Among the orders of Srila Gurudeva since 2004 such as helping to build a small temple in Bangalore and now a small temple in South India, his main orders for me were actually to translate his books into Tamil. He ordered me to translate as many as possible. He has written about 200 books in Hindi of which about 57+ books landed in English.
While I am trying my best to translate more books into Tamil (as the 12th book is going on), due to my old age I am now slow and becoming a challenge on some days. But today I was reading a segment from Srila Prabhupada’s book “The Nectar of Devotion” that made me smile and feel happy in my heart and induced so much enthusiasm! Please read it and you will understand why I felt so happy!
Srila Prabhupads was writing about the rareness of devotional service:
“In the preliminary phase of spiritual life, there are different kinds of austerities, penances and similar processes for attaining self-realization. However, even if an executor of these processes is without any material desire, he still CANNOT ACHIEVE DEVOTIONAL SERVICE. And aspiring by oneself ALONE to achieve devotional service is not hopeful, because Krishna does not agree to award devotional service to merely anyone. Krishna can easily offer a person material happiness or even liberation, but He does not agree very easily to award a person engagement in His devotional service. Devotional service can in fact be attained ONLY THROUGH THE MERCY OF ONE’s GURU A PURE DEVOTEE. In the Caitanya caritamrta (Madhya 19.151) it is said, “By the mercy of the spiritual master who is a pure devotee and by the mercy of Krishna one can achieve the platform of devotional service. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY!”
So, one has to be extremely fortunate to be selected by his/her spiritual master to get engaged in devotional service. That is the most rare and is the highest mercy. There is nothing higher than this. In the tantra-shastra also Lord Siva tells the same thing to Parvati Devi. He says that one can easily become so advanced in knowledge, elevated to the highest planets in any universes and so on, but hardly any one becomes lucky enough to serve one’s guru thus serving the Lord through him.
Now you know why I feel so lucky and so happy because of my Gurudev’s strict orders that are all glittering as immense mercy on me. So, it is the guru who makes a disciple engaged in Service to the Lord! One can never do it by himself or herself without the order of the guru. Doing something by oneself does not work in practice as there is no real fruit or enthusiasm!
From above, here is also a conclusion that runs in my mind: If a guru does not give orders but simply throws some mantra and leaves the disciple away, he is not of any real use to the disciple, because he is not merciful to give orders to perform service to him and thus to the Lord!