A Chatolic Priest Meets Sai Baba
Foreword
Many of my friends were alarmed when they learned of my intention to write a book about Sai Baba. They were aware of my convictions about this being who is human only in body. With brotherly concern, they variously advised, begged or beseeched me to publish it under pseudonym, imagining the unhappy consequences I might encounter from the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
I asked myself that I should have no fear in saying what my own eyes have seen. Why should I be afraid to make known what this poor heart of mine experiences before an extraordinary presence? Should I feel guilty for what I have discovered during these years, and be afraid to announce it? Certainly not! On the contrary, I feel quite fortunate. Necessitas enim mihi incumbit: it is not possible to resist the impulse of Truth, and woe to me if I should remain silent!
I write this book dedicating it above all to the Church preciously because I could not let pass, without pointing out to Her who is my Mother, a piece of news which can no longer remain unknown, hidden by indifference, fear, or by general confusion. This work is an undertaking which has made use of me, I would say, only as hired manual labour: I consider its contents the work of Another. It has been written above all for my bishop, Pope; and then for all my fellow bretheren, for my superiors, and for all those who throughout the centuries try to work in the services of, and in the search for, Truth.
Contrary to what those friends of mine fear, I hope - and my heart is certain of it - that these reflections will sound like a call and a warning for a greater spiritual re-awakening.
This era - the era of Sathya, the era of truth - is, in my opinion, a unique moment, which will change the historical and religious order of nations. Certainly the most extraordinary characteristics of this study, in an age in which there is so much talk about sects and religious factions, is that in all the things I have discovered these years, I have found nothing which would prompt an aversion to our religion, nothing which would obstruct our faith. On the contrary! Everything I have meditated on has brought me that much closer to the mysteries I had been celebrating, often without knowing them thoroughly. And it is precisely to Sathya Sai Baba that I owe the renewal of my life as a priest!
In short, my hope is this: that the same thing might happen for many of my fellow bretheren, whom I have found tired, strained and disappointed.
I am grateful to all those who have offered me precious suggestions, in particular to Professor Pierantonio Di Coste, who encouraged and supported the drafting of this book.
I place this book at the feet of Him who inspired it - the only begotten son of yesterday, of today, and of always, the immutable Truth - in the hope that this fruit which He alone has the right to gather will be pleasing to Him and that He will accept it as an offering for His greater glory.
November 23, 1990
Don Mario Mazzoleni
The author would now like to narrate some of the incidents from the book :
Don Mario writes in his book: "It happened a few months after my return to the area Bergamo. It was 1980. An acquaintance told me that a great Guru by the name of Sai Baba was coming to Italy. With the hunger I had for masters, that seemed like a golden opportunity.
Sai Baba : Who was that? The name meant nothing to me, but I managed right away to get my hands on a little book which was supposed to be the brief biography of this personage. It was a book written by an American, a certain Shulman, who was recounting his personal experiences of being close to Sai Baba in India. I read it lazily at first, then ever more avidly. The things I was reading were so unheard of that it made me think that perhaps the writer had just dreamed up this wild fantasy just to reawaken the appetite in the reader who were tired of being astonished.
Not long after, I discovered that there was another book in the market by another author, Howard Murphet, that dealt with the same subject. It was called 'Sai Baba, Man of Miracles'. I bought it and read it with the same voracity as before - except that this time, I could no longer doubt the authenticity of this individual, for it was highly unlike that two authors, one Australian and the other an American, could be coming up with the same lies or inventions. In addition, all of the phenomena and explanations they discussed were amply supported by the studies I have been pursuing.
I read many more books and was looking for a sign from Him or a call from Him. The moment my eyes rested on His words, I felt an instant thrill which transported me mysteriously into a divine atmosphere.
"I am yours, whether you like it or not; you are Mine, even if you hate Me. I am in you, you are in Me. There is no distance and no distinction. You have come home. This is your house. My house is your heart. Why fear, when I am here? Put all your faith in me. I shall guide and guard you."
Forgetting that I was sick, I rushed to a travel agency to book a flight to India. Final destination; Puttaparthi, the place where even now Sai Baba spends most of the year.
If what I had understood was true, I could not afford to reach the end of my life without having seen at least in the flesh. 'Him who called Himself' the mother and father of the whole human race.
The moment of the close counter was drawing near, I was full of misgivings because I had read that it is not easy to meet Him, and some times even to see Him. The books I was reading said that often, when seekers get there He is some place else and seems to elude them.
No. This could not happen. It was not I who was going to see Him: it was He coming to me to draw me to Himself.
"You did not choose Me, No, I chose you."
The best thing to do, after discovering Sai Baba, is to study Him. Nothing in my life has given me as much joy and filled me with so much bliss as studying this person. This in itself is extraordinary. When in school I was forced to study such personages as Napoleon, Cavour, Mazzini, the emperors of ancient Rome, or the Popes throughout history. All I got out of it was an overwhelming boredom and a fervent desire for the end of class. But when I devote myself to the study of Sai Baba, His work, and His teaching, I never get tired of it, even when studying things that I already know (or think I know). In fact I always benefit from it: it is always uplifting and refreshing.
For me, to study Sai Baba meant, first of all to see Him, then to investigate His activities and third to understand His thought, His message. Although I expected to take these steps one at a time, I soon discovered that they are not separable. Sai Baba began to be a message from the moment I first saw Him. Because of this, someone who sees Him has already an enormous gift. I don't say this rhetorically, because the things you understand upon meeting Him may be enough to revolutionize your life, but they still are only an infinitesimal part of what you did not understand at that time and will gradually discover in the course of subsequent events.
Just as in the case of Jesus, His identification as the Messiah did not come simply from His declarations, but mostly from His work of salvation. In the same way Sai Baba does not worry about making everybody know who He is right away, but He works in the hearts of men, redeeming them.
In the same way there are many people who charge Sai Baba with indifference to the sorrow that weighs upon the world, and they ask themselves, "If He is so powerful, why doesn't He eliminate all suffering there is in this world?" These people would like to change the mission of the divine incarnation. Jesus Christ did not change the sorrowful state of the world either, neither in His own time, nor afterwards. Everything that had to happen: bloody revolutions, wars, destruction, prosecutions, poverty, epidemics, etc., it all happened to schedule.
Even at His birth all the children under two years of age were slaughtered, by the insane command of a criminal king who was afraid he would loose his kingdom. The same kind of thing had already happened at the time of Krishna: Kamsa had all his sister's children killed, because she had been told that her eighth son would suppress - his wicked uncle.
It is never the task of the Redeemer to resolve human errors with a magic wand. Doing so would ensure that the errors would continue to be committed. It is not the mission of an elementary school teacher or of a parent to do the student's home work. If that were to happen laziness would triumph, diplomas would be given unjustly and degrees would soon prove deleterious to the whole society. No one amongst us would willingly go to a doctor who had received his certificate by buying all his degrees: The project to perfect society is based on understanding one's own errors and on the efforts we make to avoid them.
No human being has the authority to declare that God can only incarnate a certain way, or that He cannot choose to spread His message as He wills, not only through prophets, but also incarnating as the Christ, that is, as Avatars. It would be unforgivable theological and philosophical absurdity to deny the Divine Power the right to take a human form in other epochs, among other nations, and in other physical forms. On this point there can be no contrary dogma, because this truth is self-evident, and even a child can understand it: God cannot be limited by anything; much less by a human mind. If we want to have some mental concept of God, the first attribute we must give Him is all possible freedom.
Artong Jumsai is a person of high intellectual and moral stature. In the course of a lecture he gave at Odense, he asserted: "In all my years of research, I have never found a programme as complete and effective as the Sathya Sai Education in Human Values. It is a programme which offers real results in transforming children. The person who created or invented this programme must really be a genius".
Don Mario Mazzoleni, was fully convinced about Baba's divinity and he came out with the book 'A Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba'. After the publication of the book, he writes in his own words.
One certainly did not have to be a seer to predict that when this book was published, there would be a reaction on the part of the Church hierarchy. The author's aim was in fact to awaken some interest, of whatever kind, in a great voice from the East, which is announcing a time of redemption for our ailing human race. To tell the truth, I did not imagine that the Church would have recourse to such anachronistic measures. Those measures led me to wonder seriously (in other words, it was not pure fantasy) what my reaction would be if, instead of an excommunication delivered by express registered mail, guards had come to my door, with orders to burn me at the stake in the public square…
Don Mario was given an appointment with the Bishop on 16th March, 1992, to have a dialogue with him. In the end of the conversation Mario told Bishop, "I would like to tell you (and I meant in the plural) one last thing, before we end this conversation; this conversation which demonstrates how that divides is always how the truth is interpreted, not the truth itself, which is pure. Why don't you take into consideration the fact that many people who have gone to Sai Baba have felt an impulse to renew their own Catholic religions faith, which is what Sai Baba himself suggests.
Bishop : "I will make a comparison which, of course, is perhaps inappropriate for your position: even an assassin can be the instrument of salvation for someone. This does not make him any less an assassin."
Mario: "To be honest, your example seems to me ill-chosen"
On 24th May Don Mario received a registered letter by express mail from the Vicariate of Rome. The contents of the letter are as follows :
The Bishop of Bergamo has informed the Vicariate of Rome, in a note of December 17,1991, that the writings, the public declarations and the - to say the least - disconcerting ideas upheld by the Priest Don Mario Mazzoleni in regard to the Indian teacher Sai Baba, whose convinced follower he declares himself to be, excite significant astonishment and scandal among the faithful;
The Priest, on November 23, 1990, dedicated the book entitled 'A Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba' to the Catholic Church, a book which, though it begins with the praiseworthy intent of seeking the action of the spirit of God in every man and in every religious experience, ends up disowing the truths of the Catholic faith;
An attentive reading of the book reveals that the author has lost his Catholic faith in the holy trinity and in Christ as the only saviour, and, specially in the letters addressed to a friend (pp. 210-213 & 216-217), the unicity of Christ the saviour is expressly denied;
The assertions more ever that accept Sai Baba's claim to be a divine incarnation, that defends his works, miracles, sayings, doctrines, are grave affirmation against the faith;
The public declarations of Don Mario Mazzoleni have caused confusion and scandal because of the fact that they come from a priest who continues to exercise his ministry in the name of the Catholic Church;
Since the good faith of the writer shows clearly from the tenor of the book's dedication, it is all the more necessary to call the priest back from error with an urgent request to cease causing scandal and to return to the doctrine of the Church.
INVITES
The Priest Mario Mazzoleni to retreat from his heritical doctrinal positions, to cease causing scandal and to explicitly retract his error within the suitable time of 3 months; with the warning that if the retraction is not forthcoming the cardinal will have to proceed to declare excommunication latae sententiae (in the broad sense) for heresay according to Canon Law 1364, and subsequently to bar the priest from the exercise of the power of his office, until he returns to the Catholic doctrine.
He further invites the same priest to a personal interview on the subject, in his office at the Vicariate of Rome on the day June 3, 1992 at 10 a.m. or else on June 6, 1992 at 12 noon.
Camillo Card Ruini
Vicar General
Don Mario Mazzoleni replies:
Most revered Eminence,
In the present letter, I intend to entrust to writing what perhaps will come out less clearly in our meeting.
First of all I would like to express my gratitude for the attention that has been bestowed on me, and for allowing me to clarify in person the reasons for what I have done. One might say that I was anxiously awaiting this call, because regardless of the decisions that my superiors may make in my case, I wish to communicate to them an experience which continues to leave a beneficial mark in every day life.
Sri Sathya Sai Baba's message is based on an unlimited ecumenism, where ecumenism does not mean the suppression of the different religions in order to make one chaotic hodge-podge religion, but rather the constant search for the points that different religions have in common. The goal of this search, as the greatest Master says, that there be only one religion, the religion of love.
When one studies Sai Baba's teachings, as I have been doing for 12 years, one constantly sees that his goal is not to find another religion, but rather to elevate the level of human consciousness. He does this by directing everyone who comes to him toward a life full of truth, righteousness, peace, love and non-violence. He tells the devotees who come to his Ashram to put into practice intensely the fundamental principles of their respective religions. Often the people who have turned to him are not practicing any religion, or else they have strayed away from their own church. The real miracle that I see constantly repeated, is the desire those people experience is to return to practicing their faith.
