Sai Service Newsletter - 12

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SAI SERVICE Newsletter – 12

Issue June 27, 2002

 

This Thursday's Message: (Baba said)

 

Night and day, I think and think of my people, I con their names over

and over again. At every step, I have to take care of you, Else, what

will happen to you, God knows.

 

a. Baba's Talk with Devotees

 

A visitor: Baba, What is God like?

 

Baba: (Not addressing the visitor but addressing a devotee X ) Go to

Bagchand Marwadi and tell him Baba wants Rs.100/- and bring the

money.

 

X (returning in a minute): The Marwadi says he has no money and sends

his namaskars.

 

Baba: Go to the next money lender and ask him for a loan of Rs.100/-

for me.

 

X (returning in a minute): He says he has not got the money.

 

Baba: Fetch Nana Saheb Chandorkar (and when Nana came)

 

Baba: Nana, I want Rs.100/-

 

Then Nana wrote a chit to Bagchand Marwadi for a loan of Rs.100.

The money was at once sent by the Marwadi.

 

Baba: All is like this in the world.

 

Visitor later on to Das Ganu Maharaj: Why did not Baba answer my

question?

 

Das Ganu: He has.

 

Visitor: How?

 

Das Ganu: When others asked for money, it was not forthcoming. Nana

Saheb asked for it and got it at once. Similarly the man who merely

wants to know Brahman does not get it. It is he who is qualified to

know it that gets it. Baba's answer is, "Deserve, before you desire (

Brahman)".

 

b. Divine Dews from our God

 

 Allah (God) will give you plenty and He will do you all good. (SSS=

 

Ch.XXIX)

 

 Let us do our duty and surrender our body, mind and five Pranas

(life) to the Guru's feet, Guru is God, all pervading. (SSS Ch.XXXII)

 

 The true remedy is that the result of past actions has to be

suffered and got over. (SSS Ch.XXXIV)

 

 It is on account of Rinanubandh (former relationship) that we have=

 

come together. (SSS Ch.XVIII & XIX)

 

 Unless, you completely get rid of your avarice or greed you will

not get the real Brahma. (SSS Ch.XVI & XVII)

 

 I rest there, where there is full of devotion. (SSS Ch.XIII)

 

 

 

c. Weekly Article:

 

 

BABA'S VIGILANT EYE OF SUPERVISION

 

Baba himself said, `God has agents everywhere; they have vast powers,

I have very great powers'. He used these powers to save his children.

This danger had happened in 1914, even though he had given a hint in

1913, when he said, `We should not trust mad men', a hint that could

not be understood then by Santaram of Dahanu. So Baba was clearly

watching from Shirdi, his devotees at Dahanu, hundreds of miles away,

because they were his trusting children, the children of Dwarakamayee

or Masudi Ayi, hour to hour, day to day and year after year. This

power of having his eye of vigilant supervision on all those who love

Him, has been declared by him. So Santaram was more than ever

convinced that Baba was a divine personage with divine powers and

divine kindness which he exercised on behalf of everyone who placed

his entire faith in him even though such persons may number many

thousands living in thousands of places.

 

In 1915, another instance occurred to Baba's grace and protection.

Santaram with H.M Panse and others were travelling in a bullock cart

at night in a dense jungle. This was at the Ranshet pass, notorious

for its being infested with tigers. It was a dark night. Suddenly the

bulls of the cart took fright and were moving backwards. Luckily,

they were not dragging the cart sideways, as it was a hill pass, with

a steep slope on one side of a narrow road. had the bulls dragged the

cart that side, it would have been all over with them. then Panse

pointed with his hand to something and Santaram saw the gleaming eyes

of a tiger couching on the road. Panse wished to save the cart from

being pushed into the ravine, and so wanted to get down and place big

stones or sticks as a brake to the wheels. So, he asked Santaram to

hold the reins of the bulls. As he held them he roared, `Hail Sai

Baba! Run Sai Baba to our help'. The others also begin to shout and

the tiger got frightened at the volume of sound and ran away by the

side of their cart. so, it was faith in Baba and the courage that

Baba gave Santaram that saved the situation.

