the day of the full moon, which usually falls on the full moon of July—sometimes in June but mostly in July—and is traditionally known as the day of the commemoration of the guru. And why this day is so important, why this day has been chosen as perhaps one of the most significant occasions in the Vedic calendar, in the whole of the calendar of the spiritual traditions born of the Indian subcontinent, is because this day is being celebrated by Hindu and Buddhist alike, irrespective of the lineages, traditions and differences that may be found in their respective ways of teaching. Everyone honors this day, and I will give you a couple of explanations.

One of them is that the day of the full moon of July, is considered to be the birthday of one of the most important Vedic seers of all time, who is known as Veda Vyasa. He is the author or the compiler, the assembler, of all the Vedas, as well as the two main scriptures known in the Indian subcontinent, in the whole of the oriental culture, known as that of Mahabharata and Ramayana.

So Guru Purnima is celebrated today in many parts of the world, particularly all Hindu and Buddhist-based spiritual traditions have this celebration today. And not only that, even academicians, scholars, and institutions in India also celebrate on this day, simply as the thanksgiving due to their teachers; simply paying their respect to those who impart to us the necessary tools to be equipped in the chosen field of our activity, or the chosen field where we choose to express ourselves. Obviously, in terms of spiritual endeavors, in terms of spiritual language, what it means is paying tribute to the living tradition… and with that we pay tribute to the teacher who was instrumental in our own unfoldment.

In my case, I pay tribute here to His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who in his term, during his lifetime, celebrated Guru Purnima literally until the last year in his physical body. And these were very memorable occasions, because I celebrated Guru Purnima in various parts of the world—back in my homeland, in England where I used to live, and in France where I used to stay. So there are a lot of beautiful memories associated with celebrating Guru Purnima; it is a very, very special occasion. It is a very internal occasion as well. I only have this very, very deep gratitude for the tradition which allowed me to unfold…

So, just a few words I want to mention about the uniqueness of the teacher to whom I pay respect—with the utmost gratitude I can master. And I know very well that no matter how grateful I am, no matter how profoundly, profoundly indebted I am with everything I have, with everything that I have gotten to know, with everything that I realized on the path of this—which is known as the path to the Self—I am indebted to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And not only that, I am also fully aware that I can never fully, fully repay that gratitude, for many reasons… of which I would probably not even be able to speak, because I don’t know how to even convey that in language.

There is something that simply swells here with that most profound feeling of thanksgiving… I don’t know how to say that in more appropriate terms. Maharishi stands as a unique teacher, not only because I have a very specific connection to Maharishi, because this connection was through various channels. One of the most immediate was through my own mother, my mother became a devotee before I—let us say—embraced Maharishi. And I never met Maharishi, I never physically had the privilege to meet Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. However, despite that limitation—which haunted me for many, many years—this relationship became more and more intimate, and more and more internal, until it reached the point where that meeting took place beyond space and time.

Literally that union, that communion with the teacher took place right in the heart. And it was so strong, it was so visceral, that I don’t think any physical contact would have actually added or given any more intensity, because there was simply no me and no object of worship left. There was this complete union, and for a while, even in my meditative states, I had this almost internal feeling that “I am the Maharishi”… my eyes, my ears, my sense of smell, sense of touch—there was this impersonification, it was like this embodiment. And it was a very peculiar experience, a very intense experience.

Often when I came out of these deeper meditative states, I would question myself, “Is this the byproduct of imagination? Do I imagine? What is that—is this the intensity of longing?” I cannot tell exactly. However, out of these states, that communion with the teacher was born… born was that uninterrupted transmission that simply allowed the knowledge, that knowledge known by the Upanishadic saying, “… knowing that by virtue of which everything else is known,” was simply transmitted from Heart to Heart.

– Igor Kufayev – Guru Purnima Darshan

With deep Love, infinite gratitude, reverence and pranams to you, beloved Teacher…

Jai Guru Dev!

Your dedicated Students and Team Members of Flowing Wakefulness Fellowship
Guru Purnima, July 16, 2019

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IMAGES:

Portrait of Igor Vamadeva, London, May 2019

The Gallery of Sages, left to right:

1) Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Joytir Math of Himalayas
2) His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Gallery, left to right:

1)  Mother Inna & Igor Vamadeva, London, 2001
2)  Rose petal after rain, Gut Saunstorf, Germany, 2019
3)  Igor Vamadeva, Roussillon, Provence, August 2003

Puja to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Gut Saunstorf, Germany, June 2019