The central theme of the human-divine is the core of the Bhagavad Geeta and of Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s affirmation of Man and Sattvic Action in this world, filled with love or Prem, not of other worldly assets in after-life and non-activity in this life. Service with Love is the rational humanism in God’s mandate. Spiritual realisation is not material negation but living the pure life charged with fellow-feeling, in a holistic sense of identity and non-duality of all things in Creation as manifestation of that Supreme Power which is also the Absolute Unmanifest. The living awareness of oneness is the root and fruit of cosmic consciousness. Once this higher supra-mentalism – in Sri Aurobindo’s diction – becomes integral to one’s being, the laws of Nature are at one’s command and miracles are thereafter natural, not impossible. Science rises to super-science, matter rises to consciousness and a harmony, coherence and total coordination between spirit and other forms of existence emerges. You truly become an Avatar, an incarnation of the divine. Then you are a Paramahamsa, a Bhagavan. Among them we may cite Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Ramana Maharshi and that radiant Light of Love Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Swami Vivekananda blended materialism and spiritualism into a radical wholeness. Many other lofty names throng but illustratively here I mention that cyclonic sadhu whose vibrant voice called bigots to true goodness and atheists to godliness:
“First, feel from the heart... Do you feel? Do you feel that millions and millions of the descendants of gods and of sages have become next-door neighbours to brutes? Do you feel that millions are starving today, and millions have been starving for ages? Do you feel that ignorance has come over the land as a dark cloud? Has it gone into your blood, coursing through your veins, becoming constant with your heart-beats? Has it made you almost mad? Are you seized with that one idea of the misery of ruin, and have you forgotten all about your name, your fame, your wives, your children, your property, even your own bodies? Have you done that?”
Illustratively, again, is Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali exposing the hypocrisy of holiness w forgets humanliness:
“Leave this chanting and singing and telling of beads! Whom dost thou worship in this lonely dark corner of a temple with doors all shut? Open thine eyes and see thy God is not before thee!
He is there where the tiller is tilling the hard ground and where the pathmaker is breaking stones. He is with them in sun and in shower, and his garment is covered with dust. Put off thy holy mantle and even like him come down on the dusty soil!
Deliverance? Where is this deliverance to be found? Our master himself has joyfully taken upon him the bounds of creation; he is bound with us all for ever.
Come out of thy meditations and leave aside thy flowers and incense! What harm is there if thy clothes become tattered and stained? Meet him and stand by him in toil and in sweat of thy brow.”
God is not a Sunday discourse or Friday Namaz or temple Bhajan but a constant Presence within oneself which chastens life’s stream, raises the states of consciousness and divinises, never denies, human activity here on earth and therefore guides Karma or action in tune with dharma righteous values which sustain the happy union of the whole community through a higher enlightenment beyond the grosser pleasures at the sensory levels. God indwells in man and irrelevant if imprisoned in holy books and hallowed spots. The dynamics of divinity have spoken of spiritual values while believing in atheism. The true objection to religion and God has been the use of this ‘opiate’ as a treacherous tool of man’s systemic inhumanity to man. But once you realize that true religion, the religion of man, is science of the spirit, that matter and spirit are not antithetical, that human liberation is divine mission and that that cosmic vision is authentic which sees in all Creation the indelible imprint of the Imperishable, Infinite, All-Pervasive Power, then religion, in its Advaitic authenticity, is the most revolutionary ideology against exploitation, injustice and inequality and for liberty, fraternity and human dignity. The vice is not in God but in Man’s abuse of God. Ingersol, the agnostic, held: an honest God is the noblest work of man. And Lenin pinpointed the rationale behind the lity to God, the Anti-Man.
Many empires have been built as a joint adventure of the flag and the cross; many millions of women have been denied freedom in the name of Allah. Many wars have been fought because Gods have fallen out. Many injustices have been inflicted on masses of men using scriptures as weapons. But universal religion, oneness of God, a vision of the Supreme as the divinity in every person, the affirmation of equality and fellowship, of worship of God through service of man, of compassion for the suffering as the condition of godliness, of spiritual dignity of the prince and the pauper, of the Brahmin and the Bhangee, of refusal to share our wealth with the lowly and the needy as denial of God – how can such a spiritual principle which is the strength behind world peace, common prosperity of humanity, opposition to exploitation, promotion of social justice and love of fellow-men as basic to religion, be condemned concept by the heartless? The great spiritual leaders, seers, poets and reformers of India and elsewhere have been in the vanguard of revolutionary religious awakening acting on the theme that Ice of man is worship of God.
Bhagavan Baba has the powers of Super-Nature because he lives in cosmic consciousness. For him every piece of Creation is divine. For, as has been rightly said: “The ancients have stated that God sleeps in the mineral, awakens in the vegetable, walks in the animal and thinks in Man.” (Kanthryn Breese-Whitting)
The great gospel of Bhagavan Baba is love of the living as children of God and realisation of the Self by a holistic consciousness of all things great and small. “The Lord who made us all, made and loveth us all.”
The devotees of Baba hold Bhajans and sing themselves unto divine ecstasy. Why? Because it is the Bhakti Marga.
Bhagavan Baba or Sri Sathya Sai Baba is a boon to our generation. Where he walks is hallowed ground; where he sits is shrine; and where his name is chanted, tuned to cosmic vibrations, is divine presence. His doings challenge the grosser sciences, maybe, but his teachings vitalise our spiritual heritage. His message of compassion, his profound emphasis on high values and his human-divine expression of Truth elevate our emotions and refine our inner being, which we may sum up as the song of Sai. Says he:
“There is no creature without Love; the lowest loves itself, at least.”
“… Sai has come in order to achieve the supreme task of uniting as one family the entire mankind, through the bond of brotherhood, of affirming and illumining the atmic reality of each being in order to reveal the divine which is the basis on which the entire cosmos rests, and of instructing all to recognize the common divine heritage that binds man to man, so that man can rid himself of the animal, and rise into the divinity which is his goal”
The melody of Sai, the raga of Baba, the music of Bhagavan, surge up from the deepest and constitute, in a strange way, the science of being and the art of living. In moods contemplation, when self - awareness spreads, there is “silence more musical than any song.” Nada Brahman is the Key to the Universal Self.
It is in the fitness of things that homage is paid to Baba through song and art, silence and expression.
The supreme realisation in personalised incarnation is Baba. So adore Him.
About the Author:
Sri V. R. Krishna Iyer was a distinguished senior judge in the Supreme Court of India. He began his career as a brilliant lawyer and was a Minister for Law, Home, Prisons and Social Welfare, Irrigation and Power in the Kerala State Government.
Eventually he became a Judge of the Kerala High Court and later joined the Central Law Commission before accepting Judgeship of the Supreme Court. He was well-known for his passion for legal aid to the poor and pioneered judicial activism in India. He was conferred the Padma Vibhushan in 1999. Born in 1905, he completed his earthly sojourn in 2014 at the ripe age of 99.
Source: Golden Age 1980 (55th Birthday Offering)
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