From the Form to the Formless

[Guest guest]

>From the Form to the Formless The following talk was given by David Jevons to an

audience of Sai Baba devotees who were attending the annual retreat of the

Pacific Region North of the Sathya Sai Baba Organisation of the USA held at the

Silver Falls State Park Conference Centre of Oregon over the weekend of October

22nd/ 24th 1999. It has been edited but only for the purpose of reproducing it

in this Newsletter.

I wonder if we really appreciate the many blessings that are continually being

showered down upon us by our Creator. For example, not only are we privileged

to be here this weekend in this beautiful mountain setting, enjoying the good

company of like-minded people in a spiritual retreat, but we are also all

basking in the omnipresence of our beloved Lord, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Many of

you, I know, have been to India and have had an opportunity to see, to touch

and to speak to him. You have been graced to receive his physical darshan

which, as Sai Baba says, is a boon that is yearned for by the gods of the

highest heavens. Let us also remember that Sai Baba has declared himself to be

an avatar. A declaration such as this indicates that we are living in exciting

and challenging times, because the stated mission of an avatar is to restore

right living upon the Earth, is to protect those

who follow dharma and to punish those who oppose it. Now Sai Baba will be 74

years old next month, nevertheless, he has stated that he will inaugurate a

Golden Age of peace and prosperity here on the Earth before he dies in 2022.

Many of us, I know, find it hard to believe that such a transformation will

indeed take place. We look at the state of the world today and to our eyes the

world appears to be getting worse not better. All over the world human beings

are behaving like animals rather than like divine beings. We can see, as yet,

no outward signs of the promised transformation. It is therefore self-evident

that some Earth shattering event will have to occur in the not too distant

future if the path on which Humanity is now set is to be radically changed.

In an interview that Ann and I had with Sai Baba last February Swami told us

that the Earth was sick. He said that the hole in the ozone layer was getting

bigger and that as a result the Earth was heating up. He also said that the

Earth had a high temperature, a fever, and that she would have to cleanse

herself of this fever. What form this cleansing will take I do not know, but I

believe that we are witnessing the first symptoms of this fever in the extremes

of weather that we are now experiencing all over the world. Then Sai Baba

warned us that Man was extracting far too many minerals and too much oil from

the Earth for short term financial profit. He said that the Earth was hollow

and was becoming unbalanced. He held his hand up, in the shape of a clenched

fist, to look like a ball, and then he turned his hand sideways. What this

portends I do not know, but it seems

to me to imply that there will be a shift in the axis of rotation of the Earth.

If this is indeed the case then we are all in for a testing time. Sai Baba

also told us that we should not be afraid of this process as he will protect

his devotees. His teaching “Why fear, when I am here” takes on a new meaning

in this respect. I would also mention here that I had a very vivid dream about

Sai Baba a few months ago. It was quite a long dream and at the very end of it

he walked up to me, put his face right in front of mine and said “Remember my

face, one day it will save you.” I feel that this message is for all devotees.

Now it is apparent, to those of us who have been following Sai Baba for many

years, that he is changing the nature of his relationship with his devotees.

Some amazing statements have come out of Puttaparthi in the last few months.

For example, at the celebration of Dasara on October 14th Sai Baba walked out

of the celebration without giving his usual discourse, announcing to stunned

devotees that he would no longer give discourses on such occasions. He later

said that he has been giving discourses for so many years but that devotees

have not been listening to what he has been saying. They have not been putting

his teachings into practice. I recall here his warning “You seek too much

information and not enough transformation.” Earlier this month Indulah Shah,

the president of the world Sri Sathya Sai Organisation, came to Vancouver and

delivered a

personal message from Swami. Firstly, Indulah Shah announced, Sai Baba had said

that we should not concern ourselves with what he had said before June 1996 and

that what he had taught since that time was his final instructions to us. The

information age was now over and the transformation age was about to begin.

Secondly, Sai Baba had said that we should not to be devotees of his form, but

devotees of his teachings. The worship of his form must stop. He emphasised

that we were no different from him. We were all God, we were all no different

from God. We should lead our lives based on the five divine qualities that he

proclaims, namely, Love, Truth, Peace, Right Action and Non-violence. The

purpose of our incarnation is to realise that we are not our physical bodies,

and that we are in fact eternal beings of spirit.

