This is being written on the Mahasamadhi Day and devotees all over the country are celebrating that blessed event and it is desirable that they should learn more of that event and of the great soul whose every act including his casting off the physical body was highly instructive and inspiring.
To Great ones that view with perfect equanimity and power the vast abysm of time (including in it, not merely the immediate past, present and future, but also periods far remote – even hundreds of centuries remote) and take birth when they like and quit the terrestrial sphere when they like, death is no terror. It is as much of a stage in the progress of their affairs, as birth, education, travel etc. They take note frequently of their previous lives and their bearing on the present and future contacts they make or draw devotees to make with them. Neither their death nor any of the other stages of their life can be a matter for mourning. Soon after Sai Baba passed away on 15th October 1918, a lady at Bombay saw it in her dream and said to herself with sadness that Sai Baba is dying. Sai Baba appeared in her dream again and corrected her saying that people do not talk of saints and sages as dying but as attaining samadhi. This Vijaya Dasami combined with Ekadasi is a day for rejoicing to Sai Baba’s devotees, and the reason will be set out presently.
Sai Baba is a Samartha Sadguru, whose main task was not merely to shower temporal blessings on “His children,” the devotees – but to lead them to His own position of perfect attainment. They should outgrow their petty ambitions, their narrow aversions and attachment and rise to the full height of their stature. They are potentially God. The divine in them should expand and burst the cocoon of Ignorance now wrapping them and dimming their splendor. As Sai Baba put it, they should become himself. His words and deeds were all directed to the ultimate achievement of this goal and the temporal blessings showered were mere baits, mere toys to lead them to trust Sai Baba and boldly nay joyously, to follow Him with implicit faith on which He would not care to show them more than one step – the immediate step.
All ignorance that chains the devotees and all men is found to be rooted in or closely intertwined with the mistaken notion of the self. No person or creature seems to be without a consciousness or some working idea of his or its self. One in a million, however has full or adequate realization of himself or his self. What is it that one refers to when one talks of oneself? Almost invariably, if one frankly analyses his answers to this question, one is aghast at one’s inability to say what one really is dealing with. The subject deals easily enough with objects – but in trying to deal with itself (the subject) there is no clear grasp. So, one is often advised by great seers to go on frequently raising the question “Who or What am I?” and Sai Baba gave the same advice occasionally – Very few came to Him who had power to enter on this path of Inquiry, Vichara Marga.
But when one perseveres in this enquiry, especially with the help of great souls like Sai Baba or Ramana Maharishi one makes some degree of progress very easily. The first idea of all people about themselves is that they are their body or at any rate that their self is so closely intertwined with that body and its appurtenances that it seems inseparable from these. But surely one is not these severable appurtenances, e.g., bank, balance, stick, nails, hair, features etc., Even after rejecting (if they are able to reject) the entire gross body as not the self, the subtler bodies present greater difficulties to progress in this analysis of the soul. The senses, the vegetative life (Pranas) and even the intellectual powers and faculties may be reduced to the level of possessions of the self. A certain intangible self or ego seems to remain as the possessor of these, as the central substance with the rest as attributes. But this only seems so and seems for a moment or two. Presently that glimpse is gone and the old identification with all the gross sheaths and their appurtenances return and they are in their conduct guided – not by the evanescent glimpses but by their current notions, labelled as ignorance by themselves and others. How is this fetter of ‘Body self’ ideology to be snapped asunder? This fetter is called Hridhaya Granti. Sai Baba is worshiped as Hridhaya Granti Bhedaka in the Namavali. One that cuts the knot of this Ignorance, not merely in himself but also in his devotees. It is the root of all mischief; and no illumination or self – realization is possible without uprooting this noxious weed. Sai Baba uprooted it not merely by His words but also by His acts and most forcibly by His exits from and entrances into bodies.
Sai Baba rebuked some young men who wished to a photograph of His body, evidently with a view to secure a permanent picture and thereby greater contact with and knowledge of Sai Baba. The boys were advised not to take a photograph of the Sai Baba body but to pull down the wall that hid Sai Baba from their view. “It is the Teli’s wall that hides the view. Knock it down and we see each other clearly face to face” said He. Sai Baba’s words were highly cryptic. He wanted to knock down their notion that the Sai Baba body was Sai Baba and they themselves were their bodies. If the bodies constituted the personality people were evidently different from each other. But as really the self or personality is not the body, however closely intertwined it may be with the body, there is no basis for taking the soul or self to be many or varying. Said Sai Baba, “People think that they are all different from each other. But in this, they are mistaken. I am in you. You are in Me.” “Go on revolving on this. You will realize it.”
