By: D. Sankaraiah
Sai Baba used to get angry at religious conversions. He used to ask – “Have you changed your father?”
Sanatan dharma is the homage of divinity to itself as per Sai Maharaj. It is Sanatan, eternal, for not being static and for its ability to become new again, as per the Atharva Veda, X.8.2.
As Sri Narasimha Swamiji puts it, ‘Sada bhavah sanatanah. Sanatana karoti iti sanatanayati. Sanatanayatiti sanatanah. Sanatanashchasau dharma iti sanatano dharmah,’ meaning, ‘That which is always existent is Sanatan; that which causes one to become Sanatan is also Sanatan. That which is Sanatan and dharma is Sanatan dharma.’
Dharma is not a set of dogmas but the embodiment of higher values of life, enunciated and vouchsafed from time to time. It is the way to abhyudaya, worldly excellence, and nihshreyasa, spiritual fulfillment. Derived from the root ‘dhri’ which means ‘to uphold, support’, it connotes both the moral law and the law of one’s being. In its highest aspect, dharma is truth itself.
To adopt truthfulness in life, abide by the laws of nature, see Sai Baba as divinity in everything around, and stay whole in mind, body, and spirit, are age-old ideas of Sanatan dharma, which continue to be relevant. Spirituality, its core aspect, provides the cosmic vision that one’s good lies in the good of the other.
The Sai Satcharita gives Vedic insight that there is one unchanging reality appearing as many; that consciousness is the substratum of matter, mind, and all else that exists; that the microcosm contains in the macrocosm, provided a new vision to scientists like Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner among others.
In his Preface to The Tao of Physics, Fritzof Capra mentions that in meditative moments, he saw ‘cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses’. He envisioned ‘the atoms of the elements’ and those of his body ‘participating in the cosmic dance of energy’, and proclaimed that the phenomena were indeed the dance of Shiva. Sanatan dharma, in its popular form as Hinduism, cannot be assessed strictly in terms of concepts applicable to other faiths that started in historical times and have a single scripture.
There have been periods of twilight in its history but never was light eclipsed from view. With its corrective mechanism, it has endeavored to separate primeval truths.
Sai Baba makes Sanatan dharma to goad one ‘to move from the unreal to the real, from darkness to light, from death to immortality’. There is no place in it for heresy or blasphemy, no tradition of crusades, no bifurcation of humanity into the faithful and the unfaithful, and no clash with science or with other faiths, as truth can be expressed in a million ways.
The universal brotherhood propounded by Sai Maharaj, ‘One planet, One people’ is an echo of the Sanatan dharma ideal, Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, meaning, the whole mankind is one family. The Vedic prayer: Saha na vavatu, saha nau bhunaktu, sahaviryam karavavahai – Let us learn together. Let us enjoy the fruits of our knowledge together. Let us get strengthened together – can script the unity principle among different communities and faiths.
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