Indulah Shah went on to say that Sai Baba is very keen to get EHV (Education in

Human Values) schools established in every country of the world. Again it is

significant that Swami wants us to start EHV schools here in the West. He

doesn’t want us to start a religion. He doesn’t want us to promote the worship

of his form. He doesn’t want us to recruit new devotees. He doesn’t want us to

talk about his miracles and ignore his teachings. I know, because of my own

struggle in coming to terms with the Hindu forms of worship practised in the

Sai Organisation, that this is the path that we should be walking here in the

West. We should teach and exemplify the Human Values that Swami upholds so

strongly. We should promote the teaching of EHV in our schools. There is an

EHV program in the United Kingdom that is now being taught in more than 500

schools. This program fills a spiritual void in the school curriculum created

by the removal of religious education for the sake of political correctness.

Sai Baba has asked us not only to stop worshipping his form but the form of

past avatars as well. If we get attached to his form, or to any form for that

matter, we are inevitably going to suffer when we are denied access to the

form. As the husband of a wife who was very attached to Swami’s form I know

that this is true. When Sai Baba began weaning my wife off his form he started

a painful process, because my wife regarded this weaning as a form of rejection.

When we go to India to see Sai Baba and the physical Sai Baba ignores us, the

ego-self immediately creates feelings of rejection, of lack of self worth, of

doubt and suspicion. We say that Sai Baba doesn’t love us any more, that he

doesn’t know that we are there, that he doesn’t understand our wants and our

needs. But Sai Baba is weaning us for a purpose, to force us to go inside and

to contact the force that I

call Super Sai, the omnipresent force of God which is always with us no matter

where we are in the world. We don’t have to go to India to contact this force.

Ann and I have found that Super Sai is so much more powerful, so much more

approachable, so much more responsive than the physical Sai. Attachment to the

form is in fact a limitation to our spiritual progress.

Sai Baba himself tells the story of an elderly devotee who, after his wife had

died, came to live in the ashram at Puttaparthi. He was a retired army officer

and he was devoted to Sai Baba. He lived in the ashram for many years but

suddenly, one day, Sai Baba told him to leave the ashram and to go and live in

Madras. Reluctantly he left and as he was a very old man he was looked after

by some Sai devotees there. Six months later he developed cancer and died.

Subsequently one of the devotees in Madras who had looked after him went to Sai

Baba and said. “Swami, why where you so unkind to this man? He was devoted to

you and yet you threw him out of the ashram just before he died?” Sai Baba

replied “If I had not forced him to go, he would never have got liberation. He

was too attached to my form.” So there is a danger in becoming too attached to

the form of

the guru. We should strive to release all such attachments and to rely on the

omnipresent God within us, not the physical form of God in India.

In twenty-two years Sai Baba’s physical form will disappear forever, as did the

forms of all past avatars. That is the nature of physical life. Nothing is

permanent. So we can understand why Sai Baba is now asking us to move from the

form to the formless. We are not our bodies. We are all individualised aspects

of consciousness linked to a formless and nameless energy which we can call

Super Consciousness. Sai Baba himself has said that he represents Super

Consciousness and that we represent Collective Consciousness. We must seek to

bring forth the God within us, the force of Super Consciousness. Sai Baba

teaches that we are all God in human form, that we are all no different from

God. Having been brought up as a Christian, I found it very difficult to

accept this statement, for I had been taught that God was in Heaven, Man was on

Earth, and that God

had to send his only son down to Earth to save us from ourselves. I found it

very difficult to accept that God could be on the Earth. For many years I

struggled with this concept before, eventually, with Sai Baba’s grace, I began

to understand the real meaning of what he was saying. I once asked Sai Baba

“Swami, is the Christ coming on the Earth again?” Sai Baba responded most

vigorously “No, No, No! There is not one Christ, but many Christs. You are

all Christs.” Please note the use of the plural not the singular.

Sai Baba has asked us to use the So Hum mantra. So Hum means I am God. It is

the sound of our own breathing as we breathe in - So - and breathe out - Hum -

on average 21,600 times each day without our even being aware of it. We are

therefore declaring every second of the day that we are God. Sai Baba asks

that perhaps on just a few of those breaths we can be conscious of the fact

that we are God. He says that deep breathing is especially useful in the

conquering of anger, greed and lust and in handling the many negative thoughts

that suddenly pop up in our conscious minds. We can do this by closing our

eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, and observing the process of our breathing.

