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As learnt at
the Lotus Feet of Bhagavan
by
N. Kasturi (1897-1987)
PART-I
PART-I IT, the
incomprehensible Cosmic Consciousness, had chosen the
time, the place, the manner and milieu of Its arrival and
stay on earth. The child had chosen its mother and
thereby conferred the status of father, on Easwaramma's
husband, Pedda Venkapa Raju. And when, years
later, He announced that no one could come to Puttaparthi
and have His Darshan unless He so Willed and
Called, His words were but the words of the
Upanishads that proclaim the good fortune of those
who fondle the Divine Child. "tham eva, esha vrnuthe
thena labhyah" - "He is gained only by those whom
He Himself has chosen". The villagers were the Chosen
Ones. IT, the
Cosmic Being, had assumed the role of Avatâr
and arrived at Puttaparthi as IT had arrived once before
thousands of years ago in a village of cowherds on the
banks of the Yamuna. This time IT had chosen the
bank of a poorer river and a poor village so that mankind
could be saved from both the agony of poverty and the
affliction of affluence. Significantly, the household
into which the Lord arrived, that of the Ratnakaram
Rajus, was the repository of the basic spiritual
wisdom of Bharat, which the members of the family
fostered through music, poetry and dance, though Nature
had isolated the village of Puttaparthi and the
maddening stream of progress had by-passed it.
"Whenever
there is decline in Righteousness, I come again."
Thus declared Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.
Times may change, the gap between one appearance and
another may be wide or narrow, but the assurance has
always shone as a fixed star. The Cosmic Consciousness
has concretised Itself whenever the perfidy of men has
provoked the faithful to pray to Providence. As the
Sai Baba of Shirdi, IT had assured the world that
IT would continue the same mission with another
instalment of sojourn on earth after an interval of eight
years, between that life and the new one. That plighted
word has been as always, acted upon and IT has now
assumed the Name and Form of Sathya Sai Baba. Many
years after, some curious interrogator asked, "Swami!
When exactly did you gain these Divine powers?" "Gain?"
He replied, "I have had them from My very birth. Why!
From long before even that...." This
Divine Promise of Descent for Dharmasthapana (the
establishment, the protection of Dharma) had been
made long before the days of even Krishna, at the
beginning of Time itself when man first fumbled on earth.
For, it is not mere assurance of descent when the need
arises but an assertion of man's inalienable claim on the
Divine. And the villagers of Puttaparthi must have
unerringly sensed that this child, whose eyes sparkled
with delight when they neared the cradle, had come into
their midst to fulfil this Promise made millennia ago. It
was the powerful, though unconscious, force of history
that prompted the village elders to greet It as
Sathya, for they named It Sathya Narayana
(God come to establish Truth, in the place of flimsy
falsehood) although they were most certainly unaware of
the scriptural texts that contain the acclaim of
Brahma and the concourse of Gods when that Birth
happened in a gloomy Mathura prison. Brahmâ
welcomed the Baby Krishna into the world, [source
S.B.
10.2:26]
thus: 'The
truth of the vow, the truth of the Supreme, the truth in
the threefold [of e.g. past, present and future]
You are; You are the source of all truth pervading all
truths, who of the truth of the elements and of all
[the relative] that is held true is the original
truth; of each sacred truth being the origin is
everything true pertaining to You, whom we offer our full
surrender.' Sathyam?
Sath? What is the Truth; the Truth that Sai is? When Love
spun the web of Thought around Itself, It became Truth.
Love with no trace of fear or falsehood can alone delve
into the Sathya, Truth, of men and things. Such love will
induce love in the person loved and persuade him to
reveal himself without deceit or distortion. Love and
Truth are but the sides of the same coin. And it is
embodied Love Itself that has now come to teach us
Sathya. There
are eight hundred thousand villages in India that have
voyaged through five thousand years of chequered history.
At last one of them, the little village of
Puttaparthi, was chosen by the Lord to receive the
impact of the Avatâr, to wake from the petty
round of purposeless make-believe. This spiritual remedy
designed by Swami was therefore suited to rural needs.
The villagers were impulsive and emotional. They would
listen for hours to stories from the epics depicting the
incredible Man-Lion Avatâr, Narasimha, the
incomparable bhakta Hanuman, the invincible
warrior Bhima; they would sit enthralled from dusk
to dawn as musicals and morality plays re-enacted beloved
themes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharatha
and the Bhagavata Purana. Therefore, it was the path of
Namasmarana, the recollection of the Lord's Names, that
Sathya opened up as the right way to save mankind from
disaster. He struck out on this task from His earliest
years, when He was carrying on the pretence of being the
'son' of Venkapa Raju and Easwaramma. That
announcement was made in October 1940. In the years that
followed, it has echoed around the whole globe and
resounded in millions of homes. Fragrant little domestic
shrines have blossomed in lands as far apart as Iceland
and New Zealand, Argentina and Japan. On Thursdays (and
often on other days of the week too), groups gather to
sing bhajans before the altar where portraits of Sai and
other manifestations of divinity are installed. There are
bhajan songs now in Persian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian,
Spanish and Swedish to mention a few and Sai Baba gives
indisputable indications of His Presence whenever His
Glory is sung. When
Mother Easwaramma, stunned at her son's renouncing
the family, pleaded that He should not flee into
loneliness in search of silence, He agreed; for, as He
said, His task was very much related to the conduct and
concepts of men and He had determined therefore that the
place He chose for His birth should also be the centre of
the revolution that was to be. A Sai Bhajan Mandali was
built for Him at Puttaparthi by devotees. And when Sathya
(or rather Sai Baba or Bala Sai (the Boy Sai) as he was
now known and revered) agreed to accompany devotees to
other places that longed for His Presence, Kuppam or
Karur, Salem or Bangalore, Hyderabad or Madras, a handful
of bhajan singers would always follow and sing with Him
the Namavalis
He composed to propagate the bakhti path to God. We are
sternly warned however against neglecting, distorting or
misusing the Name of God, on which we have chosen to
concentrate. There are, it seems many pitfalls to be
avoided. While engaged in this sâdhana we
should not revile or ridicule sadhakas who follow
other paths or create factions among those who adhere to
other Names. We should not dishonour those who inspired
us to adopt this sâdhana nor the scriptural
texts which illumine it. The fostering of the Name
through remembrance and repetition must be done in a pure
atmosphere and we should be very careful not to devalue
it by reckless use, even as we must resist the temptation
to devalue all Names other than the one we rely on. We
must be ever vigilant against evil thoughts, words and
deeds which cannot co-exist with this holy
sâdhana. We should never claim exclusive
ownership of the Name, which we have appropriated for our
uplift. And, above all, we should desist from parading
our achievements and acquisitions. Namasâdhana
has to emerge spontaneously from one's yearning,
uncontaminated by such faults. It has to proceed without
interruption or obstruction; the yearning has to blossom
into agony and then fructify as bliss. A gathering at
Bangalore that had sung bhajans continuously for
twenty four hours were told by Swami: "Namasmarana
will do. The Name Sitaram sufficed in the
Tretâyuga. The Name Radheshyama
sufficed in the Dvâparayuga. In this Kali
Yuga, I tell you, all Names have full capability." It has
sixteen words. Each of the sixteen indicates a separate
credential or virtue which the sadhaka has to
cultivate in order to evoke Grace," He said and, lo! even
as He spoke, the sixteen rolled out one after the other
in scintillating Sanskrit verse! The bhakta has to
transform himself into a: Namasâdhana
leads to illumination. Its sacred vibrations scours away
the dross that defiles the mind. As Swami says,
Râma (God) and Kâma (desire)
can never exist together. "I do not need grace for I have
your name which can confer on me all that I wish for,"
declares the saint Purandara
Dasa.
