Transformation of the Heart - Chapter 4

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IT'S ALL GOD(By : Allen S Levy)"Love in action is right action; as speech is truth; as thought is peace; as understanding is non-violence."- Sathya Sai Baba -It's

a snowy day in mid-November, New York City. A premature winter has

blanketed the concrete metropolis in white, almost magically creating

an illusionary aura of purity throughout New York, a city, not unlike

most, steadily sinking into the mire of greed, lust and

self-aggrandizement.The twentieth patient of the week has just

left the office. Like many, she feels lonely and lost in a world where

spiritual values are often disrespected and the word of God is ignored.

In despair, she feels a lack of love in her life that most of us also

feel, caught on a planet suffering under the torturous burden of

material values and perspectives. Modern day Earth - a world where

truth is denied, righteousness reviled, non-violence only an ideal,

peace of mind a dream, and unconditional love merely a vision.I

feel her sadness. I feel her pain. Her loneliness becomes my

loneliness, and her despair becomes my despair, but only for a short

time. For I have found a way out of this darkness, this hopelessness.

My isolation and imprisonment have given way to openness and freedom.

And the helplessness I used to feel has now given way to helpfulness by

the grace of God.Contemplating my life and the advent of the

avatar within it, my attention is drawn back, back in time through the

years to when I was first born. First born spiritually, that is, into a

consciousness of God.It was Thanksgiving, 1971...My

brother, Lou, two-and-a-half years younger than I, had invited me to

visit his apartment on the lower east side of Manhattan before

traveling together to Long Island for a Thanksgiving meal with our

parents. They would eat traditional turkey and we would insistently eat

only the vegetables. Our parents thought we were being rebellious, but

had tolerated this new fad of ours. The previous spring, while in my

freshman year of college, we had both learned a popular form of

meditation. Lou and I enjoyed sitting silently, and we had become

ardent vegetarians, too. Of course, this was much to the displeasure of

our father, who owned a wholesale fish dealership in the Fulton Fish

Market on the southern tip of Manhattan.I walked up the three

flights of stairs of the dilapidated dwelling, a stark contrast to the

upper-middle class home in which my brother and I had grown up. I

knocked on the door at the head of the stairs, and a tall young man

answered. In spite of my grave doubts, he confirmed that this was

indeed my brother's place.I could smell a flowery essence

wafting toward me from the interior, and I could hear the strangest

music, music so joyous that it filled me with a feeling of sheer

delight. I danced into the apartment, moving in little circles,

Jewish-style, hands held high above my head. Reaching my brother's

bedroom, I greeted him :"Hi Lou!"He was sitting on the

floor on a mat, which I was startled to learn he called his bed, and

burst into laughter at seeing me so happy (a strange occurrence), doing

an even stranger dance into the middle of his room."What are you doing?" he asked.I enthusiastically replied, "I'm so happy I can't help but dance. This music is wonderful! Who is it?"Lou responded, "Oh, that's Sai Baba singing bhajans.""Who's he?" I asked.His reply threw me for a loop : "He's God. He lives in India."Instantly

my dancing ceased. You see, more than ten years earlier, I had

terminated my relationship with God. Hebrew school had been a grueling

experience in which I alternated between being yelled at by my teachers

for not knowing the Jewish prayers, and being struck with bicycle

chains after class by older students who had had a little too much of

the one-and-a-half hours of frustration twice a week.In my

lifetime, I had not been able to find a single individual who, in

speaking about God, and directing me in the understanding of my

religion, had been able to represent it without representing a

tradition of anger, selfishness and general pettiness, as well. So how

could God exist when there was so little love in my life? Besides, what

about the Jews during World War II? So, if God did exists, I didn't

like him anyway; and besides, how can a person be called God?That's

where I found myself after dancing into my brother's apartment on

Thanksgiving day, 1971. There was too much sorrow in my life to

acknowledge God's existence, much less his love, which seemed not to be

coming my way. Besides, the holocaust was a good rationalization for my

atheism. And, if that wasn't enough, since I was Jewish, God was

without form and was certainly not a man.With no thanksgiving and an arrogant laugh I retorted :"God! What God? The one in your fantasies? Come on!"My

arrogance was no doubt the fruit of an educational career long on

"intellect" but sadly lacking in moral training. And I could feel anger

rising in me, the anger felt in childhood - born of sadness,

loneliness, friendlessness, of not loving, not being loved, not

understanding and not being understood.Lou's response hit me right where my stubborn intellect was most vulnerable :"See for yourself. Read about him."That

