Swami Ganeshnath Maharaj, Mahamandaleswar at Bhima Shankar tells our Sai Aura team, how to respond to the raging pandemic through Sai grace.
Can devotion to Sai Baba help us deal with the Covid-19 pandemic?
■ The pandemic has a bright side, too. While there are inconveniences, fear, and uncertainties, cultivating a spiritual outlook by total surrender to Sai Baba will helps us; we may not be able to change our circumstances, but we will be able to see them in a positive light. The very first Chapter of Sai Satcharita points out how Sai Baba monitored the epidemic of Cholera at Shirdi. Keep on reading it.
Sai Baba’s Advaita Vedanta points to one reality, yet why is there so much suffering?
■ First, we should have the right concept of that Sai-power. It makes you to ‘talk now and hear now’. Sai Baba is close behind our every thought, word, and action. What is it that makes me think that ‘I am?’ How do we breathe automatically? How do our hearts continue to beat? ‘I as an individual do not exist, but that power allows me to work, form concepts, and to react.’ When we suffer setbacks, we ask questions as to why there are inequality, suffering, and tragedy. It’s a reminder to get back to our source – that is Sai Maharaj.
Ultimately, one feels that one has to accept everything as it is.
Every day, three things happen — creation, preservation, and destruction; they are all concomitant. These are signs of the life force. Our master Sai Maharaj would say, “You look to me, I look to you”. The world we live in is a school in which observation and experience offer us ample opportunities. So we take everything that can help us learn, and expand our horizon.
When Sai Baba says ‘I am in you and you are in me’ what does it mean?
■ In deep sleep, there is no duality; there are no thoughts. When thoughts arise, then duality comes, but in sleep, I don’t know ‘who am I.’
If we try to discipline our minds, we reach a stage when we become still. When thought is not there, there is no duality; if thought is present, duality exists.
Some say that with devotion to Sai Baba we may experience non-dualism for a short while, but we continue to live in a dualistic world of pleasure and pain…
■ Absolutely right! So long as we are an embodied self, duality will be there, but with total surrender to Lord Sainath, we’ll know that there is only one principle working everywhere. During our inward journey, we get a glimpse of it. It’s like one painter is given a brush, paint, and canvas and he draws different caricatures with the same material. One caricature makes you happy, another makes you sad, yet another frightens you; all three of them come from the same painter. Non-duality is existent while duality is also present. When you contemplate the universal spirit you experience total bliss.
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