He dares challenge God to deprive him of grace; he
proudly asserts that he can win it back by
Namasâdhana! A sense
of wonder is aroused by sravanam. It is at first
but a faint stir, a feeble echo of the call that softly
gurgles from the depths within. A voice, a vision, a
picture, a book, a dream, a song - any of these may
awaken us to the dormant hunger for god. But
soon the echo grows, reverberating loud and long, and the
need to know more and more parches our throat. We begin
to search for persons and places from whom and from where
this insidious thirst could be quenched. We find delight
to be in these places, to be among these people, eagerly
sharing the elation that fills the air. This stage is
kîrtanam and it is Swami Himself who leads
you to this "chorus group", for He watches over everyone
on the pilgrim path. As a result of the happy hours and
days spent in kîrtanam, one is privileged to
live a life where the Lord ever dwells within the memory,
granting us freedom from low desires and faith in his
never-failing compassion. This is the stage of
remembrance, smaranam. Addressing
a gathering at Prasanthi Nilayam on
Sankranthi day-1964, Baba spoke of that bhajan of
momentous significance with which he launched the Sai
spiritual revolution in 1940: Swami
has elaborated on this Hindu rite of worship. "When a
person walks along a road, his shadow slides unharmed
over slush and bramble, hollow and hump, because, as you
can see, it has attached itself to the feet! Man is God's
shadow. He can overcome the hurdles of living and the
handicaps in sâdhana if he holds on to the Feet of
God." Devotees deem it a gift of grace, when Swami
allows them to touch His feet. In days gone by, He used
to agree to their request to worship His Feet, the
gurucharanam, with formal puja, every time
they arrived at His residence. This pâda
puja was done by chanting the
Ashtottara-satha-nama-ratnamala, the 108 names
which summarise His divine attributes and
lîlâs [listen
to a sung version here],
while offering flowers at His Feet with each name that
was recited. On the occasion of my 60th birthday, my wife
and I were given the chance of performing this
pâda puja while we chanted the
Ashtottara-sahasra-nama of Shirdi Sai Baba,
the 1008 names of Himself while at Shirdi. Another
memorable occasion was on a Vijayadashami, years
ago. It was the culmination day of the Dasara festival
when the Mother (Sai) is worshipped as
Durgâ-Lakshmî-Sarasvatî. A few
of us including Raja Reddy and Lakshmi Narayana
Sastri were granted the unique chance of worshipping
those Feet with the recitation of the Lalitha
Sahasranama, the 1008 names of Mother who is
glorified therein as Lalitha, the embodiment of truth
(sathya), grace, goodness (s'iva), beauty
(sundara). But names, however many, can only touch
the fringe of this infinity called God, whom the
Svetasvara
Upanishad
describes as "Man and woman, boy and girl, a cheat,
indeed, the aged tottering along holding a stick and
moving with a myriad faces turned in all directions.....
as a blue butterfly, as a green parrot with red eyes, as
the thunder-cloud, as all the seasons and the seas!"
Swami has also said that undue importance should not be
ascribed to the numbers 108 and 1008. Numbers are
recommended only to discover whether, amidst the
mechanical rotation of names, one name may taste
nectarine sweet and induce the reciter to stay longer and
probe deeper into its mystery and wonder. As the
devotee performs pâda-sevanam with all
earnestness, the urge to offer continuous adoration,
grows more and more insistent and he seeks to establish a
regular routine of ritual which can keep him active most
of the time, quaffing the love of the Lord. This stage is
arcanam; Sincere involvement in these spiritual
exercises creates so much love for the Lord that His
beauty is seen in every flower, His majesty in every
sunrise, His mercy in every cloud and His features in
every face. Loving fellow-men, in whom the Lord is
latent, gives one even more joy then loving an
idol or image in which He has to be imagined
and invoked. This
discovery awards the pilgrim access to the next stage,
vandanam, worship with humility and thankfulness,
worship through purity of thought, word and deed. The
devotee gets transformed into a servant who totally
surrenders his will to that of the master, which role now
establishes him in the stage of dâsyam.
Dâsyam, when it is unreserved, wins grace so
plentiful that the relationship is divinised into
sneham (or sakhyam), friendship. Nothing is
sought, nothing is kept back. Whatever the master has,
the servant has. Friendship brings them so close that
they are not 'two' any more. In fact, the ninth stage,
the victory of âtmâ-nivedanam, the
acceptance of the individual self by the omniself, is
won! (bhâgavata-dharma)
[See
Prahlâda's song in S.B.
7.5:23-24] Swami's
infinite mercy has summarised these nine stages in words
that describe the same path in a masterful and different
manner. The
first favor, that any devotee seeks from one whom he
approaches as a guru, is a special name surcharged with
divine potence, which he can treasure and which confer
riches as well as release. Swami once said, "There are
many who ask me to give them a Name that they can repeat,
but I tell them, take any name you like, any name which
is reminiscent of the glory of God. All names are equally
sweet. It is only a crooked intellect that discovers
differences between one name and another." So, the
Bhajans he composed and taught were on the names of God
revered by followers of many creeds. Moreover, a few of
these bhajans clearly declared that God had no name or
form to exclude others or demarcate Him. He could be best
known as pure sathyam (truth),
jñânam (knowledge), anantham
(eternity). When such elevating Bhajans are sung by the
congregation, the whole atmosphere tingled in that
rarified consciousness. Swami
also taught that the qualities of tolerance, humility and
love are essential, if God is to install Himself in the
hearts of devotees. He also marked out the human values
that are crucial for individual and social progress, as
he guided devotees at the village mandir. There was one
bhajan that He particularly emphasised, exhorting people
to undertake the day-by-day journey of life with
Sathya (truth), Dharma (righteousness,
morality), Shanthi (peace, serenity, equanimity)
and Prema (love) as their constant companions and
counsellors. [Listen
here how Swami sings the
bhajan].
These four values have since been elaborated upon and
elevated into the pillars of the educational system He
has launched, to save mankind from the brink of death
through dehydration. This
bhajan movement initiated on the Urvakonda Rock and
fostered at Puttaparthi, spread quickly. The families
that had contact with Shirdi Sai Baba received
intimations in various ways that Swami was that very Baba
come again in a more liberal and easily accessible form.
