The attachment we have toward anyone does not allow us to live peacefully; it brings suffering. Attachment, no matter whom it is toward, if you become attached to a woman or a man, even if you do not get them, you will remain unhappy. You will keep struggling to have them, keep asking God for them, keep waiting for their messages, for their notifications. You will keep creating scenarios in your mind that are not true, that have nothing to do with reality.

And when you look at reality, where the chances of that person becoming yours—of marrying them or having a relationship with them—seem very low, you will mentally break down. You will remain in suffering. You will not be able to enjoy life; you will not feel like doing anything.

Similarly, even if you get them, there is still suffering. Now there is the fear of losing them, that they might leave, that they might become someone else’s. And along with that fear comes jealousy: that they are talking to someone else more than they talk to you, that they are laughing with someone else, that they are online but not replying to you, and so on…

Attachment does not allow you to enjoy life.

And there are many different negative forms of this attachment that we can discuss, especially when it comes to an attachment that sounds somewhat positive, like attachment to a guru.

When there is attachment to the guru, it sounds good to say that this is devotion, anurāga, and in a certain sense, it is. If your rāga toward everyone else has ended and it is now directed toward the guru, that can be very helpful, because the people toward whom we develop rāga can often take us onto the wrong path.

For example, if you are attached to someone who is a drunkard, constantly goes to clubs and bars, and lives in a way that is not good for you, your attachment will make you overlook their faults. That is what attachment does, you mostly see the good in them.

And then, because you want to make that person yours, because you want them to like you, stay with you, spend time with you, talk to you, or even spend their life with you, you start trying to become someone they will admire. And everyone considers themselves good in their own eyes. So, in order to become good in their eyes, you begin trying to become what they consider good—that is, you start becoming like them.

Then you too may start going to clubs and bars, taking drugs, and so on, thinking that this is what you want, that this is your own desire, when in reality you have absolutely no interest in any of it. You are doing it only to look good in the eyes of the person you are attached to.

In the same way, when you become attached to someone, you gradually start becoming like them. So, if attachment must be there, then in a way, it makes sense to be attached to someone whom you would want to become like, someone who takes you onto the right path.

And that is where the guru becomes different. But that too can be problematic.

Attachment means becoming attached to someone, clinging to them, becoming chained to them—like two bulls tied to each other with a rope. Now, if the two bulls try to move in two different directions, the rope may eventually break and they may separate. But the person who is attached does not want to separate. So they walk in the same direction as the person they are attached to.

Now, if that person is going in the wrong direction, if they are heading toward a cliff, then you will go there too. That is why, if you are going to become attached to someone at all, it matters whom you become attached to. And that is why the guru.

The problem begins when, through the same rope with which you are attached to that person, you start pulling them toward yourself. In other words, you begin trying to control their life, wanting them to walk on your path, or wanting them to remain with you. Marry you. Then you start creating problems in their work and on their path. That is the problem that can arise even in being attached to the guru.

You have to become like them; you are not to make them like you.

If, under the mask of devotion, under the guise of anurāga, you begin trying to bind them within your worldly ideals, then that becomes a problem.

The guru is every relationship to the disciple—mother, father, son, friend, companion, everything. But you cannot bind them within these relationships or limit them to these roles. They are all of these relationships, and they are all of these relationships for all their disciples.

Ordinary relationships, however, can belong only to you; they cannot belong to everyone. The very definition of ordinary love is that it becomes limited to one person. Ordinary romantic relationships usually involve a certain exclusivity. We expect the person we love to reserve a special place for us. But the guru’s love with disciples does not work in the same way. 

And because of this, your entire understanding of relationships and love begins to feel as though it is falling apart. It doesn’t feel right. So you start trying to bind them to yourself in different ways, to make them yours alone, through ideas like marriage. And then you begin to feel jealous: Why are they close to others? Why do they spend time with others?

But why does jealousy arise? Because somewhere inside, you have created an idea: ‘I am special to the guru.’ Then someone else becomes close to them, and suddenly your position feels threatened. You are no longer simply seeing another disciple receiving love; you are interpreting their closeness as your own loss.

And this creates problems in many different forms. 

For one thing, you may start putting the person who appears to be closest to the guru on a pedestal, or you may look at them with a deep sense of inferiority. Often, the second one happens with women when the guru is a man: they cannot bear to see another woman very close to him.

But you also have to understand that if someone is very close to the guru, it does not necessarily mean that they are very advanced. Often, the sickest person is the one kept under the closest observation of the doctor. So you should not put such a person on a pedestal either.

They may often pretend that they are the closest to the guru, that they are connected to him at the level of Para Vāk, that they are established in the experience of non-duality, and so on and so forth. But often, it is the most ignorant person who speaks most confidently about knowledge. Patients in a mental hospital may consider themselves more sane than the nurses. You should feel compassion for them, rather than being influenced by what they say.

So, to sum it all up: devotional attachment to the guru can become a means of sādhanā, but only if it gradually frees you from possessiveness rather than creating more of it. Do not try to bind the guru to yourself, do not become an obstacle on their path, and do not put someone on a pedestal simply because they appear to be close to the guru. They may simply be the person who needs the most attention.

Use attachment as a way to end your attachments to the rest of the world. Use it to walk on the right path. Make it the fuel that moves your vehicle forward on the path of sādhanā.