Guru Purnima – The Origin and Significance

Guru Purnima – The Origin and Significance

This episode of the Vedic Worldview explains the significance of Guru Purnima, which falls on this weekend, July 20 to 21 (2024). Vedic meditators are invited to join Guru Purnima celebrations with Thom and other Vedic Meditation Initiators around the world over the course of the weekend. If you’d like to join these celebrations, please visit thomknoles.com/guru-purnima for details of events near you. That’s thomknoles.com/guru-purnima,

[01:23] Movable Dates

Jai Guru Deva. I’m Thom Knoles. Thank you for listening to my podcast, The Vedic Worldview. Today, I want to talk to you about an annual event that is in the Vedic calendar known as Guru Purnima. Guru is spelled G-U-R-U. We’ll come back to definitions in a moment. Purnima, P-U-R-N-I-M-A, Purnima. Guru Purnima.

Guru may seem to have a very obvious translation. Almost everyone knows what a guru is, but let’s define it just to be 100 percent clear about what it means, because it will come into the conversation.

Gu in Sanskrit means darkness, but it’s implicit of ignorance. And Ru means a remover of, a darkness remover, someone who removes ignorance, is a guru. And so if a guru is increasing ignorance, that’s not really a guru. A guru has to be somebody who elucidates and illuminates and enlightens.

Purnima. Purnima means fullness and in this particular instance the combination of the two words Guru Purnima apply to a particular full moon night in a lunar month of the Indian calendar.

The Indian spiritual calendar runs on lunar months rather than on solar months. That is unlike the Gregorian calendar with which we’re familiar, where we have January, February, March, April, May, June, July, etc, all of which are dictated in the Gregorian calendar, the solar calendar, by the placement of the equinoxes, which are roughly the 21st or so of December, it moves a little bit every year, and the 21st of June, those are the equinoxes, when the sun is just as long by day in both north and south hemispheres of the earth, and the night is just as long in both the north and the south hemispheres of the Earth.

And then we have the solstices. Solstices, where, in the northern hemisphere, it is the peak of summer, during the summer solstice, and the low point of the sun in the winter, and in the northern hemisphere, the opposite of that.

So, Gregorian calendar, Western calendars, based on solar events. Notably those four, two solstices, two equinoxes.

[04:29] Soma Chandra

The Vedic calendar, lunar calendar, is based on what happens in “moonths,” and I’m intentionally mispronouncing that to make it clear that it’s based on the moon. The word month comes from the word moon. And so, based on the cyclical behavior of the moon, from dark of moon, which we call new moon, to full moon, and Soma Chandra.

Soma Chandra is the proper Vedic Sanskrit name for that spiritual quality of the physical body known as the moon. Soma Chandra, Soma Chandra.

Soma Chandra becomes full about once every 28 days or so, and then wanes into darkness, dark of moon. So around 14 days after the full moon comes the new moon, dark of moon. And in the northern hemisphere summer, in one of the months of the lunar cycle comes the full moon, the waxing full moon, which is referred to as Guru Purnima, the fullness of the Guru, the full moon of the Guru.

[05:50] Many Moons Ago

And this full moon of the Guru has a long, long tradition. In fact, the tradition is said to be about 5,000 years old.

And you know these words thousands just roll off the tongue so liberally. It Is good to remind ourselves that 2024 years ago, a particular rebbe, or rabbi, who lived in Nazareth, moved around teaching and we’ve decided to number our years after that particular chap.

The numbering system for the solar years that have occurred since the time of that birth BC Before Christ and it used to be called AD Anno Domini, the year of our Lord, but that’s fallen out of favor since and now it’s referred to as the CE, the Christian era. So we are in 2025, the Christian era. That was only 2024, two thousand twenty four years ago.

3000 years ago saw the building and formation of the great pyramids at Cheops in Egypt. 4,000 years ago and we’re in civilizations headquartered in Babylonia and between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is modern day Iraq.

[07:18] Apaurasheya – Not Authored By Anyone

5,000 years ago in India lived a great saint, a great master by the name of Vyasa. Vyasa, V as in Victor. Y-A-S, as in secret, A. V-Y-A-S-A Vyasa, and those of you who’ve seen my name on the website will see that I have a spiritual name, Maharishi Vyasanand Saraswati is the name given to me by the Shankaracharya tradition.

It means Maharishi, which means a great seer, Vyasanand, the one who blissfully puts knowledge into a sequence, an understandable sequence is a Vyasa. Vyasanand means, ananda means bliss, the bliss of that process of putting knowledge in a sequence, the sequential elaboration of knowledge. Saraswati, Saraswati is the name of the matron goddess of our particular tradition, the Saraswati order, the Saraswati tradition of knowledge that comes out of ancient India.

And Vyasa, who had another name, Veda Vyasa. Veda Vyasa meaning the one who organized and put into a proper delineated sequence all of the cognitions of the Veda that had occurred up to his lifetime.

Veda is a body of knowledge which is cognizable. No one wrote it. It is Apaurusheya. apaurusheya, you’ll remember from other podcast episodes, apaurusheya. A-P-A-U-R-U-S-H-E-Y-A . Apaurusheya. Apaurusheya.

It means not authored by anyone. Knowledge that is embedded in the Unified Field itself. Knowledge that is embedded in the consciousness field, which is one with the Unified Field. Knowledge of all the mechanics of Nature’s evolutionary process; its beginnings, its course, and its goal. The source, the course, and the goal of knowledge, all embedded in a primordial set of sounds that exist deep within the Unified Field.

