The Guru Stotram is a river of Grace, an ever-flowing current to the heart of Eternity. It captures the essence of Guru Kripa, or the effervescent Grace of the Dispeller of Darkness.

For me, the Guru is how God becomes personal. The Guru shows me that God is not just an Eternal, Impartial, Truth, or even an All-Pervading Essence of Love, but is also a Being who loves me and all of us unconditionally. Before meeting the Guru, I had faith in God, but not a personal relationship. It was the Guru that gave that to me. Now I see that the lines of the Guru Stotram are true: “There is no truth higher than the Guru, no practice higher than the Guru, and no knowledge higher than the Guru.”

For some of us the Guru can take the form of a physical person on earth. A true Siddha, or Perfected Master, is a Being that has no ego. When you look at Them, all you see is the divine radiance of God shining through. God is in all of us as our True Nature, but we have forgotten. The Guru knows, and they help us to awaken.

Such a Being cannot die. Their physical body may fall away, but the God within was never confined to that body anyway. We can still use Their form to connect with Them. We can look at Their pictures, sing to Them, travel to Their temples, and experience Their Grace through satsang with other devotees. The Guru shows us They are still here, often times through dreams, synchronicities or miracles, but always through an inner knowing of the heart.

Of course, if we don’t feel called to a specific form of the Guru, we can still connect to Them.

The Universal Guru is the God within every heart, and we can connect to Them by reading about any of the saints we are drawn to from any of the world's great spiritual and mystical traditions. Each one is a different mask of God, as if They just swap bodies the way we might change clothes.

Some of us might not require any form. Since the Guru is within, if we are truly quiet, we can hear that Still, Small Voice. The moments when I am connected to my intuitive heart are when I can most clearly see that the Guru guides every step of the journey. It is all Grace, and day by we grow into this tremendous and mysterious awakening.