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re-evaluation of things valued no longer in themselves but as God" (absolute reality, or being-consciousness-harmony). Expanding selves intersect and so merge with one another. The ultimate goal is infinite expansion to embrace the whole universe.
Professor Datta would never claim that his own consciousness has expanded very greatly. But passing over the question of the extent of such expansion, which is a matter of degree in any case, and considering its manner, we see in his own wide interests, philosophical insight, extensive sympathies, and considerable influence an example of the simultaneous expansion of personality in all four modes.
8. R. D. Ranade.
The guru is a basic institution of Hinduism. Whether thought of as a transmitter of revealed wisdom or as a Socratic midwife assisting the disciple to realize truth already possessed, the guru is considered the essential agent of spiritual progress. The disciple does not look beyond his guru, who as the agent of his salvation is for him the manifestation of God and object of devotion." Historically gurus have varied from founders of world religions to those with a single disciple. At the present time R. D. Ranade is one of the great gurus, and perhaps the one with the greatest standing as a philosopher.
Ramchandra Dattatraya Ranade, a Marathi Brahmin, was born in 1886, and initiated into religion by guru Bahusahib in 1901. He was educated at Poona, where he specialized in mathe
** Like Chaitanya embracing a black tree because he recognized it as Krishna.
39 A distinction is sometimes made, however, between the guru and the satguru (real guru). In this case the guru, a person of advanced but not necessarily exalted spiritual status, is the disciple's immediate teacher, while the satguru, a personage of exalted spiritual status, often the guru's guru, in whose name the guru acts, is the object of the disciple's veneration. One of Ranade's disciples told me that Ranade is a satguru, another told me that he is only a guru and not a satguru, while Ranade himself told me that there is no real difference between a guru and a satguru.
49 Ranade is the only one of the philosophers discussed in these articles to have a guru.