And we’re not going to say it is everywhere, we’re going to say that everything is it. It is everything. Everything is it. Unified Field.

[10:15] Vyasa Purnima

Vyasa, this master of enlightened vision, also known as Veda Vyasa, who lived about 5, 000 years ago, happened to be born on Guru Purnima, was born on the full moon of midsummer in the lunar month in India. And for thousands of years after his advent, that particular date of the year, was referred to as Vyasa Purnima. Vyasa Purnima.

It was a celebration of Vyasa’s birthday. And it was used as an opportunity to remember everything and everyone, every event and every being, every form and every phenomenon, from which you learned constructively in order to become what you are now. Presumably more knowledgeable than you were before. This is how evolution works. We do become more knowledgeable than we were before.

Guru Purnima is a night of celebration in the Vedic calendar, some would say the highlight of the Vedic calendar, because in it we celebrate our great, well-deserved, self-created good fortune at being practitioners of Vedic Meditation.

And, on this night we cherish the memory of, and the thoughts of, all the forms and phenomena, all the people and events from which we learned constructively in order to become more knowledgeable than we were before. And we formalize this tradition in our particular way by an open and public performance of what’s known as Guru Puja.

[12:29] Guru Puja

Guru Puja. Guru, we’ve already talked about. Puja means a ceremony, a ceremony of gratitude. And those of you who’ve had the great well-deserved self-created fortune of having learned Vedic Meditation in its proper way, you may remember that you were asked to witness, innocently, while your teacher performed a ceremony of gratitude for a few minutes prior to teaching you your technique of Vedic Meditation, Guru Puja.

Guru Puja typically is performed, in a way that can be seen and experienced by a group. Last Guru Purnima, I was in Sydney, Australia, and we performed this before a group of 500 Vedic meditators. But one need not even be a Vedic meditator in order to attend. It can be attended by anyone. Guru Purnima.

It happened to be on Guru Purnima. that I first learned this meditation from my master Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. And so it has a very special significance for me.

[13:58] The Waxing Full Moon

Because it’s a lunar event it moves around in July a little bit like in the Western calendar sometimes Easter is in March because it’s a lunar event. Sometimes Easter is celebrated in April So that specific time, which we call Easter, is a lunar event, but it falls in a solar calendar and therefore it moves around that solar calendar according to where the moon and the full moons were. They give us the ability to calculate on which date Easter should be celebrated.

Guru Purnima is very similar, although unlike Easter Sunday, Guru Purnima is not glued to a particular day of the week. It is held on the night of the waxing fullness of the moon in July. I do remember at least one Guru Purnima that happened in August, like around the first or second of August, but this is very rare.

So Guru Purnima, on the waxing full moon. So we have typically two nights in which we can see a rather full moon. One is called the waxing fullness, which means, in the main part of the night where most people are awake, sometime between sunset and midnight, you would see the moon in its rising fullness.

It might actually become full at 2 a. m. or it might actually become full at 8 o’clock in the morning the next day. But, the night of the waxing fullness is the night where the moon is still in its process of waxing. Waxing means becoming full.

The following night, even if the full moon technically was exactly at 3 a.m. or at 12 noon or something on the following day, the following night, the moon will still look rather full, but it will be what we refer to as the waning fullness. That is to say, it’s slightly less round in the sky than it was on the previous night.

So, Guru Purnima typically will be celebrated on the waxing full moon on that particular night of the week, irrespective of what day that is, that’s the night of the full moon.

[16:37] Holding Awareness of Life’s Teachers and Life’s Lessons

So there we have Guru Purnima. What do we do on Guru Purnima? Well, traditionally, it is considered a night where one holds in one’s awareness, we like to have that puja, Guru Puja that I mentioned, to which I alluded earlier, but we also like to hold in our awareness a thought for the people, the gurus, and guru is not necessarily always a person.

It might be a thing. that happened. It might be a moment, it may be a phenomenon, it might be an alliance or a relationship, something that brought us into a constructive acquisition of greater knowledge. And there’s plenty of room in that vessel of thought for all kinds of characters and events that have raised us into the consciousness state that we’re in today. Better off for having more knowledge.

And by the way, not necessarily the case that every one of these events was an absolutely wonderful thing, which at the time we preferred to happen. Sometimes, we learn constructively, even from things, or even from people, that we would have preferred it not to happen, but we’ve become wiser as a consequence.

We don’t necessarily rule that out. 

[18:11] Guru Deva

Guru Purnima, also very specifically amongst my colleagues, the Initiators of Vedic Meditation, is a night where our awareness rests upon whomever it was that brought us into this tradition, that person’s guru, whoever that may be, and that person’s guru.

So in my particular case, that would be Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, from whom I learned this wonderful knowledge of integration and his master, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, who we refer to as “Guru Deva.” Guru Deva, Guru, we have, and Deva is D-E-V-A, Deva, but it’s not pronounced that way, it’s pronounced Deva Guru Deva, Guru Dev. That final A is elided. To elide a letter is a term of art, of linguistics, where it means that a particular letter rather evaporates in the mouth, so Deva becomes Dev. Guru Deva, Guru Deva.

And Guru Deva, amongst my colleagues, refers specifically to Shri Guru Deva, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, our master from whom we have this meditation and all of the appending knowledge.

So we have the tradition of Guru Purnima celebrated annually at some time in July. And keep your eye on my website, thomknoles.com, and also on the websites of your local qualified Initiators of Vedic Meditation as to what will be the night of this event of Guru Purnima, this summer in the north of the equator and winter south of the equator. I think that’s all there is about Guru Purnima for the moment.

Jai Guru Deva.