Paaras

To most people Paaras is a philosopher’s stone. To me, it is a philosopher’s mind as tough as stone, sturdier than that of others with the ability to create changes in mind sets.

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To most people Paaras is a philosopher’s stone. To me, it is a philosopher’s mind as tough as stone, sturdier than that of others with the ability to create changes in mind sets.

PAARAS

Every lump of clay has the potency of being sculpted into an ethereal sculpture. What you do need is the right sculptor!

The puppeteer pulled our strings in mysterious ways. The number of people whose attitudes and thoughts he has transformed are almost immeasurable. His transformative prowess is spread over a cross section of followers, devotees and disciples. The stories are countless, and most of us are privy to not more than a few.

So here are some of those few.

Krishan Mohan ji, a disciple from Durgapur, delves into profundities and equates Gurudev’s transformative powers to Paaras, the philosopher’s stone.

Q: Krishanmohan ji you have described Paaras. What is the meaning or description of Paaras?

Krishanmohan ji: The meaning is that while the paaras is not visible to the naked eye, but when it touches iron, the iron shines like gold. That is when people come to know that paaras lives here. No one can see paaras. Our Gurudev was a paaras who turned a thug of yesteryears, an illiterate man, or a person who is not literate, nothing, into a man doing seva of mankind and gradually this person came to be known as a guru. That is, he started the process of transforming him from iron to gold. Not that this man became gold, because to become that takes many lifetimes, many yonis.

Paaras is a legendary stone in alchemy. It can change the chemistry of basic metals into precious ones like gold and silver. That’s the legend. This is a common middle-ages belief in the western and eastern worlds.

And now Krishanmohan ji.

Q: When you met your guru– so he was a simple human being like you say you were iron before the Paaras transformed you - so what were your aspirations and plans that changed after meeting him?

Krishanmohan ji: In 1970 I had a desire to become a very rich man, so rich that I could afford an Impala car. That I would be driven straight from the carpet into the bungalow in an airconditioned room. When I met Guruji, I found that only if one has such a high will (expectations), will he be able to meet Guruji. (laughs) because if the desires are all met, then one won't meet a guru. When you are destined to get something greater than your will, will you find a guru. That is what I got. Something higher. The seva that we got. That is greater than what one wanted.

Q: Very nice.

People found Gurudev’s transformative influence to be just as mystifying.

Nitin Gadekar tells his own story.

Nitin ji: I got involved with this Guru. And this guru— I must tell you—I just forgot all about him. And then after some time, it so happened, that a lot of people that I knew, one was Sri Krishna Deolekar, Suresh Prabhu etc—who personally did not know each other but all of them knew me, Sunny Sethi, Shyam Dhumatkar and many more people like that all of us started playing table tennis in Khar Gymkhana, and it was quite funny that here were all of us, who were not really—except some of us—so keen on playing, we started meeting in the evenings and started playing, and at those times I think, somewhere I started telling everyone individually and collectively about this Guru that I’d met. I don’t know why I was telling them; at that time, I was not impressed with Guruji, I was not following him. Even Sunny used to make jokes about it like “Show me your forehead, I will cure your headache, will reduce the water in this etc.” and we used to all have a good laugh. So, none of us were serious, but I still insisted on telling everybody that I met a great guru—maybe I was putting myself on a pedestal and talking to people, I don’t really know. Then one day, it so happened that Sunny was getting engaged, and all of us went there, where we had this great experience with Guruji, and I think all of us got involved on that day.

I must also tell you—I am from a family which is absolutely non-vegetarian. We eat fish or meat practically at every meal. But some months down the line, I told my father I didn’t want to eat non veg food anymore.

Nobody really impressed me and I never hero-worshipped anyone. But here was some power—this Guruji had some power--it was like a magnet which kept pulling me on to him. Every time I met him, I saw only him. There was nobody else in the room. I couldn’t see anyone else; I couldn’t think of anything else.

When you go to a temple, you are still aware of your surroundings, but when I was with Guruji, I used to forget everything else. My mind was numb many a times. I didn’t even remember if I was Nitin, or who I was—I just knew I was and I was in front of a great soul, and the whole experience was so uplifting that it used to keep forcing me to come back to him.

