Namaskar

The benefit of performing namaskaram (prostrating) to the Guru is only the removal of the ego. This is not attained except by total surrender. Within the Heart of each devotee the gracious Guru is giving darshan in the form of consciousness. Since to surrender is to offer fully, in silence, the subsided ego, which is a name-and-form thought, to the aham sphurana (the effulgence of "I"), the real holy feet of the gracious Guru.
Since this is so, Self-realization cannot be attained by a bowing of the body, but only by a bowing of the ego.
--Final Talks p28, 1995