I beg you, Eminence, let us not shut the door on these people: they are living rather through a delicate moment, and for our Church it would surely be a gesture of noble outreachy, as well as practical evangelism, to include them in our fold. Sai Baba does not want new churches, He wants to fill the ones that already exist.
I know that the Church is seriously worried about the formation of new sects. But I can unconditionally guarantee that Sai Baba has given clear directives that new religious communities should not be created in oppositions to the official ones. If groups of devotees gather in centres, this is to be only in order to carry out charitable works and to study sacred scriptures. Let me point out that Hare Krishna or Jehovah's Witness or the Seventh Day Adventist will never set foot in a Catholic church to participate in Sunday worship, but I assure you that there are many devotees of Sai Baba who are praying in our Parish churches with renewed fervour, and that they take communion with a mystical zeal rarely found among normal Christians. Sai Baba's devotees gather once a week in order to pray and sing, but their worship is directed towards the same God that is worshipped in the Churches.
I am acquainted with all the Sathya Sai Baba centres in Italy. Many times I have exhorted there members to simplify their exterior rituals, which derive from their sympathy for the exotic world of India, and to ask their parish priests for permission to meet in the parish church to pray and sing the praises of the Lord. Unfortunately, misunderstandings and prejudices keep them away, nevertheless there are now many priests who contact me in order to find out more about Sai Baba and his teachings. In these last months I have received innumerable letters of appreciations, most of them from Catholics. The dissenting voices (which as always, are the noisiest) make up a tiny minority.
What grieves me most in this whole experience that I am going through, is to see the extreme superficiality with which Sai Baba and his message are being addressed by the Church. Meanwhile millions of people of every nation, race and religion are continually overwhelmed by his astounding greatness, and I see the most erudite and intellectual people surrender one after the other to what they have seen with their eyes and felt in their hearts.
Eminence, I do not want to get involved in defending the theological positions I have expressed in my book. I realise that they are open to discussion, and that they may be "disconcerting". Believe me, it was not at all my intention to create scandal. If this has happened, it is due to my ingenious zeal, I shall try to make amends. I promise that if I am allowed to continue my ministry as a priest I shall hold no more public lectures, nor will I give interviews to the media about Sai Baba. In all these years I have never contaminated my ministry with any theories foreign to our doctrine.
Given that the only thing that really matters to me is that our church come to know Sai Baba in a serious way, without divisions, I declare myself available to take part in any committee that might be set up to study Sai Baba thoroughly. I am willing also to take part in any trips to visit Him, as long as they are undertaken with a scientific attitude without prejudices. It may be useful to say that I am in contact with doctors, physicists and scientists who have been studying the Sai Baba "phenomenon" for years.
Whatever measures are taken in my regard, I declare that I shall always be happy to serve the Church in any other way through consultations or studies, because I shall always feel that I am united with Her.
Devotedly, in the Lord,
Sd : Don Mario Mazzoleni,
Rome, June 3, 1992
Don Mario writes, "When I spoke to the cardinal about Sai Baba and His mission of ecumenism, He interrupted me, almost worried, in order to say. There can be no ecumenism, because the whole truth has been revealed only in Catholicism".
These words wounded me more than the threat of excommunication.
Don Mario further expresses, "As the author of the book in question, I reaffirm that I have not lost my Catholic faith. On the contrary, after my encounter with the great 'Indian Master' Sri Sathya Sai Baba, I feel that I live it with greater intensity, in a spirit of real communion with all other religions. These all share the one goal of reaching the same God, who transcends all changing names and forms.
Between the two alternatives I am offered, either being exiled from the institution of Church, or else being exiled from my conscience, I cannot and will not select the latter. Institutions do not accompany anyone beyond the grave. While the only reality that one can present to God is one's conscience. The Lord who 'examines the heart' is our judge: if in my case I have committed or am about to commit an error (by refusing to retreat), I beg His forgiveness and the light to rectify it; if I am acting in accordance with truth, may He forgive those who condemn me".
Eternal praise be to the Christ, to Him "who was born from the father before all ages," Him who outlives all the good and wicked actions of man and who will never die.
On Thursday September 24, 1992 the fateful letter arrived. This time it was fully formal decree of excommunication.
The final words of Don Mario Mazzoleni :-
"Here we have come to the end of my history as a priest. This is the chapter of my life which will now be filed away. I felt that I owed this explanation to the reader, even though the affair is of no longer of any concern to me: to be suspended from certain ceremonies, said to be divine, certainly does not preclude access to the Divine. I can no longer go to Mass, no longer lose myself in the warm atmosphere of a midnight Mass, to be moved by the sweetness of Christmas Carols, but I can always speak heart-to-heart with the Lord, pray to Him, love Him, meet Him. Everyone can, because of this, even 'atheists' know how to pray. This is the real consolation, which no one will ever be able to take from me; there is not a single person in the whole world who can pry you away from God.
To belong to a religious institutions does not automatically mean that one belongs to God. To be in harmony with the Divine, one must respect the conscience of every person and listen to one's own. At that point one can say: if God is with us who shall be against us? "Why fear when I am here?"
Mario Mazzoleni
(Entire matter has been taken from the book 'A Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba' by Don Mario Mazzoleni).
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Book Review
http://beaskund.helloyou.ws/netnews/bookstore/mazzoleni.html
«Why on earth would a priest, who has been taught so many well-packaged and inviolable truths, need to be a seeker? Are there any existential questions which a priest has not answered? and - you might ask - what does a man of the church, who should already have perfected his education and knowledge, still need to investigate?... Well, then, yes!
In nature, everything undergoes change, and our reason is part of nature. The fundamental truth might not change, but the human approach to these truths does, and this amounts to admitting that it is necessary to review and correct the way sacred truths have been formulated in the past. The level of consciousness of a people gradually expands, and a formulation which seemed right centuries ago today appears honestly outdated. It is not the underlying truth which goes out of date, but the way in which it is expressed. The clothes change, but not the body dressed in them.»
- Don Mario Mazzoleni, page 2
«One of the quotations, which has made Sathya Sai Baba's mission famous throughout the world is the following:
There is only one religion: the religion of love.
There is only one language: the language of the heart.
There is only one caste: the caste of humanity.
There is only one God, and He is omnipresent.
Some detractors think that this slogan implies a desire to unite all religions into one, making just one religion... Sai Baba has absolutely no intention of founding a new religion. He himself has said that there are plenty of religions already, indeed too many. The sacred task He has assumed is to lead all religions back to the one Truth which is God and Love. Any religion that fights or dismisses other religions in order to defend itself is not a true religion, because it is against Love, which is to be against God!»
- Don Mario Mazzoleni, pages 177, 178
This era - the era of Sathya, the era of Truth - is, in my opinion, a unique moment, which will change the historical and religious order of nations. Certainly the most extraordinary characteristic of this study, in an age in which there is so much talk about sects and religious factions, is that in all the things I have discovered in these years, I have found nothing which would prompt an aversion to our religion, nothing which would obstruct our faith. On the contrary! Everything I have meditated on has brought me that much closer to the mysteries I had been celebrating, often without knowing them thoroughly.»
- Don Mario Mazzoleni, Introduction
Don Mario Mazzoleni has a degree in Moral Theology from the Higher Institute of Theological Sciences of the Alphonsian Academy in Rome. In the 1970's he was associated with the Vatican Radio and the newspaper L'Avvenire. He was particularly concerned with the relationship of the mass media to spiritual instruction.
Source: http://www.geocities.com/priyasai108/cd/catholic.htm
Friday, November 30, 2007
Go Within
The following talk was given by David Jevons in September 1998 to an audience of Sai Baba devotees who had gathered together for the annual Autumn Portishead Sai Baba Centre meeting, which was held in a hall just outside Bristol, in England. It has been edited, but only for the purpose of reproducing it in this Newsletter.
GO WITHIN
Yesterday, when I was mentally preparing myself for today's talk, the thought occurred to me that so much has been said about peace in the many functions held by the Sai Organisation this year that it would be extremely difficult for me to find something fresh to say. Moreover I felt sure that the other speakers today would all make the same points about peace that I would want to make and so much that I would say would probably be superfluous. Then my inner voice spoke to me very clearly and said that the title of my talk to you today should be 'Go Within' and so that is what you are going to get! Of course I should not be surprised at this sort of thing happening because this process of choosing the subject for a talk has taken place many times before.
I recently did a wonderful interview with Anil Kumar, who is Sai Baba's main interpreter. As some of you might know, my wife and I produce the Ramala Centre Newsletter and in our next issue, which comes out in about two weeks time, you can read a transcript of the interview with Anil Kumar. One of the questions that I asked Anil was "What is the greatest manifestation that you have ever seen Swami do?" Without hesitation he replied "Speak through me". He then went on to say "You know, when Swami first called on me to speak he asked me, without any prior warning, to get up and to speak inside the Poornachandra Hall in front of a large audience and I just had to talk. However once I realised that Swami was going to do that, I got clever and began to prepare my speeches in advance. I prepared a speech about wisdom but, of course, Swami then asked me to talk about devotion. When I prepared a speech about devotion, Swami then asked me to talk about Dharma. So it soon became very apparent to me that Swami was teaching me to rely on the force of God within me and this, in truth, is what I do with all my talks." The process is exactly the same for me.
As I stand here before you now, I really have nothing prepared. I just invite Swami to think, act and speak through me, which, of course, is the birthright of everyone in this room. I will warn you, though, that in the beginning this process does involve a slight test of nerves, because you have to trust the process and to recognise that you are not the doer or the speaker. However I can assure you that after a few such talks you overcome your fears and begin to trust the system and it really is amazing how it does work. As I heard the first speaker today talking about going within and the next speaker following on in much the same vein I saw very clearly that the great Organiser in the sky had organised all the speeches to flow one into the other and that my task this afternoon was simply to pull together all the threads in the final presentation. Hopefully by the time that I have finished you will have grasped the importance of going within.
What do I actually mean when I say, "Go within"? What is it that we are seeking when we go within? I remember that when I was in Puttaparthi, about five years ago, Sai Baba came out to look at some construction work that was going on at the back of the mandir some time after he had finished his formal darshan. After the inspection was over he came back into the men's side of the mandir and looked at the few people who were sitting there. Sai Baba was only about ten feet away from me. He just stood there for what seemed like an eternity but which, in reality, was probably only for two or three minutes, and he looked at us ever so gently and lovingly, rocking slowly from foot to foot. Then he raised both his hands and gave us one of his special two-handed blessings, with both his hands describing the familiar circular pattern in the air. As he looked at me I experienced true ecstasy, not the ecstasy of orgasm but the ecstasy of spirit. I realised afterwards that it was probably the greatest bliss that I had ever experienced. But why was I experiencing such bliss? It was because I was totally focused on the Lord. I was not conscious of my body; I was not distracted by my mind or senses. I was totally at peace with myself and was totally focused on the Lord. I was one with my divine spirit deep within my own being. I was just I.
Now I relate this incident simply to illustrate that when you focus totally on God, on the aspect of God within you, that is the time when you experience true bliss and, of course, you don't have to go all the way to India and see Sai Baba in order to achieve this. You have to learn to focus on what I call the omnipresent God, which is the aspect of God that is within you, your divine spirit or atma. Sai Baba says, "You are in me, but a little part of me is in you." So you have to train yourselves to go within, to look within, to seek the God within you, the part of your being that is never born and so never dies. My wife, Ann, is particularly sensitive to Swami's hand blessings. She feels that they transform every atom of her body and she regularly feels the kundalini energy rising up her spine as he gives his blessings. That is the power of an avatar's darshan. It transforms everybody and everything. As you may well know, Sai Baba loves to tease and to joke with his devotees. Someone once asked Swami in an interview what he was actually doing when he moved his hands in the familiar blessing pattern. Sai Baba replied "Well, when I move my right hand like this, I'm uplifting the whole consciousness of the world, and when I move my left hand like this, I'm keeping Indian Airlines flying!" What a delicious sense of humour he has.
