A GURU CAN BECOME GURU WHEN HE’S ORDERED BY HIS GURU. THAT’S ALL. OTHERWISE NOBODY CAN BECOME GURU

The first criterion, according to the Vedic scriptures, is the quality of the words the teacher speaks. (Even a fool may be highly esteemed–until he speaks.) In the Bhagavad-gita Lord Sri Krishna, the original spiritual master, tells His disciple Arjuna, “The self-realized soul can impart knowledge unto you because he has seen the truth.” In other words, a genuine guru must have realized the Absolute Truth, the Personality of Godhead, and he must be able to impart this truth to his disciple, thus freeing him (or her) from repeated birth and death.

We should therefore immediately reject as outright charlatans those so-called gurus who pretend to have some spiritual knowledge, but who teach their disciples only how to gain some material advantage–a slimmer body, better sex life, success in business and so on. Real spiritual life means getting free from the agony of birth and death. How can a common man, unable to distinguish spirit from matter–and thus himself caught in the cycle of birth and death–claim to be a spiritual master? Such cheaters generally take up the “guru business” just to earn a living. But the Srimad-Bhagavatam, the essence of all Vedic scriptures, sternly warns, “No one should become a guru unless he can free his disciple from birth and death.”