WONDEROUS SAINT SRI SAIBABA-PART 26

BY PUJYA SRI NARASIMHASWAMY JI

GIFTS OF SRI SAI BABA
MOST VARIED AND UNIQUE PEARLS AND SWANS

Newton's dog, his fellowmen and Newton all looked at Nature and saw apples fall. The first looked on and derived no benefit. The second ran up and ate the fruits. Newton alone discovered the Law of Gravitation which has served mankind, as a useful theory or hypothesis to explain many facts of Nature.
All sorts of men and women have approached Sri Sai Baba. Some have returned without any benefit. Some received much of temporal goods with just a taste of the spiritual others, higher and higher spiritual goods. Every one received what he was fitted to receive. Baba, the Universal mother that he was, impartially offered his gifts, nay, scattered them before his visitors, but the crows picked up the offal and the swans, the pearls.
It was in accordance with the capacity, the receptivity and the circumstances of each visitor due to his Karma Rinanubanda, i.e., prenatal merits and ties, that Baba's gifts were effective; and hence spiritual benefits received from him are of a very varied description. Anything like an exhaustive statement of them being impossible, we may content ourselves here with a set or samples.

That Boundless Love :
When people talk of God, to most He is a word and nothing more. They know how to use it for their worldly purposes, nothing what effect it has on the hearer. Convention and current feeling invests its use with a certain dignity and telling force, specially in oaths and curses. But how few have felt at all or in any appreciable degree the sacred awe, the first basis of the idea of the Holy or that for higher feeling of all-Consuming all-sacrificing bundles of Love! For too many have been begotten or brought up in godless families amidst cheerless, cramped and darkened surroundings where the words and conduct of the parents, relations and friends are really a stifling negation of God, conscience and the moral principal, sometimes nominally veiled by an occasional observance of forms of worship or reference to God. Some of these are at times candid enough to admit and sometimes to bemoan the fact that they could never conceive of, much less experience God in their lives.

Spiritual Rebirth, First step in God-Realisation :
The greatest service Sri Sai rendered and renders to mankind is to save such souls from their utter darkness, to show them the existence in himself and elsewhere, of vast power, vast knowledge, vast goodness and self-forgetting Love which blesses him that gives and him that receives and to make them float on waves of joy and happiness, hitherto inexperienced. Rudely shaken from or terrified out of their prolonged stupor and indifference they just receive a few gleams of light into their sin soiled eyes, feel a glow of gratitude, love and other noble emotions in their chilled hearts, begin their spiritual birth and see or feel their God in Sai, their real Saviour. For the first time, they get a rudimentary idea of Sri Sai-and know God. He is the giver of the God-idea to them and is God, in their view and it may be their only God.
The benefit is by no means confined to the class just described. Persons, who start life better, fall into evil ways, gets tainted by wicked company, sunk in voice and sin from drama and cinema songs and street talk, lose their early innocence and receptivity, become thoroughly care-hardened, sneer at purity and piety and blatantly proclaim their imperviousness to godly influence. To such Sai has many times restored, in some degree, their lost innocence by making them feel that they see God in him and in his devotees. Some cultured and English educated persons that this writer met have confessed to him that Baba, who has restored their faiths, is God to them, that in their present life of holiness the foreground is fully occupied by Baba, and that Sri Rama, Sri Krishna, Sri Siva, Sri Datta and Sri Pandarinath get their halo of glory through Baba. One lady said "Krishna no doubt appeals to me and attracts me. But Baba who often appears and instructs me in visions is a hundred times more powerful".
The need for a noble "Superman" that leads one to God is at its height in the case of advanced spiritual aspirants who style him their Samartha Sadguru and derive from him the maximum benefit that a human being can enjoy. Realisation of the Ishtadevata, perpetual enjoyment of heaven at His feet, attainment of Adwaitic Bliss or Nirvana Sukha can alike be had at the guru's feet and there alone.

A Warning :
Sri Sai Baba showered his benefits on thousands in a variety of ways. Some only of these have been revealed to this writer and these may be a sample of his gift to others. But one cannot be sure that the highest have been yet made public. However that may be, before proceeding to give a very brief sketch of these, the writer has one request to make or a warning to give. Person who are great admirers of particular saints, like Krishna Chaitanya, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Samartha Ramdas, Haranath or Thayumanavar, should not judge others exclusively by the life, teachings and methods of their saint or hero. Let not Sri Sai Baba be measured on the Procrustes bed of any particular saint. Sri Sai is a rare phenomenon by himself and his services to Humanity, if judged calmly, would be found great enough to require a special corner in our pantheon and a readjustment of our ideas based wholly on a few past examples. In the words of Browing (as adapted) we must insist,
Our times are in his hand,
Who said "A whole I planned,
Past shows but half; Trust God, see all, nor be afraid"
Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth.

WONDEROUS SAINT SRI SAIBABA-PART 4

BY PUJYA SRI NARASIMHASWAMY JI

RAMA AND KRISHNA AS AVATARS

Very little is known of Sai Baba's early life; but he had told several of his devotees that his guru was a Brahmin, and even mentioned his name—states Prof. G.G.Narke,recalling his reminiscences of the great saint.
Once, as a result of a disputation between Prof. Narke and some fellow-devotees, a few pointed questions were put to Sai Baba:
Q:—Are the Puranas true?
A:—Yes; true.
Q:—What about Rama and Krishna?
A:—They were great souls; gods they were; Avatars.
Q:—This Narke will not admit all that; and he say you are not god.
A:—What he says is true. But I am your father and you should not speak like that. You have to get your benefit and everything from me.
In certain ecstatic moments, Sal Baba said "I am God'' , Main Allahhum , but his usual role was that of a devotee, entrusted with vast powers to carry out the wishes of God (the Fakir).

Determinism :
Sai Baba was bold in his dealings with persons and occasionally Infused faith in his devotees by even defiance of sanitary precautions. Prof. Narke has himself one such experience.

"Baba used to get sweetmeat for naivedya from one "H". One day in 1916, "H" lay a plague-stricken corpse. Plague was raging at Shirdi. Baba asked me to go and get the sweetmeat from ''H''s shop. I went and told the wife, who was weeping, of Baba's order. She pointed to the corpse and said I might take the sweetmeat from the almirah. I took it trembling with the fear that by this I might catch the infection and others too. That was given as naivedya. Baba told me, "Do you think you will live if you are away from Shirdi and that you would die if you stay at Shirdi? That is not so. Whosoever is to die will die; whosoever is to be caressed will be caressed."

Baba set the example of living amidst society and labouring. He ground grain into flour. He was not for ascetic desertion of society, nor for begging. Though he himself begged within limits, it was for a little food only; when he demanded dakshina that was for a number of reasons, chiefly for clearing rinanubanda. He wanted the general run of visitors to continue their grahasta lives and did not advocate Sanyas.
Sri Sai Baba's demand for dakshina was explained by him to a visitor. "Do I ask of every one? I demand only from those whom the Fakir (God) points out to me.He demanded only particular sums and would not accept anything more.