Nevertheless, even if we know that we have to go within, what is it that prevents us from getting in touch with that aspect of God within us, our eternal spirit? What is it that prevents us from being at one with peace, love, truth, right-conduct and non-violence, what is it that blocks this experience of bliss? As some of you may know, Ann and I now live in British Columbia in Canada, close to the American border. In fact we often go across the border into the USA to shop and to sightsee. About three weeks ago Ann and I crossed the border into Washington State to go to a lovely little town called Linden. Linden has a strong Dutch heritage. There's a real windmill in the main street of Linden, which has been converted into a hotel and Dutch names are to be found everywhere. We went to visit the county fair that was on there, a big agricultural show. In the main arena there was a stage on which various cultural events took place each day of the fair. Now it just so happened that when I was there a hypnotist was putting on his show. I am usually not very interested in hypnotism, because there is something in me that doesn't want to surrender my mind to anyone, but something made me stay and watch this demonstration.
The hypnotist took about twenty people up on to the stage and then weeded out a few of them who apparently weren't susceptible to his form of hypnotism. He then began his demonstration. After assuring them that he wasn't going to do anything harmful or degrading to them he put them all to sleep through some hypnotic technique. He then demonstrated that he had total control over them by making them do things that they normally wouldn't do. For example, he told them under hypnosis that he was going to walk around in front of them but that he had a large tear in his trousers and that when he bent over you could see his bottom. Then he woke them up and began walking around in front of them on the stage. Whenever he bent over the women subjects covered their faces in embarrassment and the men subjects laughed and pointed at him. Of course his trousers weren't split. It was all in their minds. Then he did another demonstration. He put them to sleep again and held in his hands a wad of paper napkins. He told his subjects that he had a wad of $100 bills in his hand and that provided they could hide the bills in their clothes they could have as many as they liked! He walked around his subjects, both men and women, handing out paper napkins and they were stuffing these napkins into their clothes like there was no forever. They couldn't believe their luck! Finally, holding a plastic bag full of bottle tops, he said to one man "Look, I've got a bag full of silver quarters here and you can have them, provided you stuff them down the front of your trousers." We watched the gentleman in question do this with alacrity. Then the hypnotist said "Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that they've been in the deep freeze all morning and ……". Would you believe it, the gentleman began hopping up and down as though he had a block of ice between his legs! Now what is the purpose of telling this story? What does it all prove? It shows how much we are controlled by our subconscious minds. If a hypnotist can put these thoughts into these people's minds and in a few seconds can make them believe that they are real, how much more do we programme our subconscious minds with our everyday thoughts and experiences.
Some of you will have heard of ISAP - The Inner Self Awareness Programme - that has been developed here in the UK. This wonderful course deals very thoroughly with the whole business of the conscious and the subconscious mind and of how we unconsciously respond to old patterns, old beliefs and old understandings. From the moment that we are born, we start conditioning ourselves. What we are our taught by our parents, by our teachers, by society as a whole, by all our experiences of life, all goes into our subconscious mind and creates an 'identity' which blocks the understanding of the spirit with which we incarnated. Do you know that a young child doesn't know its colour or race or what that means in society until an adult points out that fact to the child? A child is more in touch with its spirit than an adult because there are fewer conditioning experiences blocking its divine connection. As we become adults, so we lose that connectedness with our inner self, the aspect of God within us. Above all we lose our sense of oneness, of connectedness to everyone and to everything. The symbol of ISAP is the shutter that covers the lens of the camera. The shutter, made up of differing segments (past experiences), covers the lens (spirit). So what we have to do is to open the shutter, to put aside our conditioning of this life, to reveal the force of God that moves within us. It is not something that is deliberately hidden from us. It is our birthright. It is what we are; eternal, infinite, spiritual beings. All the great spiritual teachers have taught 'Look within, for there is the Kingdom of God.'
Now Sai Baba is a great mould crusher. One of the reasons that he has come on Earth is to help us to break the mould of who or what we think we are. I, personally, had a very difficult relationship with Swami for the first four or five years after hearing about him because the esoteric tradition that he represented appeared to conflict with mine. As the saying goes, he really rattled my cage. It was because of this that my wife had to drag me out to India, protesting strongly, to go to see Sai Baba. I really didn't want to go and see any Indian guru, let alone one who was said to be God on Earth. There was a part of me that said, "I just don't need this. I've worked out a very good understanding of the nature of God and the purpose of life and I don't need anyone playing around with it!" Well, of course, you go out to see Sai Baba, you stand in his transforming energy and you feel the power of his unconditional love. Even though he totally ignored me, thus giving me the time and the space to work through all my doubts and fears, he was still working on me. I like to use the analogy of a time-release capsule. Sai Baba planted a time-release capsule of knowledge and wisdom within me, which over the months and years after my visit slowly released spiritual understandings within me, which enabled me to grasp the vital essence of his divine message. His teachings were soon echoing inside my head. There is only one God and that God is omnipresent. You are God; you are no different from God. Love all, serve all. The reason why you incarnate on the Earth is to transmute your karma. Everything that happens to you is of your own creation. There is no such thing as evil. The purpose of life is to seek and get liberation. Such concepts were strange to me before I came in contact with Sai Baba. I was brought up in the Christian belief that Man is on Earth and God is in Heaven, that Man was born out of sin and that God had to send His only son down in order to communicate with Man and to save him from himself. But Sai Baba was saying the very opposite to this, that God is within me, that I am no different from God and, as such, that I am a perfect eternal being that knows neither birth nor death.
Over the fifteen or so years that I have been in contact with Sai Baba I have gradually drawn closer and closer to him. My wife and I have been privileged to have many interviews with him and we have begun to form a close relationship with him. Nevertheless, both we and many other devotees of long standing have lately been going through a very difficult period because Sai Baba has been ignoring us on the physical level in a definite attempt to wean us off his physical form. Over the years we've grown very comfortable with and accustomed to his form. I'm always joking that my wife is a founder member of the MTF club, which is the Must Touch Flesh club! Whenever she gets near Swami, poor man, she wants to hold his hand, to massage his feet, to mother him, to get very close to him. As a reserved Englishman I sit back and watch this whole process with some amusement. However she has developed a very close relationship with Swami. He looks at all her photographs, he listens to all her stories, he answers all her questions about family matters. They have a wonderful rapport and yet, over the past two or three years, there's been a distancing, a drawing back, a withdrawal of physical contact by Sai Baba.
We recently went down to a retreat in Grants Pass in Oregon, in the USA, where we met Jack and Louise Hawley, who wrote 'Dharmic Management', and Joy and Raye Thomas, who have written many books about Sai Baba and have even lived full time in his ashram. At the retreat they both talked about the same subject - the difficulty they're experiencing as Sai Baba withdraws his physical contact from them. Now Jack Hawley spends several months of the year in India with Swami, he's been inside Swami's private house on many occasions, but Swami hasn't talked to him in a year and a half. In fact, he's ignored him. Jack was relating as to how difficult he found this at first, as to how he went though all sorts of feelings of rejection, feelings that he wasn't good enough, that he'd done something wrong. Suddenly, however, he began to realise that this process was a gift from Swami, since it was forcing him to contact the Sai Baba within rather than the Sai Baba without. Joy Thomas spoke in much the same vein. She had to suffer an apparent rejection by Sai Baba in front of a large crowd at darshan. Her group was called in for an interview. They all went up to the veranda to go inside, but Swami let the whole group in except her! He closed the door with Joy still outside and she had to walk back to her place in front of thousands of people. That is a very, very difficult test to face but, again, it forced Joy to go within. The reason why Sai Baba did it, or so Joy said, was because he had been appearing to her regularly in her dreams, telling her things. She wanted to know if her dreams were genuine, if what he was saying was accurate. This was Sai Baba's way of telling her to believe her own experience. He was saying "I come to you within, listen to what I'm saying."
When we were last in Puttaparthi we met Phyllis Krystal the authoress of several books about Sai Baba including 'Sai Baba: The Ultimate Experience' and 'Cutting the Ties that Bind'. Sai Baba set the stage for her lesson during the first visit that she and her husband made to the ashram in 1973. During their farewell interview Phyllis asked Sai Baba when he would like her and her husband to return. He looked intently at her and, pointing at himself, he then said "First you must remember that you don't need to come back to see this little body." After a significant pause he then said to her "Find me in your own heart." Then, after another pause, as Phyllis accepted and understood his message, he continued "But you will return to be re-energised." Many years later he emphasised this message again in a very dramatic way, one that many people could observe. On the day that she was to leave for home, after previously assuring her on several occasions that he would see her before she left, he had still not called her in for the promised interview. Darshan came and went but as he walked back to his quarters after bhajans Sai Baba abruptly stopped in front of her and said in a loud voice, for all to hear, "Go inside, right now" and turning to a friend of Phyllis who was sitting next to her he said "And you too." They were both puzzled at first, thinking that he meant for them to go into the interview room, but then he added "Do", indicating to Phyllis that she should take padanamaskara. As she stood up to do this Sai Baba placed his hand on her head and pushed it down towards his feet inviting her to kiss them. This ended her 'interview', as Sai Baba then carried on walking back to his quarters in the Poornachandra Hall. He would not appear again until Phyllis was on her way home but she knew exactly what he meant because of his comments on that first visit many years earlier. We must detach ourselves even from his physical form and should strive to be connected to our own inner God-self. We have to establish this link with the God within us. We can't always be going to see him; we can't always be relying on his physical form for our mental and spiritual sustenance. We can't always be travelling to India to see him, to get answers to all of our questions.
So we all have to start relying on the inner God, on that still, quiet voice within. It just isn't physically possible for the whole world to go and see and talk to Sai Baba. We have to rely on the aspect of God within us, our atma or divine spirit. This inner being is who we really are, which is an actual part of God, and, as such, is one with God, is imbued with the qualities of God: Truth, Love, Peace, Right-conduct and Non-violence. When we tap into this being we can know the answer to any question that we ask. Sai Baba says that if you sit down and meditate and attune to the spirit within you the answer will always come within twenty minutes. The answer will always come. Now I know that it's difficult, in the world in which we live today, where daily we are faced with dramas and disasters and scenes of human suffering, to believe that the world is working perfectly, that everything that manifests is a part of God's Plan. Recognise, though, that what we are actually seeing is Humanity at its lowest ebb, the end of Kali Yuga, where it appears that the world has gone mad, where human values appear to be reversed, where bad is regarded as good and good is regarded as bad, where the world focuses its attention on the bad rather than on the good. Look at what is happening in the world today where all that the world's press appears to be interested in is the sexual peccadilloes of the president of the USA. Do we see the press making any effort to report on the people who are trying to transform and uplift human society? Is there anything positive ever written about Sai Baba, for example? Is there anything positive ever written about the daily sacrifice and service of people of goodwill who work unceasingly for the upliftment of human society.
Someone actually tried to start a 'good news' newspaper in England a few years ago, a newspaper that would report only good news, not bad news, but it folded within a few months. There is a part of us that doesn't want to hear good news, that doesn't want to focus on the higher aspects of life because it is attracted to the lower. Rather like watching a soap opera on the television, we watch the drama of life and we believe it to be real, not just a drama, and we become fixated with it. Sai Baba teaches that life is a game and all that we have to do is play it. We must never get sucked into believing that the game is anything more than a game, that the drama of life is real, especially since the drama is going to intensify beyond our wildest dreams in the next few years. We are approaching a critical time in the evolutionary process of this Earth. What is going to unfold only Sai Baba knows, but it is apparent that big evolutionary changes are coming. The seeds that Humanity has sown will soon bear fruit. Sai Baba will not be drawn on this point but he does say that Humanity will suffer 'irritations'. It behoves us to prepare for such 'irritations' and the best way to do this is by establishing a close link with the divine aspect of God that is within us - our atma or spirit. In this way we will be guided to be where we are meant to be, to do what we are meant to do and to say what we are meant to say.
