Message by H. H. Narasimh Sswamiji for Guru Poornima on 10th July 1956.

[Guest guest]

It is a long established usage amongst Hindus to pay special regard to or

worship the Guru on every Pournima day. It is on that day the moon it at its

fullest and the mind of all is most happy and best disposed to receive the

fullest that the Guru can give. Gurus have often advised their devotees to

approach them on Pournima days especially. Sai Baba, for instance, told Sri

H. V, Sathe that he should come with his puja materials and worship on Guru

Poornima Day. That is a day which is especially attractive and has special

merit more than other poornimas. It is on that day Sri Vyasa's glorious

commentary on Brahma Sutras, etc., was commenced by which so much of flood

light in the spiritual field has been poured on humanity. It is for

spiritual purposes that one must go to the Guru though other purposes are

not barred. Especially in Sai Baba's tradition or Guru parampara, the Guru

is the sole resort of the sishya for everything needed by the latter and so

temporal as well as spiritual benefits alike may "be craved for. Indeed,

the spiritual ought to predominate and not allow temporal ideas to overpower

the mind of any pupil. Yet on occasions, the temporal needs are so

painfully pressing as to require an approach to the Guru even on a

Guru Poornima Day by the pupil. The question of the pupil's

approaching the Guru may naturally be viewed from two standpoints namely,

(1) Gurus standpoint and (2) pupil's standpoint. There are Guru's

and Gurus. 'Guru' is such a broad term as to include even the ordinary

college professor though in any colleges the Gurus have hardly any persona!

touch with the hundreds of students who approach them. Our ideas

generally go back to the Gurus of the earliest Indian history that we

know when the pupil went and stayed with the guru, working for him and

depending on him, and therefore, being in intimate touch with the Guru and

all persons belonging to the Guru. The Guru's wife was mother to the

pupil. The pupils were then very young and, as in so many boarding houses

now, it is at a tender age that the pupil was taken to the Guru and left

with him. This is a very great advantage for the development of the pupil.

Beginning one's contact with Gurus at a late age as innumerable

difficulties. By adolescence most of the habits and mental traits of the

pupil become so rigid that fresh imposition of ideas and ideals is often

found to be of no effect, the previous habits being so powerful and so hard

to break. The previous habits are referred to by the term 'Prakrit!'.

The habit has become second nature, and Sri Krishna Himself says in the

Gita :—

Sadurscam chesbtate svasyah

Prakriteh jnanavan api

Prakirtim yanti bhutani

Nigrahah kirn karishyati.

This means, 'Even the learned man behaves in accordance with,

that is, in obedience to, his prakriti or nature. Therefore a restraint

going against the grain of his previous habit or nature is ineffective, In

the case of those who are really very anxious for their highest,

development, they must always take care to place the young trainee under

the trainer or Guru at the earliest possible moment, remembering the English

form of the above stanza in the proverb 'Bend the twig and bend the tree'.

If we bend a plant in its twig stage, when it becomes a tree the same bent

will be fixed permanently in the tree which has taken the place of the twig.

That is how for big palanquins very big bamboos are bent up very early

prepared, and used. The application of this doctrine of the need for early

approach to the Guru is attended with considerable difficulty. It is not

all people that perceive this truth nor is it all people that can easily

approach and place themselves entirely at the disposal of a Guru. The

circumstances of many prevent their going to the Guru and living with him.

Moreover a Guru cannot accept any one and every one as a pupil to live with

him. He makes his choice. Only promising children from whom much developmen

t can be expected would be taken up by a Guru, that is, taking the

conditions as they should be. In modern days, this selection of pupils

for training has assumed various forms and the selection of pupils is

governed by principles which can sometimes seldom be recognised as

principles. It is often a bias or an improper motive that guides the

selection. So much of howl has been raised lately about the way in which

thousands that offer themselves for entry into colleges, for

instance, a medical college or an engineering college, have been

rejected. The principle of selection can hardly be the community, the

riches or the influence of the pupils to be selected. No doubt there is a

certain limit set to the number of pupils to be admitted in modern

institutions. In olden days, when a pupil provided the labour and cost very

little in the way of maintenance, hundreds or thousands could be easily

admitted into an Ashram or an educational institution And a Guru may well

pray as he does in the Taittiriya Upanishad 'A Mayantu Brahinaeharinah svah'

etc. That is, 'May students pour on unto me as the floods in rivers or as

regularly as the months in ths year'. The more populous an institution the

greater the amount of good it can do normally: far spiritual purposes.