Sai Baba has also asked us to do the Jyoti or light meditation each day. This

is the meditation when you focus on the light in a candle, bring the light into

your body and become

that light and then send that light out into the world. By following these two

simple procedures we will transform not just ourselves but the world as a

whole. Sai Baba has also given us a vision of the Golden Age that is to come.

He says that in this Golden Age there will be no need for seva or service, there

will be no need for bhajans or devotional singing, there will be no formal

worship, there will be no religions as we know them today. Why will this be

the case? It is because they all represent duality, separation from the

Godhead. They all promote separation from God and deny the omnipresence of God

in each and everyone of us. Sai Baba says that this Golden Age will be a time

of peace and prosperity because people will be leading lives based on the five

human values. People will be aware of their birthright, they will know that

they are indeed God.

I would now like to talk very briefly about the vedantic understanding of the

nature of human existence. Firstly there is dvaita or dualism which holds that

Man and God are quite separate, that the individual soul and the Supreme Soul

are separate and distinct principles. Then there is vishishtadvaita or

qualified dualism, which holds that Man is separate from God but is in a unique

relationship with Him. Finally there is advaita or non-dualism, which holds

that God, the soul and the Universe are all one. This latter understanding is

held to be the ultimate goal for Man and when you achieve this state of being

then you will attain liberation and will no longer need to return to the plane

of Earth unless you choose to do so in order to lead others into this

understanding. All the great gurus, of course, live in a constant state of

advaita. They are at one with

everything and everybody. Sai Baba has used the three stages of Jesus’ life to

explain this vedantic understanding. In the beginning Jesus regarded himself

as the messenger of God, that is to say he was living in dualism as he regarded

himself as being separate from God. Then Jesus went into a time of retreat, his

forty days in the wilderness, and he emerged saying that he was the son of God,

that is to say that he was related to God. This was the state of

vishishtadvaita. It was from this understanding that he carried out his

ministry. However Sai Baba says that it was not until Jesus was on the cross,

enduring the pain of crucifixion, and was being tormented by the soldiers who

had crucified him, that Jesus entered the state of advaita. Jesus, quite

naturally, was having negative thoughts about the soldiers who were tormenting

him, when he heard the voice of God inside him say “All are one, my dear son,

be alike to everyone.” He then

realised the reality of advaita and merged with it

When you go from this retreat, if you remember nothing else, I would like you to

remember those words. “All are one, my dear son, be alike to everyone.” Sai

Baba says that at that point the last doubts of Jesus dropped away and Jesus

was able to declare “I and my Father are one.” He had become a realised being

and was one with his Creator. If you listen to the voice of God inside you it

will proclaim the same fact, that there is no separation between you and God,

that there never was any separation, that the separation that you perceive is

only in your mind, is a figment of your imagination. To reach this highest

truth, do not think that you and God are separate. Think always that God is

within you, that you yourself are God, that you are an infinite and an eternal

being. Throughout your many lives there has only ever been one,

never two. There never was duality. You and God are one and the same. So

develop self-confidence, or should I say soul-confidence, in that fact. Know

that you are atma, divine spirit. Do not become body conscious, become soul

conscious. Keep away from anything or anyone that leads you into body

consciousness.

When you realise that God is not separate from you, then you gain immense

self-confidence. You begin to manifest Love, Peace, Truth, Right Action and

Non-violence as a natural part of your being. Do not think that you are your

body, for the body is just a water bubble on the ocean of life. Your body is

just a dress that you put on and will discard when it is worn out. Bodies are

not special. Sai Baba has said that his body is not special. His body will

die just like ours. Only the divine spirit is eternal. I would think that

most of us here, I know that I am, are in a state of vishishtadvaita, of

qualified non-dualism. Through our association with Sai Baba we have moved

into the stage when we know that we are in relationship with God, that God is

our true Mother and Father. Let us now take that final step, which Sai Baba is

inviting us to take, and move

from the form to the formless, from the finite to the infinite, from duality to

the oneness of all life.