Several years ago we published in the Ramala Centre Newsletter the story about a dream, which my daughter, Diana, had experienced. In this dream she met Sai Baba conversed with him and had an out of the body experience with him. He took her up above the Earth, to a position where she could see past, present and future, and showed her that all the suffering in the world was just karmic settlement and, as such, was all a part of God's plan for Humanity. He went on to tell her that there is no such thing as evil, that the world is perfect in every respect, if only because God created it. God is present within every human being, so how can we judge anyone. If we judge them, then, we are judging God! What is the source within us that makes the judgements? It is most certainly not the God within us, because God would not judge God. So it can only be the persona that we have created from our earthly experiences, from the times when we were separate from God. Sai Baba warns us not to judge this world or the actions of the people in it if only because of what happens every time we make a judgement. Sai Baba says that every time you judge someone, you take on some of their karma, you take a little bit of karma off them and put it on yours. So every time that you think badly of someone, every time you say negative things about someone, you are actually doing them a favour, because you are lightening their karmic burden but, alas, increasing yours! Keep that thought in mind the very next time that you judge someone. Sai Baba says that the more you judge, the less you love and the whole purpose of life is to love and to serve one another.
So we have to understand that everything that manifests in the world is all part of a great cosmic drama, a drama that was written aeons of time ago, if not before time. All that we can do is observe, react and draw lessons from that drama. I recently went to a seer in Bombay, who reads from some palm leaf scrolls called The Book of Brighu. Now these scrolls were written thousands of years ago and yet this gentleman was able to read the scrolls and not only tell me events about my life both past, present and future but also about past and future lives. Whether or not he is accurate remains to be seen but if he is, then, it is apparent that much of life is preordained or predestined and that all we can do is respond to it. Sai Baba says that what you meet in life is destiny, but how you meet it is self-effort. So we observe and take part in the drama but what is important is the place from which we view that drama. Sai Baba says that the colour of the glasses that we wear colours all that we see. In other words, if we wear red lenses in our glasses, then, everything that we see is red. If we look with the eyes of love, then, all that we see is love. If we look with the eyes of spirit, then, all that we see is spirit. If we look with negativity then all that we will see is negativity. If we look with positivity then all that we will see is positivity. That is why it is so important to go within. It determines the reality of what we see and, therefore, how we react to it and how we react to it determines our actions and, therefore, our karma.
God, Infinite Spirit, call Him what you may, is orchestrating this drama. He is the author. We are just the actors in His drama. Because He has written it, we have to trust that it is perfect. We have to trust the author. We have to trust the part or the role in the drama that has been assigned to us. We have to realise that since we are infinite, eternal beings, we are never born and so we can never die. Every death, every act of suffering, is not an act of random fate, of blind chance. It is an act of destiny. Therefore there is no such thing as a tragedy. As Sai Baba says, "Everything is perfect. It is just karma working itself out." In this certain knowledge, surely, we can be more at peace both with the world and with ourselves. Knowing that no one is born and no one dies we can accept the world for what it is, an impermanent, ever changing stage onto which, as Shakespeare said, we have our entrances and our exits. Remember that the spirit is never born, never dies and never suffers. It is eternal and infinite. It is the observer of the drama as, indeed, is God. When we are one with our divine spirit we are one with all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. It is at such a time that the drama of life is seen for what it really is, a drama!
Nevertheless, Sai Baba says that it is a great privilege to be in incarnation on the Earth at this time. Why is this so? It is, firstly, because we are in incarnation on the Earth at the same time as a full avatar and, secondly, because we have been blessed with the wisdom to recognise him for who he is and have been able to have personal contact with him, a privilege of which the beings on many other planes of life are very envious. To enter into the aura of an avatar, to be able to see, touch and talk to him, to have his darshan, to be able to hear his teachings directly about the reality of human existence, as we do at this time, is something that will not happen again for a very, very long time, if at all. So we are being offered an immense opportunity to take a gigantic step forward, to achieve liberation and to return home to the Source of All Life. Now just because you are living here in England, apparently far removed from Sai Baba physically, do not think that it is impossible to establish a relationship with him. Sai Baba's main teaching is that there is only one God and that God is omnipresent. He is here now, around us, above us and within us. Sai Baba says, "I am in you and you are in me" and he is as much here as he is in India, in fact anywhere in the World. The stories of his omnipresence are manifold and I do not need to repeat them here. The experience of Jack and Louise Hawley, of Raye and Joy Thomas and of Ann and myself are all one and the same. The inner Sai Baba is so much more accessible, so much more omnipresent and so much more powerful than the physical form that lives in India. So go within.
My lovely wife, Ann, who has had such a close relationship with Sai Baba, a true affair of the heart, is finding it very difficult to release the outer form and to go within. Sai Baba is being very tough on her. She goes to see him at Puttaparthi and is totally ignored. She sits there in darshan for day after day and Swami doesn't even look at her, yet alone speak to her. If we are blessed with an interview, it's always on the very last day, just before we leave and as we walk out of the interview room he always says the same thing to us. He looks deeply into our eyes and says "Remember, I am always with you, I am always with you". This isn't some esoteric statement. It is a fact of life. He is reminding us of the supreme teaching, that there is only one God and that God is omnipresent. At no time are we separate from God.
I would like to finish by reading an extract from one of Sai Baba's talks which, for me anyway, encapsulates all that I have said to you this afternoon. It defines why we are here, why the avatar is here and what our relationship with him should be. So just sit back and listen and imagine that Swami is speaking the words to you which, of course, in one sense he is, through me.
"Come just one step towards me, and I shall take a hundred steps towards you. Shed just one tear, and I shall wipe away a hundred tears from your eyes. I bless only thus. May your bliss grow. I have come to give you the key of the treasure of bliss, to tell you how to tap that spring, for you have forgotten the way to blessedness. If you waste this chance of saving yourselves, it is just your fate. You have come to get from me tinsel and trash, the petty little cures and promotions, worldly joys and comforts. Very few of you desire to get from me the thing that I've come to give you, namely, Liberation itself. And even among those few who do, those who stick to the path of spiritual practice and succeed will be a handful.
This is a great chance. This chance will not come your way again. Be aware of that. If you cannot and do not cross this sea of grief now, taking hold of this chance, when again can you get such a chance. Be confident that you will be liberated. Know that you will be saved. Go and tell all that you went to Puttaparthi and that you got there the secret of liberation.
Many hesitate to believe that things will improve, that life will be happy for all and full of joy and that the Golden Age will recur. Let me assure you that this avatar, this divine body, has not come in vain. It will succeed in averting the crisis that has come upon Humanity".
Source:http://www.ramalacentre.com
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GO WITHIN
Yesterday, when I was mentally preparing myself for today's talk, the thought occurred to me that so much has been said about peace in the many functions held by the Sai Organisation this year that it would be extremely difficult for me to find something fresh to say. Moreover I felt sure that the other speakers today would all make the same points about peace that I would want to make and so much that I would say would probably be superfluous. Then my inner voice spoke to me very clearly and said that the title of my talk to you today should be 'Go Within' and so that is what you are going to get! Of course I should not be surprised at this sort of thing happening because this process of choosing the subject for a talk has taken place many times before.
I recently did a wonderful interview with Anil Kumar, who is Sai Baba's main interpreter. As some of you might know, my wife and I produce the Ramala Centre Newsletter and in our next issue, which comes out in about two weeks time, you can read a transcript of the interview with Anil Kumar. One of the questions that I asked Anil was "What is the greatest manifestation that you have ever seen Swami do?" Without hesitation he replied "Speak through me". He then went on to say "You know, when Swami first called on me to speak he asked me, without any prior warning, to get up and to speak inside the Poornachandra Hall in front of a large audience and I just had to talk. However once I realised that Swami was going to do that, I got clever and began to prepare my speeches in advance. I prepared a speech about wisdom but, of course, Swami then asked me to talk about devotion. When I prepared a speech about devotion, Swami then asked me to talk about Dharma. So it soon became very apparent to me that Swami was teaching me to rely on the force of God within me and this, in truth, is what I do with all my talks." The process is exactly the same for me.
As I stand here before you now, I really have nothing prepared. I just invite Swami to think, act and speak through me, which, of course, is the birthright of everyone in this room. I will warn you, though, that in the beginning this process does involve a slight test of nerves, because you have to trust the process and to recognise that you are not the doer or the speaker. However I can assure you that after a few such talks you overcome your fears and begin to trust the system and it really is amazing how it does work. As I heard the first speaker today talking about going within and the next speaker following on in much the same vein I saw very clearly that the great Organiser in the sky had organised all the speeches to flow one into the other and that my task this afternoon was simply to pull together all the threads in the final presentation. Hopefully by the time that I have finished you will have grasped the importance of going within.
What do I actually mean when I say, "Go within"? What is it that we are seeking when we go within? I remember that when I was in Puttaparthi, about five years ago, Sai Baba came out to look at some construction work that was going on at the back of the mandir some time after he had finished his formal darshan. After the inspection was over he came back into the men's side of the mandir and looked at the few people who were sitting there. Sai Baba was only about ten feet away from me. He just stood there for what seemed like an eternity but which, in reality, was probably only for two or three minutes, and he looked at us ever so gently and lovingly, rocking slowly from foot to foot. Then he raised both his hands and gave us one of his special two-handed blessings, with both his hands describing the familiar circular pattern in the air. As he looked at me I experienced true ecstasy, not the ecstasy of orgasm but the ecstasy of spirit. I realised afterwards that it was probably the greatest bliss that I had ever experienced. But why was I experiencing such bliss? It was because I was totally focused on the Lord. I was not conscious of my body; I was not distracted by my mind or senses. I was totally at peace with myself and was totally focused on the Lord. I was one with my divine spirit deep within my own being. I was just I.
Now I relate this incident simply to illustrate that when you focus totally on God, on the aspect of God within you, that is the time when you experience true bliss and, of course, you don't have to go all the way to India and see Sai Baba in order to achieve this. You have to learn to focus on what I call the omnipresent God, which is the aspect of God that is within you, your divine spirit or atma. Sai Baba says, "You are in me, but a little part of me is in you." So you have to train yourselves to go within, to look within, to seek the God within you, the part of your being that is never born and so never dies. My wife, Ann, is particularly sensitive to Swami's hand blessings. She feels that they transform every atom of her body and she regularly feels the kundalini energy rising up her spine as he gives his blessings. That is the power of an avatar's darshan. It transforms everybody and everything. As you may well know, Sai Baba loves to tease and to joke with his devotees. Someone once asked Swami in an interview what he was actually doing when he moved his hands in the familiar blessing pattern. Sai Baba replied "Well, when I move my right hand like this, I'm uplifting the whole consciousness of the world, and when I move my left hand like this, I'm keeping Indian Airlines flying!" What a delicious sense of humour he has.
Nevertheless, even if we know that we have to go within, what is it that prevents us from getting in touch with that aspect of God within us, our eternal spirit? What is it that prevents us from being at one with peace, love, truth, right-conduct and non-violence, what is it that blocks this experience of bliss? As some of you may know, Ann and I now live in British Columbia in Canada, close to the American border. In fact we often go across the border into the USA to shop and to sightsee. About three weeks ago Ann and I crossed the border into Washington State to go to a lovely little town called Linden. Linden has a strong Dutch heritage. There's a real windmill in the main street of Linden, which has been converted into a hotel and Dutch names are to be found everywhere. We went to visit the county fair that was on there, a big agricultural show. In the main arena there was a stage on which various cultural events took place each day of the fair. Now it just so happened that when I was there a hypnotist was putting on his show. I am usually not very interested in hypnotism, because there is something in me that doesn't want to surrender my mind to anyone, but something made me stay and watch this demonstration.
