“You do not even know your own religion; how can you know ME”. These words, vibrant and loud, broke through the depth of my sleep, early one morning, a decade ago. The voice was low and very deep and yet I recognised it to be Bhagavan Baba's voice, speaking to dispel my doubts and agony. During those early years of my meeting Bhagavan my mind was disturbed. How could l, a Muslim, to believe in what Bhagavan was saying? I had asked this question in pain and was torn by a conflict between the heart and the head.
The voice showed me the way. In the morning I went to the University's library and pulled out books on Sufism. There started an education that was to last for many years. I was made to sit at the Feet of many Sufi Masters, read through the medium of many languages the truth of my religious beliefs and the holy Quran. The grey silence of the in the library became a real home with Bhagavan's hand ever helping me There were times when I searched for a book, but found another manuscript, which I did not seek After hours of struggle I would give up and taking the unwanted book, finally realized that it contained some information for my growth.
BABA, STEP BY STEP GUIDED ME TO THE STRAIGHT PATH. He opened for me a new world, so mysteriously summed up in "LA-ILL.A-HA-ILLA ALLAH (there is no God but God). A few glimpses of this world of beauty and divine unity are noted in the following lines: They constitute a continued experience of Divine knowledge.
Bhajan time in the evening at Prasanthi Nilayam — from the capsuled darkness of the loudspeaker there swelled a voice, celebrating the glory of the ONE with many Names.
The sound swirled and eddied, breaker-like, splashing the tree tops with their leaves already swatched in the liquid gold of the setting sun. If then circled and dripped in fine stream-lets on the lines of the devotees sitting in front of the Mandir; and from there to the cemented floor. It saturated the granite heart till nothing but the awareness of the ONE remained, throbbing in the rust-brown clutches of the twilight. And, in that multifaceted consciouness, appeared many a lithograph, beautifully unique.
The most distinct of them was the Quranic injunction:
Beyond the overflowing persuasiveness of words, there was the first part of the Testimony (SHADAT): La illaha llla Allah. (there is no God but God) With its many dimensions of explanations, it looked mysterious, as if it was etched on the bronze disc of time, self-luminous, self-sustained. Still further down, behind the words and the semanticity there was the majesty of the sound-just two letters A/a: and L/1/. The entire Islamic affirmation of God was the manipulation of those two sounds.
In an interview granted to college teachers in 1980, Bhagavan explained that A/a:/ represents ATMA and L/L means Laya, mergence in Atma. The whole display of the creation and its dissolution, as well as its secret was summed up in these two sounds. The song, the sacred assembly and the Remembrance is enough to remind the seeker of Presence of the ONE and only. Yet where is He? The same question was put to Mian Miran of Punjab.” Where is God?” He was asked. "In you and around you."
Curiously enough some 300 years later, Bhagavan wrote on the Quran of a Mulsim devotee: "I am in you, beside you and around you, be happy." The world may not believe it but a positive proof of it was experienced by the family of the writer. My old mother, once saw Bhagavan in a mystic vision when all of us were perturbed about the absence of my three children. The children had gone to do an important work and though it was pitched dark they had not returned. While praying for their safety she saw Bhagavan Baba standing by their side and described Him whom she had never seen in real life... “He is protecting your children, be calm." She said." He is the real I in them”.