 

In 1915, after this incident, Santaram started for Shirdi. At the

railway station, one V S Samant gave Santaram a coconut and two annas

to buy sugarcandy to be presented to Baba. When Santaram went to the

Shirdi Masjid, he gave Baba the coconut, but forgot all about the two

annas or the sugarcandy. He asked Baba leave to go back. Baba said,

'`Yes, you may go via Chitale, But why keep back a poor Brahmin's two

annas?' Santaram had frequent experiences like this of Sai Baba's

eye of supervision and antarjnana of everything that happened to his

baktas everywhere. When Santaram gave the two annas, Baba said,

`Whatever you undertake to do, do it thoroughly. Else do not

undertake to do it'. This is a very valuable instruction applicable

to everyone and to all departments of life.

 

Even after Mahasamadhi, Baba's vigilant eye of supervision is

protecting His devotees. It happened in the year 1935, a two year

child of Santaram, Ananda by name, was very active and very

mischievous; he ran up against the stove on which milk was boiling.

He dashed against the whole stove and vessel, and would have expected

that his clothes would have caught fire from the stove and the skin

scalded by the boiling milk. But neither happened. The milk vessel

fell on one side. the stove flew on the other side. In between Ananda

full of Anandam, that is, without any injury, sorrow or trouble.

 

We will take another instance of fire. This was in 1926. Sai

Haranath, his little child of nine months old, was along with the

other children, playing upstairs. The mother, the only guardian or

caretaker, who ought to have been present was down on the street. It

was deepavali time. One of the older children lighted a squib or

cracker and flung it. It fell upon Haranath. None of the children

noticed it or considered it serious. Ordinarily the child, who wore

two clothes, one under the waist and the other above waist close to

the skin would have been burnt to death. But what happened?. In the

street, suddenly a fakir appeared, who shouted to the lady. `Go up.

See what is there. Without knowing what it was, she ran up, just as

soon as the incident occurred, and found both, neither cloth and the

frock of Sai were burning. With her hands she boldly seized the

burning the cloths and extinguished the flame. She found that the

child's clothes on the upper portion and nether portion were mostly

burnt out. yet what happened to the child? Wonder of wonders! Not a

bit of scar or burn was on the child; she had come very early to the

child's rescue. Now how could she come from the street just in time

to extinguish the flame? Who could the fakir be? When she got down

with a view to thank the fakir, the fakir had gone. This again is the

watchful eye of supervision, `on those that love Me and those that

belong to them'.

 

There was another incident connected with the same child Sai, when he

was two years old. He, like rest of the children, was active, healthy

and vigorous. he was playing upstairs. At one end of the terrace,

there was a broken wall – a portion of the wall, which ought to have

been there, was recently knocked down for purposes of repair. Not

noticing its absence, this Sai rushed up and fell down over the

debris below. the father was very anxious, and he ran up to see

whether the boy was alive or how far he was injured. But Sai was

standing and laughing. He said, `Baba held me up in his arms as I

fell'. Can a two year old child imagine and tell a lie? Again, we

have Baba's eye of supervision, just as he saved Santi Kirvandikar, a

three year old child as she fell into a well at Shirdi before 1918.

 

Then once there was danger to the children from swallowing a

poisonous thing. The children were rummaging up Santaram's drawers,

and found what they thought was a box of peppermint. An older child,

Kalu Ram, put one fancied lozenge in his mouth and handed over

another to a younger child. But the taste of it was bitter and the

small quantity he had tasted or swallowed made him uneasy. So, he

went up to his mother, and the mother thought, looking into his

outstretched tongue, which still had a bit of the lozenge on it, that

it was a piece of chunam. Then she took it out. The children were

then asked to show where the box of lozenge was, and they pointed to

a box called Pharaoh's snakes as the box of lozenge. This is a deadly

poison. It is a compound of magnesium, phosphorous etc., which when

lit up, produces a long coil of ashes, which twists in the form of

snakes. That is why it is styled, Pharaoh's snake. A doctor was then

called in, and he gave then an enema. But that failed to act. then

Santaram took up Baba's udhi and tirta and gave them to the child.

