Back to Home Page Is a Guru Required? Some people argue, "What is the necessity of having a spiritual master when God is there?  Why can't I just have God directly as my guru just as Arjuna did?" The answer is that we are not standing face to face with God as Arjuna was. Of course since God is omnipresent, He is certainly present with us. That's a fact. But in our present state of conditioned consciousness we can neither hear Him nor see Him. So how we will receive instructions from Him for our deliverance from birth and death?'' To this question someone could answer, "Since God is present in the form of scriptures, if we simply follow the instructions in the scriptures, we will become delivered." This a valid principle. And in the scriptures we find that over and over again we are instructed to take shelter of a bona fide spiritual master. It is also enjoined in the scriptures that unless one has a spiritual master he is not qualified to study the scriptures. The scriptures guide us in this way because if we approach scriptures with our conditioned consciousness, we can easily misunderstand them.  Therefore a bona fide spiritual master is required to help us properly understand the scriptures. In short, the will of God is revealed to us through the transparent via medium, the bona fide spiritual master.