Swami did not protest when devotees adored and worshipped
his Feet, the gurucharanam. He exuded wisdom and
love and so, every interpretation of scripture that he
gave was revelation to the learned. What He spoke was
truth; how He acted was right; in His presence, serenity
reigned supreme and he tapped in everyone hidden sources
of love. As a result, when aspirants were advised by Him
to choose any one name and form of God that appealed most
to them for their japa, smarana or
sâdhana, they choose the name Sai, Sai
Baba or Sai Ram as their support and
sustenance. Sathya
Sai bhajan mandalis increased in number and membership.
The groups were cemented by the bond of fraternity, and
the sense of dependence on the grace of Sai. They had,
all of them, a compassionate guide and guardian, who
designed their lives as their Charioteer, a
Krishna for every hesitant Arjuna. Besides,
those in whom the emotion of dedication and surrender
(pranipâtha) predominated, had the great
good fortune of Swami granting them His constant
presence. "If you need Me, you deserve Me," He says. Call
on him by any name; he responds. Anyone name is as
effective as any other. The name is the shield, the rock,
the prop, the raft. It is the key when the day dawns, the
bolt when sleep sets in. The
message that Swami willed to proclaim at this gathering
was, once again, the call of Namasmarana, the
recollection of the Name, reliance on the Name. The
backdrop on the dais of the huge hall had two large
paintings, one of Thyagaraja,
the saint-musician of South India, and the other of
Caitanya
of Bengal.
They are both supreme in the ranks of
Namasadhakas. 'Râma' was the open
sesame to liberation for Thyagaraja; the name
'Krishna' was equally potent for
Caitanya. Swami
holds them both as examples of immense ardour, of
unflinching faith and undiluted ecstasy. He revealed
details of their lives which He alone knows.
Thyagaraja, he said, made a vow in his 20th year
(1779 A.D.) to recite the Râma mantra
continuously. He concluded his vow at the end of twenty
one years and fifteen days, when he had repeated it 960
million times. The Râma
Rahasya Upanishad,
said Swami, gives the assurance that a person who
achieves this formidable target would earn the boon of
darshan, sparshan and sambhashan
(vision, touch and talk); he would see Râma
as a physical presence, touch His lotus feet, receive His
loving embrace and hear His sweet, comforting words of
illumination. It happened accordingly. Râma and his
brother with Sîtâ, his consort, and
Hanumân, his dâsa, became for
Thyagaraja the company that sustained him for the
rest of his life. The
other saint was Caitanya, Krishna Caitanya
(Krishna
Consciousness).
His mind knew no other than his beloved Krishna.
The nectar of the name coursed through his veins!
Caitanya led groups of devotees, all equally
Krishna-intoxicated, singing and dancing in holy
harmony from one shrine to another, through the length
and breadth of this land. He
pleaded with man to be as humble as a blade of
grass, and as serene as a mountain peak.
He turned the faces of millions towards
Vrindâvana, the playground of
Krishna. Indeed, wherever Caitanya was, it
was Vrindâvana, complete with Krishna
and the cowherds. The
backdrop on the dais announced that Swami had decided
upon the Name as the cure for the ills of mankind. The
scriptures too declared that this sâdhana is
the only hope for mankind in this Kali age (yuga)
when demonic characteristics hold sway over human
behavior. Swami
summarised the message elaborated in the seven hundred
verses of the Gîtâ in its two phrases:
[BG
8.7]
"mâm anusmara yudhya ca". "Remembering me,
engage in battle". Swami repeated the same message and
inspired the delegates to sanctify their days with
unbroken remembrance, smarana, of the name. Those
who do japa (mantra-meditation) however must
remember that though they may achieve a fantastic
numerical target in repeating the Name, mere vocalisation
is but a shallow feat even when accompanied by a mental
picturing of the Form. "Of what avail is it," asked
Swami at the World Conference, "if you simply worship My
Name or Form without attempting to cultivate My Samathva,
the Love that I shower on all beings, who need it, My
Shanthi, the serenity I maintain amidst all the turmoil
that causes you so must suffering, My Sahana, the
fortitude with which I witness this Passing Show, My
Ânanda, the Bliss whose very embodiment I am and My
Prema, Love, which is the most significant of My
boons?" So much
for bhava-sankîrtan. The second mode of
extolling God through name is
Guna-sankîrtan. Guna means attributes
or qualities or virtues. Devotees take delight in
contemplating the excellence of God, His mercy, His
compassion, His majesty, His might, His wisdom, His
power, His uniqueness, His mystery-qualities with which
the Infinite (that is beyond word and thought, beyond all
attributes, all descriptions. (The unspeakable Silence)
has clothed Itself, in order to become accessible to the
circumscribed understanding of man. The Lord, in whatever
way His devotees know Him - the only begotten Son of God,
the Saviour from Sin, the Custodian of Heaven or as
Almighty Providence - is capable of transforming every
act of His into a miracle, every word of His into a
command, every thought of His into an astounding
achievement. He is Truth, Goodness, Beauty. He is
Sat-cit-ânanda (eternity, conscious, bliss)
.... There are many spiritual aspirants who prefer such
abstract names on His supreme glory to concentrate upon,
names that awaken and raise their consciousness to the
heights of transcendental awareness. They decorate God in
these magnificent adjectives and immerse themselves in
the inspiring radiance of the beauty they
discover. Another
route along which divine grace is drawn down the
smarana path is
lîlâ-sankîrtan.
Lîlâ means sport, pastime, prank,
play. Seekers of grace remind themselves during the
recital of the name, of the strange exploits, the
stunning victories, the mysterious miracles, the
incredible incidents that reveal the divine nature of
their personal God. Thyagaraja
was thrilled when he recalled to memory the
transformation of Ahalya, the breaking of the bow
of S'iva, the killing of Vali and the
destruction of Râkshasa hordes [See
Ramakatha Rasavahini P1
& P2].
Others long to dwell on the revival of Lazarus
or the healing of the lepers. Meera (or
Mirabai)
can never persuade her mind to wander away from the
picture of little Krishna, seven years old,
holding up the Govardhana Peak on the palm of His
soft slender left hand [read this story at
S.B.
10.25].
Krishna is always Giridhari, 'He who bore the
hill', for Meera. That name summarised the
compassion, courage, capacity and wisdom of the Lord for
her, it was all the sustenance she ever needed or sought.