The child had a good vomit and as a result was saved. the younger

child had evidently not eaten or, at any rate, not eaten much, but

even to that child udhi and tirta were given, and that child also had

a good vomit and was saved.

 

On another occasion in 1932 Kalu gave a ring to a younger child.

Instinctively the child put the ring in to mouth. the ring got stuck

in the throat. doctors came and gave enema without any result. Then

Santaram gave the child some udhi with tirta and then put his own

finger deep into the mouth of the child. He felt where the ring was

and pulled it out and thus saved the child.

 

In 1934 another child aged only three had pneumonia, measles and an

abscess on the chest. The child was very weak and was getting weaker

and weaker. The doctor was afraid to operate on account of the

child's weakness. But Santaram applied antiphlogistine over the

abscess and the abscess opened and became a wide open wound. Even the

doctor was afraid to operate. so, Santaram prayed to Baba and put a

bit of udhi into the wound. The deputy collector Sri. V.M. Jadhav,

learning of this asked him whether he was sure of its being cured

and, if so, within what time. He answers '`n 24 hours'' That night

Baba appeared in Santaram'' dream and said, '`Why did you say 24

hours? Why not immediately?' Anyhow in 24 hours the wound was healed.

Jadhav was convinced that Baba's udhi was a great blessing and took

some udhi for his own son who had pneumonia. that saved his son's

pneumonia in 24 hours. One see why in Sai Sahasranamam, it is said of

Baba,

 

Gopeem Sathra Yadha Krishnah

Thadha Nachne Kulavanayah

 

Sai protected Santaram Nachne's family as Krishna protected

the gopis

 

 

d. DIVINE GRACE

 

Even after he left His body, in response to the earnest prayer of

one Mrs. Kumudben B. Raval (of Bhau's Pole, Ahmedabad Maha Gujarat)

Baba manifested Himself in the form of Goddess Ambika.

 

 

Similarly all such prayers of devotees of Mahomedans and Parsis were

responded to by Baba by manifestations of such forms as the devotees

worshipped. Very lately for a Parsi doctor of Kopergaon (Dist.

Ahmednagar Maharashtra) He assumed the form of his Paygamber

Zarthostra. To another Mahomedan devotee named Gulam Hussein

Jaffarally Surendranagar (Maha Gujarat) He was please to appear as

his Prophet Ali on horse. To native Christians He showed that He had

that heavenly divine power which they believed in. Thus

Chakranarayan, a Police constable, who kept an eye on the income and

outgoings of Baba expressed his wonder saying, "Baba distributed

hundreds of rupees per day and yet very often. He received a much

lesser amount. Really he has got the divine power". A native

Christian nurse yearning to go to Shirdi after His Maha-Samadhi, was

at first refused leave by the head-nurse but on the first one''

constant chanting of Baba'' name, she was able to bring about a

change in the mind of the latter as a result of which she sanctioned

her leave and enabled the first one to fulfil her wish. Another

Christian Miss Meerabai Satyavir, a teacher in Baroda Methodist

school, says that this (the writer's) book inspired in her an

unshakeable faith, and in the course of her reading she had Sai

Baba's vision in the form of a globe of Light and thereafter she has

visited Shirdi more than once; Baba is her only refuge or shelter. He

has been helping her and always saving her from irreparable losses.

It is therefore clear that rendering of help in all matters material,

spiritual to every person irrespective of his caste, creed, race,

merits or demerits has been Sai Baba's daily routine, His very

nature, His joy.

