How does Chapter 18 of the Shri Sai Satcharitra describe the nature of the Guru and the experience of a devotee approaching him?

Chapter 18 portrays the Guru as the supreme, eternal truth of Brahman, capable of showing the world as an illusion. It uses a powerful metaphor to describe a devotee's experience: just as a salt doll entering the ocean dissolves and cannot return, a person who truly approaches the Guru merges with the divine and undergoes a complete transformation. As explained in Chapter 18, this signifies that the path to the Guru is one of ultimate surrender and unity, where the individual self dissolves into the greater consciousness. The chapter emphasizes that if one is fortunate enough to receive the Guru's grace, the false distinctions of 'mine' and 'thine' disappear, leading to a state of non-duality.