A shower of nectar is falling from the heavens, but the bamboo tree will not bear fruit or flower. Tulsidas Ji gives the analogy of the bamboo. When we go to a Guru with shraddha, then the Guru can give us the spiritual goods. He can start giving us premanand (Divine love), not before that. So, first of all, shraddha: then we should associate with the Guru. And then the Guru will teach us how to do bhajan kriya, how to practice devotion.
Let's say you have a machine, and that machine is worth a lot of money, and all of a sudden the machine stops working one day. You have no idea how to fix it, so you make a phone call, call an expert. The expert comes, and it takes the expert all of four seconds to fix everything. He connects one wire to the other, and he says that would be five hundred dollars. He's an expert; he knows what to do. The machine starts working. It's like brand new once again.
It has to be a Guru who tells us how to practice devotion, otherwise we'll do it haphazardly. We've done it, and we see the result. We've been walking towards God for countless lives, and we have not yet reached. How far is God anyhow? He's living inside of us. He's that near. He's sitting inside. We have not reached Him. Why? We have not practiced devotion under the guidance of a Guru.
So the expert Guru teaches us how to practice devotion, how to do sadhana. And then when we engage in sadhana, what happens? Anarth nivritti happens. Anarth nivritti. Anarth, what is that? Nivritti, what is that? We gain freedom, nivritti. We gain freedom from anarth. What is anarth? All the undesirable qualities and traits.