The hypnotist took about twenty people up on to the stage and then weeded out a few of them who apparently weren't susceptible to his form of hypnotism. He then began his demonstration. After assuring them that he wasn't going to do anything harmful or degrading to them he put them all to sleep through some hypnotic technique. He then demonstrated that he had total control over them by making them do things that they normally wouldn't do. For example, he told them under hypnosis that he was going to walk around in front of them but that he had a large tear in his trousers and that when he bent over you could see his bottom. Then he woke them up and began walking around in front of them on the stage. Whenever he bent over the women subjects covered their faces in embarrassment and the men subjects laughed and pointed at him. Of course his trousers weren't split. It was all in their minds. Then he did another demonstration. He put them to sleep again and held in his hands a wad of paper napkins. He told his subjects that he had a wad of $100 bills in his hand and that provided they could hide the bills in their clothes they could have as many as they liked! He walked around his subjects, both men and women, handing out paper napkins and they were stuffing these napkins into their clothes like there was no forever. They couldn't believe their luck! Finally, holding a plastic bag full of bottle tops, he said to one man "Look, I've got a bag full of silver quarters here and you can have them, provided you stuff them down the front of your trousers." We watched the gentleman in question do this with alacrity. Then the hypnotist said "Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you that they've been in the deep freeze all morning and ……". Would you believe it, the gentleman began hopping up and down as though he had a block of ice between his legs! Now what is the purpose of telling this story? What does it all prove? It shows how much we are controlled by our subconscious minds. If a hypnotist can put these thoughts into these people's minds and in a few seconds can make them believe that they are real, how much more do we programme our subconscious minds with our everyday thoughts and experiences.
Some of you will have heard of ISAP - The Inner Self Awareness Programme - that has been developed here in the UK. This wonderful course deals very thoroughly with the whole business of the conscious and the subconscious mind and of how we unconsciously respond to old patterns, old beliefs and old understandings. From the moment that we are born, we start conditioning ourselves. What we are our taught by our parents, by our teachers, by society as a whole, by all our experiences of life, all goes into our subconscious mind and creates an 'identity' which blocks the understanding of the spirit with which we incarnated. Do you know that a young child doesn't know its colour or race or what that means in society until an adult points out that fact to the child? A child is more in touch with its spirit than an adult because there are fewer conditioning experiences blocking its divine connection. As we become adults, so we lose that connectedness with our inner self, the aspect of God within us. Above all we lose our sense of oneness, of connectedness to everyone and to everything. The symbol of ISAP is the shutter that covers the lens of the camera. The shutter, made up of differing segments (past experiences), covers the lens (spirit). So what we have to do is to open the shutter, to put aside our conditioning of this life, to reveal the force of God that moves within us. It is not something that is deliberately hidden from us. It is our birthright. It is what we are; eternal, infinite, spiritual beings. All the great spiritual teachers have taught 'Look within, for there is the Kingdom of God.'
Now Sai Baba is a great mould crusher. One of the reasons that he has come on Earth is to help us to break the mould of who or what we think we are. I, personally, had a very difficult relationship with Swami for the first four or five years after hearing about him because the esoteric tradition that he represented appeared to conflict with mine. As the saying goes, he really rattled my cage. It was because of this that my wife had to drag me out to India, protesting strongly, to go to see Sai Baba. I really didn't want to go and see any Indian guru, let alone one who was said to be God on Earth. There was a part of me that said, "I just don't need this. I've worked out a very good understanding of the nature of God and the purpose of life and I don't need anyone playing around with it!" Well, of course, you go out to see Sai Baba, you stand in his transforming energy and you feel the power of his unconditional love. Even though he totally ignored me, thus giving me the time and the space to work through all my doubts and fears, he was still working on me. I like to use the analogy of a time-release capsule. Sai Baba planted a time-release capsule of knowledge and wisdom within me, which over the months and years after my visit slowly released spiritual understandings within me, which enabled me to grasp the vital essence of his divine message. His teachings were soon echoing inside my head. There is only one God and that God is omnipresent. You are God; you are no different from God. Love all, serve all. The reason why you incarnate on the Earth is to transmute your karma. Everything that happens to you is of your own creation. There is no such thing as evil. The purpose of life is to seek and get liberation. Such concepts were strange to me before I came in contact with Sai Baba. I was brought up in the Christian belief that Man is on Earth and God is in Heaven, that Man was born out of sin and that God had to send His only son down in order to communicate with Man and to save him from himself. But Sai Baba was saying the very opposite to this, that God is within me, that I am no different from God and, as such, that I am a perfect eternal being that knows neither birth nor death.
Over the fifteen or so years that I have been in contact with Sai Baba I have gradually drawn closer and closer to him. My wife and I have been privileged to have many interviews with him and we have begun to form a close relationship with him. Nevertheless, both we and many other devotees of long standing have lately been going through a very difficult period because Sai Baba has been ignoring us on the physical level in a definite attempt to wean us off his physical form. Over the years we've grown very comfortable with and accustomed to his form. I'm always joking that my wife is a founder member of the MTF club, which is the Must Touch Flesh club! Whenever she gets near Swami, poor man, she wants to hold his hand, to massage his feet, to mother him, to get very close to him. As a reserved Englishman I sit back and watch this whole process with some amusement. However she has developed a very close relationship with Swami. He looks at all her photographs, he listens to all her stories, he answers all her questions about family matters. They have a wonderful rapport and yet, over the past two or three years, there's been a distancing, a drawing back, a withdrawal of physical contact by Sai Baba.
We recently went down to a retreat in Grants Pass in Oregon, in the USA, where we met Jack and Louise Hawley, who wrote 'Dharmic Management', and Joy and Raye Thomas, who have written many books about Sai Baba and have even lived full time in his ashram. At the retreat they both talked about the same subject - the difficulty they're experiencing as Sai Baba withdraws his physical contact from them. Now Jack Hawley spends several months of the year in India with Swami, he's been inside Swami's private house on many occasions, but Swami hasn't talked to him in a year and a half. In fact, he's ignored him. Jack was relating as to how difficult he found this at first, as to how he went though all sorts of feelings of rejection, feelings that he wasn't good enough, that he'd done something wrong. Suddenly, however, he began to realise that this process was a gift from Swami, since it was forcing him to contact the Sai Baba within rather than the Sai Baba without. Joy Thomas spoke in much the same vein. She had to suffer an apparent rejection by Sai Baba in front of a large crowd at darshan. Her group was called in for an interview. They all went up to the veranda to go inside, but Swami let the whole group in except her! He closed the door with Joy still outside and she had to walk back to her place in front of thousands of people. That is a very, very difficult test to face but, again, it forced Joy to go within. The reason why Sai Baba did it, or so Joy said, was because he had been appearing to her regularly in her dreams, telling her things. She wanted to know if her dreams were genuine, if what he was saying was accurate. This was Sai Baba's way of telling her to believe her own experience. He was saying "I come to you within, listen to what I'm saying."
When we were last in Puttaparthi we met Phyllis Krystal the authoress of several books about Sai Baba including 'Sai Baba: The Ultimate Experience' and 'Cutting the Ties that Bind'. Sai Baba set the stage for her lesson during the first visit that she and her husband made to the ashram in 1973. During their farewell interview Phyllis asked Sai Baba when he would like her and her husband to return. He looked intently at her and, pointing at himself, he then said "First you must remember that you don't need to come back to see this little body." After a significant pause he then said to her "Find me in your own heart." Then, after another pause, as Phyllis accepted and understood his message, he continued "But you will return to be re-energised." Many years later he emphasised this message again in a very dramatic way, one that many people could observe. On the day that she was to leave for home, after previously assuring her on several occasions that he would see her before she left, he had still not called her in for the promised interview. Darshan came and went but as he walked back to his quarters after bhajans Sai Baba abruptly stopped in front of her and said in a loud voice, for all to hear, "Go inside, right now" and turning to a friend of Phyllis who was sitting next to her he said "And you too." They were both puzzled at first, thinking that he meant for them to go into the interview room, but then he added "Do", indicating to Phyllis that she should take padanamaskara. As she stood up to do this Sai Baba placed his hand on her head and pushed it down towards his feet inviting her to kiss them. This ended her 'interview', as Sai Baba then carried on walking back to his quarters in the Poornachandra Hall. He would not appear again until Phyllis was on her way home but she knew exactly what he meant because of his comments on that first visit many years earlier. We must detach ourselves even from his physical form and should strive to be connected to our own inner God-self. We have to establish this link with the God within us. We can't always be going to see him; we can't always be relying on his physical form for our mental and spiritual sustenance. We can't always be travelling to India to see him, to get answers to all of our questions.
So we all have to start relying on the inner God, on that still, quiet voice within. It just isn't physically possible for the whole world to go and see and talk to Sai Baba. We have to rely on the aspect of God within us, our atma or divine spirit. This inner being is who we really are, which is an actual part of God, and, as such, is one with God, is imbued with the qualities of God: Truth, Love, Peace, Right-conduct and Non-violence. When we tap into this being we can know the answer to any question that we ask. Sai Baba says that if you sit down and meditate and attune to the spirit within you the answer will always come within twenty minutes. The answer will always come. Now I know that it's difficult, in the world in which we live today, where daily we are faced with dramas and disasters and scenes of human suffering, to believe that the world is working perfectly, that everything that manifests is a part of God's Plan. Recognise, though, that what we are actually seeing is Humanity at its lowest ebb, the end of Kali Yuga, where it appears that the world has gone mad, where human values appear to be reversed, where bad is regarded as good and good is regarded as bad, where the world focuses its attention on the bad rather than on the good. Look at what is happening in the world today where all that the world's press appears to be interested in is the sexual peccadilloes of the president of the USA. Do we see the press making any effort to report on the people who are trying to transform and uplift human society? Is there anything positive ever written about Sai Baba, for example? Is there anything positive ever written about the daily sacrifice and service of people of goodwill who work unceasingly for the upliftment of human society.
Someone actually tried to start a 'good news' newspaper in England a few years ago, a newspaper that would report only good news, not bad news, but it folded within a few months. There is a part of us that doesn't want to hear good news, that doesn't want to focus on the higher aspects of life because it is attracted to the lower. Rather like watching a soap opera on the television, we watch the drama of life and we believe it to be real, not just a drama, and we become fixated with it. Sai Baba teaches that life is a game and all that we have to do is play it. We must never get sucked into believing that the game is anything more than a game, that the drama of life is real, especially since the drama is going to intensify beyond our wildest dreams in the next few years. We are approaching a critical time in the evolutionary process of this Earth. What is going to unfold only Sai Baba knows, but it is apparent that big evolutionary changes are coming. The seeds that Humanity has sown will soon bear fruit. Sai Baba will not be drawn on this point but he does say that Humanity will suffer 'irritations'. It behoves us to prepare for such 'irritations' and the best way to do this is by establishing a close link with the divine aspect of God that is within us - our atma or spirit. In this way we will be guided to be where we are meant to be, to do what we are meant to do and to say what we are meant to say.
Several years ago we published in the Ramala Centre Newsletter the story about a dream, which my daughter, Diana, had experienced. In this dream she met Sai Baba conversed with him and had an out of the body experience with him. He took her up above the Earth, to a position where she could see past, present and future, and showed her that all the suffering in the world was just karmic settlement and, as such, was all a part of God's plan for Humanity. He went on to tell her that there is no such thing as evil, that the world is perfect in every respect, if only because God created it. God is present within every human being, so how can we judge anyone. If we judge them, then, we are judging God! What is the source within us that makes the judgements? It is most certainly not the God within us, because God would not judge God. So it can only be the persona that we have created from our earthly experiences, from the times when we were separate from God. Sai Baba warns us not to judge this world or the actions of the people in it if only because of what happens every time we make a judgement. Sai Baba says that every time you judge someone, you take on some of their karma, you take a little bit of karma off them and put it on yours. So every time that you think badly of someone, every time you say negative things about someone, you are actually doing them a favour, because you are lightening their karmic burden but, alas, increasing yours! Keep that thought in mind the very next time that you judge someone. Sai Baba says that the more you judge, the less you love and the whole purpose of life is to love and to serve one another.
