One year after Sri Sathya Sai Baba's passing on April 24, 2011, I have yet to find the right words for what he meant to my family and to me. It is not a cliché but a professional admission, since I rarely feel such an inadequacy. My belief in Baba was unexpected, though no student of devotion sees grace as anything but bestowed.
My parents were not Sai Baba followers at first. In fact, there were no pictures of even Shirdi Sai Baba in our house when I was a child. The puja room was quietly reserved for a well-ordered, ritually cleansed orthodox sort of pantheon. When the encounter with Sathya Sai came, I was 17 years old. My parents had met him and decided he was God incarnate. They also decided I better come and get his blessings since I wasn't doing too well in my studies. I went to Puttaparthi somewhat reluctantly, since the very idea of God, Guru, Bhajans, Vibhuthi, being "goody-goody," as we used to say, all of that seemed the opposite of where I wanted to go. I cannot say I was reluctant on philosophical principle though. I was perhaps tempted by the possibility that what my parents were saying could be true, that Baba could bless me with magical powers to do well on my exams.
I had never seen a place like Prashanthi Nilayam before. Even before the sun rose over the ashram, so much seemed to be happening, and so calmly, elegantly, at that. It felt literally like it was an embodiment of peace. I don't know if it was the place, or the people who made it that way. There were thousands of people there, all kinds, Indians and foreigners, young and old, affluent and not. There were young men from the school there, like me, who spoke good English, planning on becoming engineers and scientists, and they all seemed to be perfectly happy with their bhajans and vibhuthi and "Sai Rams." There were also foreigners, and they seemed to be finding meaning in our culture, just like I had imagined The Beatles might have done decades earlier. There was a university, a planetarium, international dialing. There was also a Ganesha temple, and some Vedic chanting, but beyond that it was not my grandmothers' religion anymore. Baba's world suddenly seemed to me like the future and not the decrepit past I had so feared.
But all of this was only secondary to meeting the man who became my God. Like my father and mother, I too could not think of him after that encounter as anything but an avatar, God incarnate. But the interesting thing was that unlike the gods I had believed in before who were all in the temple or in my head, here was someone who was playing that role in real life. He played that role well, for in the months and years that followed, Swami became more than a symbolic deity or figurehead for our prayers. He became our go-to God, someone my parents called on at every major occasion for guidance, blessings and sometimes just like that. The only way to describe the role he played is a Telugu expression, a pedda dhikku, the elder-refuge. At times, it seemed like our concerns were mostly mundane but he was patient. He gave my parents practical advice but to him it was not an end in itself, just a way to ensure the conditions we needed to focus on spiritual growth. He never wavered from spiritual leadership, and needless to say, he never sought anything from us in return.
In later years, Baba became less frequently involved with our family concerns, but the belief remained that he was our God, Guru and Guide. He spoke to my parents on occasion, and offered them just the right words of encouragement and direction. In a way, that distance helped me see him differently. I began to read his teachings. They seemed to represent a way of seeing the world that we hardly found anywhere else in the modern, media-saturated world. He was talking about things we had only heard about in our moral science books in school, and unlike those, he seemed to make these ideas relevant and important. He offered ways of interpreting even familiar myths and legends that seemed to enforce a deeply universal, humanitarian, and no-nonsense meaning of god and life. He made me think of religion as a form of culture, a way we make sense of everything, rather than a mere technique for getting what we want from some higher power. He made me think of religion as not some inviolable code written down in the past, but as a resource, a deep well of insight stored in our poems, stories, myths and art, rediscovered and reinterpreted from one generation to another. He made me think that at its heart all religion is about selfless love, and he showed me that it is humanly possible.
Chris Fici: Why Being a Hindu Has Made Me a Better Catholic
International Sri Sathya Sai Organization
Sathya Sai Baba - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
But Sai Baba was also a controversial figure though, and I was wondering how the author responded to the accusations of his critics. Were the criticisms heard, reflected upon, and dismissed after thoughtful consideration, or were they dismissed with less need for consideration because of a belief that they simply couldn't be true?
I hesitate to bring the criticisms up, as this tribute so clearly is not meant to be controversial, but the devotion evidenced in the tribute raises what I believe are legitimate questions about how that devotion can be maintained in the presence of such strong criticism.
He was just a vehicle to enable you to see this. Now, your traditions and sacred books are open to you as well as the road to selfless love.
What then are you to do?
Namaste
Once they are dead and gone, they lose their divine powers,
This applies even to the mighty messengers and prophets of God of all religions.
What more to say about Sai Baba?
May be their ideas have tremendous influence. But erecting their statues and idols garlanding them and worshiping them as deities standing in front of the stone statues, is difficult to comprehend
It means associating idols as symbols with one true almighty God
People have every right to philosophize these as per their religion.
f&f
This is a false statement as once we have advanced in a certain level of awareness we never lose that awareness. ie soul thing. Those so called "divine powers" are a direct reflection of our level of awareness of reality. ie that Reality that underlies all appearances.
That awareness comes through a process of realization not knowledge. One is an understanding and one is in the realm of intellectual knowledge. World of difference between them but they may be related to some degree.
We are all expressions of God and all divine. no one is more divine than another. now some have risen to a higher level of consciousness development.
No one not even the Hitlers of the world are any less of an expression of the Absolute. once we come to see the necessity of "ignorance" ie our original unawareness, for souls to exist as unique expressions of the Infinite we can see clearly all are divine.
The study of the Hindu masters is a worthwhile study. my favorite is Aurobindo and his teachings but all souls are unique so each will have a unique path and journey and a favorite guru.
We humans seem to have a need to make a God in our image.
Either the concept of Unity of Being or the Idea of Apparenticism. Which is right? Are both reconcilable?
You may say the difference is only in form but not in substance. You may mix up the substance and accident.
Existence is common both in God and in the universe and this has led non-Muslim mystics to conclude that God means the Universe.
But the Ultimate Reality is still far away.
As every human has a soul, the Universe has a soul, it is like the relation that the embryo has with its mother when both are mixed up with each other.
God knew best, I am incapable of arguing on that.
Some religious philosophers think there is unity between God and His creations like Sai Baba, but in Islam most philosophers assert that, that Unity is not real.
They say that human intellect can reach what they call the universal soul( may be it is termed Nirvana, ) but it can not move a step further and so we say God is incomparable and unfathomable.
God is not the Universe, the Ultimate reality is still very, very far away. However the Quran says, God is closer to you than your jugular vein.
People take the shadow( may be Sai Baba or other morally upright Saints and mystics) of Ultimate Reality as Reality itself.
This is the age-old debate if the soul ever merges with the Infinite. I suspect it does but when or if it does; it does not lose anything but gains everything.
I.e. it becomes that that is. Or it always maintains its unique identity. Either way it is beyond we humans ability to comprehend at this time of our evolution of consciousness process.
After all how far away is infinite? Maybe as humans we are half way there now. Ok just kidding.
As a young child I remember a TV show where the commander of a space ship stated “we are half way to infinite”. That kept me thinking as a child for a very long time that we can get half way to infinite.
You are on to something very important. But now let go of the teachers and the scriptures. You do not forsake them if you let go. Let go, and see for yourself in your own way with your faculties of seeing what there is.
Some people are trapped in the shadow of form whether it be murtis (idols) or books, or doctrine, or philosophy or the words of wise scholars. Some people find their way through the shadow to that which remains unnameable and incomprehensible and yet accessible.
Salaam,
Pratitya
That which is sacred and that which is defilement both come from the Absolute. To say all is one does not mean there is no difference between the saint and Hitler.