WONDEROUS SAINT SRI SAIBABA-PART 39

BY PUJYA SRI NARASIMHASWAMY JI


HOW DO MASTERS REDEEM DEVOTEES ?

STEADY UPLIFT ENDING IN FREEDOM FROM CYCLE OF BIRTHS

How do Saints or Samarthas help humanity? This interesting question is answered in the following statement prepared jointly by B. V. Narasimhaswami and Bharatananda.

The Supreme Being is thought of as having five aspects or functions with names appropriate to each :--

Creation : Brahma in conjunction with Saraswathi.
Maintenance:Vishnu or Narayana in conjunction with Laxmi.
Destruction :Rudra in conjunction with Kali.
Iswar :Mahesh in conjunction with Maheswari.
Redemption :Sadashiva in conjuction with Kripa.

There are avatars combining often several of these elements. The life work of a Samartha Sadguru lead one to identify him with the Redemption aspect of the Supreme Being.
Jivas, like ourselves, are going on from birth to birth. They are the Supreme Being, but shot out of Him by an initial act of nescience (Maya). Then the initial ignorance developed by a series of their Karmas, whirls them at a terrific velocity in the circle of Samsara. The Jivas feel powerless to get out of it. They are moved by desire (Vasana) to acts (Karma) which in turn strengthen desire. So the vicious circle of Karma and Vasana catches the Jivas in its powerful grip and unaided they feel they cannot wriggle out. If they try to do so, they only get more and more entangled more and more involved in Samsara. How are these Jivas then to be helped out of this involution in evolution, so that they may evolve themselves back into the state of the Supreme Being?

Avatars to Help:
At special times Avatars of the Supreme Being come down to raise humanity in masses. The Avatars do not as a rule set to themselves the task of caring for particular Jivas spiritual advance. So the work of the Avatars finds its supplement and fulfilment in the work of the Samartha Sadgurus. These with the vast powers, knowledge and bliss of the Supreme proceed to deal with individual Jivas and help them out of their involution to evolve into the Supreme Being. Samarthas like Sri Sai Baba are called Samarthas because of their vast nay unlimited, power, wisdom and bliss and they are called Sadgurus, because they appear in order to act as the Guru for individual Jivas to lead them into the Sat or Supreme. The powers of Samarthas may, to a superficial view, appear like the feats of a thought-reader, magician or necromancer. But there are unmistakable differences between these two sets of powers in respect of their origin, their nature or limits, the manner of exercise and the purpose or motive of such exercise. The magician and others of his like acquire their power and exercise it with great effort and its exercise is within definite limits of time, space, etc. and the purpose of the exercise may be either sordid or at any rate clearly personal. The Samartha, on the other hand, has not to work for the powers , the powers come as pan of his realisation and perfection; and exercise of his powers is not the result of effort. These powers are not limited to any particular sort or class, as even Ashta Siddhis are limited in comparison with the Samarthas.The purpose of the Samarthas, exercise is pure mercy for the Jiva, whose spiritual advance is distinctly furthered thereby.

How They Work :
We may proceed to examine the main feature of the work of the Samartha Sadguru.
The point at which a Jiva's involution or Samsaric life turns to evolution or the Path of Redemption is the appearance of the Sadguru to that Jiva. How did the Jiva start his Jiva hood? By forgetting its original, its real, nature as Brahman and thus disturbing the harmony of the Gunas that prevailed in Brahman till the forgetting. At that moment, a disturbance in the Gunas took place and the Jiva started its samsaric career. The original Brahmic state was the clear unruffled waters of the ocean. The disturbance caused in it a small whirl. This whirl is the Jiva; and it fancied itself (and this is the primary ignorance) different from the waters of the ocean, by reason of its being a whirl. The Sadguru comes and restores the harmony that pravailed before the Jiva started this whirling. The Sadguru shows the whirl that it is water after all this , Jiva realising that truth sinks into peace as part of the ocean and thus primal harmony is restored by the Sadguru. This is the essence of Sadgurus work. But the general lines of his work we shall next consider.

The Initial Help :
First the Jiva is under a heavy load of past Karmas which weighs him down and pins him to Samsara. He has to reap the pains and pleasures he has sown. If he tries to remove one item of load he does two more acts and thereby increases the load. This is because of his weakness, and want of clear vision, and of ability to know and direct himself alright. He requires, therefore, the help of one who knows the situation exactly and what will meet it in the individuals special circumstances. Such a guide and director is the Sadguru. So the Jiva has to go to a Sadguru. But unfortunately even the desire to approach a Sadguru and the idea of how to approach him properly are foreign to the Karma-bound Jiva. So taking advantage of a little punya (merit) acquired by the Jiva by means of previous contact (however remote) with the Sadguru or any other holy person, the Sadguru mercifully makes the approach easier for the Jiva. By his vast powers, the Sadguru helps the poor. Jiva, even temporally in a way under such marvellous circumstances that the Jiva is pulled out of his vicious circle, and roused to a sense of admiration, gratitude and reverence to the Samartha, noting especially how divine the Sadguru is contrasted with the earthly Jiva.