But Sai Baba’s conduct was a far more eloquent exposition than His words, which were. “I am not this body. This is my house.” “I am not here. My Guru Mowrshad has taken me away.” He once thrust His hands over the fire and they were badly scorched. Asked about some medical treatment for the pain he should be suffering, He answered that His entire body might be placed over a huge fire and burnt, and that He would all the while enjoying the fun.
The valiant also sometimes die before their death. In 1886, Sai Baba admonished a devotee, Mhalsapathy as to what should be done to the Sai body. “I am going to see Allah (God). Look after this body for three days. If I return, I shall look after it. If I do not, inter this body thereafter in that place (pointing out a place).” Then the breath, the pulse and all other signs of life suddenly disappeared. And Sai Baba was but a corpse. After the lapse of three days He rose into life again. After this resurrection, he continued to work through physical body for thirty two years.
In 1916 again, Sai Baba prepared others for His approaching end. He detained Nana Saheb Nimonkar by His side saying, “Bury me first and then go away.” Again in 1918, he indicated to Uddhavesa Bua that there was no need for him to send his fortnightly letters to Sai Baba. Two months before the Mahasamadhi, Sai Baba sent a cryptic message to a Mahomedan saint, in which He said that God was taking away the lamp he had lighted. On receipt of that message, tears dropped from the eyes of that saint. To another holy man he sent two hundred rupees with a direction that the normal ceremonies of beating drums with certain recitation and mass feeding should be carried on.
Upto the 15th of October 1918, He went on, as though nothing unusual was to happen. Fear of his being lost to the devotees had no doubt been entertained by several of them even 6 or 7 years previously. He had allayed these fears by assuring them that the dropping of the body would not affect or alter His immediate presence at all places and at all times and his ready showering of responses to their prayers. From under the tomb (where the body would, that people would be accustomed to treat as Sai Baba), He would work vigorously. That assurance He gave over and over again. The intermixture of the ideas that Sai Baba was a man playing the part of a kind but powerful guru to the devotees and that He was all the same their God, was frequently taking place in their hearts with varying success. Sometimes, especially for the best developed devotees, the God idea of him would be uppermost, almost drowning the idea that He was working through a body. This would be the case during group Aratis or private individual prayers when highly intense – and of course such cases were rare during Sai Baba’s life time. Life in the physical body however necessary are useful to start the contact with devotees, at times impeded their progress on spiritual path. Hence as in the case of Shri Krishna, the saviors gross body was taken away from the gross vision of the multitude. Leaving his subtler forms, especially the fame body woven out of his marvelous and gracious life history to carry on the main life work or the mission for which the body had been assumed. The benefits of the transition from the body life of the saint to the unseen life were vast and incalculable in each case. Sai Baba is now clearly identified with God by the staunchest devotees. Sai Rama, Sai Krishna, Sai Datta etc., are seen to be real one and the same. He is referred to as Apantaratma if identified with the old Jive in the body, just as Narada and Bhrigu were. But in moments of high ecstasy the devotee’s soul is merged in Sai Baba’s and then Sai is Para Brahman and felt to be Para Brahman. For this, the highest benefit derived from approaching Sai Baba, the casting of the body after a wonderful life of service to Humanity, was necessary. Sai is God. Sai IS. Sai always was and will be. None need shy or fear when dealing with Sai Baba. There is now no mosque or Hindustani language or lungi costume or features to attract or deter. All can start with anything or any fact of Sai Baba’s dealing with them and rise into the pure and perfect contact with Brahman or God by force of that thing or fact. Sai Baba’s survival demonstrated by frequent response to prayers and shower of blessings is felt to be a fact requiring no proof. Sai Baba becomes part of the devotee now, all the more easily as there is no Sai body to bother about.
This chapter may well close with the effect of that transition on one of the best developed devotees. Says the North Indian Judge:
I look upon Shri Sai Baba as the Creator Preserver and Destroyer. I did so before His Mahasamadhi in 1918 and I do so now. To me, He is not gone. He is even Now.
To me, He had no limitations. Of course, when He with us, there was the flesh tabernacle. That was prominently brought to our notice at times. But mostly the infinite aspect of His was what remained before me. I thought of Him as a mental or spiritual image, in which the finite and infinite blended very perfectly – yet allowing the finite to appear before us at times. Now that the body has been cast off, the infinite alone remains as “Sai Baba”
By: BV NARASIMHA SWAMY
Source: October 1941 Sai Sudha
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