In plain words
they said. But it also goes on that today's gurus tell this śloka's meanings in their own way, meanings that suit themselves, and teach these disciples, “Your guru alone is Brahmā, your guru alone is Viṣṇu, your guru alone is Maheśvara, your guru alone is Parabrahman in person,” and so secure their own positions for themselves. Yet between a guru and a teacher there is a great difference. The one called a teacher goes over again for himself what he has acquired, what is in the books, and comes and teaches it to the students. This can also be described as nothing more than serving others in a way bound up with his own self-interest. When, drawing a salary, he teaches the students who have joined the school the lessons he has to teach, it is not that this is some great wonder, nor that he himself is to be regarded as the guru. Since he teaches us, we must give him the respect due to him in the place of a teacher. The person who teaches in hope of a return may be a teacher. But with no expectation of any return, in the effort to make the heart, one's own true abode, blossom, the one called the Sadguru, being of the very form of God, enters into people and sets about giving them the teaching that makes their hearts blossom, whether in a dream, or face to face, or by any path whatever. When the time, the karma, the causes and the duties that are ours come together, the Sadguru Himself sets out to come looking for us. The very moment that auspicious time came to Mahārāja Parīkṣit, Śuka arrived at that place, taught Mahārāja Parīkṣit, and in seven days made him fit to attain Mokṣa. In this the very first word is ‘Guru Brahmā’. What is the work Brahmā does? With the saṃskāras of former births in view, with the merits, the fruits of karma, the feelings and cittas that belong to each in view, to set a person in each of his births and so to keep watch over the aim fit for his next birth: that is the duty of Brahmā. In the same way, the one who weighs our saṃskāras, our conduct, our fitness and our wish, inquires by practising which Name, in what way, and by undertaking what sādhanas this fellow can become blessed, and gives that Name, that time, that discipline: there is nothing wrong in calling him Guru Brahmā.