A student once asked Swami Veda Bharati about Guru-Disciple Relationship – “when is the best age to meet your master?”

Swamiji replied – “I’ll give three brief answers.”

First answer is 3 years before you are conceived because he would give instructions to your parents.  This happens in rare cases – 3-years before, 10-years before.

Like in the case of my Master’s parents, the Master came in their very, very old age and said, You will have a child”.

And they said, “What? We are 70, 80-,90 years old”… I can’t remember what age…and they said, “we can’t have a child.”

“You will have a child and then I will come and claim that child.”

So, that is a similar story in the bible of Abraham and his wife. So this story is universal.

The second answer is that sometimes in the case of those who are to be born with a spiritual or social mission, or spiritually-inspired and socially-guided mission, sometimes the Tradition goes into the generations.  You will have one child, and another child…a boy and a girl independently.  In separate family.  And their family will come in touch with a teacher, a great teacher or some guide and these two will marry and they are like-minded and they will bring up a child.  First they prepare themselves. So then they bring up the child who will sometime meet the Master or whose birth is guided like I have just described.  And then he grows up and another girl grows up and they marry.  And then the third generation is the real person for which that generation were preparing.

It is not necessary that each time they become socially active, they may have some very private mission, but that is how it goes—at least 3 generations.  But as you know in all the cultures of the world, they talk of 7 generations past and 7 generations future.  When a great disciple comes into a family and becomes a Master, after him, for up to 7 generations some effect lasts.  And it may even show up in the same family many centuries later.

For example, people who are physically related to me–I met them recently, I had never met them in my life… I had never met a relative of mine and 3 years ago my first cousin came into the Ashram…and they think–they think…that I am reincarnation of founder of the family from 400 years ago, who was a great Master.  In the case of those, they don’t cremate in India, they bury them and it becomes a sacred spot.   And that sacred spot is still there and my children have visited that.

So it is not a simple question.

The third answer: Even if from the very childhood you have not reached the highest state that you are capable of in this life because you have past karma.  So you finish that karma, then the Master will come.

My father was initiated.  My mother received Gayatri mantra in dream.  And my father received also.  And so on–it is a long story and you know about my childhood, but my Master did not come until 1969 when I was 36 years old. Because when I had settled down, married, taken my degrees, gotten a job, bought my first house, okay.

Three months after I bought my first house, then the Master came.

And I asked him one day, “My children are so lucky they have seen you in their childhood, why did you make me wait for 36 years.”  And he said, “Ah ha, come earlier and suffer your karma for you!  I came at the right time.”

Although I had known of him 19 years before he came. So he had already come in my life.  And he and his Master were guiding me all the way through the years.  Because without that guidance, I would not have been able to do at that age what I had been able to accomplish but they were guiding in a disembodied way and now they were guiding in an embodied way and now they have gone back to the same disembodied way.

So that is my brief answer.

So pay off as much of your karma as you can and be concerned with that. And wait.  That’s it.