As some of you may know I was an airline a pilot for all of my working life and

Sai Baba often makes jokes about this. In my very first interview he put his

arm around my shoulders and said “You are my pilot, but remember, I’m your

pilot!” Sai Baba also uses the analogy of a plane to describe his mission. On

the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday he said that his plane was taxiing out

from the airport building in preparation for take-off. On his seventieth

birthday he said that his plane was lined up at the end of the runway, with its

engines revving up, ready for take-off. On our visit last February Sai Baba

told us that on his seventy-fifth birthday, in November 2000, his plane will

take off. Now this plane is not a physical plane, like a Boeing 747, it is a

plane of consciousness. Nevertheless, to get on that plane involves a

selection process, because you have to

get a boarding card in order to be on that plane. I feel that this plane is the

plane of liberation and that in order to catch this plane we have to lead lives

that will make us worthy of liberation. We have to follow the spiritual

disciplines that Sai Baba has asked us to follow. We have to make a great

effort to discover that we are indeed no different from God. I feel that many

of us have been waiting for this final step for many lifetimes. Now Sai Baba

is offering us the chance of liberation by simply following him and his

example.

I had a dream the other day in which Sai Baba told me that I would have to come

and live in his ashram in India, because I simply did not have the

self-discipline to follow a spiritual path whilst living in the outside world!

He said that I was continually getting distracted by worldly matters and that

the only way for me to get liberation was to come and be subject to the

discipline of the ashram. He said that the time would soon come when I would

have to release all my material possessions and concentrate on the real purpose

of my life, namely, to attain liberation. Well, hopefully, some of you are more

disciplined than I am and you won’t have to go to India and be subject to ashram

discipline! It is a fact, though, that when Ann and I go to the ashram, we

liken the experience to going to a spiritual health farm, because we recharge

our spiritual batteries, we re-establish our spiritual

disciplines, we get in touch with our inner selves and we always leave with an

inner glow of well-being. Unfortunately, as the subsequent months pass by, we

tend to slip back into our old habits, to allow the pressures of the outer

world to interfere with our spiritual disciplines. So if we really want to

move from the form to the formless, then, we will have to put some energy into

this transition, to make this quest the most important aspect of our lives, our

very reason for living, and not treat it as an intellectual pursuit.

Now Sai Baba says that there are two paths towards liberation that are available

to us at this time; the path of knowledge and the path of devotion. Of these

two paths, the path of knowledge is a difficult path to walk as the outer world

is such a distraction for us, especially here in the West. The path of

knowledge demands silence and meditation and time for the induction and the

practice of knowledge. When we walk this path we unite with God through our

own efforts. However the path of devotion, the path of devotional service to

God, is open to all of us at this time. When we walk this path God unites with

us because of the efforts that we have made. Sai Baba uses the analogy of the

cat and the monkey to distinguish between the paths. The path of knowledge can

be compared to the baby monkey. The baby monkey has to cling to its mother in

order to stay with it.

The baby monkey clings to the mother’s body through its own self effort, and the

mother monkey then carries it to where she wants to go. The path of devotion

can be compared to the baby kitten. The mother cat carefully picks up the baby

kitten in its mouth and carries it to wherever she wants to go and then puts it

down. The kitten has to make no effort save that of being in relationship with

its mother. That is the path of devotion and that is the path that Sai Baba is

advising us to follow. I would now like to give you an example of this mother

cat principle at work, as it happened to me.

I was in India, staying in Sai Baba’s ashram at Puttaparthi, last February.

After morning darshan was over six small lines used to form in the darshan

area. Devotees queue in these lines in order to get into the temple for the

morning bhajan session that follows a short time afterwards. Now it is

difficult for devotees to get into the temple because the ashram staff and the

students from Sai Baba’s school are allowed to go in first and they can take up

much of the space that is available to the men. Moreover, unless you are

actually sitting close to where the lines form, it is well nigh impossible even

to get into these waiting lines. I tried on several mornings to join the lines

but got nowhere. It was just like a rugby scrum, with some people throwing

themselves into the lines in order to get a place. The situation was hopeless!

I mentally said to Sai Baba that I

was not going to demean myself by taking part in this scrum, and I stopped

trying to get into the lines. A few days later, however, my inner voice

impelled me to go and try again, but when I reached the lines they were all

full. I was about to give up when an illegal seventh line began to form!

Feeling very guilty, I hastily sat down in this illegal seventh line and waited

for the inevitable order from the seva dals to move. To my utter amazement that

morning the seva dals allowed this seventh line to stay! The usual little

cosmic lottery then took place and my seventh line drew the number one token

and I was the second person into the temple that morning.

