In the late 19th century, a boy was born into a wealthy family in Northern India. At an early age, he took to the spiritual life and by the age of 9, announced to his parents that he intended to leave home to seek out a guru and dedicate his life to spiritual awakening. Naturally his parents were confused and distraught, but quickly realized that their boy's spiritual talents and aspirations were undeniable, and there would be no stopping him. And so he gave up his householder life and left home for the Himalayas, to meditate and practice in solitude.
At the age of 14, he met his guru and become a disciple. After a year of spiritual practice under the tutelage of his teacher, he was instructed to spend the next 10 years living in complete solitude in the forests of India. He would spend his days meditating, speaking to no one, and living off the vegetation of the jungle. Without flinching, he followed his guru's instruction and took off for the forest, where he spent the next 10 years in total solitude.
At the age of 25, he returned to his guru to continue training with him at his ashram. Shortly after, his guru again instructed him to return to the forest to live In solitude, this time for 40 years. Again, without skipping a beat, the young disciple took off for the jungle. He created a cave where he lived for 4 decades, speaking to no one, living off the land and deepening his spiritual realization.
In the 1941, after repeated invitations and requests by members of his guru's monastic order, the now 71-year old ascetic accepted the the position of Jagadguru Shankaracharya (spiritual leader) of Jyotir Math, a position that had been vacant for more than 150 years. This marked his return to society as the pre-eminent spiritual leader of India. He quickly became one of the most famous and recognizable people in the second most populous country on earth, attracting crowds of hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) of people wherever he went. He was treated as the "King of the Yogis,"and developed an innovation on his ancient system of meditation that could be performed by non-monastic people living in the regular world.
One of his disciples, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, would later take this system of meditation to the west, where it became known as Transcendental Meditation - one of the most popular and scientifically studied techniques of meditation that has been practiced by everyone from the Beatles to Rick Rubin to Steve Jobs to Ray Dalio. This man was given the name Swami Brahmananda Saraswati. His seemingly solitary life eventually set the stage for one of the biggest meditation movements in history, inspiring millions of non-monastic people to transform their consciousness.
The ancient Indian text Dhanurveda is a treatise on the art of archery and warfare, which uses the pulling back of an archer's bow as a metaphor for how momentum is created to create forward direction and power. The further an archer can pull his arrow back, while keeping his form aligned and his focus squarely on the target, the more powerful, accurate and far ranging the release of the arrow will eventually be. Guru Dev's life is an elegant (albeit extreme) example of this principle in action: 50 years in complete solitude, building spiritual power, which was then released over the last 13 years of his life, in which he was one of the most influential and positive forces on India and the spiritual world at large - a legacy that still lives on in millions of meditators today.
Now, this doesn't mean we all need to spend 50 years living in solitude to fulfill our life's purpose. Guru Dev's story is unique and uncommon. But in this world of instant gratification, obsession with quarterly earnings, short term results and showing off on social media, we can take an important lesson from his life: the deeper we can pull the arrow back, and the stronger our focus while we do so, the more powerfully we will be able to deliver our unique gifts to the world when nature signals to us that it's time to release them.
The next time you notice yourself feeling behind in life, rushing to some outcome that you think you need to achieve by some mentally determined time period, or allowing yourself to be pressured by the projections and expectations of others, remember the story of Guru Dev. Allow yourself time to become the force of nature you are destined to be. If you've read this far, something inside of you intuitively knows that nature always accomplishes everything on time, yet is never in a rush. Be more like nature. Time is all you have.
The Most Powerful Man In India
