What is the Tradition?

Hari Puri Baba

(from "Baba: Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Yogi"):

Hari Puri Baba: "What? You think the Rishi Patanjali and the Rishi Panini were sitting in some Angrezi university, teaching in great halls, writing books published at university expense? You think that they had ideas that just came into their heads, that they did research?” he said one day. “You will never understand these things.

“No, these men were great sadhus who lived at their dhunis surrounded by disciples who didn’t spend their time studying, but selflessly serving their gurus. And the gurus gave to their disciples what they had received from their own gurus. Not just the ‘teachings,’ or instruction, but the gurus transferred their own nature, so that the very personality of the Guru became that of the disciple. With this as a foundation, these seeds of knowledge you call ‘teachings,’ when passed down bore fruit, and that fruit bears more seeds. This is the Tradition.”