 

(By. Swami Sai Sharan Anand in Shri Sai The Superman)

 

 

e. Spiritual Spectrum:

(EXTRACTS FROM PURANAS, MESSAGES FROM SATPURUSHAS)

 

Hinduism – A Brief Sketch

Swami Vivekananda - The first disciple of Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa

 

Paper on Hinduism

Read at the World's Parliament of Religions, Chicago

19th September 1893

 

Three religions now stand in the world, which have come down to us

from time prehistoric- Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They

have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their

survival their internal strength. But while Judaism failed to absorb

Christianity and was driven out of its place of birth by its all

conquering daughter, and a handful of Parsees is all that remains to

tell the tale of their grand religion (Zoroastrianism), sect after

sect arose in India and seemed to shake the religion of the Vedas to

its very foundations, but like the waters of the sea shore in a

tremendous earthquake it receded only for a while, only to return in

an all-absorbing flood, a thousand times more vigorous, and when the

tumult of the rush was over, these sects were all sucked in,

absorbed, and assimilated into the immense body of the mother faith.

 

>From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which

the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas

of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the

Buddhists, and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in

the Hindu's religion.

 

Where then, the question arises, where is the common centre to which

all these widely diverging radii converge? Where is the common basis

upon which all these seemingly hopeless contradictions rest? And this

is the question I shall attempt to answer.

 

There never was a time when there was no creation.

 

The Hindus have received their religion through revelation, the

Vedas. They hold that the Vedas are without beginning and without

end. It may sound ludicrous to this audience, how a book can be

without beginning or end. But by the Vedas no books are meant. They

mean the accumulated treasury of spiritual laws discovered by

different persons into different times. Just as the law of

gravitation existed before its discovery, and exist if all humanity

forgot it, so is it with the laws that govern the spiritual world.

The moral, ethical, and spiritual relations between soul and soul and

between individual spirits and the father of all spirits, were there

before their discovery, and would remain even if we forgot them.

 

The discoverers of these laws are called Rishis, and we honour them

as perfected beings. I am glad to tell this audience that some of the

very greatest of them were women. Here it may be said that these laws

as laws may be without end, but they must have had a beginning. The

Vedas teach us that creation is without beginning and end. Science is

said to have proved that the sum total of cosmic energy is always the

same. Then, if there was a time when nothing existed, where was all

this manifested energy? Some say it was in a potential form in God.

In that case God is sometimes potential and sometimes kinetic, which

would make Him mutable. Everything mutable is a compound, and

everything compound must undergo that change which is called

destruction. So God would die, which is absurd. Therefore there never

was a time when there was no creation.

 

If I may be allowed to use a simile, creation and creator are two

lines, without beginning and without end, running parallel to each

other. God is the ever active providence, by whose power systems

after systems are being evolved out of chaos, made to run for a time

and again destroyed. This is what the Brahmin boy repeats every day:

"The sun and the moon, the Lord created like the suns and moons of

previous cycles." And this agrees with modern science.

 

I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body.

The body will die, but I shall not die.

 

Here I stand and if I shut my eyes, and try to conceive my existence,

"I", "I", "I", what is the idea before me? The idea of a body. Am I,

then, nothing but a combination of material substance? The Vedas

declare, "No". I am a spirit living in a body. I am not the body. The

body will die, but I shall not die. Here am I in this body; it will

fall, but I shall go on living. I had also a past. The soul was not

created, for creation means a combination, which means a certain

future dissolution. If then the soul was created, it must die. Some

are born happy, enjoy perfect health, with beautiful body, mental

vigour and all wants supplied. Others are born miserable, some are

without hands or feet, others again are idiots and only drag on a

wretched existence. Why, if they are all created, why does a just and

merciful God create one happy and another unhappy, why is He so

partial? Nor would it mend matters in the least to hold that those

who are miserable in this life will be happy in a future one. Why

should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and

merciful God?