"My devotees strengthen each other by relating their
experiences of My Grace among themselves," S'rî
Krishna says, "They create great joy and they derive
great joy reminding themselves of My
Lîlâs." Swami,
at the World Conference, explained the worth and wisdom
enshrined in the name, 'Râma'. Râma
means, 'that which delights'. Since the only
source of unfailing delight is the
Âtmâ, Râma means the
âtmâ too. This son of Das'aratha was
named Râma since He was the
Parama-âtmâ in human form. In
fact, Swami said that the very syllables Ra and
Ma have a deep mystic meaning. 'Ra' is the crucial
syllable in the word Nârâyana (the
mantra of Vishnu) and 'Ma', the crucial syllable
in Na-ma(h) S'ivaya (the mantra of S'iva). The
name Râma thus unites the two great streams (of
Vishnu and S'iva) into which millions
through the ages have channelled their worship of the
divine. The
significance of the syllables was also explained by Swami
through the great Vedic axiom 'Tat Tvam Asi',
'That Thou Art' (meaning "Thou", the individual is but
"That", which refers to the concept of God who is beyond
all words). 'Ra',
said Swami, signifies That (That, the transcendent); 'Ma'
is the symbol of Tvam (This, the particular, the
individual); and the syllable 'aaa' is reminiscent of
'asi' which means 'is'. 'That', the divine, and 'This',
the individual, are thus linked together by the word 'is'
(the individual is nothing but the divine), which in fact
is the Truth all men must discover. Thus does the word
Râma reveal the totality of knowledge to man again
and again as it is chanted. In
these various ways, the Name Râma, through a subtle
alchemy, destroys and discards the worthless alloys of
shallow thoughts and purifies the mental metal of man.
Swami also revealed that the sound Râma has
numerical significance. Ra is counted as two and Ma as
five, adding up to the auspicious number, seven. He
recounted a scriptural story to underline the unique
potential embedded in that Name immortalised in the
Ramâyana. Long,
long age, the sage Prachetas composed a magnum
opus on God and His glory that totalled 100 crores of
verses. The three worlds, heaven, earth and hades (naraka
or hell) competed to own the entire text but when the
struggle assumed apocalyptic proportions, God at last
intervened to apportion a third of the Poem to each of
the three. But one verse remained without an owner.
Fearing a recurrence of the fight, that too was allowed
to be shared. The verse had thirty two syllables which
meant that each world could appropriate only ten. Now
there was another problem of distributing two syllables
among three contenders, and God solved it by graciously
permitting all three to have them forever. The two
syllables were 'Ra' and 'Ma'. This
story clarifies the mystic power of the Name RAMA. Rama
could well be the instrument for the uplift of all
mankind for there is no trace of separativeness in the
symbol or sound. It is indeed like the one divine energy
which as one uniform bloodstream, circulates through and
galvanises all lands and peoples. This divine energy is
the source of every twitch and tingle, every sob and
sigh, every pang and thrill of every person be he black
or white, bound or free, from land or sea, air or space.
Any name, however, that brings to mind this divine
principle has to be welcomed as a means to expand our
capacity to love, share and care. Swami
asserts that no one can deny or deflate the divine.
"Even those who proclaim that they could never find
any trace of God in outer or inner space, or those who
are sure that God is dead and has been buried, or those
who declare that, even if alive, He is no longer useful
to man and is in fact more a nuisance and a handicap -
all these have to admit that there is some inscrutable,
inexplicable entity that is beyond the reach of logic or
laboratory, some unknown which affects the course of
events and the nature of things." Nama-smarana
is the sâdhana which gives IT a Name,
acknowledges IT's existence, IT's mystery and adores IT's
might. At the
Valedictory session of the World Conference, Swami said,
"Participate in group bhajans on as many days of the
week as you can. Thursday and Sunday evening are the best
but this is no unbreakable rule. And above all, do not
create cults centred around one name or the particular
bhajans used in Prasanthi Nilayam. Do not become
fanatics, blind to the glory denoted by other names and
forms. Join groups that adore all manifestations of the
divine and demonstrate that every name and form of the
divine is Mine." This
new assignment of publicly parading the streets was
received with considerable trepidation by many. They had
long assigned themselves to the rank of an 'elite' of
their own definition. How could they now tramp the roads
without restraint, how could they let emotion show on
their faces, dedication cry through their voices and how
to let their shoulders be jostled by the sundries of
humanity? Yet, it was Swami's word and it had to be
obeyed. So they hurried through their rounds and scurried
home furtively before they could be discovered by early
risers. They limited the Nagara-sankîrtan
program to just two or three days a month. But Swami's
kindness would not let them ignore the medicine that He
had prescribed. They were reminded by Him, softly,
sweetly but repeatedly of their duty to themselves. It is
an inescapable truth that the barriers of self-conscious
restraint as well as those between man and man must be
shattered before the individual can scramble over the
barrier between God and himself. It is this truth that
Swami was prescribing in simple doses and easy stages,
when He urged men to take up the practice of
Nagara-sankîrtan that would compel devotees
to reveal their devotion and unity unashamedly in the
streets. Those who steeled themselves to it, however,
found the response, not slow in showing itself. To the
happy surprise of these embarrassed ones, they found the
neighbors anticipating the sankîrtan with
lights switched on and doors wide open. They found their
own days growing more sweet and smooth. Swami was
generous with encouragement. His
Task was to make man leap over the cramping contours of
his individuality and know the delight, the warmth and
the freedom of devotion pouring spontaneously from the
heart to lose itself in Him, "Where My devotees sing
of Me, there you will find Me seated," He had
declared long long ago to Nârada,
the sage musician of heavenly worlds. He keeps that
ancient promise, showing unmistakable signs of His
Presence wherever the bhajans are held. Vibhuti,
Amrit, Haldi, Kumkum, shower from
pictures of Swami or of other divine personages (who are
only other forms of Him), flower garlands around the
frames loosen and swing to and fro or drop right down on
the lap. His footprints may be found on the floor. Any
one or more of signs such as these are indisputable
evidence of His response to the prayer for grace. Later,
when the devotees arrive at His Residence, He gives them
the proof in no uncertain terms, with His knowledge of
all that happened in their homes, as He compliments or
reprimands, appreciates or admonishes, the bhajans, the
standard of music, the composition of the group of
devotees, the atmosphere of the place and the simplicity
of the sessions. Meditation
is the next step in the aspirant's spiritual effort after
he has begun the practice of japa and
bhajan. Swami advocates a course of meditation. He
characterises it as japa-sahitha dhyana. For the
bhaktha who is by nature ruled and regulated more
by the heart than the head japa-sahitha dhyana is
a continuation and extension of the sâdhana
of namasmarana. The name evokes visions of the
form and so, when the name is on the tongue, the form to
which it is wedded is clear to the eye. "Continually
repeat the name, but take care that you do not turn into
a tape-recorder! Let the name be not merely on your lips
but veritably dancing on your tongue sweetening the
taste-buds with the love, power and majesty, the delight,
dominion and dispensation of God. Let the name and the
form be the twin rails on which your mind moves."
says Swami. When the name slips from the tongue, hold on
to the form which is equally sweet and satisfying. When
the form fades from the inner eye, keep your attention
fast on the name. Practise this dhyana until the
name merges in the form and the form loses its limits,
and fades into the limitless expanse of consciousness,
into which the mind sinks. Or the form may merge in the
name and, as the mind grows still, the name too may lose
its validity, its many-syllabled distinctiveness
dissolves in the great hum of OM, the
All-Pervasive Sound from which all things
began. "In
the beginning was the Word and the Word was made
Flesh".... says the Bible. It was the Word that first
stirred being into becoming. From the vast, still, sea of
consciousness, its vibrations assumed shape (flesh) as
the objects of creation. The forms of the divine that
appear before us are also the concretisation of this
Primeval Word. Thus, the one who keeps the name and the
form with him constantly is led back by them to melt into
this vast sea of Blissful Consciousness from where he
first arose. The mere constancy of thought and tongue
dwelling on the divine also leads him to that very subtle
knowledge (that lies far beyond the limits of mind and
intellect) where Time is lost and Name and Form merge in
this Ocean of Stillness. Until the Word emanated and
Creation happened, there never existed the divisions of
Time (the present, past or future) or any such notions as
Is or Was or Will Be. There was only undefinable Bliss.
