The way to attract God and Guru’s grace

Story of Aruni, an average student who attracted his Guru’s grace through unconditional devotion and went on to become the famous Sage Uddalaka.

To achieve the ultimate goal of life we have to follow these steps:

• We have to surrender to a true saint or Guru and serve him with our whole being and completely follow his instructions for practicing devotion to god.
• Always regard God and the Guru to be one.
• By this practice, when our mind becomes completely purified, then our guru will grace us with divine love.

Then we will attain our ultimate goal of our life-Divine Bliss and we will be freed from the bondage of Maya and the effect of three modes of maya, triguna, the three types of actions, trikarma, the disorder in the three humors of the body, tridosha, the five afflictions, panchaklesha and the five material sheaths covering the soul, panchakosh will be removed forever.

Story of Uddalaka is very inspiring in this context.

Aruni of Panchal in Northern India was a dedicated student of the sage Ayodhaumya.  Many bright students studied under the same Guru along with Aruni who was not a bright student, but had staunch faith in his Guru.

The Gurukul also had a garden, an orchard and large paddy fields.  It was a duty of the disciples to till the fields and tend to the orchards.

Once, it was a cold winter evening and Aruni was carrying firewood he had collected for the use of the ashram.  On his way back to the ashram it started to rain heavily.  Suddenly, while walking through the paddy field, Aruni found a breach in the mud embankment that held back the water used to feed the paddy saplings.

He realized that the water would wash away the mud banks, and the crops would die with no water.  He rushed to the ashram and informed his Guru about the breach.  Sage Ayodhaumya instructed him to take care of the breach and come back to the ashram only after ensuring that the water does not escape.

As Aruni was a loyal disciple, he went back and looked for various options to stop the breach with no success.  Left without a choice, Aruni decided to plug the large breach by laying himself flat on the ground.  Next morning when Sage Ayodhaumya found Aruni in such a pitiful position got overwhelmed by the devotion of his disciple.

With love and affection the Sage simply patted Aruni and with the grace of Guru Aruni suddenly received all the knowledge of the Vedas.  Same Aruni later became famous with the name of Sage Uddalak, whose teachings are the part of the Upanishads.

So to attain Para bhakti-the Divine bliss, one should completely surrender to God and Guru. After attaining this para bhakti one attains complete Divine knowledge.