 

In the second place, the idea of a creator God does not explain the

anomaly, but simply expresses the cruel fiat of an all-powerful

being. There must have been causes, then, before his birth, to make a

man miserable or happy and those were his past actions.

 

Are not all the tendencies of the mind and the body accounted for by

inherited aptitude? Here are two parallel lines of existence- one of

the mind, the other of matter. If matter and its transformations

answer for all that we have, there is no necessity for supposing the

existence of a soul. But it cannot be proved that thought has been

evolved out of matter, and if a philosophical monism is inevitable,

spiritual monism is certainly logical and no less desirable than a

materialistic monism; but neither of these is necessary here.

 

(to be continued)

 

 

f. Baba's Help:

 

 

Baba drew diseases on to himself:

 

Baba's way of saving people from disease was sometimes very peculiar

and unrecognisable. Baba drew diseases on to himself, a peculiarity

which sometimes, a perfected saint exhibits. Baba was seated at the

Mosque, and Mrs. Sadasiva Tarkhad with some peculiar eye disease,

which was paining her for a long time, sat in front of him, and her

eyes were watering. Suddenly her eyes ceased water, but Baba's eyes

began to water. She was surprised to see that, when even the

diagnosis of the disease was very difficult for ordinary surgeons,

and the cure thereof much more difficult, Baba at one stroke drew the

disease on from her to himself and cured her. Similarly when she had

neuralgic head-ache, which made life so miserable for her as to drive

her to court death. She got rid of it by having a dip in the cold

water of Godavari at Kopergaon on her way to Shirdi. When she came

out of the water, the neuralgic head-ache had left for ever. Baba's

drawing disease to himself is also noticed in two or three other

remarkable cases. The first is the case of Balwant Khaparde. Plague

was raging at Shirdi, and Balwant caught it. He had a bubo in his

groin, and Mrs. Khaparde, his mother, was weeping and wondering

whether she had brought her family to Shirdi in order to court death.

Baba told her in figurative language that everything would end

favourably. But she could not understand it. Then Baba, who always

wore a kupni, showed that he had drawn the bubo to himself. Shama,

who was then present, even when he narrated it in 1940 to His

Highness Pujyasri B.V. Narasimha Swamiji, was choked with tears at

the idea of Baba's self sacrifice, sacrificing his own life for the

sake of his devotees. As a result of his drawing the bubo from

Balwant to himself, both were cured. Balwant was cured and Baba was

cured Baba said, `My orders are supreme'. And Balwant was saved.

 

Besides Balwant Khaparde, there is another case of Baba drawing

bubonic plague to himself to save his devotees. A Superintendent of

Police in Bombay State went up to Goa, and there caught plague. Baba

appeared in a dream or vision to him and said, '`o not fear, Get your

bubo opened up by the doctor, and you will be cured'' At the same

time Baba was saying at Shirdi '`he rascal has sent me a Goa mango'',

and he showed bubo on his own person to the bhaktas there. He

appeared at the same time to the Superintendent's wife at Ahmednagar

in her dream and told her, `Your husband has sent me a Goa mango. It

will be alright soon. Do not fear', and disappeared. The lady could

not understand the meaning of Baba's words. So, she came to Shirdi

and asked Baba. Baba made her stay there for some days. Meanwhile the

Superintendent returned from Goa to Shirdi, and then everything was

explained, and the people saw how Baba had drawn the plague to

himself from the Superintendent and saved him.

 

Baba sacrifice of his health for the sake of his devotees is found in

certain statement made by him. At the close of 1910, when G.S.

Khaparde visited him, Baba said, `For two years I have been so ill as

to live on mere bread and water. I have string-worm (guinea worm).

People rush, and give me no rest. This will continue till I go back

to the place of my origin. I do not mind it, because I care for more

for my people than for my own health.' In fact it is believed that he

gave up his own life in 1918 as a substitute for, and to save Tatya

Patil's life. He loved Tatya Patil very dearly, not only because his

mother and family fed him from the very beginning but also because

Tatya Patil himself was closely attached to him and spent 10 or 11

years sleeping with him at night at the Masjid, till he got married.