So we have to understand that everything that manifests in the world is all part of a great cosmic drama, a drama that was written aeons of time ago, if not before time. All that we can do is observe, react and draw lessons from that drama. I recently went to a seer in Bombay, who reads from some palm leaf scrolls called The Book of Brighu. Now these scrolls were written thousands of years ago and yet this gentleman was able to read the scrolls and not only tell me events about my life both past, present and future but also about past and future lives. Whether or not he is accurate remains to be seen but if he is, then, it is apparent that much of life is preordained or predestined and that all we can do is respond to it. Sai Baba says that what you meet in life is destiny, but how you meet it is self-effort. So we observe and take part in the drama but what is important is the place from which we view that drama. Sai Baba says that the colour of the glasses that we wear colours all that we see. In other words, if we wear red lenses in our glasses, then, everything that we see is red. If we look with the eyes of love, then, all that we see is love. If we look with the eyes of spirit, then, all that we see is spirit. If we look with negativity then all that we will see is negativity. If we look with positivity then all that we will see is positivity. That is why it is so important to go within. It determines the reality of what we see and, therefore, how we react to it and how we react to it determines our actions and, therefore, our karma.
God, Infinite Spirit, call Him what you may, is orchestrating this drama. He is the author. We are just the actors in His drama. Because He has written it, we have to trust that it is perfect. We have to trust the author. We have to trust the part or the role in the drama that has been assigned to us. We have to realise that since we are infinite, eternal beings, we are never born and so we can never die. Every death, every act of suffering, is not an act of random fate, of blind chance. It is an act of destiny. Therefore there is no such thing as a tragedy. As Sai Baba says, "Everything is perfect. It is just karma working itself out." In this certain knowledge, surely, we can be more at peace both with the world and with ourselves. Knowing that no one is born and no one dies we can accept the world for what it is, an impermanent, ever changing stage onto which, as Shakespeare said, we have our entrances and our exits. Remember that the spirit is never born, never dies and never suffers. It is eternal and infinite. It is the observer of the drama as, indeed, is God. When we are one with our divine spirit we are one with all knowledge, all wisdom, all power. It is at such a time that the drama of life is seen for what it really is, a drama!
Nevertheless, Sai Baba says that it is a great privilege to be in incarnation on the Earth at this time. Why is this so? It is, firstly, because we are in incarnation on the Earth at the same time as a full avatar and, secondly, because we have been blessed with the wisdom to recognise him for who he is and have been able to have personal contact with him, a privilege of which the beings on many other planes of life are very envious. To enter into the aura of an avatar, to be able to see, touch and talk to him, to have his darshan, to be able to hear his teachings directly about the reality of human existence, as we do at this time, is something that will not happen again for a very, very long time, if at all. So we are being offered an immense opportunity to take a gigantic step forward, to achieve liberation and to return home to the Source of All Life. Now just because you are living here in England, apparently far removed from Sai Baba physically, do not think that it is impossible to establish a relationship with him. Sai Baba's main teaching is that there is only one God and that God is omnipresent. He is here now, around us, above us and within us. Sai Baba says, "I am in you and you are in me" and he is as much here as he is in India, in fact anywhere in the World. The stories of his omnipresence are manifold and I do not need to repeat them here. The experience of Jack and Louise Hawley, of Raye and Joy Thomas and of Ann and myself are all one and the same. The inner Sai Baba is so much more accessible, so much more omnipresent and so much more powerful than the physical form that lives in India. So go within.
My lovely wife, Ann, who has had such a close relationship with Sai Baba, a true affair of the heart, is finding it very difficult to release the outer form and to go within. Sai Baba is being very tough on her. She goes to see him at Puttaparthi and is totally ignored. She sits there in darshan for day after day and Swami doesn't even look at her, yet alone speak to her. If we are blessed with an interview, it's always on the very last day, just before we leave and as we walk out of the interview room he always says the same thing to us. He looks deeply into our eyes and says "Remember, I am always with you, I am always with you". This isn't some esoteric statement. It is a fact of life. He is reminding us of the supreme teaching, that there is only one God and that God is omnipresent. At no time are we separate from God.
I would like to finish by reading an extract from one of Sai Baba's talks which, for me anyway, encapsulates all that I have said to you this afternoon. It defines why we are here, why the avatar is here and what our relationship with him should be. So just sit back and listen and imagine that Swami is speaking the words to you which, of course, in one sense he is, through me.
"Come just one step towards me, and I shall take a hundred steps towards you. Shed just one tear, and I shall wipe away a hundred tears from your eyes. I bless only thus. May your bliss grow. I have come to give you the key of the treasure of bliss, to tell you how to tap that spring, for you have forgotten the way to blessedness. If you waste this chance of saving yourselves, it is just your fate. You have come to get from me tinsel and trash, the petty little cures and promotions, worldly joys and comforts. Very few of you desire to get from me the thing that I've come to give you, namely, Liberation itself. And even among those few who do, those who stick to the path of spiritual practice and succeed will be a handful.
This is a great chance. This chance will not come your way again. Be aware of that. If you cannot and do not cross this sea of grief now, taking hold of this chance, when again can you get such a chance. Be confident that you will be liberated. Know that you will be saved. Go and tell all that you went to Puttaparthi and that you got there the secret of liberation.
Many hesitate to believe that things will improve, that life will be happy for all and full of joy and that the Golden Age will recur. Let me assure you that this avatar, this divine body, has not come in vain. It will succeed in averting the crisis that has come upon Humanity".
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An interview with Al Drucker
David: I would like to begin by asking you about your spiritual background. What were your spiritual understandings before you came into contact with Sai Baba?
Al: I was brought up in a Jewish home in pre-war Germany. As a little boy I was a very pious kid even though my family was not particularly religious. It was really an opportunity for me to get away from my family. At the time I felt overpowered by all the women in my family. They all loved me and fluttered around me so much that as a little kid I just couldn't take it. So the only way that I could become free of all of that was to become so religiously inclined that their needs wouldn't prevail over mine. I think that I began studying the Torah when I was only three.
David: But was there any one factor or incident in those early days that awakened your spiritual consciousness, that started you on your spiritual quest in this life?
Al: Well it seems to me that my interest in spiritual matters was always there. I have some intimations of having been a Ramakrishna sannyasin in my last life. I believe that I spent that life in France. I have some remembrances of it. I also feel that I have spent many lifetimes in India, living in caves in the Himalayas. In this life I did not pursue a spiritual path until well into my adult years. After going to university I kind of got lost in the world for a while. I joined a select group of engineers and physicists who were responsible for the technical management of the U.S. ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes. However I soon got an inner message that working on these weapons of mass destruction was not right for me and so, on a spiritual impulse, I quit the programme very suddenly in the late 1960's and went to live at the Esalen Institute, a centre for growth and transformation in Big Sur on the Pacific Coast, south of San Francisco. The contrast from my previous lifestyle could not have been more dramatic. I radically changed professions, to become in succession a massage therapist, a Rolfer, an acupuncturist, a homeopath, a gestalt therapist and, finally, a teacher of alternative medicine. Now Esalen is just across the mountains from the Tassajara Zen Mountain Centre, it is about fifteen miles as the crow flies, and I used to hike across the mountains to meet a wonderful teacher, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi. He was really a great saint and it was through him that I became interested in Zen. I have also had a long time interest in Taoist teachings, having spent some time in China as a young man. So it seems to me that I have always been interested in spiritual matters, but Spirit didn't really become the major focal point in my life until my aeroplane experience, in which Swami saved my life and thereafter led me to him in India.
David: The greatest obstacle that I had to overcome in establishing a relationship with Sai Baba was the concept of God incarnating on the Earth. To me God was always separate from His creation and never incarnated in form on the Earth. When did you accept this reality?
Al: Well, you see, even as a kid we would sing a song in Yiddish about the time when the Messiah would come on Earth and we would all be happy. I have always believed that the Messiah was just around the corner and that the Messiah was God on Earth. So I have always been waiting for him and rather than being surprised that such a thing could actually happen, I was surprised that it hadn't happened yet. So I didn't have that prejudice against God being in form.
David: In the talk that you gave yesterday, you related the story about meeting the SS colonel in the railway carriage, as you tried to escape from persecution in Nazi Germany. This impressive figure, dressed in the black uniform, must have absolutely taken your breath away, and yet he talked to you about the Bible and made that amazing statement, "There is no Moses to save you this time".
Al: I was just a kid of nine and, of course, I was terrified. I was frightened out of my wits when he came into that train compartment. I lived in Cologne and I was travelling across Germany to Poland and had stopped off in Berlin. In Berlin I had some well-to-do relations and they had decided to put me into this first class compartment, but unknown to me, Jews were not permitted to be there. I had the compartment to myself until the train stopped some twenty-five miles outside of Berlin and that was when this SS colonel appeared. So I sat there, petrified, expecting to be arrested, but he was charming He loosened his jacket and took off all of his imposing paraphernalia - the cap with the skull emblem on it, the black leather belt, the gun, the dagger, the leather gloves, the monocle and the big black leather boots. He made himself comfortable and told me to sit comfortably and not to be afraid of him. So, in a sense, he became an ordinary guy for me. He talked to me about God and the Jews, quoting extensively from the Old Testament. He warned me that the Holocaust was coming and advised me to escape westwards not eastwards which, of course, is what I eventually did.
David: You said that you felt that the SS colonel was Sai Baba, that he manifested as that colonel to warn you, in fact, to save your life. Are you really sure of that?
Al: It is very clear to me now that the colonel was Swami. He simply didn't fit the SS character at all. There was no way that man would have taken the chance in Nazi Germany at that time of saying the things that he said to me, even if he felt that way.
David: The SS colonel came out with this amazing statement "There is no Moses to save you this time. You will have to be your own Messiah." What do you think that Swami meant when he said that? How do you view that message in the light of what eventually happened to the Jews? What would be the purpose of the Jews being subject to the Holocaust? Was it to prove to them that there is no Messiah?
Al: I wish I even had the beginning of some answers for that. I have no idea, David. But two world wars in two successive generations, which destroyed or uprooted hundreds of millions of people, and then the development of atomic and hydrogen weapons that promised to snuff out all of civilisation, and God knows what other insane weapons of death are in the offing to destroy Mankind, only proves what madness has come upon us in this Kali Yuga, and how absolutely vital it was in this time of darkness for the Avatar to come and rescue Mankind from itself. The genocide of the Jews is just an outward symptom of the genocidal feelings of hatred and mayhem inside all of us. Swami has come to correct that. As for the Messiah, I once had the chance to ask Swami whether he was the Messiah for which we had long been waiting. He answered "Not one Messiah. You are all Messiahs. You have the power to save yourself and to save others also." In other words, he will drive the chariot, he will direct us from within, but it is our job to save ourselves and we have been given the full power of God to transform the internal enemies of greed, hatred and jealousy, etc. which are polluting our hearts into the divine love that is Swami. For me, personally, Swami gave me the chance to clear up most of my haunting memories of Nazi Germany. It relates to the first time I had to leave India very unexpectedly. Let me tell you the story.
In 1981, after I had made some fifteen or so trips to Sai Baba, he directed me to come and live at Prashanti Nilayam. So I went back to America and gave up everything. I sold or gave away all of my possessions and I was back at the ashram within a couple of months. At his direction I was to give up my U.S. citizenship and become an Indian citizen. My life in America was to be finished! So I started the process of Indian naturalisation and I arranged that I would become an Indian citizen on my 60th birthday, because that is a particularly auspicious day. I planned to go to Bangalore that day to be sworn in and also, a few days later, to deliver a paper at a conference of the heads of all the Indian universities on the Awareness Programme, six courses unique to Swami's University, which covered the whole range of human knowledge - the humanities, the sciences, the arts, and the spiritual and religious history of the world - which all undergraduate students were required to take. I had had a hand in formulating the programme. Now at that time Swami was in Whitefield.
