Is Sai Baba a Breaker or Builder? By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

[Guest guest]

If one had no other pre-existing loyalties and came to Baba to treat him as

one's Guru-God and his name as the sacred guru mantra, Baba allowed and even

encouraged it. To such people, Baba even touched his own pictures and

presented or returned the same for worship, and assured people that he

resided in the picture thus worshipped, and even gave proofs of such

residence. Baba, however, never gave any picture or other object to Moslems

or Christians that had a strong aversion to the worship of objects. Baba

never disturbed the faith of people in their own scriptures.

 

Building or creation is a complex process, and involves the replacing of old

forms by new ones. Though the old order change giving place to the new, in

god's plan, several people stick to their old forms and these are called

superstitions. But instead of applying opprobrious epithets to these, it is

better to allay their fears by demonstrating that apparent destruction by

God of the old is an indispensable part of His constructive work and that

really destruction is construction in such cases. When in the march of

evolution, the single cell bursts into two, the death of the old is the

birth of the new. Even where highly complex organisms with sex

characteristics differentiated, the older must wear out and die before the

younger are born and developed.

 

The old dilapidated temple however sacred must be pulled down before the new

beautiful temple is built on the same site. Similarly, though Baba assures

people of his respect for old forms, old gods and gurus, what happens often

is that a new strong, vigorous, charming and fruitful faith in Sai Baba

replaces the old decadent profession of faith in one's older gods and gurus.

But do those enjoying the new faith deplore the loss of the old or even

declare that they have lost anything? In fact, they have lost nothing

really. What has been given up was not any living faith. People should not

give up their living and fruitful faith in Rama, Krishna, etc. and in their

gurus. They never do give up such faith.

 

A more recent instance occurring at Kumbakonam may be repeated. A staunch

Vaishnavite Brahmin was worshipping God as Tirupati Venkatesa and refused to

pay any regard to any other form. He was ailing from very acute and painful

Sciatica and Rheumatism. His son-in-law gave him Baba's udhi and asked him

to repeat Sai Baba's name with faith. At first, he resisted this attempt to

subvert his faith in Venkatesa, as he termed it. But necessity is the mother

of faith.

 

One night, when the pain in his body could not be endured any further, he

suddenly took Baba's udhi and applied it to his legs thrice, calling on Sai

Baba to remove his pain. The effect was instantaneous. The pain was off.

Sleep that he could never obtain instantly supervened. He woke up in the

morning freed from sciatica and was able to walk. He first thought that

Venkatesa had led him into faith in Baba. He finally discovered that Baba

was Venkatesa. Baba's Guru being Venkatesa, or one that had merged his self

in Venkatesa. In fact, there is only one God, however necessary it may be to

start one's faith in God by localizing God and attaching a particular form

and name to Him.

 

Sai enables men ultimately to see that the fruit of former faith is the

present faith, that Sai is no other than the Old Ishta Devata and guru and

that the unifying and harmonizing influence molding their lives and selves

points and leads to that ultimate unity-Sai-chit-Ananda. Such experience has

come to several. Reader, if it has not come to you yet, you also may get it

one day. It is your own God who draws you through the Sai form.

 

Freedom

The truly blessed are those who, flinging freedom aside, have clung to Thy

Lotus-feet;

In pain is their gain;

In defeat is their joy;

In sorrow is their dawn of awakening;

In suffering is their victory!

And to those that smite them, they give their smiles!

And to those that persecute them they send out the benedictions of their

love-filled hearts!

They are the truly free! They have broken all fetters-Aye, even the fetter

of freedom!

 

 

http://www.saileelas.org/magazines/saipadananda/april1999.htm#IsSaiBabaaBrea

kerorBuilder