As I sat down, close to the front and just to the right of the thin strip of red

carpet that divides the men from the women, I was amazed to see that Ann was

sitting in the exact mirror position of where I was sitting, but on the ladies

side. Now Ann, unbeknownst to me, had gone through just the same process that

I had had to endure, but on the ladies side. Now what are the odds, out of

40,000 or so people, all wanting to be in the temple close to Sai Baba, of a

husband and wife winding up in a mirror position along side each other, close

to the front. A few moments later Sai Baba entered the temple and walked down

the carpet towards us. My wife, who is never shy about talking to Sai Baba,

said “Swami, my husband is here.” Sai Baba smiled at her and said “Yes, yes, I

know.” Then he turned and talked to me, asking me about my eldest son. Now

that, to me, is the miracle of

Divine Omnipresence. That, to me, is a far more striking testament to Super

Sai, to God’s Omnipresence, than any interview, any manifestation, any miracle.

That is the reality of God’s Omnipresence, which can impel two people to walk

two separate paths in order to place them in the same position, at the same

time, for a moment of destiny. That is the divine Mother Cat at work and, you

know, the same thing has happened to you, if you did but know it, in getting

you to be here this morning, listening to this talk.

In my very first interview with Sai Baba, back in 1993, the most important thing

that he did for me was to give me a mantra that changed my perception of myself

and of my role in life. He slowly recited to me -

“You are God, you are God, you are no different than God.

You are the Infinite Supreme, the One Reality.You are Sat Chit Ananda Swarupa.

You are Om Tat Sat Om.”

He told me to say that mantra to myself every day, for that was the truth of my

being. Now for a Christian this was a difficult thing for me to do.

Nevertheless it started a whole process of change in me. Although, at first,

the mantra was just words, and meant little to me, the fact that they are such

powerful words, and the whole statement is so transformative, gradually began

to imperceptibly change my understanding of my own divinity. I would like to

quote to you some of Sai Baba’s own words on this very same subject.

“You are divine, that is the truth.You and the Universal are one.You and the

Absolute are one.You and the Eternal are one.You are not the individual, the

particular, the temporary.Feel this. Know this. Act in conformity with

this.”

If we know this as the truth of our being then we will achieve liberation, we

will attain the goal that we have been pursuing for so many lives, in so many

bodies, enduring so many karmic settlements. This is why Sai Baba is in

incarnation at this time, to reveal this great truth, which has been hidden

from us for so many lives. We are no different from God. We are God.

I often wonder where I would have ended spiritually in this life if I had not

come into contact with Sai Baba. I would probably be stuck in my Western

Esoteric Philosophy and seeking too much information and not enough

transformation! I would not have been introduced to the path of devotion and

to the concept of ‘Love All, Serve All’. I would not have discovered that when

you serve another person you are in fact serving God. I would not have been

able to face someone I did not like with the thought in my mind “All are one,

my dear son, be alike to everyone.” It is so difficult to understand the

reality of Oneness with God if one has not experienced it personally. I always

recall a description of oneness by that great teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti who Ann

and I

used to go and listen to every year until his death in 1986. There are some who

regard him as the World Teacher. Krishnamurti was one day watching a man

repairing a road in Ojai, in Southern California. Suddenly he became one with

everything around him. He was the workman repairing the road, he was the

pneumatic drill in the hands of the workman and he was the road. He was at one

with everything. He was experiencing the feelings and emotions of everything.

Few of us will have such an experience, but we can all begin to act in accord

with it.

I would like to finish now with a quotation from Sai Baba, in fact these are the

words that Sai Baba said on Shivaratri day this year.

“Do not get deluded because I talk, laugh, walk and eat like you. Do not get

deluded by this body feeling. All my actions are selfless, selfless, selfless.

There is no trace of selfishness in me at all. Have firm faith in that truth.

If you have total faith, wherever you are, all your desires will be fulfilled

without your even asking. Only those who don’t have total faith will suffer.

So develop self confidence. That is the first spiritual discipline that you

must follow. You must undertake to follow this now. Liberation can be gained

in this lifetime. Millions know me. Millions will come to me, but only a

handful will obtain liberation.”

May we all be in that handful. May we all move our consciousnesses from the

form to the formless, from the individual to the whole. May we all become one

with the One.

Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter, March 2000,

http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter03_00_01.htmRamala Centre Website:

http://www.ramalacentre.com

______________________

COLLECTION: Preetham Sai P.V.

MANGALORE,INDIA.

 

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[Guest guest]

Thank you for sharing this with us..

 

its a brilliantly written speech which reinforces.. many things

especially to those emersed in worldly activities...

 

Pri

 

 

saibabanews, preitam preitam <preitam>

wrote:

> From the Form to the Formless