However where personal attention and contact are required, this increase in

student population may be considered a demerit. But this need not

necessarily be so. There are Gurus and Gurus. Some Gurus can manage very

large numbers, especially with the aid of trained subordinates, and one

might therefore expect that at least for spiritual purposes when people

flock to a powerful Guru, their might be scope for all people that approach

to get attended to. The fact, however, is that the number of pupils who

approach a Guru for spiritual purposes is extremely low. The amount of

vairagya and sacrifice implied in the approach is seldom achieved. Very few

pupils possess such vairagya, especially longstanding vairagya as opposed to

mere evanescent vairagya. In the case of Gurus par excellence like Sai Baba,

these problems can seldom arise. The Gurus themselves are quite competent to

decide as to when and how a pupil should approach them and how he should be

dealt with at each stage. But the vast majority of spiritual Gurus are

hardly to be ranked with such high names as Sai Baba. The bitter experience

of those who have approached a Guru for their spiritual or all-round

development has been that the Guru promises a great deal and takes up a

pupil, but is found to be sadly deficient in those excellences of Sai which

ensure the pupil's safety aad

advance. A very great amount of vairagya is necessay

to prevent a Guru from taking advantage of the fact

that a sishya is prepared to obey the Guru in every particular. The pupils

are mostly blind and ready to receive and carry out any order given by the

Guru

whom they believe to be competent to issue orders to them. Unfortunately,

Gurus with defective development have proved to be the bane of a good number

of pupils :that approached them. That is the bitter fact that is constantly

heard or lamented in spiritual circles. It is often said that some prominent

person is a proper Guru and people approach that prominent person. After

considerable time, the discovery is made that the image golden at the top

has only a clay foot and cannot therefore be of real service to the people.

Luckily in, the case of Sai, the main fact is that he does not offer

himself as a Guru. He is not known to be a Guru nor is he anxious to be

known that he is a Guru. He has often followed the advanced soul should

conceal his merit. : -

Budho Balakavai kridet : .

Kuscalo Jadavat charet

Vadet Unmattavat vidvan

Gocharyam Naigamah charet.

This means, 'Though a person is a Jnani, he must behave as though he is a

mere child. The person who is extremely skilful conceals his skill and

behaves like a dullard. The person who is a great vidvan, highly learned

talks like a crazy person or an idiot. And the Jnani well versed in all the

sastras behaves like a quadruped', Sri Seshadriswami of Tiruvannamalai

actually gave this advice to Vallimalai Swamiyar - 'telling him that he

should pose as a crazy or insane person, for then no one would molest him

and every one would leave him alone. Sai Baba for long decades constantly

behaved in such a way as to lead even those very closely moving with him to

fancy that he was a mad man. Mahlsapathys who was constantly with Baba,

writes in his memoirs that Baba behaved at times like a mad man. G. G.

Narke, noting the conduct of Baba on one occasion, thought Baba must be mad.

