Sathyam Sivam Sundaram - Part I (Sl# 38)

June 7, 2006

SaiRam

Sai Baba Again (Continued..)

In teaching and admonishing the devotees in relation to their troubles, He told them that they must concentrate on the recitation of God's Name, that it was the best means of earning Peace. Once He suddenly turned to a devotee with the question, "Don't you do recitation?' She started to say something in reply, but Baba did not wait to hear it. "Oh, you have lost your Japamala (rosary), haven't you?" He asked. Then, thrusting His Hand into the sand, He took out a rosary and said, "Here, come and take this." The lady rose reverently and came forward with folded hands to receive. Sai Baba signed her to halt, and told her with a smile illuminating His Face, "Wait! First, tell me whose rosary this is." She looked at it and gasped. "Mine, Baba! Or rather, my mother's". She was so happy to get back her rosary, the one given her by her dying mother. Baba told us all about her mother's piety, her brother's rigorous Tapas, austerity, and her own Sadhana, spiritual

practice. He asked her when she had lost the precious rosary. We were all dumb-founded when she declared she had misplaced it four years previously at Bangalore!

The gathering of devotees increased in number from month to month. The Old Temple was found inadequate, and it was not possible to meet every day on the sands. The devotees felt that Sai Baba's room was too cramped and low, and He was being forced to live in the very midst of noise, dust, and confusion. On festival occasions the area around the temple was too small to accommodate the people who came. A number of devotees prayed to Baba to agree to the construction of the present spacious building which Baba named "Prasanthi Nilayam" or "Abode of Tranquility".

Prasanthi Nilayam

What a fine name for the dwelling of the Lord! What cool breezes and quiet solitude does that name invoke! The mountains that stand in a ring around the Nilayam look like hoary sages lost in contemplation. The broad sky inspires vast boundless musings; the rocks on top of the hills invite meditation. Sai Baba has planted a grove for religious austerities on the side of the hill behind the Nilayam; in that grove there grows a Banyan tree which is bound to become the holiest of such trees, at least so far as the seekers of spiritual uplift are concerned.

The Banyan tree, known as Nyagrodha, "down-grown," and Vatavriksha, "enclosure tree," is famous in Indian sacred literature and history. Lord Maha Vishnu, the great God of Preservation, or Siva, God in the Form of the Guru, is described as sitting under a Banyan tree, and expounding by His very silence all knowledge to His disciple. This tree may be said to symbolize Sanatana Dharma, the Eternal Wisdom, for its branches reach out in all directions and draw sustenance from every type of faith and spiritual striving. It is also called Rahupada, "many-footed" in Sanskrit, for the series of roots that its branches send down toward the earth strike the ground and seek food therein and make the branches independent even of the parent trunk. The tree is therefore immortal. There are in India Banyan trees that have been worshipped for thousands of years, such as the one at Triveni at Prayag, Allahabad, or the one called Akshaya-vat, the "Indestructible," at Gaya.

The Banyan that is growing in the grove has a peculiar sanctity of its own. In April of 1959, while talking one evening on the sands of the Chitravathi River to a gathering of devotees, Baba spoke of Buddha and the Bodhi tree, the "Tree of Wisdom," and of the Sadhakas (spiritual aspirants) seeking some specially favorable spots for their austerities. Even as He was speaking thus, He "took" out from the sands a thick copper plate about fifteen inches by ten inches in size which contained mystic markings and letters of many known and unknown alphabets! He said that such mystic plates, cryptograms written on copper or stone, are planted under trees where aspirants engage in austerities so that they may be helped to develop concentration of mind and control of the senses. He announced that He would be placing the copper plate under a Banyan tree that He proposed to plant in the grove. This was actually done on the twenty-ninth of June, 1959, and Sai Baba declared

that Yogis who have reached a certain stage of spiritual progress will automatically come to know of this tree and this mystic plate, and they will be drawn by the mysterious force of these toward the meditation grove which will then fully justify its name!

The Prasanthi Nilayam was inaugurated on the twenty-third of November, 1950, the twenty-fourth birthday of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. It took about two years to build. Baba can be said to be the architect and engineer who directed the entire work for construction. His suggestions had to be accepted by the engineers, for they found them much better than their own. They recognized Sai Baba had a greater sense of perspective, a finer aesthetic point of view than they had. Baba was a hard taskmaster, but with immeasurable compassion. His Grace overcame the most insurmountable obstacles! For example, huge heavy girders for the central prayer hall came from near Trichinopoly by train to Penukonda, but how on earth could they be brought over the District Board Road, sixteen miles long with a sandy stream at the seventh mile? How could any truck with those things sticking out negotiate the acutely angled corners of the village on the ninth mile? After Bukkapatnam was

reached, there were three miles of a track that can be referred to only by courtesy as a road; and then the broad expanse of sand which the Chitravathi River spreads across, a distance of three furlongs. There were the dilapidated culverts to be gone over, the slushes to be dragged through; and if and when girders arrived at the spot, the task of hoisting them on top of the high walls. The engineers gave up all hope of bringing the girders to the village and asked Baba for some alternative proposals for roofing the prayer hall.

One night in the small hours the chief engineer was awakened by a loud noise in front of his house at Anantapur. He peered into the darkness and was surprised to find a crane from Tungabhadra Dam Works, put out of action and unable to move! He ran to Puttaparthi and told Baba that if only it could be made to operate, the owner could be persuaded to travel up to Penukonda and bring the girders along. Sai Baba materialized some Sacred Ash and gave a small quantity to the engineer who piously scattered it over the engine of the crane and asked the driver to make efforts to set it going. With a grunt or two, the engine started, the wheels turned, and the crane moved - toward the girders! Lifting them with its giant arms, it somehow passed over all culverts, turned acutely round the corners, lurched over the Vankaperu slush, and puffed up the Karnatanagapalli hill! There the engineer said its strength was nearly exhausted. It could not possibly draw all that weight

through the sands. So Sai Baba Himself sat near the driver and handled the wheel, and the crane unloaded the girders near the work spot.

(Prasanthi Nilayam To be continued..)

SaiRam