A
sadhaka may have heard or read of this Impersonal
Concept of God, beyond thought, time and form, but at the
start of his journey, he cannot grapple with this awesome
Nothingness. As long as he identifies his own self with
the body and cannot think of his existence as
transcending its limits, his mind cannot understand any
concept that goes beyond it either. 'dukham
dehavadbhir' says the Bhagavad Gîtâ
[BG 12:5] - "meditation on the impersonal is
very difficult for those who believe that they are the
body." This means that they can look upon the world
only as a multiplicity of sharply defined objects, all
existing within the narrow limits of the physical moulds
that the human eye can see. To such a man, God has
meaning only if He has a definite Form. God may be imbued
with immeasurable charm, with a thousand heads and eyes
and feet, but He is still a definite Person with a
definite Form that is separate from all the rest, though
He may wield undisputed power over all creatures. Such a
Person has [naturally] to have distinct qualities
too and He is granted those, according to the devotee's
own needs. The devotee seeks refuge from the world and so
he goes towards God as a father-figure for protecting him
or as a mother to shower on him unquestioning love; he
may stand at a reverent distance waiting for punishment
or grace or pity or run rapturously forward to the
Liberator, to be freed and fondled and fed. Such a
devotee cannot face the responsibility of the truth of
'Soham' 'I AM That'. He cannot face the concept that his
own helplessness and God's Might and the world that
pounces upon him with tooth and claw - are all one
indivisible whole. Then there will be none to blame nor
anyone to rush for help. It is indeed a frightening
situation. So, he surrenders himself instead to the
simplicity of 'dâsoham', the attitude of
master and servant, and finds a pair of divine feet to
which he clings. Japa-sahitha dhyana, the Name and
the Form, is the way for such as he, where one can call
on God with confidence. Let
us pause a little to ruminate over the power of
nama-japa and the experience of a fellow pilgrim.
Joy Thomas of Cherry Valley, California, found herself
immobilised, since she had to choose one of two repugnant
choices to extricate herself from a dilemma. She prayed
to Baba whom she had wholeheartedly accepted as preceptor
and guide. The message received as reply was, "Just
repeat the Name!" She asked for a more satisfying, a
more down-to-earth prescription. But Baba refused to
modify or nullify the advice once given. "So I began
to recite the Name I love," Joy writes. "Sathya Sai
.... Sathya Sai .....". All day I kept it going. When the
mind tried to bring the dilemma to memory, I would say
the Name out loud for a while. When bedtime arrived, I
fell asleep easily and the beloved Name echoed peacefully
in my dreams. "As I
repeated the Name throughout the next day, the memory of
the problem surfaced a few times, but, instead of seeming
to be a fearsome future decision to be made, it seemed
more like a dream that had occured in the past. In a very
short time, even the 'memory of the dream' disappeared!
No decision was made; no action was taken; no miraculous
solution appeared. The problem had simply dissolved. If I
could remember what it was, I would gladly tell it here!
"Where did the problem go?" I asked Baba. I received a
gentle response: "When you removed the problem from
the mind, you eliminated it from the only place where it
ever claimed to exist." Joy
writes that the repetition of the Name has been effective
in dealing with other financial and relationship problems
she has had. It breaks the anxiety cycle during illness
too by erasing the thought of the symptoms from the mind.
"When they no longer exist in the mind, they no longer
persist in the body." In fact, the
sâdhana of Nama Japa has prompted me to
indulge in what He calls a day-dream (a step towards what
is truly a Vedantic victory, the knowledge that there is
only One there is no rest). "I imagine myself saying,
"You know, I used to be caged in some sort of form which
took me from place to place. I needed it almost all the
time. As a matter of fact, there was virtually nothing I
could do without it. It seemed paramount to my existence
then; but now, I can't remember what it was!" The
saints of all religions succeed in their search by
constantly practising the presence of God in them and
around them. For twenty one long years, Thyagaraja
reached out single-minded towards that one goal. He
prayed. He petitioned, he protested, he confessed, he
adored, he thanked and all the while kept the Name
dancing ceaselessly on his tongue. I remember the
occasion when I, after a pilgrimage to Rishikesh,
Hardwar, Varanasi, Triveni, Gaya and Dakshineswar, wrote
to Swami that it was through His Grace that I was able to
visit those shrines and see Him alone everywhere. He
replied that it was the Name that never strayed from my
tongue that had concretised His Form before me in each
shrine. "When you call out from the heart for God to
grant you His vision, the Formless assumes that Form you
crave to see," He said to me. "Fervour is always
rewarded by the compassionate Lord." Gaining
this vision of the multiplicity of the world as One
Indivisible Whole, which is the consummation towards
which the japa and dhyana lead, depends on
the standard of inner purity attained by the devotee.
There are six evil enemies that poison a man's thought,
word and deed and have to be destroyed. They are lust,
anger, greed, attachment, pride and hatred. When these
'enemies' are examined however from the viewpoint of
striving for the vision of unity, they will be understood
as only various emotional ways of accepting this busy
world. They are expressions of the value we attach to
these many objects and persons, which are of no value, or
rather, do not even exist at the highest level of truth.
Their 'evil' is therefore fundamentally the evil of
divisiveness, of dividing the world into many different
objects. They prevent the acquisition of the true
knowledge that the things around us are but shadowy
illusions imposed on the One. The
Vision of Unity cannot arise in a mind heaving in
agitated waves as it reacts to the hundreds of people and
things it contacts every moment. It can only be revealed
to a mind grown calm and translucent with the constant
practice of rejecting variety, striving instead to detect
a serene unity that hides behind this passing show. When
this world is recognised as worthless, these many
emotions that arise in relation to the many different
things, die away. Then, knowing no conflicting emotions,
thought, word and deed too cannot differ. They all become
one and one-pointed. This undistracted one-pointed
concentration is, in other words, termed 'purity' and
finally such a sadhaka reaches the goal of
realisation that One Alone Is. There
are two pathways to this one-pointed concentration: one
is to withdraw the senses that bring in information about
the many-colored world and strive to keep the mind aloof
from impressions; and there is the path that uses all the
senses freely, yet practises the actual Presence or Will
of God in all things and events. The bhakta
cultivates love and love cannot reject or ignore; it can
only glorify. He sees the Lord's smile in every flower
and star; he hears His voice in every chirp or twitter,
hoot or roar. S'sî
Ramakrishna
Paramahamsa
saw the Mother wherever he cast his eyes. The
devotee does not see anyone else. For him, there is only
He, with the vast sky as His shamiana and the
breeze, His breath. Not even the humblest blade of
grass will quiver but for Him (*).
