HOW DO MASTERS REDEEM DEVOTEES?

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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 HH

Pujyasri B V Narasimha Swamiji and Bharatananda.)

 

The Supreme Being id thought of as having five aspects of functions

with names appropriate to each:

 

Creation: Brahma in conjunction with Saraswathi.

 

Maintenance: Vishnu or Narayana in conjunction with Laxmi.

 

Destruction: Rudra in conduction with Kali.

 

Protection or Ruling: Iswara in conjunction with Maheswari.

 

Redemption: Sadashiva in conjunction 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 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 fulfillment 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 Samartha because of their vast

– nay unlimited power, wisdom and bliss and they are called sadgurus,

because they appear on 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 part 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 Siddis

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 Jivahood? 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

prevailed before the Jiva started this whirling. The Sadguru shows

the whirl that it is water after all; the 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 Sadguru's work. But

the general lines of his work we shall next consider.

 

INITIAL HELP:

 

First the Jiva is under a heavy load of past Karma 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 went of clear vision, and of ability to know and direct himself

all right. 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, gratitudes 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

a 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 the 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 the 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 words 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 therefor 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 Sad-Guru 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 Dehatmabuddhi, i.e., the idea that he is 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 shackles 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 that the

Guru-God is his own Antaryami, i.e., he sees him within himself. The

Samartha's vast powers enables 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 and 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 Vasana's 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 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.

 

(Courtesy: HH Pujyasri B V Narasimha Swamiji)