Sushila Chowdhary, an office colleague of Gurudev, became the conduit for her husband’s introduction to the mahaguru and the eventual setting up of the sthan at Patel Nagar in Delhi.

The medical fraternity had said that she won’t be able to have any kids. So, she came to Gurudev to ask him to bless her with a son.

The story was ‘ask for one’ and ‘get two’, but he promised ‘three’. Far more generous than the companies that say ‘Buy one and get one free.’

Her husband had a domineering personality and a large heart, but he had no faith in spiritualism or Gurudev for that matter. Yet, after a year of observing Gurudev from afar, he not only accepted him as his Guru but became a key player in the Mahaguru’s spiritual matrix.

In the words of William Shakespeare - What led to the “taming of the shrew’?

Q: I have heard that Mr. Chaudhary did not believe in Gurudev or …

Sushila ji: He never had faith in all this, even when I used to go to Gurudwara Bangla Saab, he would say I will wait outside and keep an eye on your slippers, you go in. I would go to the Hanuman temple and he would keep waiting outside. He wouldn’t stop me but would not enter.

Q: What was his reason? He did not believe?

Sushila ji: He was an atheist. He would not socialize much. He just liked eating and drinking. Even in the family there wasn’t much interaction. And slowly after some time Gurudev changed him. When guruji made a sthan in Himachal. Which place was it?

Q: Kathog?

Sushila ji: Yes, Guruji asked Mr. Chaudhary to come there and do seva. Mr. Chaudhary said “I don’t like all this old people or children will come and call me guru.What am I?” Then Guruji said, “You don’t have to do anything as such, I will do everything you just have to keep your hand on them. You are a medium for me to do this seva, the current has to be passed by me, you just sit at your sthan and do seva. Chaudhry ji said my father has never done such work, how will I do it? Gurudev said, “There is great power in devotion. I will give you both devotion and the powers. I am sitting here, so why are you concerned?” Guruji came to Patel Nagar and made a sthan then he started seva from 1982.

Q: How did Mr. Chaudhary start having faith in Gurudev?

Sushila ji: As guruji told me that I will have a child in a years’ time, I started going to Gurgaon in the bus alone, then one day Mr. Chaudhary said how do you go in these stinking buses, “Let’s see who is the person for whom you go running so far and that too in the stinking buses.” Then he started taking me to that place (Gurgaon) by car. There he saw that guruji was keeping his hand on the people with pain and curing them on the spot. I don’t remember where he had gone, to Odi where Gurudev had a sthan, he saw people coming on beds and going back on their feet after getting better. He then started having complete faith in guruji and felt that there is no other guru with such powers on the earth and never will be. Finally, he had a strong faith on guruji even more than what I did.

Q: Mrs. Chaudhary I am asking these questions about Mr. Chaudhary because I want to know that do these spiritual people keep doing spiritual work also after they pass away? So, if you could tell me about some more experiences that people come and tell you about this.

Sushila ji: Yes, people do come and keep telling me about this. They tell me that Mr. Chaudhary come in their dream and bless them and their work was done. When we woke up in the morning and went to the court, the judge spoke, we were shocked since everything was going against us. Everything went in our favour.

Faith must be deeper than the level of the conscious mind. In his case, the story did not end with his demise. The ethereal Mr. Chaudhary is still active in seva. His faith transcended life!

Ashok Bhalla remembers Gurudev, a mentor like no other.

Q: How did he teach you to evolve spiritually?

Ashok ji: He didn’t communicate anything. There has to be something beyond communication, what I am not aware of that automatically inspires you. And one more thing, like I know I am following his path, I am forcing myself to sit and do some paath like how he wants me to do. But I would never say guruji I am doing like this, but he would tell me that you are doing a lot of labour, very good, like he would encourage you. That encouragement also used to work wonders. But it was not only encouragement, there is something beyond that.

Q: What was gurudev’s personality like in your eyes?

Ashok ji: Very Dynamic, very bold. Like a king of a jungle, Totally Calm, always cheerful, never depressed. Any circumstances he would only advice and we used to follow that to have a positive attitude.

The Mahaguru helped convert Ashok ji’s copperish anger into golden behaviour, all in the course of a few sessions of hushed advice and a few rubs of Paaras, the Philosopher’s stone of transformation!