Hanukkah (or Christmas, if you like; my brother believed in Jesus, too)

Lou gave me the book Baba by Arnold Schulman. Within a few days, I

reluctantly opened it and read. After ten pages, I put the book down,

my mind numb. In fact, my mind seemed to have stopped - an impossible

occurrence, especially for me. After a few all too brief moments, it

began again but all I could think was : "Oh, my God! This is God!" In a

state of sheer excitement, I picked up the phone and dialed my brother."Lou, you're right! This is God! Sathya Sai Baba is God! What do I do now?"He calmly replied, "Relax. Sit down and meditate. When I see you next, we'll talk more about it. Keep reading."That

was the beginning and, I might add, only the beginning of the

magnificent, munificent grace which Baba would shower upon me.In the following year, while reading his books, the ones called Sathya Sai Speaks : Volumes I, II, III,

etc., in the midst of a treasury of teachings, I came across what I

thought was a most practical one for an overworked college student :The

fruit of action belongs to the actor; therefore, renounce the fruit.

Act, but renounce the fruit of the action; dedicate every action to God

and renounce all desire for its fruit; call upon God to be the doer of

action, and totally and fully, without recourse, renounce every vestige

of attachment to the fruit of action.For

that entire week, I had been trying to write a final paper in my first

and only political science course. We had studied the philosophy and

leadership in the American civil rights movement. I had read Frederick

Douglas, Martin Luther King, Jr., Eldridge Cleaver, Malcolm X, and

innumerable other black political figures. The professor had asked us

to write one paper to pull it all together. This was it - the only

grade in the course. I set about the nearly impossible task and after a

week succeeded in crumpling up more than 20 pages of first-page starts.

I was in a panic. How was I to enjoy the Thanksgiving break, which was

now upon me, if I had to write this paper?I resolved to retreat

to my brother's apartment, where just one year previously, the joy of

God's love had touched my thirsty soul. Thanksgiving eve I sat down,

paper on desk, pen in hand, and lit a candle before a picture of Sai

Baba. I prayed. "Oh God, hi! It's Al Levy calling. Can you please write

this paper on black political thought for me? You are the doer of all

deeds, the speaker of all words, the thinker of all thoughts. Please

then, write this paper and bear the fruits. I surrender it all to you.

Thanks."For the next sixteen hours or so, he wrote. Every time

I seemed to reach an impasse, I called on Baba again for help, praying

as I had done before.The paper was typed the following week at

college and handed in. Just before Christmas, I received it back. The

professor had written, "This is a good paper. You have a nice flow of

language. When you talked about Martin Luther King, I heard Martin

Luther King talking; when Frederick Douglas was mentioned, it sounded

like Douglas was speaking; and when Malcolm X was referred to, it was

like him speaking. A job well done. 'A'"Of course, it was a job

well done - by Baba. He had brought the essence of these courageous

leaders who had actually left the earthly plane, and had placed their

thoughts and words directly into this paper. Thank you Baba!Through

the next thirteen years of my educational experience, I called on my

Sai Baba to do the work and bear the fruits. With his grace, I passed

through the bachelor of arts degree in psychology and a master's of

science in social work from Columbia University. Receiving professional

training in psychoanalysis was difficult, but he took me through the

Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis and on to a graduate university

where, once more, I prayed to make it through the program.When

I entered this doctoral program in psychoanalysis, the university had

not yet been accredited, but the dean assured us it would be, and that

all degrees would be retroactively honored with full accreditation

status. I decided to enroll.While engaged in doctoral study, I

was offered an opportunity to pass through the program in one year,

contingent upon writing an original doctoral thesis on a psychoanalysis

topic. They said my previous graduate training qualified me for such an

opportunity. Doctoral programs are notorious for being brutally arduous

and terribly torturous, taking five to ten or more years to complete.

Delighted by the opportunity to be free of the entire educational

rigmarole, of which I had been a prisoner for more than 25 yeas, I took

the university up on their one-year offer.I prayed to my Baba

as always, "Please, dear Baba, write this doctoral thesis. Baba, you

are the doer of all deeds, the speaker of all words, the thinker of all

thoughts. Please, my Father-Mother God, write this paper and bear the

fruits too. Thank you." (I had matured a little in my relationship with

God by now, so I left out the "Oh God, hi! It's Al Levy calling" part.

