Obstacles and Objections

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Obstacles and ObjectionsBy Sri Narasimha SwamijiSEEK NAUGHT ELSE BUT GOD"When you are right everything goes well."Seek your centre - the DivineWho is the pivot of the worlds?Know, all revolve round itAt His bidding and call,Then you have freedom and joy,True harmony and peaceAll other quests are vain"The objection to Sai worship did not come always from orthodox sections. It came mostly from the inertia of human nature. People do not wish to move out of ruts or sloughs into which they have fallen. Sai bhakti is now a fact of very great religious importance to millions of souls in this country and the SAI light is being carried across the waters to illuminate distant corners of the earth. Sai bhakti is a live force.Some times persons ask these questions: -Do you ask us to give up our Rama worship and Shiva worships? And if we have those worships, why

should we worship Sai? Why should you go on propagating Sai and not Shiva or Rama?In the first place, one has to give up all hope of satisfying such curious objections because the objections arise not from reasoning but from the underlying mentality or emotional factors.The first question reminds us of the opt-quoted illustration of a leading question - Have you left off beating your mother? Answer Yes or no - there is a vicious assumption, which is patent in the question about the mother. Nobody would object to people worshipping Shiva or Rama. Sai Baba sent Appa Kulkarni to worship Mohiniraj i.e., Shiva at Nivas before appearing to answer in a court case. He sent Shama to worship Goddess Vani on a hill and Megha to worship Khandoba. He blamed Chandorkar for bypassing a Datta temple.The second question is again a baseless assumption. Nobody asked people to give up Shiva or Rama

worship and take Sai as a substitute. The question may be however referring to the fact that several hereditary worshippers of Shiva or Rama or other Gods have taken ardently to Sai worship which at the final stage drowns all other worship in rt. Sai becomes finally the one God and so the same as the other forms of God eg., Shiva, Rama etc., The worshippers find enormous, unmistakable and clear benefit accruing to them from the heartfelt Sai worship that they are going for, and above all they felt the presence of Sai as an ever present guardian with them, undertaking to safeguard and advance all their temporal and spiritual interests and carrying out the undertaking by most miraculous or remarkable means unavailable to such worshippers and undreamt of by them till they came to Sai Baba.Coming to the objection to any propaganda being done for Sai, the short answers are this. The honey and flavor

in the flower do propaganda for the flower to attract bees and carry on the work of more reproduction of the plant so that the earth may be replenished and more fruits may be had. This is nature. Similarly the bhakta after achieving so much of welfare desires in his heart of hearts to share it with others, and therefore communicates his experience to others so that the others may also have the same benefit following the well-known principle – "When you get nice things to eat, do not monopolize it, but share it with others."Ramanuja's Guru gave him a sacred 'mantra' for 'Moksha' consisting in the utterance of the holy name of God and advised him not to reveal it to others, but keep it a profound secret. What did Ramanuja do? He got up on the temple tower and shouted the 'mantra', and later said, "If I have committed a sin, let me go to hell. But if the 'mantra', being heard by others, will

save them, let all these innumerable people who hear it get saved hereby. I am willing to be damned to save all.This is exactly the feeling of propagandists of Baba. Sai propaganda is downright truth without the least tinge or taint of falsehood in rt. The present Sai propaganda is unselfish and absolutely true.• It was Thirukkoshti Nambi, who initiated Sri Ramanuja into the ASHTAKSHARI - 'Om Namo Narayanaya' - the Moksha Sadhana. (Source Shri Sai Padananda April 1998)