And not in the outward objects only of the world, but in
the subtlest life principle too, the devotee now
understands nothing but the command of the Lord: it is
His Will that is the force of cohesion in the atoms of a
crystal, it is the instinct by which an insect survives;
it is the loyalty and dedication of a dog to its
master. "By
single-minded devotion (bhakti) I can be known; the
universe can be seen as a fraction of My Glory. I can be
visualised as such and you can enter into Me and be
merged (pravesha)," says the Lord to Arjuna.
Identification with Him is the highest reward of love.
Prasanthi, supreme peace, follows the pravesha
(entry) of the bhakta into the source of all
beings, the Lord .... 'My Father and I are One.' "O
Râma!" says Hanumân, "When I feel that I am
this body, you are my Lord. When I feel I am the self,
equipped with this instrument called body, I am a
jîvî (individual), you are then the
Original of which I am the image, the shadow. But when I
am aware that I am the Âtmâ, You and I
are One!" The
bhakta to whom the Lord is all, says that God made
man in His image. The sceptic, to whom He is a doubt and
a question, says man made God in his image. But Swami who
is both God and man reveals that the genuine truth was
expressed by the sage who declared in the
Upanishads,
"The eternal absolute impersonal being became aware of an
urge, a mâyâ, affecting the serenity.
That urge was the primal desire, 'ekoham
bahusyâm' - 'I am alone, I shall be
many'. Why was
this loneliness cognised? What was expected from this
'many-fication' (or, as Sankarâcârya
says, the 'many-fiction') that came into being?
Swami confesses that He multiplied and personalised, in
order to 'love' and be 'loved'. "I seperated Myself
from Myself in order to love Myself!" But, before the
beginning, there was none else and no other. The desire
for expansion and 'full-filment', the Mâyâ,
was however overwhelming and He had to project us,
fractions, from His own substance. Mâyâ
is the playfulness inherent in God. It veils the One and
presents it as the Many. It causes in-apprehension and
intrinsic to Him. Since He always Is, Mâyâ
too Is, forever. It parades reality before us, dressed in
diverse forms and labelled with different names. These
finite phenomena have only relative reality. They are
'real' for, the divine essence has projected Itself,
separating Itself from Itself in order to love Itself and
understand Itself. Yet, they are 'unreal' because they
exist only in the unstable and ever-changing flux of
time, space and causation. "I beheld these others
beneath Thee," writes St.
Augustine,
"and saw that they neither altogether are, nor
altogether are not. An existence they have, because they
are from Thee; and yet, no existence, because they are
not what Thou art". 'Sarvam
Brahmamayam' - All is Brahma, assert the Vedas,
'Na iha nana asthi kinchana' - Here, there is no trace
of any other. But we observe only multiplicity
wherever we turn. Appearance has distorted reality by
fragmenting it and fixing names on each little bit; our
senses are inadequate instruments to explore this
diversity and penetrate to the reality behind it all. Our
mind is subject to perpetual agitation as the result of
the series of desires, that assault it and our intellect
too can deal only with limited areas of understanding. In
spite of these handicaps man has also been imbued with an
eternal thirst, a longing to reach his source, to become
aware of the reality, his own and that of
nature. Scientists
who have peered into the sub-atomic world of mystery have
had an amazing confrontation with its contrariness. The
paradox of the 'unreal Real' is the building block of the
whole universe, they find. They witness particles
behaving like waves, waves hardening into particles,
matter turning into voids and voids emanating into
matter. "This Mysterious Universe!" they have been led to
exclaim. "Indeterminism can alone comprehend it. Time is
a fiction, space is a figment and the cause-effect
continuum, a fable!" Swami explains the puzzle in these
words: "Though foam, bubble, ripple, wave and swell
which are modifications of the sea are non-different from
the sea, yet action and reaction, separation and
collision are perceived among them and between them. But
the truth is that they are never different or distinct
from the sea from which they have emanated, on which they
exist, into which they merge. The sea is the Reality. All
else is appearance." Appearance or
mâyâ needs time and space for
spreading out its ravishing wares. It clothes itself in
the scintillating warp and woof of cause and effect in
order to lure the unwary even as, at the same time, it
inspires the wary. God
did not make man in His image nor man make
God in his image. God wished to play 'hide and seek' and
since He is not only the One but the One with no second
(Advaita - without duality, which relating to the
Lord means that His body and Himself are non-different;
see S.B.
7.15:63-65),
He became the Many, charged with the urge to seek.
God wished for a play and so He became the play-wright,
the director, the stage-hands, the actors and the
audience. As the Gîtâ announces, "He is
the grain and the fire, the cook and the meal, the
consumer and the digester, the strength and the
activity." [see for example B.G.
15:14,
9:16
&
B.G. 10].
This wish, created the I-sense, limited the cosmic
consciousness into a 'God' whom the fragments seek to
rejoin. The multiplicity of fractions into which the I
sparked off, in which 'God' is revealed as Sat, Cit
and Ânanda (eternity, consciousness, bliss), is
the mâyâ that confronts man. The
absolute is the pre-cosmic God; God is the Absolute, from
the cosmic point of view. What an
overwhelming lure is woven by mâyâ!
Mâyâ has hidden the absolute under a lid of
gold, the Vedas
say. It has transformed the absolute into a marvellous
relativity. "This is seen as a marvel; this is spoken
of as a marvel; this is listened to as a marvel ..."
proclaims the Gîtâ.
So, we are tempted, to approach, admire and applaud.
Einstein in a delicious jingle reflects the reaction of
all who are involved with mâyâ:
"A
thought that sometimes makes me hazy: Or, we
have to echo the comment of Sir
Arthur Eddington
on the mystery of the electron, "Something unknown is
doing, we don't know what!" Mâyâ
is a Sanskrit word which means 'that which does
not exist' but which appears to. Bertrand Russell
writes, "Matter is a convenient formula for describing
what happens where it isn't." Mâyâ has
become also a decent scientific axiom, with Eddington
acknowledging that "The stuff of the world is
mind-stuff" and Sir
James Jeans
admitting, as the title of his book, that it is indeed
'The Mysterious Universe'. The
seeker on the path of Jñâna tries to
explore and experience the 'thought', spread out as
mâyâ. But what does the emotional
seeker, the bhakta, do? He does not ignore or
dismiss or condemn. For him, the cosmic conundrum,
which mâyâ has persuaded the absolute
to project, is captivatingly kaleidoscopic. It delights
the eye, it tingles the ear, it tempts the tongue, it
thrills the nose and throbs the skin. Some sages declare
that the brain and the senses were evolved only in order
to involve the living being totally in the play of
mâyâ. The devotee, unlike the
inquirer, the jñâni, dares not ask
the why and the how of the world around him. He is
amazed; he is amused; he accepts; he adores - and thus,
he advances. [see also e.g. S.B.
