My habit of creating different kinds of expansions of regular words is resurfacing again and again these days. As a student, I always used to remember my lessons by remembering first letters of any bulleted points. When I started teaching, I started expanding regular words as if they are acronyms. This was just an attempt to help learners to remember the concepts easily. Today it is the turn of the word "GURU". Our traditional understanding of the word 'GURU' immediately locks one of the two meanings in our mind; A Teacher or An Expert. Both these meanings highlight that knowledge is flowing from a Guru to his disciple or subject. This is also called a Mentor- Learner relationship. Let's dig deeper. A true Guru would be one who knows a lot. A person who knows a lot will find opportunities to learn things from everyone and everywhere. He will not hesitate to learn even from his disciple. So! In my opinion a Mentor-Learner relationship should be bi-directional. This is called give and take relationship by behaviour science experts. This relationship in common language is what we call as a relationship of friends.
With the above discussion we can now evolve a new expansion of the word GURU as: Guru - Gives U, Receives U (Read it as Gives You, Receives You). An ideal GURU is like a close friend. I have seen some people establishing this kind of relationship even with their Deities. My mother used to talk to the statue of Lord Krishna, as if he was sitting right next to her. She even used to scold her Lord, if something didn't go the way she had planned. This is possible only if there is a relationship of friendship. As a learner I think the best policy is to completely get devoted and bowed down towards your Guru, so that he can receive you well. A true Guru, while giving to you, will make sure that he has learnt something new to be given to you when you meet again.
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