Needless to remark, that the personal pronoun “I" is another Divine image. Bhagavan has pointed this out. The Quranic verses, like the remarkable lines in Bhagavat Geeta, make use of it most effectively. Sometimes they indicate love: “Tell my servants/that I am indeed/ close to them / The oft forgiving, most Merciful," (XV: 49) It is also used for admonition: For He is just one God: Then fear Me." (xv11:51) It becomes the terrifying image of Divine retribution and human destiny:
Who is this mysterious I? So close and yet so imperious ? The holy Vedas declare it as Ekam Eva Adviteeyam (one alone without a second), and in Bhagavan's words, “It is impossible to measure Him with anything. He is omnipotent.” (Sanathana Sarathi, Oct. 1988, p. 261) The Quran describes this Atmic principle as AHAD. "And there is none/like unto Him (CXII :4) Bhagavan's grace awakened in me an intuitive love of the One and only. I became a candle at His door step clamouring to be a Muslim, and nothing else." One whose heart and purpose are drowned in God, so as to see nothing but Him" (SUFI, Laleh Bakhitiar, p.34) For Bhagavan this is also the purpose of life: "Seek God, Love Him, Merge in Him." (SAI AVATAR)
In Islam, the symbol of this awakened and unifying consciousness is LIGHT. The examples of light are often so close that one is amazed at the parallels. Like the holy Gita, the Quran also declares God to be "The Light of heaven and earth." (XXIV: 34) Every created object is a lamp filled with the Divine luminosity:
Strange though it may appear, the same image is used by Rumi:
 |
| Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273), Persian Poet |
But the light is the same
Fix your gaze upon the Light
And you are delivered from the dualism
Inherent in the finite body.
(MASNAVI: Ill, 1259)
How beautiful it is to cease to be and melt into the warm, limpid existence of the ONE and only, to experience that in reality you are not two but ONE. The ecstacy of this experience alas is not given to an ordinary self. The Mind soon claims its victim. Soon we see two whereas it is one. But the purified heart, on the other hand swims in the ocean of the Divine Unity, and the Sufi, who is merged in God, sees everything as God.
Jili, the Islamic philosopher has called this as the Principle of Whatat-ul Wajood. “You possess the treasure of the Divine ESSENCE,” says Attar in JAWAHAR-AL-ZAT, “and all its attributes”. “Bhagavan puts it more poetically by using the common image of the SEA.” I AM THE OCEAN; EVERYTHING IS IN ME. “This is the state for which the heart of the Sufi yearns and its symbol is AHAD. Proclaimed by many in such a way that it has become unity in diversity. “In reality God and Man are one. (Aminuddin A’la: Risala-i-Qurbia) Similarly, Bhule Shah of Punjab sings -The Lord is not separate from us.”
In Islamic escoteric experience the state of mergence for most people, does not last long. Often it is granted in the form of a vision:
One night after prayers were over… I continued to meditate. Absorbed in ecstasy, I had a vision. There was a Khankah (monastery). Suddenly I saw that I was outside. I saw the entire universe in the structure of light. Everything had become one colour and all the atoms of all beings proclaimed "I AM THE TRIRH." (Shamsusuddin - SUFI)
There must have been many who had this experience as a continued state but to the average man such knowledge was not revealed. It was meant for the assemblies of the elites. The glimpses, like the one described above, where the spark is absorbed for a while in the Fire, indicate the end of the journey. It is detailed in the image of the abiding Face in the Quran. “All that is on earth will perish. But will abide the Face of thy Lord full of Majesty. Bounty and Honour.” (LV: 27)
How long does it take for each soul to span the distant, is a Divine secret? Lucky are those who are alert to the call, to the chance that invites them to be a twig for the Divine Fire, especially during the life time of an Avatar/Awaliya Allah: the direct Image of the Divine. When the twig is burnt away there still remains a heart reflecting a glorious picture of the unified cosmos:
My heart has opened unto every form. It is a pasture for the gazelles, a cloister for the Christian monks, a temple for the idols, the Ka'ba for the pilgrim, the tablet of Torah and the book of the Quran. (Ibnual Arabi FUSUS.)
This cosmic vision is symbolic of the Garden in the Quran, promising peace and the Presence of God, and above all there is the much awaited union:
And Bhagavan Baba completes the picture: “There is nothing separate when all is one.”
About the Author
Prof. Zeba Bashiruddin served as Reader in English at the Osmania University, Hyderabad, for over 25 years. She joined the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning at Anantapur Campus as Reader, Department of English in 1982 and subsequently served as Head and Professor, Department of English. Her son Syed Akbaruddin was a career bureaucrat and served as India's permanent representative at the United Nations at New York from January 2016 to April 2020. Her second son Syed Kabir is an alumnus of SSSIHL. His experience can be read here. Dr. Zeba's book 'Sai Baba and the Muslim Mind' authored in 1998 can be read here.
Source: Sai Vandana 1990 (65th Birthday)
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