11:3
& S.B.
11:11] This
cosmos is 'mama mâyâ' ('My Mâyâ')
announces Krishna. Why then should one accuse It or avoid
It? The devotee knows that the Lord has warned Arjuna
(and through Arjuna all of mankind) that His
Mâyâ is 'duratyayâ' (hard to
surmount) and that it may distract and destroy wisdom
(apahrita jñâna) (see
B.G.
7.14).
Enough for him is the knowledge that Krishna has, in the
same context, named mâyâ as
'daivî' (transcendental, divine) too! Could
anyone dedicated to God approach anything daivî
with doubt, disgust or dread? The Upanishads
acclaim God as Mayin, the One, accoutred with
Mâyâ. The
Brahma
Sûtras,
which, along with the Upanishads and the
Gîtâ comprise the three basic texts of
Indian philosophy, reveal that creation, the cosmos,
termed 'loka'
(literally, the cognisable) is lîlâ
kaivalyam (only play). Sankara,
the most erudite of the many commentators on these three
texts, explains the 'playfulness' of the One as Its very
nature, inseparable from It. 'svabhâvâd
eva sambhavathi' - 'mâyâ happens
because of Its innate character'. Play is an action
both effortless and purposeless. It is also an amalgam of
genuineness and make-believe. The player is aware that it
is play but the onlooker is deluded into belief in the
appearance. Swami, as a ten-year old, acted in the Telugu
drama 'Kanaka-Tara' in which He took the role of
the brother who was executed. He acted the part so
convincingly that His mother misled by
mâyâ rushed on-stage, to prevent the
deadly deed: The word 'delude' is derived from the Latin
'Ludere' (to play). "I
Myself have killed those against whom you are reluctant
to draw the bow", Krishna tells Arjuna as He laughs
at his despondency. "They have already been slain by
Me. Be you the incidental cause only." This was said
while Krishna revealed His Cosmic Form engaged in
assuming and subsuming the worlds and their denizens
[B.G.
11:34].
At the World Conference at Bombay, Swami revealed to the
delegates: "I am deluding you into the conclusion that
I am just human with this Name and Form and with My
speech, song and action. But, when you insist on knowing
My Reality, I may grant you any moment the Revelation of
My Truth." During the same discourse He affirmed that
"This (meaning Himself) is not a phenomenon of brama"
(delusion). This is the phenomenon of Brahma."
Rabindranath
Tagore
has said, "When It plays, It plays at being God and
becoming everything else." The golden lid invites and
inflames curiosity even while obstructing or distracting
it. The
mysterious veil is adorned with enchanting stellar
embroidery, decorative orbit designs and empyrean
embellishments. The lîlâ confronts our
intelligence and challenges our imagination. It presents
a perpetual perplexity which tests, toughens and
tantalises man, blessed Man! "The Universe is the
University for you", says Swami. The universe is a
mask, a spell, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm that
we are drawn into cautious involvement in its incidents.
Werner
Heisenberg,
one of the giants of Quantum Physics has disclosed that
uncertainty or indeterminacy is the very nature of the
cosmos, micro as well as macro. And indeed, this
principle of uncertainty only makes it all the more
lovable. "Love My Uncertainty", Swami exhorts us.
"The whole universe is engaged in a continual Cosmic
Dance of Energy", concludes another scientist,
Fritjof
Capra.
Swami says, "I am Nataraja, the Cosmic Dancer. I alone
know the agony of teaching you the steps." The
devotee who has surrendered to the dancer, whose steps
create space, whose winks create Time and whose whirl
creates Worlds finds fulfilment in the total acceptance
of His Lîlâ as the Reality within his
reach. He loves Him as present everywhere and in
everything. Vâsudevas-sarvamidam - All this is
Vâsudeva, God. Krishna
adopts the name Vâsudeva because
Arjuna liked that name the most. As the children
who gather around the hawker of sugar dolls pick for
themselves dolls of their favourite shapes - elephants,
camels, bears, cats - so too the devotee chooses the
shape and the name, the color and the size of the
drinking cup with which he wishes to quaff the divine
essence. He fancies his own choice as the most
heartwarming and pities or avoids or tortures those who
sip the same nectar from a vessel that looks different;
There's many a cup from which the devotee can sip; its
color may be white or dark, brown or blue; its shape may
be a Linga or a Nataraja, a child named
Krishna sitting squat on the floor, a Sai
Baba sitting cross-legged on a rock or a charming
Sai in a bright orange robe. Having
thus chosen his God, the bhakta is delighted to be
His servant, a witness to His Glory, a Spectator of His
Lîlâ. He strives to love God and be loved by
God and to understand that it is His will that is
enforced in the actions of all things. In order to give
His devotee greater joy, God actually animates and
dominates the idol or image that is the object of
devotion and awards the bhakta the vision of God
in sky and slime, ant and antelope, molehill and
mountain. Or, God might assume a human form and, as He
favored Arjuna, play the roles of kinsman, comrade and
counsellor, guide, guardian and goal. Krishna
the Avatâr who taught the
Gîtâ to Arjuna tells him, "The
foolish misunderstand Me, because of My adopting the
human form, ignorant as they are of My being the supreme
sovereign of all beings" (B.G.
9:11).
But the bhakta who is emotionally motivated would
really prefer to misunderstand Him, for, being encased in
this human body, he cannot easily transcend his human
feelings and worship God as the Formless Absolute. The
'ignorance' with which Krishna charges him enables
the devotee to pray and plead, to protest and praise, to
picture Krishna as mother, father, friend, monarch
or judge. Krishna, in fact, joyously extols the
bhaktas who long to adore Him in human terms and
through human relationships and affinities. "Their
thoughts are fixed in Me," He says, "Their lives
are wholly dedicated to Me. They entertain and enlighten
each other only about Me. They rejoice in Me and they
make others rejoice" (B.G.
9:13-15).
Swami has revealed that He is deluding us into the belief
that He is human. "My Truth, let me tell you, is: I am
the One and only source of every name and form that
mankind has, in its long history, ascribed to
God." Krishna
has assured the bhaktas the same reward. Their
dedication, their sâdhana of mutual
enlightenment, the sharing of love and light, He says,
are credentials which deserve grace. "These people are
constantly attached to Me. They worship Me with
whole-hearted love and I bless them and grant them
buddhi-yoga, the intuitive vision of Me as the soul and
substance of all that pass and perish" (B.G.
9:22).