 

Baba put his hands into the fire on one occasion, and his skin was

badly scorched. Shama had to pull out his hands from the dhuni. When

asked he did so, Baba replied, `Let the cursed hand go. A child had

fallen into the fire, and I had to pick it up. `It was learnt soon

after that a smith's wife was sitting by the smithy fire with a child

on her lap. Leaving the child aside, she went out, and the child fell

into the smithy fire. Luckily it was saved, and the reason appears to

have been that Baba pulled it out by mystic means seated as he was at

the Dwarakamayee. When Baba was asked to attend to his injured hand,

he said, `Allah is my doctor', and the doctors sent from Bombay and

other places were sent back. The only thing that Baba did was to

allow Bagoji, his leper attendant, to smear his scalded hand with

ghee and tie it up with cloth for a year. This scalding was healed

long prior to that, but Bagoji continued to serve Baba.

 

Baba offered his own throat to Mir Jaman, the ruffian, who with the

drawn sword at midnight, wanted Baba's permission to cut the throat

of the Hindu devotees sleeping there. Instead Baba said, `Cut my

throat', and this cured the ruffian of his fanaticism.

 

One Narvekar, who was suffering from high fever, had sent Rs.500

through his son to be given to Baba and he hoped that if Baba

accepted that amount, he would be free from fever. When the son came

to Shirdi and paid the money, Baba received it, and at once he began

to shake with fever. When bystanders asked, `Baba, what is this?',

Baba said, `One had to undertake to bear the pains of others'. So,

Baba got the fever and Narvekar's fever left him. Baba also was cure.

Transfer of disease is very difficult to understand, just like the

transfer of sin (papa) or good deeds (punya). "Shisya papam Gurum

rajeth" Baba said that he undertook to bear all the burdens,

responsibilities and sins of his Ankita children himself. How a sin

committed by a devotee could get transferred to the Guru is rather

difficult to understand, for sin is not a commodity to be handed over

from hand to hand. Strangely enough, there are mantravadhis who by

their mantras invest a ball with power to take the pain from one to

another. If a man has been stung by a scorpion or other poisonous

creatures, then this ball is handed over to that man, and he hands it

over to another and the second man gets the pain with ball. he

transfer it to a third. This has been seen. this is a remarkable

phenomenon, and perhaps may suggest the possibility of sins also

being transferred by some mysterious process from one person to

another.

 

Baba has also helped people to overcome disease, mental and physical.

Let us take the physical first. Baba used to treat with drugs very

serious cases of cobra bite, leprosy, tuberculosis, asthama, etc.,

and effect cures. later, after he had obtained Sakshatkara of God,

that is, attained divine powers in himself, he cured people of

diseases by merely giving udhi and offering the blessing `Allah Acha

Karega'. The udhi cured the people of their diseases. Such cases are

too numerous to be included in a single book. the cure through udhi

was widely prevalent even before Mahasamadhi in 1918 and the number

of cases of cure through udhi after 1918 that are reported in `Sai

Sudha', `Sai Lila' and the other papers is prodigious, and all sorts

of diseases have been cured by udhi; and not merely men but also

animals. For instance, cows suffering from udder disease, or

suffering from pain at calving time, were helped by udhi and greatly

benefited.

 

 

Publisher's Note:

 

THE SOLE PURPOSE of this newsletter is to present Sai messages and

other spiritual messages to the interested devotees on Thursdays.

Feel free to forward this newsletter to your interested associates.

 

In this newsletter, wherever the sources of the articles not

mentioned, please consider these items are taken from H H Pujyasri B

V Narasimha Swamiji's books.

 

Mailing Address: Vasuki Mahal Shri Shirdi Saibaba Trust, Vasuki Mahal

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