So that morning I was sitting in my room, working on my presentation, when a policeman knocked on the door and informed me that I was under arrest! Well, you call imagine the shock and disbelief that I felt. It seems that they had decided that I was a CIA agent and would pose a threat to the country if I became a citizen. The policeman had orders to take me to Anantapur. I insisted that I had to go and see Swami first. Well, amazingly, I got to see him. It's a wonderful story and I cannot tell it all now, but I got to see Swami and he told me, despite my fervent objections, that, yes, I was CIA, and it would be best if I left the country! Then he explained that CIA really meant Constant Integrated Awareness, and that I should call the headman in Anantapur. I called this officer and to my astonishment he directly answered the phone, which is most remarkable in India. When I told him that Bhagavan had advised me to leave India, he gave me eight hours in which to leave the country. Now this is the day, my 60th birthday, on which I am supposed to become an Indian citizen and give up my U.S. citizenship and, in a moment, my life was totally turned around! I didn't have any money, I didn't have a ticket, I didn't have an exit visa yet, somehow, Swami miraculously arranged for all of that and I ended up by flying to Germany, of all places. That was as far as I could go at that time with the funds that I had available. I stayed with some German Sai friends that I had met at the ashram. Now the husband was in the Wehrmacht, the German army, during the war and his wife was a leader of the girls' side of the Hitler Youth movement. We spent an intense month together discussing the war and clearing out all our old karma. It was totally finished for us and we became very close friends. We put the whole war experience to rest. In my talk yesterday I referred to the pure light that shines in the eyes of the children in Swami's schools and I have a clear sense that many of these kids are the reincarnated souls of the beings that died in the gas ovens of Auchwitz, and that they are now with Baba and so have forgiven all that was done to them in the past! I am really clear in my own mind that even if Adolf Hitler were sitting here in front of me now I would forgive him and see only the wholeness and the completeness and the perfection of his being, and not dwell on the horror of what he, in his madness, perpetrated on the world.
David: How long did it take you to recognise Sai Baba's divinity. My path was a very slow one, requiring many visits, with much doubting and testing. How was it for you?
Al: I loved Swami the first time that I saw him. I just loved him. As I said yesterday, the very first time that I saw Swami was in the Poornachandra Auditorium on the day of Mahashivaratri. Just before he came out, I had this very powerful deja-vu experience of being back in Nazi Germany. There were the massed flags and the swastika symbols, which of course was the symbol of Nazi Germany, the slogans and banners on the walls, similar to what the Nazis used to do, and when Swami started speaking he was saying the same things that Hitler said! Then I woke up and realised that here was the ultimate of goodness that had come into consciousness, the ultimate in the totality of the history of the world as it is known in the West. There had not been a full avatar on the Earth since Lord Krishna, over five thousand years ago. I recognised that I had experienced both the ultimate of divine goodness and the ultimate of evil in my life. They both used some of the same outer forms, they both used some of the same expressions, they both used some of the same symbols and slogans, and they both used similar mannerisms. In the talk that Swami gave that day he said that it does us no good to go around digging ten metre holes in a field in our search for water. We can dig holes all over a field and still find nothing. He said that we must dig one hole, but dig it deeply, in order to find pure clear water. If we want to know the reality of this Sai Avatar, we must come close to him and dig deeply. The intensity of that experience was so powerful that it has remained with me ever since.
David: You've been so close to Swami, do you think it is because of your actions in past lives or in this life?
Al: I really do not know. All I can say is that there is nothing that I am aware of in this life that would relate to that extraordinary privilege.
David: We both know of people, such as yourself, who were very close to Swami and then have suddenly fallen from grace and been banished from the ashram. I have this feeling that it is safer not to get too close to Swami. It's almost like getting too close to the fire and getting burned. What are your feelings about this?
Al: When the devastating moment of incineration comes it is almost always totally unexpected, like the incident on my 60th birthday that I just spoke about. In some ways, it's a lot like death. We think that death is something that happens to everybody but us! Here is another story with an unexpected result. One morning I got a message to report to the head office of the ashram. Remember that at the time I was a lecturer in the Sathya Sai Institute and, in fact. I was the only Westerner there. Swami also had told me to do study circles for the residents in the ashram and for the staff and students at the University. I also gave talks to the Westerners who visited the ashram. So there were many opportunities for me to slip up and to make a mistake, but in this particular incident even the mistake was missing. I had done nothing wrong. Anyway, I went down to the office, it was just before morning darshan, and waited for the manager of the office to arrive. He was coming straight from seeing Swami, since they have breakfast together. He walked up to me and said, "Pack up your things and leave. You have to be out of here by noon!" I said, "Out of here, what do you mean?" He replied, "You are being told to go. You've got to go." Now this is after I've been there three years. I asked, "What is this all about?" but he replied, "I've been instructed not to tell you." So I returned to my flat and said inwardly "Swami, what have I done? I don't understand it. I have to leave and my whole life is here. This is where all my things are." At that time I had an extensive library of over five hundred books. I began packing and choosing a few favourite books to take with me I picked up a book of Shankara's poems, opened it and read 'Mother, how could you be so cruel to your only son, you're my Mother and how can you not love your son? Somehow I knew that it was no accident that I was looking at this poem. Just then a message came for me to go and see Dr. Gokak, who at that time was the vice chancellor of the University, and who was also my boss. He told me that Swami was very unhappy with me and I had to leave. I said, "What is this all about, Dr. Gokak?" He replied that he had been told not to tell me, but that Swami was unhappy with something that I had said at a public meeting. I returned to my flat and continued with my packing when Professor Kasturi called for me. Now Kasturi and I were like father and son. I spent much time with him. He said, "Drucker, you've done it." I said, "What is it that I am supposed to have done?" He replied "Swami says that you were cracking dirty jokes in your talk to the foreigners" I said "That's just not possible, Kasturiji, that's totally incorrect." Kasturi said that Swami had received a letter from a German lady who had reported this fact to him. He also said that he (Kasturi) had received a letter from the same German lady asking for an introduction to me. I have no idea who this lady is. So I went off for my last darshan and as I'm sitting there in darshan Swami comes up to me and says "You are a Surpanakha." Now Surpanakha is the name of a demon in the Ramayana. She is the sister of Ravana and when she discovers Rama and Lakshmana she desires them so much that, in a jealous rage, she tries to kill Sita. Lakshmana intervenes and with his sword disfigures her, first cutting off her nose and then her ear. She runs back to her brother Ravana in order to raise an army of demons and so avenge herself. Ravana is amazed that she stayed around long enough to have both a nose and an ear cut off, and he asks her why she did not run away. She replies that they were both so beautiful she couldn't take her eyes off them! So when Swami called me "Surpanakha" and jokingly said that he was going to cut off my nose, I responded by saying "0 Swami, you are so beautiful, I'll have to stay around until you cut off my ear too!" Apparently, that was the right answer. Swami told me to take padanamaskara. I kissed his feet and that was the end of the incident. It was over, and I stayed at the ashram. But it was a warning to me that at any moment I could be thrown out, with or without good reason and, as you know, later on it did indeed happen to me. I have always recognised that God can take anything that He likes away from me. I have heard Swami talk of the three zeros, of reducing a true devotee to nothing, of taking away their wealth, their health and their name to prepare them for liberation. I am ready for that.
David: Obviously the fact that Swami did eventually throw you out of the ashram must be for your highest good, but what, do you think, was his reason for doing that? Do you think that he is preparing you for liberation?
Al: I had always believed that the meaning of the three zeros was that God can take any material thing away from me, but that He could not take God away from me. I worshipped Swami as God and here I was getting thrown out of the ashram. So I felt that even God had now been taken away from me. I felt totally devastated, without roots of any kind. I believed that there was no existence left, but then I discovered something. There is no way that God can be taken away from me. The form of God was no longer in my eyes, that was all. Now that discovery was not immediate. It took me about a year to get over the feelings that something horrible had happened to me. Nevertheless, during this period of time, I experienced many remarkable acts of grace, including being in the interview room with Swami every day for some weeks. It was a direct experience. It was not a dream. It was a state of awakened consciousness. I was sitting there and Swami would be sitting here and we were talking. It was no less real than the exchange that we are having now. I realise now that Swami will never take himself away from me.
David: Ann and I have always created a separation between the forms that we call Sai and Super Sai. We love to go and visit Sai, that is to say the physical form of Sai Baba, but we also recognise that Super Sai, that is to say the omnipresent form of God, is with us every moment of our lives and, indeed, is here right now. It is Super Sai that is for us the God in which we trust and in which we believe and with whom we have no conflict. It seems to me that conflicts such as you have experienced only arise when you get close to the form and have to relate to the form!
Al: Well, David, we have to be willing to get close to Swami and even to risk being thrown out, but even if that happens we will discover that nothing really has happened. How can anything ever come between Swami and his devotees? He is pure love and he yearns for all of us to come very close to him. One reason Swami gives us vibhuti is to remind us that ash is the only thing that survives in a fire. We have to be willing to do what it takes to be consumed in his fire and to realise the truth of who we really are, which cannot be affected by anything.
David: What has been your experience of being nine years in the wilderness, of being removed from Sai Baba for so long a time, after being so close to him?
Al: During the eight years I was at the Ashram I did indeed feel very close to Swami. In the first years Swami would speak to me every day. So I was treated like I was a very special person. But what has come to me in these years of being in the wilderness is sanity. I thought that I was special, but it is now very dear to me that I am not special, none of us is special, and I don't want to shock your readers when I say this, but even Swami is not special. There is nothing special about anything in this world. Underneath we are all exactly the same, one unchanging divine essence; on the surface there is just the changing names and forms of maya, the veil of illusion.
David: When you say Swami, you mean the form of Swami?
Al: Yes, absolute truth does not have a form. It cannot be seen with the eyes, nevertheless, some forms can be used to point the way to the realisation of our true reality. Such is the form of Swami, but we must go beyond that stage to the direct experience of the formless divinity as the truth of our being.
David: Professor Kasturi was always having a hard time with Swami, even though he was very close to Swami. Swami sometimes did some harsh things to him, didn't he, to crush his ego? Is this the price that you pay for being that close to him?
Al: No, I don't think that it's like that; I don't think that it's a price you have to pay for being so close to him. I think that it's the price you have to pay for having chosen to be on the fast track to liberation. You have to pay that price if your ego is to go. The sense of individuality has to go and all that Swami is doing is to help you to realise that all forms of individuality are a mistake. So I think that this sort of thing happens to all people who have made the commitment to liberation, no matter what. There is only one interest in my life and that is the path to liberation, so anything which blocks that path has to be removed, and quickly, because I am not prepared to wait for another five lifetimes. Ann, in her talk yesterday, said that the Book of Brighu astrologer had told you that you were going to incarnate again with Prema Sai and live in his ashram for most of your next life and would die at ninety-five. This, apparently, was confirmed to you at Shivaratri when you did not see the lingam emerge. You have now accepted this as a fact.
David: Yes. That is true.
Al: I think that's a terrible mistake. Excuse me, David, but I have to tell you that that is very foolish. Don't accept anything like that. Your mind has the power of God and you can change destiny by changing your consciousness. You can, I know that! You have the power to do this unless you have talked yourself into wanting to be around for another one hundred and fifty years or so.
David: I have no desire to be here again, even for a life with Prema Sai.
Al: Then don't accept it. Don't accept it and Swami will not support that mistake. It really is a mistake. He would not support it unless that is your wish. So make that decision now and even if the three zeros and all that stuff follows, so what? This world isn't worth anything anyway, so why invest in it?
David: May I ask you a personal question now? Was your decision to marry Yaani, the decision which directly led to you being thrown out of the ashram, made from the heart or from Swami?
Al: It was not from the heart, it was clearly from Swami, although now it has become a thing of the heart. You know, it's an interesting fact that that was the way of most marriages until this century. Parents or preceptors usually arranged marriages, because it was in the best interest of the individuals concerned in their journey to God. The love, which was often very deep, usually came afterwards. I would say that I'm a very reluctant husband. I went through sixty years of life without ever having contemplated marriage and just at the time when I am supposed to give up everything I get married!
David: What game do you think Swami is playing with you with regard to your marriage?
Al: Well this marriage has been my principal sadhana for the past ten years and in retrospect I can say that nothing else that I can think of has been as valuable as this marriage in terms of personal growth and development. From a worldly and a cultural sense we are totally opposite! There is a constant opportunity for friction between us. We have Swami in common, as our common love. Other than that we have few other common interests. What a grand opportunity this presents for self-interest, for ego, to expose itself and to be seen and set aside! It is something of a challenge. Swami has presented us with a final challenge to enable us to finish this silly game.