Both historically and geographically, gurus are treated with great reverence, and disciples and devotees feel honoured to serve them.

Gurudev was a Mahaguru who went anticlockwise.

When he took us on a trip, he drove himself most of the time. He would buy us food and soft drinks on the way. Instead of being served, the Mahaguru became the server on most occasions!

I guess, in keeping with his humour, it would not be out of place to call him ‘the Ulta Guru’.

Back to Puran ji.

Q: What was his behaviour towards those who served at the sthan at Gurgaon?

Puran ji: More than a Guru he would be like a fatherly figure to everybody, taking care of everybody so affectionately and so nicely. He would never get angry on anyone. Never. He was very, very, affectionate person. At night around 1.30 or 2 am Gurudev was having his dinner, I had not had my dinner by then. Guruji would close the doors when he was having his dinner. I was feeling hungry ya. I went from the other door and asked Ganesh to give me food. I took 2 rotis from the langar and set aside to have my dinner. The time I started, Guruji entered. He saw me and said “Is this the way you eat food? Do you eat food like this?” He went inside the small kitchen, gave food to me and said, “Eat this now”. He made me eat all that food. This is how he looked after all his children.

The gentleman we are about to chat with next is called Tony. And his faith was stuck in between the two - his toe and his knee!

How did Gurudev pull it up to his head?

Q: Tell us about how you came to Gurudev?

Tony ji: There was a girlfriend of mine, so she told me that she is going to Guruji. So, I said, “Okay, I will spend some time with him and write a freelance article about what kind of a fraud this Guru stuff is all about. Make some money for a few beer parties. That’s how I came to Guruji.

Q: That’s sounds like a very nice way to come and then what happened. What went wrong

Tony ji: Gurudev saw me from a distance and started laughing. “Acha tu agaya,“ As though he knew me. Guruji put his hand on my head and I felt as though a few thousand tons had vanished from my head. I went on thinking that Guruji knows hypnosis also.

Q: Then?

Tony ji: Then after that I started coming, then what I did is beyond logic.

((tell us))

Whenever I had one hour in Delhi, I did not have money to reach the sthan, I would just go for the sthan and reach and come back.

Q: To meet a hypnotist?

Tony ji: Not a hypnotist! After that I never thought of him as an hypnotist.

Q: Were you a religious man?

Tony ji: No, I was the most unreligious person. I drank, I eat all sorts of nonveg, I do all the un-religious things, which society calls as unreligious.

Q: Did you have any experiences of him?

Tony ji: Life started changing. Attitudes towards a lot of things that were very pleasurable and attractive started changing automatically without any... He never said anything. It just started turning from within the heart.

Q: And, when all this started happening to you, how old were you then?

Tony ji: 23. You can say it started happening within 6 months after I started coming.

Q: Did he give any lecture on god, religion or spiritualism?

Tony ji: No, Guruji used to never speak much. He would give me the experiences; these experiences are something that you cannot explain in words.

Q: Do you think he was just a nice guy. That’s it?

Tony ji: I think he was cosmic consciousness personified. He was a gardener who planted a nursery of gurus, of making people aware that they themselves are God personified.

Quite a confession.

Tony came thinking he will make some money for beer by writing an expose on one more fraud Guru. Fortunately for him, the wheel turned anticlockwise and he was left overwhelmed.

Both Tony and I thought Gurudev was a hypnotist. Logic did not offer a better explanation. How else could we explain his instant cures?

Two youngsters who were yet to transmigrate from disco to divinity were bound to have issues with realisation. Time, however, put head on shoulders, and here we are, lost in thoughts of him.

Harish ji is a gentleman who does seva in a place called Hoshiarpur in Punjab and also supports the sthan at Gurudev’s hometown, Hariana.

Harish ji’s brother-in-law is Ved ji. After overcoming alcoholism, Ved ji became a staunch devotee of Gurudev. He collaborated for decades with a person called Mama ji, by supporting the sthan that was established in Mamaji’s house at Jalandhar.

Let’s chat with him:

Q: Ved ji, what is your story with Gurudev?