I just figured he knew me by now; I had been in trouble so often and

called on him so much for help).But when the year was up, I had

only completed the first half of the reading of references necessary to

write the paper. Two years passed. The reading and note-taking were

done, but, to my despair, no writing. I kept praying to Baba and hoping

against the odds set up by my mind that he hadn't abandoned me. The

third year passed and some writing had been done but it was rejected by

the doctoral committee. They didn't seem to like my topic :

"Psychoanalysis and Meditation." What was I to do? I prayed to do

nothing and let my Baba do it all.Within the next six months,

the doctoral committee accepted the topic without question : "An

Exploration into the Psychoanalysis Treatment of the Meditating

Patient." During my psychoanalysis student internship, I had found that

some of my patients were meditators and were continuing the practice

while undergoing treatment. I decided to study the meditating patients

to see if they did better in psychoanalysis than my non-meditating

patients.I continued to pray to Baba; but all along the

question kept arising in my mind : "Baba, why, when they gave special

permission to complete the degree in one year, is it taking so long?"

And I complained, "Each three-month term costs fifteen hundred dollars,

Baba. Can't we speed it up a little?"In June, 1985, after

four-and-a-half years, the paper was completed. The doctoral committee

approved the thesis with minor revisions; and the next month I

received, by my Baba's grace, a letter from the university dean

congratulating me on the award of the long-awaited Ph.D. The timing was

right! During the previous two weeks, all the university students and

prior graduates had received a letter from the new dean stating that

the graduate school, after twelve years, had received full

accreditation by the Midwest Regional Committee of Colleges and

Universities, as well as accreditation by the University and College

Accreditation Board in America, effective March, 1985.This was

the first "university without walls" program in the United States to

receive full recognition. However, contrary to the former dean's

assurance, the letter continued, the present dean and faculty were

sorry to announce that all graduates who had received their degrees

prior to March 1, 1985, would not be entitled to accreditation status,

according to the regulations of the Midwest Regional Committee."Thank

you, God!" I exclaimed. My Baba had saved me from an unforeseen

tragedy. Had I completed the doctoral program any sooner than the

four-and-a-half years it had taken, my degree would not have been fully

accredited when received. Baba had done it again; his timing was

perfect!My thoughts go to all of you, all who may be struggling

through the cumbersome and sometimes obnoxious task of the educational

experience, not to mention the ongoing process of life itself. Pray to

the Lord to do all the work and bear the fruits thereof. Keep the

faith! For it is true :"Lord God Almighty, Sai Baba my beloved,

you are the doer of all deeds, the speaker of all words, the thinker of

all thoughts. I surrender it all to you. Please, then, bear the fruits

of all my thoughts, words, and deeds. Thank you, Baba." And add a

little "I love you" at the end.And now, as if awakening from a

dream, again I find myself sitting at my desk awaiting the next

patient. This remembrance of the past has renewed my faith, has given

me hope that in this lost world, the light of love is visible. Nay, not

only is the light of love visible, but transformational.For he

has transformed my life from a desperate search for love into a deep

desire to give love to others. I have groped in the darkness and found

happiness and beauty blossoming in the midst of a struggling humanity.

Even more miraculously, my life has turned from concerns of self into a

sharing of the burdens of life that others seem to bear. The real value

of this life I call "mine" has become the intense desire to respond to

the cry of pain from another - my own Self in disguise.By the

grace of God, I love, and in that loving, give; and I pray that the

giving be so constant, so deep, that one day, realization of the

oneness of giver and receiver - the true nature of being - be eternal

in this consciousness.They say God is omnipresent. Everywhere I

look I now see his creation. I see him. Yes, God is very much alive and

well, and living in Puttaparthi. And we have found him. We can see his

face and live!May his blessings fill our lives and touch all those we meet.(From : Transformation of the Heart, compiled and edited by Judy Warner)Copyright reserved by Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications Trust, Prashanti NilayamVisit : Sai Divine Inspirations : http://saidivineinspirations.blogspot.com/ Sai Messages : http://saimessages.blogspot.com/ Love Is My Form : http://loveismyform.blogspot.com/