Obstacles and Objections

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Obstacles and Objections

 

By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

 

 

SEEK NAUGHT ELSE BUT GOD

 

 

" When you are right everything goes well. "

Seek your centre - the Divine

Who is the pivot of the worlds?

Know, all revolve round it

At His bidding and call,

Then you have freedom and joy,

True harmony and peace

All 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)