Ved ji: My brother-in-law Mr. Kapoor used to stay in Gurgaon. I was an alcoholic. He spoke to Gurudev about me. My Mama ji who used to stay nearby came to take me from Jalandhar saying, “Guruji wanted to meet you”. I went to meet him and with his blessings I left drinking alcohol.

Q: To stop your alcohol did he make you do any kind of work?

Ved ji: No, nothing. it was only his blessings. He told me to drink only 2 pegs. After one or two months, I left drinking those 2 pegs too. He never stopped me for anything. He never asked me to leave eating non veg. But by being with him I left eating non veg too.

Q: Laughs

From alcoholism to altruism maybe a minor change of spelling but it is a major change in stance!

Another Mumbaikar who went from meditating on wine to meditating on the divine is Giri Lalwani.

Q: Was there any visible change in you? What was your lifestyle earlier?

Giri ji: My lifestyle totally changed. My lifestyle was to go for parties, night parties, coming back late at night and having booze. Then when I saw Guruji, the day I had his darshan in 1982 on 6th December, after that I could never have hard drinks. I became a teetotaller. I didn’t even come to know that I had become a teetotaller. I became a vegetarian also. He never asked me to be a vegetarian. But just having his darshan, it turned me into a very different personality.

There is an old saying that any tree that grows next to a sandalwood tree acquires some of its scent. That seems to be the story that fits our bills.

How does Nitin Gadekar view this?

Q: Before you met your Guru and now, do you feel like a different human being, and if so, in what ways? Is there any different way that you look at things in life?

Nitin ji: I think I certainly look at things in a very different way. Basically, before I met my guru, I was just a happy-go-lucky chap. I didn’t take life seriously, nor did I think too much about any event. I had a fairly lucky…I was a happy person. But after I met Guruji, I think for some time, I have been thinking about everything from a spiritual background. It is actually the spiritual angle that is on in my mind at every event, including my daily…day-to-day life. I think over the years, I was confused about so many things, which made me a weak person. Eyes of men…even in my own eyes in certain ways, I became a very weak person. I got up every day with a scare in my heart. I started realizing that…I was seeing myself as a third person all the time…I was looking at myself becoming weak, uncertain—it wasn’t that aggressive, you know, without a care in the world Nitin Gadekar. I changed, though I tried to keep up appearances in front of others, but internally, I knew I had changed. And over the years, I think somewhere, something happened—I don’t know what, but I slowly started feeling that my whole life has gone into somebody else’s hands. I think he was a much greater force than what we would like to believe, or we do believe.

I would like to quote one of Gurudev’s disciples Uddhav Kiritkar who now lives in New Zealand. He said, “You cannot contain a scenery in a photograph or lock up the ocean in a bottle. The Mahaguru was too vast and very difficult to understand. None of his disciples seem to have got more than just a whiff of his reality.”

A man with the Shiv tattva would naturally have the weaknesses of Shiv as well. The one weakness that I noticed in Gurudev was that he was easy to please and rewarded people instantly.

Gurudev would insist that I fly to Gurgaon every month for Bada Guruvaar, a Thursday dedicated to seva. It was an exercise I could ill afford at that time. To top that, my name on the duty chart at Gurgaon was often replaced by someone or the other, leaving me feeling cheated and upset. Three months later, Gurudev called me to his room and asked me about my seva. I was quiet with embarrassment. Before I knew it, he put a clove in my hand and asked me to swallow it. I did. He said, “You can go now, your mahamritunjay is siddh!”

A mantra that should have taken me years to complete, was handed over in a split second, fully accomplished and siddh. I did not even know the words. He gave them to me on a phone call later.

Let me add confusion to mind-Gurudev transferred the Om and other Shiv graphics to hundreds of people as if it was a franchise product. Gupta ji of Parwanoo’s entire family were given Oms on their hands on their second or third meeting with him. Many others too!

In Kathog, a one-horse town in Himachal, Gurudev gave seva to several teachers in the school where he had set up camp. He converted teachers to healers in a few meetings!

No ordinary feat that!

Jain Saab of Jammu was asked to do seva at his home without knowing how to spell the word. For him it was on-the-job-Do-it-Yourself training.

Well, in hardly 8 to 10 days in his presence, we were given powerful mantras. And in a few months, we were asked to sit on the gaddi which is the seat of the guru’s power, and heal people.