Later Development :
Thus the Jiva gets prepared to and does attach himself by love to the Samartha Sadguru and the latter increases his faith by showing him more and more of his vast knowledge, vast power, vast kindness and love,all exercised on behalf of the devotees out of pure mercy. As part of this same mercy, the Guru directs the devotee to do some acts which will increase the punya or good Karma and reduce the papa or bad Karma of the devotee. The more good Karma is done, the more is the doer reducing his heavy load of past bad Karma, without committing fresh bad Karma. Results of previous Karmas are even advanced and regulated by the Samartha's omniscience and omnipotence to help his dependent reap his harvest more quickly.
But in this process the Jiva is apt to get attached to the doing of punya or meritorious work. Though they enable him to get over Rajas and Tamas, they still bind him through Satva, as they will carry him to repeated births in nice worlds i.e. of the Gods, Even this Satvic bondage must be rent as under.

So the Guru next weans the devotee even from good works. For the purpose, the devotee must have an attachment higher and stronger than good works. That is the attachment to, and love for the Guru, ending in surrender to the Guru. Attachment to the Guru is useful no doubt. But its early stages leave in the mind of the devotee the idea that he is still the person directing his affection to the Guru, and doing the appropriate service therefore and that he is doing something worthy and meritorious. It nearly approaches detachment by reason of absence of personal motive but is still tainted with Egoism, i.e. with the sense of the devotee being an agent, a voluntary performer of action. This sense also must be knocked on the head or banished. Its absence is surrender to or identification with the Guru. Identification and surrender are almost the same, with a slight difference. In surrender, the process is marked by humility and a desire to end the self, which need not be distinctly present in identification with the Guru. Identification may be the result of surrender but is seldom its cause. The fruit of identification is the destruction of the primal Maya or nescience under which the Jiva started its separate existence. Surrender restores the balance (or harmony) of gunas that was upset when the separate existence of the Jiva commenced.

Towards Surrender :
This surrender is brought about when the feeling of the devotee towards his Guru gets intensified. Such intensification is comparable to a huge world-wide dynamo attracting an electrified atom. The devotee, the atom, may however still be feeling or fancying that it is moving of its own accord to the huge dynamo, the Guru and then the devotee may even raise the question how this surrender is to be effected and accelerated.
In this connection, we may consider another line on which the devotee Jiva's progress is proceeding. The devotee starts with devotion to his Guru or God, who is felt to be entirely outside him, i.e. outside the devotee's body. The devotee is then under the influence of Rajas and Tamas and identifies himself almost entirely with the body. But increasing contact with the Sadguru and increasing faith in him, with good works, especially selfless, meritorious works, reduce the Rajasic and Tamasic elements of the devotee and wear off his Deh-atma-buddi, i.e., the idea that he is the body.

His ideas of God get broader and finer and more emphasis is laid on God's and Guru's spiritual nature which bursts the shackless of finite space limits. The Guru God is not confined to the small human body but extends far beyond covering the entire universe on one side, and, on the other, is very subtle and therefore enters as Sarva Antaryami into all hearts. The devotee begins to feel that the Guru,God is his own Antaryami, i.e., he sees him within himself. TheSamartha's vast powers enable the devotee to obtain the finer sight actually to see the Guru within his own heart. The inner presence of God,Guru can never be inactive. His real living presence within asserts itself more and more and swallows up the Jivahood of the Jiva. This is self surrender of the Jiva when viewed from the latter's stand-point. With this swallowing up or surrender, all old Karmas, good and bad, are swallowed up.

The Final Snap :
The Vasanas or tendencies to do fresh Karma have also to be destroyed in the Jiva's progress. Vasanas are desires or desire tendencies directed to lower objects (whether earthly or otherworldly objects). These have to be swallowed up only by a stronger and purer desire or affection, by something more exacting than earthly love. As stated already, such stronger passion is the devotee's love for the Guru, and it is that love that blossoms into complete self-surrender. This surrender alone totally extinguishes Vasanas. Once Vasanas are destroyed, there is no more ego, no more of vicious circle of Samsara, and the Evolution of the Jiva into the Supreme is complete. Then the Jiva sees that the Samartha Sadguru has all along been with him, inside and outside, and that the Jiva , the Sadguru and the Supreme Being are and always have been one and the same Real.