iMonk | June 2006

Calcutta, West Bengal, India — Wednesday, June 14th

Sri Guru and His Grace

Sripad Goswami Maharaj published Sri Guru and His Grace by Srila Sridhar Maharaj at the Guardian of Devotion press in San Jose, in 1983. It is a profound book: I have read it several times.

This morning Goswami Maharaj showed me a nice email that he received expressing appreciation for Sri Guru and His Grace:

I have just finished reading the book by Srila Sridhar Maharaj, Sri Guru and His Grace. I read it several times before taking harinam initiation, but I never felt such inspiration coming from it that could be even distantly compared to what I feel now.

I wanted to thank you for compiling this book, for giving us such an inexhaustible source of inspiration and charm. Now, by your grace and the grace of Srila Sridhar Maharaj, we can at least lightly touch Srila Guru Maharaj's representation of Divinity — and be enchanted by it. Thank you very much, Maharaj.

"So many years since it was published, and still there is appreciation for Sri Guru and His Grace..."

"Yes, It's the gift that keeps on giving," I replied.

Goswami Maharaj liked the fact that although the devotee had read the book before, they were getting some new light from it now: "It shows that they are alive. They get it."

He continued: "It's always a little disappointing when you mention a book like Sri Guru and His Grace and somebody says, 'Oh, I have read that,' or when you quote something from it they respond, 'Oh, I know that story,' because there is always some new inspiration to be had whenever we read or hear something from Srila Guru Maharaj's books."

Indeed, even now, the Introduction to Sri Guru and His Grace — an essay by Srila Sridhar Maharaj originally published in The Harmonist in 1934 — is "an inexhaustible source of inspiration and charm."

In a follow-up email, the devotee wrote:

The closer I got to the end of the book, the higher the subject became, and I thought, "Oh, I should hurry up and read until the end so that I can start over, from the very beginning, to what was more or less understandable for my level of consciousness. The end is too high for me: I must get back to the beginning!"

Sri Guru and His Grace: read it again for the first time.

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