Out of the compassion for those who are immersed in
devotion to Me, I destroy the darkness, that fogs their
vision, with the 'effulgence of the wisdom I
confer." Sage
Vyâsadeva
derived delight and shared it with devotees while engaged
in recounting and recording the lîlâ
and majesty of the God he adored in the form of
Vishnu. But he could not speed on the concrete
runway for long. From bhakti he must perforce take
off to jñâna for
jñâna alone can negate bondage
totally. In His attempt to encapsule divine glory in a
thousand nouns he reached the 729th, but at that stage he
took off into the region of the incomprehensible, where
God is impersonal and can be experienced only as an
interrogation or an exclamation and all attempts and
aspirations achieve the ultimate full stop. He could
describe God only as "Who", "What" and "Which", and
finally as "That". When "This" is cognised as "That",
surrender culminates in submergence. Pranipatha
attains fulfilment in Prasanthi
(abode of supreme peace). -
Namavalis: see for
example the S'rî
Sathya Sai Ashtottarashata Nama
Ratnamala &
Sathya
Sai Navaratna Mala
tad
viddhi pranipâtena:
...
understand that by exercising respect ...
[B.G.
4:34].
satyasya yonim nihitam ca satye
satyasya satyam rita-satya-netram
satyâtmakam tvâm s'aranam
prapannâh
Neither Brahmin nor Kshatriya, Vais'ya nor
S'ûdra,
I am not a Brahmacari, Grihi or Vanastha,
I am Sathya Bodhaka!
Sathyam-Sivam-Sundaram!"
Panduranga Vittal at Pandharpur temple
" Panduranga Vittala Jay Pandarinatha Vittala "
It
was only for a year and a four months however that Sathya
attended High School. Soon, He walked out of the circle
of friends and family, of kith and kin. "My devotees are
waiting", He proclaimed, "I have to attend to My
unfinished task." Leaving school and home behind, He
retired to a lonely spot on the skirt of the town. There
it was that He inaugurated the era of world-wide
multi-lingual, multi-racial bhajan with a song
[which is: Manasa Bhaja Rey Guru Charanam]
acclaiming the Guru from Puttaparthi as the
savior of man. He was the Sai Baba of Shirdi, He
said, and advised people to cleanse their homes and minds
and worship Him every Thursday. Thursday is termed
Guruvaar, the day of the Guru, according to the
Hindu calender and the Sanskrit language.
The
Nameless is invoked through a thousand Names, each Name
being an attempt to verbalise a fraction of the ecstasy
the devotee experiences as he seeks to know It. The Name
is, in fact, the Magnificence, the Majesty, the Power,
the Love of the Nameless Mystery enclosed in a lovely
capsule that melts on the tongue in flavoured sweetness.
The Upanishads contain innumerable Names through
which the ancient sages of India have sought to delineate
the indescribable. A thousand such Names and adjectives
have been gathered together by the famous Upanishadic
scholar Paramasivananda Saraswati in his book
'Upanishadannama-sahasra'. Each Name is a window
shedding a beam of light on the Cosmic Mystery. He who
seeks to paint the personalised Impersonal on the canvas
of his heart has to use an immense variety of colours and
lines, daubs and designs, patterns and strokes. Each
picture painted as a Name is as authentic and as valid as
the rest.
Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare
Hare.
- thapo-yuktha (capable of meeting suffering
calmly and bravely);
- a samsara-muktha (free from attachment to the
transient and the changing);
- a paadaa-saktha (eager to be at the Feet of the
Lord);
- a vihitha (obeying rules of discipline);
- a daana-sahitha (having a charitable
disposition);
- a yaso-mahitha (possessing an unsullied
reputation);
- a kalma-sharahitha (without blemish);
- a poorna (contented);
- a gunagana (equipped with virtues);
- an utheera (successful in tests);
- a vidya-vikeerna (ripe in scholarship);
- a jñâna-vistheerna (a master of
extensive wisdom);
- a swaatha (satisfied with the Self);
- a sadguna kraantha (adorned with rare virtues);
- a vinaya-visraantha (resting content in happy
humility); and a
- paada-swaantha (fully dedicated to the Lotus Feet of
the Lord).
If the sadhaka tries to earn these traits while
repeating the sixteen words, then Baba promised, "
Vaade nenoudu (He is I) - Nene Vaadoudu (and I am
he)!" 
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare
Hare
"Hare Krishna Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna Hare
Hare,
Hare Râma Hare Râma, Râma Râma
Hare Hare."
"Manasa Bhajare Guru Charanam"
"Manasa Bhajare Guru Charanam,
Dusthara Bhava Sagara Tharanam."
[text]
- Man is born, He says, with the question 'koham?"
(who am I?) on his lips.
- He discovers an answer, 'dehoham' (I am the
body) only too soon;
- After a series of knocks through the years against the
pranks of fate, he revises it later into
-'dosoham' (I am a servant, an instrument).
- Still later, he realises that his will is but an echo
of the divine will that directs the cosmos and its
constituents. He is aware of the truth of 'soham'
(That, I am).
- Finally,when the ideas of 'so' (That) and
'aham' (I) which together constitute soham
melt into one indivisible awareness, OM alone
remains as the conclusive answer at the end.
Caitanya Mahâprabhu
"Gurudev"
... trinâpekshâ ati hîna ...
... lower than a blade of grass ...
[text]
* Dâsya, (service) as lived by
Hanumân, ever eager to receive or anticipate
the commands of the Lord (Râma) and to please Him
by implicit obedience;
* Santa, (neutral, serenity) as exemplified by
Bhîshma who maintained unruffled unconcern
and steadfast loyalty in the face of whatever trouble
came upon him. He continued to extol Krishna even
as he saw Krishna advancing, discus upraised, to
kill him! [see S.B.
1.9:37];
* Sâkhya, (friendship) as Arjuna had with
Lord Krishna, companion and confidant with whom the Lord
joked and played because Arjuna's deep dedication could
stand the test of frolic and familiarity;
* Anurâga, as illustrated by the simple,
unsophisticated worship of the Lord offered by the
cowherd women of Vrindâvana. Their lives were
totally dedicated to Krishna even after He had left for
Mathurâ and faroff
Dvârakâ. Their thoughts that centered
the Lord sustained them through the anguish of years of
separation; [see for example also
S.B. 10.39]
* Vâtsalya, as evinced by
Yas'odâ, the foster-mother of Krishna, who
derived the highest joy from her role as mother, nursing
and nourishing the son whose every word and gesture was
for her a soothing gift; and lastly the
* Mâdhurya Bhava, as lived by
Râdhâ, the Gopî of
Vrindâvana, overpowered with the role of
Beloved. Mâdhura means sweet. She saw and
heard, she tasted and sought only that sweetness
everywhere and at all times, for the Lord is all
sweetness, 'raso vai sah', as the ancient sages
describe Him in the Vedas. She knew no distinction
between creatures and their Creator; It was all God, all
Krishna, for her. She felt, she experienced, she knew,
that Krishna was ever for her, her own, she
herself.
"Bâla - child"
Am I - or are the others, crazy?" [see for
further reading: Methodical
Preliminary Exercises
& Synopsis
by The
Order of Time]
"Jaya
Jaya Jaya Sai Baba Naam"
Text
-
Dwarakamayi: Shirdi Sai can be seen the most right
on the photo.
- Bhajan: sacred songs in
bhakti-yoga, devoted singing, usually to the service of
one or more holy names (see Sai
classical bhajans and
mantras
& also Krishna
bhajan).
- Painting
of Caitanya by Puskar
Dasa.
