I can fully understand your dilemma and appreciate your Guru bhakti. That is how it should be when one is blessed to have a Guru. As a general rule it is good to stay with your Guru since it is in His persona that the Divine has come to us. Also different Gurus bring different kinds of influences some of which may not mix well. Hence the general advice stands regarding staying with the Master who has come into our life.
However a field like spirituality is by its nature vast and plastic. In the end what matters is none of the outer means and methods but the soul’s aspiration and the Divine Master who draws us towards the great summits of perfection that are yet to be won. Now He calls us by the rhythms of his flute and the dance of joy, now with the sound of the conch shell and the roar of the chariots on the battlefield of life. The truth of the matter is that the Guru is everywhere and if the soul is ready then the revelation can come anywhere and at any moment. Nor is initiation limited to the traditional way of giving a mantra in the classical setting of an Ashram or the method limited a to a certain fixed and formal practice pursued diligently for a limited goal. All these things were necessary at a given point of time in the course of human evolution. They are perhaps still needed for many who want to limit spirituality within the limits of the mind and its definitions. But spirituality, by its very nature is a search for something vast and infinite, an infinite freedom, an infinite Truth, an infinite Peace and Bliss, an infinite Love, an infinite Consciousness which cannot be bound or limited by any outer rule or norm. the only thing that would set its limits is the human aspiration, the seeking, the goal that we are pursuing.
What is needed therefore is to look deep within oneself and see what one is truly seeking. A formal initiation does not matter so much as the real reason for which one goes to a Guru. Even if one is face to face with the Divine, one will receive only that much which one aspires for. What one has to therefore focus foremost is on why one is seeking the Divine or the Guru or the Master. If the form of the Guru in which the Divine has come to us fulfills our aspiration then so be it. But if we aspire for more, – since aspiration can grow, faith can widen, love can ascend, then the shift or transition from one Guru to another is natural and inevitable.
Apart from this there are certain paths that go well with each other whereas certain others do not mix well. For example, the way of the Gita and the true Vedanta or else the traditional forms of Shakti worship may enlarge their scope and the journey of the aspirant enter into the wider field of Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga even though the starting point was something g on a smaller scale. It is like certain tributaries that enter the main river and rivers that flow into the common sea. Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are like that ocean where certain mighty rivers do enter naturally. Then the way of our further spiritual evolution changes. What applies when we are swimming in a river changes when we enter the sea. In a somewhat similar way, when we enter the ocean vast of Sri Aurobindo’s teachings the method and approach changes. While we are laboring in the river we have to do most of the labour whereas when we are in the vast bosom of the Mother then it is She, the ocean who does most. Therefore one has to see what one is seeking for and then take the call of the Path.
As to the surrender, it is understood that in surrendering to the Guru it is not to the outer form that one surrenders but to the Divine in Him. If one can remember this then again there is not much of a problem. When one is with the previous Master one has to see the Divine in Him but if it so happens that the growth of aspiration has led one to another Master then one has to take it as the Divine Himself leading one from one form of his to another because the stage of evolution or the needle of consciousness has shifted within and hence the Master and the method have also shifted. However nothing should be done forcefully. This shift and change should happen naturally, organically as a flower blooms, as love happens, as the sun rises when the hour of the dawn has arrived.
