gururbrahmä gururviñëuù gururdevo maheçvaraù,

gurureva paraà brahma tasmai çré gurave namaù.

The above verse for Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda was a direct experience of Reality. For him, Shri Swami Tapovanji Maharaj, our Parama Guru, was säkñät para-brahma.

Säkñät Brahman

Gurudev was a treasure-house of knowledge, a great personality full of love and compassion. Whenever someone wanted to worship or compliment him, he would always refer to Tapovanji Maharaj and categorically state that everything was because of his Guru’s blessing.

It is impossible to describe the greatness of our Parama Guru. Even after reading his autobiography Éçvara Darçana or his travelogue Wanderings in the Himalayas, no words can fathom or describe the depth, the greatness and the vastness of this majestic personality – the abode of tyägaù (renunciation) and tapaù (austerity). He was the personification of both his names – Swami Tyagananda and Swami Tapovan Maharaj.

What can we say about this extraordinary Sage? Even the greatest of orators, our Gurudev, would become quiet when people asked him to speak about his Guru. This logical, magnificent, humorous, powerful Gurudev of ours would suddenly become quiet, look into the yonder, and with moist, devotion-steeped eyes, drift into meditation. If we still insisted, he would just say, “Parama Gurudev is Brahman, and Brahman cannot be described in words.”

Revealed In Silence

Once, when I was with Gurudev, I asked, “Gurudev, could you tell us some of your incidents with Parama Guru Tapovanji Maharaj?” Gurudev looked at me and replied, “In the infinite Brahman, in that one-without-a-second, there is no incident.” And as usual, he became quiet.

I thought to myself, ‘He is again escaping from it! I can’t let this opportunity go!’ However, I just sat there quietly pleading, ‘Give us a glimpse’, expecting something in words, something we could, at that moment, understand.

Gurudev was quiet for some time, but I was not ready to give up! As it often happened in such situations, he seemed to distract our minds to something else. We were sitting on a balcony near the seashore, and he turned our attention to listen to the sound of the waves.

He said, “Listen, listen! How the waves are rising and how they begin to roar. Listen, how they fade away.”

The tide was probably coming in and we could hear the waves rising in their cadence and then fading away. And as we were quietly listening, he added, “Listen how the whole universe resonates with the sound of Om. Listen to the sound of ‘Om’ in the waves and see how it rises and reaches its crescendo and then fades away into silence. Now close your eyes.”

Gurudev chanted ‘Om’ along with the waves. Then he said, “Now listen. Listen to the silence between the two waves.”

We listened quietly. And then, there was only silence. In that silence, Gurudev revealed who the Guru is, he revealed the Truth, the Reality of the Guru.