The following are some excerpts of the relationship between a Guru and His disciple:

These vignettes of the relationship between the Guru and His disciple show the immense devotion a disciple has for His Guru:

Shri Saish (Guru) and His disciple Dinkar (His Holiness Bhaktaraj Maharaj’s earlier name)

His Holiness Bhaktaraj Maharaj (earlier known as Dinkar)

‘Dinkar never sat in front of his Guru.

When with the Guru, Dinkar would stand in a corner awaiting the Guru’s orders. (He never tried to impress his Guru!)

Dinkar always gazed at his Guru’s feet or at the ground. Later on, when speaking on this aspect, He would say, “A servitor should never look into his Master’s (Guru’s) eyes. That is why I always looked at His feet. Inspite of that I could see Shri Saish’s face clearly.”

Dinkar never asked the Guru anything. He only knew that the Guru should command him and he should obey those commands.’

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Whenever the Guru travelled in a horse carriage, He would ask Dinkar to sit beside Him. However Dinkar would not do so, thinking “How can I sit beside the Guru?”

Then the Guru would say, “Follow me”. Fearing that the Guru would reach His destination before him and to avoid any lapse in service towards the Guru, Dinkar would run behind the carriage.

One can imagine how difficult it must have been for one to run after a horse carriage on a street where one has lived in a social setting. But Dinkar would never pay heed to such things.

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Once, soon after the Guru sat down in the horse carriage, it departed.

Since Dinkar did not get time even to wear slippers he began running after the carriage, barefoot.

Seeing this, the Guru threw His own slippers from the carriage, for him. Yet feeling that he could not wear the Guru’s slippers, Dinkar held them close to his bosom and continued running behind the carriage, barefoot as before. The Guru reprimanded him for that too.

Lord Jesus calls His first disciples

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the Word of God, He saw at the water's edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Siimon Peter, and asked him to put out a little away from the shore. Then He sat down and taught the people from the boat.

When He had finished speaking, He said to Simon, "Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch."

Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets."

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord, I am a sinful man!" For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men." So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

- From The Holy Bible, The Gospels, Luke 5:1-11

Swami Vivekanand meets His Guru Ramakrishna Parmahansa for the first time

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) was the chief disciple of Shri Ramakrishna. A brilliant student of the Calcutta University and endowed with a questioning mind and a deep philosophical attitude, he went to Shri Ramakrishna to find an answer to the question which was agitating his mind along with that of some of his fellow-students: Was the religion which he had inherited from his forefathers merely a bundle of idolatry and superstition, as the Christian missionaries preached, or did it contain any substance?

As Vivekananda recalled later, when he first called on Shri Ramakrishna, the latter "looked just like an ordinary man, with nothing remarkable about Him".

Could that man be a great leader, Vivekananda wondered and asked Him the question he had asked several others, "Do you believe in God, sir?"

The answer was prompt "Yes".

Vivekananda asked, "Can you prove it, sir?"

Again, the answer was "Yes". Vivekananda then asked "How?"

Immediately came the answer, "Because I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much more intense sense". That at once impressed Vivekananda.

As He (Swami Vivekananda ) would reminisce later:

For the first time I found a Man who dared to say that He saw God; and that religion was a reality to be felt, to be sensed in an infinitely more intense way than we can sense the world. I began to go to that Man day after day, and I actually saw that religion could be given. One touch, one glance can change a whole life. I have read about Buddha and Christ and Mohammad, about all those different Luminaries of ancient times, how They would stand up and say, "Be thou whole", and the man became whole. I now found it to be true, and when I myself saw this Man, all sceptism was brushed aside.”

Passage taken from ‘Swami Vivekananda – An Anthology’ - by Bimal Prasad