Gurudev’s train was super-fast. I guess he had unlimited tasks to complete in limited time.

What is Nitin Gadekar’s viewpoint on this I wonder?

Nitin ji: I think he allowed a free flow of that power just to be sent through a medium more than anything else. I think all of us were mediums who he felt would one day rise. I distinctly remember Guruji saying to people that you know that all of us in so many births knew each other and all. Many saints have said that in India and it’s a common belief that many saints knew each other or their disciples for generation of lives. So that is commonly said all the time, so I think Guruji knew who was what, who is Nitin Gadekar and who’s anybody and he knew what our past lives were with him or what we had with him. Or whether we would be to, so maybe when we feel that we are the chosen ones while we might not be the chosen ones. Because we are already there as were chosen many lifetimes ago.

Nitin’s reference to the term ‘medium’ is very different to the meaning of the word in western philosophy and practice. He is speaking of a medium being a conduit of the Guru’s power.

The man we are about to talk to next showcases humility today but was quite the opposite another day!

Here’s Surendra Kaushal from Chicago:

Surender Kaushal ji: I used to be very hot-tempered person and I have improved a lot. It took me a long time. But always when I get mad, I always think about guruji. His unconditional love changed me. And I want to give that same love to all the people who come here.

Most of us noticed the changes that took place in our dispositions thanks to his influence over us. What we did not notice was his process. Though we might define it as unconditional love, we can also explain it clinically.

When a huge ball of power, call it energy if you will, focuses on you and comes in contact with you regularly, it magnetically influences the subtle chemistry of your aura, thereby raising your consciousness. Could this entrainment be why people felt elated in his presence or even in the thought of him?

To add a little style to the thought, let me quote a sher by Ashok Sahil.

Tumhare dar pe aane tak bahot kamzor hota hu

Magar dehleez chu lete hi main kuch aur hota hu

main kuch aur hota hu

When I’m by myself and alone, I feel weak and lacking in confidence. But the moment I come in your vicinity; I feel like something else greater than myself. That’s what Ashok Sahil was saying.

Suresh Prabhu shares his reflections on Gurudev’s presence not in the physical but in ethereal form:

Suresh ji: I don’t ever think that he is not there because sometimes I personally feel that when you have somebody in physical form there it is sort of a limitation that you can relate to the person with a physical gesture that he makes to you. But sometimes if it is not there then that means it will be there in a full form not necessarily in the physical form but something that he actually manifests himself into various different ways.

As a guru, he was one of the greatest!

He set standards almost impossible to meet. We are still stumbling and fumbling along, trying to match his expectations of us.

Maybe someday we will meet them.

Insha Allah!

Narender ji narrates a reading about Gurudev from the Brighu Samhita.

Narender ji: We had heard many interesting and important things about Gurudev in Brighu Samhita that we had no knowledge of. Like one of the most important things is that we heard was that Gurudev from Gurgaon is an ansh of Shiv and being a Shiv ansh, he is the roop and Swaroop of Shiv. He cures people in Gurgaon. People come to him and he has given his disciples some powers through which they heal and bless people. In the same way, while doing seva, there would be crowds of people who would come to meet him. Then a little later we came to know that Gurudev would leave his body one day. In physical sense, we call it as ‘Death’. But I will not use the word ‘Death’ here. Because Guruji is an immortal soul, an ansh of Shiv and these kinds of people, they are omnipresent. We had also heard that when Guruji will not be there in his physical self, what we call death in the worldly sense, he will become Svargvyapi, post which he will be exist in a special place that will be in Hastinapur – which refers to his samadhi at Najafgarh where his sthan is. But he will be available wherever he wants, and be seen wherever he wants.

The people whose life he affected were meant to be affected. They were born for greatness and he to make them great. Life and conditioning had led to an amnesia of their true selves. The need of the hour was resurrection of the self of the past, to the accomplishments of lives gone by.

For this to happen, one needed a curator who could shock, inspire and correct. That is why we saw him as a ‘Paaras’ who converted soiled gold into shining ones.

I would like to quote the Mahaguru’s favourite Urdu poem. I guarantee its relevance.

The poet says that no one understands the secret of this world of appearances as to who is the ‘player’ and who the ‘played’.