Baba had to correct that impression in him when he (Narke) approached him by

saying, 'Narke, I am not mad', having read his heart though Narke never

uttered his thought. This convinced Narke that Baba had only appeared to be

mad while at the same time he was able to see the impression that was

produced in Narke without any extraneous aid, that is, purely by his power

of antarjnana. Narke was convinced that Baba was a Jnani and an Antar-jnani,

and therefore a highly developed person competent to be a Guru, but was only

posing as a mad man. The advice that a person should pose as a mad man can

never be given to the vast majority of the Gurus, for they would forfeit the

esteem which they value so much by reason of being thought to be crazy. It

is only great souls like Sai Baba who deem honour and dishonour as the same,

who are not anxious to secure applause or praise or esteem, that can pose as

crazy men. But coming back to the main subject, we may say that Gurus like

Sai Baba prevent many persons from knowing their real worth. Therefore some

approach them for very low purposes. Yet when a competent person approaches

a great personage like Sai Baba, the latter notes who is competent and who

is not competent. Such Gurus draw unto themselves persons specially fit for

development under their influence. In the case of Anna Saheb Dabolkar for

instance, when he was pressed by his friend Sri H. S. Dixit to go and meet

Baba, his great difficulty was that he could not see the use of a Guru. He

thought that unless a Guru could save a boy from death, he was not fit to be

called a Guru. Such absurd notions get into the minds of persons who are

mostly the sort of persons that approach Gurus. Baba had to disabuse

Dabolkar of such faulty notions. He himself drew Dabolkar on and corrected

his erroneous notions. He enabled him to approach him through Chandorkar's

pressure and by the timely intervention of a Muslim friend who gave him

proper directions for reaching Shirdi. And when pursuing his own line of

thought, having reached Shirdi, was indulging in a hot debate with Bhate

whether a Guru was at all necessary and expressing strongly his opinion that

a Guru was a fetter on one's freedom. Baba got over the previous bent and

the dire influence of similar ideas working in Dabolkar's mind by a sudden

revelation of his knowledge of everything that passed far beyond his ken. He

asked Dabolkar's friends when Dabolkar first approached him. "What was this

Hemadpant saying?" knowing fully well what he had been saying. So Dixit

answered, 'Baba, you know it very well'. Baba was operating on the mind of

Dabolkar by stunning him with surprise at the wonderful and extraordinary

powers of knowledge of all things transpiring at various places far beyond

his ken of neighbourhood. Dabolkar was thus ready to receive Baba for the

Guru, and Baba impressed Dabolkar also about the need for a Guru by

answering Dixit and some other friends who asked him about that time as to

the way. Baba said, 'The way (the way upward) for spiritual amelioration is

very hard to tread. There are bears and tigers on the way.' Then Dixit

asked, 'If there is a guide?' Baba then replied, 'If there is a guide, the

bears and tigers move away'. Thus he impressed upon Dabolkar that a Guru God

was absolutely essential, and Dabolkar was drawn more and more powerfully by

Baba into a mood of surrender. Dabolkar became and excellent devotee of

Baba.

The Dewan of a Native Stale (N. R. Sahastabuddhe) wrote to Sri Dixit that

when he tried hard to get various persons as Guru his attempt was a failure

and that he had given up his quest practically when suddenly the real Guru

Baba drew him to his feet. That is the way in which the really great Guru

operates. People are not always as lucky as Dabolkar and Sahasrabuddhe. They

do not find Guru drawing them to their feet. Then the complaint is heard

that there are no Gurus. But the truth is that there are Gurus but the

persons who wish to become pupils are not yet competent to be pupils.

Considerable humility and dispassion must spring in the soul before one is

competent to approach a great Guru. The Guru in his level is like an Emperor

and the sishya (pupil) that approaches is in the position of (or more like)

a beggar. But the beggar fancies that he is as good as the Guru. The stoic

idea of human equality and the feeling 'Why should I stand in awe of such a

thing as I myself?' spiring up and make a man unfit to be a pupil. That is

why, approaching a Guru when one is really very young and has not yet

developed ideas of haughtiness, self-respect, etc , is the best.

On this Guru Poornima Day, if any readers are really desirous of getting a

Guru for themselves and if they desire Sai Baba to be their Guru, the advice

or message to be given to them is that they must first fit themselves to be

sishyas or pupils of such a great Guru ‘Sai Baba’, The Guru his nothing to

gain by your

going to him and you have to gain everything by approaching him. It is the

realisation of this cardinal fact that will give you proper humility, and

the approach should be with love, admiration, and veneration. Therefore one

must prepare one's mind by a proper study of works about Baba, and by

personal contact with really sincere devotees and acquire correct notions of

Baba. There are hundreds of persons who call themselves Sai bhaktas but

hardly five per cent amongst them realise that Sai Baba is a Samartha

Sadguru, a teacher of the highest sort armed with superhuman powers, acting

purely out of beneficence towards those approaching him. The famous lines,

'Scanta mahanto nivasanti santah

Vasantavat Loka hitam charantah

Tiraah svayam bhima bhava Arnavam janah

Abetuna Anyanapi tarayantah.'

mean, 'There are great souls in enjoyment of perfect peace, who are as

beneficent as the spring season showering blessings over vast masses in

order to make them happy and blessed. Though they have themselves crossed

the terrific ocean of samsaric life and though they receive no consideration

for their kindness, they ferry people across that ocean'. This is the

description given of great Guru in Vivekachudamani, and many a reader

wonders where to find these Gurus. If any of our readers should be in that

mood, this message is specially directed to them and announces to them the

fact that Baba is at present living, more living than many of the people who

talk to them as Gurus and whom they can approach in the flesh. That Baba is

highly powerful and is able to mould the mind and heart of all people that

approach him and of all others that it may be necessary to influence for the

benefit of the pupil. That Baba's assuming the position of a Guru is quite

dissimilar to the position of so many present day Acharyas who assume the

position of a Guru but who can achieve really very little for the benefit of

the pupil. Baba on the other hand when he assumes the position of a Guru

undertake complete charge of all affairs of the pupil who thereby becomes

his 'Ankita' child. Baba looks after him with all concern and kindness of a

parent and with a thousand times the power of any ordinary parent. Things

which others find it impossible to do, Baba does on behalf of his 'Ankita'

child. This is the experience of hundreds or thousands from the contact of

Baba, long after his Mahasamadhi in 1918. The pages of Sai journals like

'Sai Lila Masik' and 'Sai Sudha' abound with illustrations proving the above

fact. Therefore this message is given broadcast so that all who care might

develop proper humility and love and reverence towards Baba and earnestly

endeavour to approach him immediately. From this moment forward try to

establish contact with Baba, and by Baba's grace you may succeed and secure

for yourself a blessing which is far superior to other blessings and which,

in fact, amounts to the securing of every blessing that you desire!