David: Life is a game, as Swami says, and we must play it, but now that you are allowed back in Prashanti Nilayam can you tell us about your more recent experiences?
Al: Well, my first impression after nine years absence is that nothing has really changed. Everyone says that the ashram has totally changed and, of course, from a physical standpoint that is true, but I didn't pay too much attention to that. I was just aware that Swami had not changed one iota in some twenty-five years. He is the same beautiful being, he expresses the same immeasurable kindness and concern; he emits that same unfathomable unlimited love. There is that same awesomeness and magic when he comes out to give darshan. He inspires us with the same hopeful message of redemption. He coaxes us in the same way, to rise above desire and temptation, to realise our incredible divine inheritance. Swami is totally unchanged. He is still saying what he said when he gave his first discourse, namely, my life is my message. He is teaching us to follow his example of raising our thoughts to heaven above and of using our bodies to serve mankind below. Now recognise that we also haven't really changed. We go through these histories, these life-stories, and we think that so much has happened but, in fact, we are still as we have always been, even before we came into this birth and even after the death of these bodies. We are always whole and perfect and one with Sai Baba. We are love itself, and that is why Swami has always addressed us as Premaswarupa, as embodiments of pure divine love. This is now becoming my direct experience. I can relate one experience that came up for me during the Paduka festival last year at the ashram. They brought out this golden chariot for Swami to ride in and out of nowhere all this judgement came into my mind. Good heavens, I thought, Swami, what are you doing? What have you got to do with this garish obscene thing, this huge golden chariot? Would Jesus or Saint Francis ride in something like that? I was very troubled by it, but at the same time, I was also very much the witness of my trouble. Where did all of these feelings come from? Why should I care what ever this chariot looks like? But still I cared. So I had to quiet myself down. I just had to close my eyes and shut it all out, become very silent and very quiet and, then, when I opened my eyes, Swami was sitting in the chariot and this incredible feeling of love gushed out of me. I started crying. I was just overcome. It was as if I had put on these glasses of love and everything was just pure love. Wherever I looked, at the people, at the chariot, all I saw was pure love. It was a wonderful experience.
David: The chariot was a donation of love, wasn't it, but Swami did point out that he had no need of it and he did give it away, didn't he?
Al: I don't know and to tell you frankly, I'm not particularly interested in the chariot. I mentioned this incident to show how Swami takes something about which we have made some negative judgement and turns it into an experience of love. Swami tells the story of Jesus walking with his disciples on a road, when they come upon the stinking decomposed carcass of a dead dog. The disciples try to lead Jesus away from the gruesome sight, but Jesus bends down very close to the remains and says, "Look at the beautiful teeth of this dog. How much it must have been loved by its master." So Jesus saw the one beautiful thing in that otherwise unpleasant sight. That is Swami's message to us. Give up your judgements. Put on your love glasses and see the face of divinity, in other words, see Swami's unbounded love in whatever you see.
David: My last question, really, is in the light of all your experience with Swami and the suffering that you had to endure, what do you think is the purpose of life?
Al: Well, it depends what you mean by life. You see, I believe that life is eternal. Life has no meaning outside of truth, outside of oneness, outside of unity, and so the purpose of these earthly lives is to awaken and to realise true life. Life on this Earth is not life. This is death. To live in these bodies and to grow old and to get sick and to suffer and to die, that is an investment in death, that has nothing at all to do with life. Life is when you are free, life is when you are the light and give that light to everyone. Life is when you become an overflowing cup of pure love, a cup that has to be constantly shared. That's life. If there ever was a purpose for this human life, it is to drop all these insane ideas about life on Earth and to return to true life. That is Swami's mission as I see it.
Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter, September 1999, http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter09_99_02.htm
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Copyright Ramala Centre. "You are welcome to reproduce any of the articles published in the newsletter, provided you acknowledge the source."
Al: I was brought up in a Jewish home in pre-war Germany. As a little boy I was a very pious kid even though my family was not particularly religious. It was really an opportunity for me to get away from my family. At the time I felt overpowered by all the women in my family. They all loved me and fluttered around me so much that as a little kid I just couldn't take it. So the only way that I could become free of all of that was to become so religiously inclined that their needs wouldn't prevail over mine. I think that I began studying the Torah when I was only three.
David: But was there any one factor or incident in those early days that awakened your spiritual consciousness, that started you on your spiritual quest in this life?
Al: Well it seems to me that my interest in spiritual matters was always there. I have some intimations of having been a Ramakrishna sannyasin in my last life. I believe that I spent that life in France. I have some remembrances of it. I also feel that I have spent many lifetimes in India, living in caves in the Himalayas. In this life I did not pursue a spiritual path until well into my adult years. After going to university I kind of got lost in the world for a while. I joined a select group of engineers and physicists who were responsible for the technical management of the U.S. ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programmes. However I soon got an inner message that working on these weapons of mass destruction was not right for me and so, on a spiritual impulse, I quit the programme very suddenly in the late 1960's and went to live at the Esalen Institute, a centre for growth and transformation in Big Sur on the Pacific Coast, south of San Francisco. The contrast from my previous lifestyle could not have been more dramatic. I radically changed professions, to become in succession a massage therapist, a Rolfer, an acupuncturist, a homeopath, a gestalt therapist and, finally, a teacher of alternative medicine. Now Esalen is just across the mountains from the Tassajara Zen Mountain Centre, it is about fifteen miles as the crow flies, and I used to hike across the mountains to meet a wonderful teacher, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi. He was really a great saint and it was through him that I became interested in Zen. I have also had a long time interest in Taoist teachings, having spent some time in China as a young man. So it seems to me that I have always been interested in spiritual matters, but Spirit didn't really become the major focal point in my life until my aeroplane experience, in which Swami saved my life and thereafter led me to him in India.
David: The greatest obstacle that I had to overcome in establishing a relationship with Sai Baba was the concept of God incarnating on the Earth. To me God was always separate from His creation and never incarnated in form on the Earth. When did you accept this reality?
Al: Well, you see, even as a kid we would sing a song in Yiddish about the time when the Messiah would come on Earth and we would all be happy. I have always believed that the Messiah was just around the corner and that the Messiah was God on Earth. So I have always been waiting for him and rather than being surprised that such a thing could actually happen, I was surprised that it hadn't happened yet. So I didn't have that prejudice against God being in form.
David: In the talk that you gave yesterday, you related the story about meeting the SS colonel in the railway carriage, as you tried to escape from persecution in Nazi Germany. This impressive figure, dressed in the black uniform, must have absolutely taken your breath away, and yet he talked to you about the Bible and made that amazing statement, "There is no Moses to save you this time".
Al: I was just a kid of nine and, of course, I was terrified. I was frightened out of my wits when he came into that train compartment. I lived in Cologne and I was travelling across Germany to Poland and had stopped off in Berlin. In Berlin I had some well-to-do relations and they had decided to put me into this first class compartment, but unknown to me, Jews were not permitted to be there. I had the compartment to myself until the train stopped some twenty-five miles outside of Berlin and that was when this SS colonel appeared. So I sat there, petrified, expecting to be arrested, but he was charming He loosened his jacket and took off all of his imposing paraphernalia - the cap with the skull emblem on it, the black leather belt, the gun, the dagger, the leather gloves, the monocle and the big black leather boots. He made himself comfortable and told me to sit comfortably and not to be afraid of him. So, in a sense, he became an ordinary guy for me. He talked to me about God and the Jews, quoting extensively from the Old Testament. He warned me that the Holocaust was coming and advised me to escape westwards not eastwards which, of course, is what I eventually did.
David: You said that you felt that the SS colonel was Sai Baba, that he manifested as that colonel to warn you, in fact, to save your life. Are you really sure of that?
Al: It is very clear to me now that the colonel was Swami. He simply didn't fit the SS character at all. There was no way that man would have taken the chance in Nazi Germany at that time of saying the things that he said to me, even if he felt that way.
David: The SS colonel came out with this amazing statement "There is no Moses to save you this time. You will have to be your own Messiah." What do you think that Swami meant when he said that? How do you view that message in the light of what eventually happened to the Jews? What would be the purpose of the Jews being subject to the Holocaust? Was it to prove to them that there is no Messiah?
Al: I wish I even had the beginning of some answers for that. I have no idea, David. But two world wars in two successive generations, which destroyed or uprooted hundreds of millions of people, and then the development of atomic and hydrogen weapons that promised to snuff out all of civilisation, and God knows what other insane weapons of death are in the offing to destroy Mankind, only proves what madness has come upon us in this Kali Yuga, and how absolutely vital it was in this time of darkness for the Avatar to come and rescue Mankind from itself. The genocide of the Jews is just an outward symptom of the genocidal feelings of hatred and mayhem inside all of us. Swami has come to correct that. As for the Messiah, I once had the chance to ask Swami whether he was the Messiah for which we had long been waiting. He answered "Not one Messiah. You are all Messiahs. You have the power to save yourself and to save others also." In other words, he will drive the chariot, he will direct us from within, but it is our job to save ourselves and we have been given the full power of God to transform the internal enemies of greed, hatred and jealousy, etc. which are polluting our hearts into the divine love that is Swami. For me, personally, Swami gave me the chance to clear up most of my haunting memories of Nazi Germany. It relates to the first time I had to leave India very unexpectedly. Let me tell you the story.
In 1981, after I had made some fifteen or so trips to Sai Baba, he directed me to come and live at Prashanti Nilayam. So I went back to America and gave up everything. I sold or gave away all of my possessions and I was back at the ashram within a couple of months. At his direction I was to give up my U.S. citizenship and become an Indian citizen. My life in America was to be finished! So I started the process of Indian naturalisation and I arranged that I would become an Indian citizen on my 60th birthday, because that is a particularly auspicious day. I planned to go to Bangalore that day to be sworn in and also, a few days later, to deliver a paper at a conference of the heads of all the Indian universities on the Awareness Programme, six courses unique to Swami's University, which covered the whole range of human knowledge - the humanities, the sciences, the arts, and the spiritual and religious history of the world - which all undergraduate students were required to take. I had had a hand in formulating the programme. Now at that time Swami was in Whitefield.
So that morning I was sitting in my room, working on my presentation, when a policeman knocked on the door and informed me that I was under arrest! Well, you call imagine the shock and disbelief that I felt. It seems that they had decided that I was a CIA agent and would pose a threat to the country if I became a citizen. The policeman had orders to take me to Anantapur. I insisted that I had to go and see Swami first. Well, amazingly, I got to see him. It's a wonderful story and I cannot tell it all now, but I got to see Swami and he told me, despite my fervent objections, that, yes, I was CIA, and it would be best if I left the country! Then he explained that CIA really meant Constant Integrated Awareness, and that I should call the headman in Anantapur. I called this officer and to my astonishment he directly answered the phone, which is most remarkable in India. When I told him that Bhagavan had advised me to leave India, he gave me eight hours in which to leave the country. Now this is the day, my 60th birthday, on which I am supposed to become an Indian citizen and give up my U.S. citizenship and, in a moment, my life was totally turned around! I didn't have any money, I didn't have a ticket, I didn't have an exit visa yet, somehow, Swami miraculously arranged for all of that and I ended up by flying to Germany, of all places. That was as far as I could go at that time with the funds that I had available. I stayed with some German Sai friends that I had met at the ashram. Now the husband was in the Wehrmacht, the German army, during the war and his wife was a leader of the girls' side of the Hitler Youth movement. We spent an intense month together discussing the war and clearing out all our old karma. It was totally finished for us and we became very close friends. We put the whole war experience to rest. In my talk yesterday I referred to the pure light that shines in the eyes of the children in Swami's schools and I have a clear sense that many of these kids are the reincarnated souls of the beings that died in the gas ovens of Auchwitz, and that they are now with Baba and so have forgiven all that was done to them in the past! I am really clear in my own mind that even if Adolf Hitler were sitting here in front of me now I would forgive him and see only the wholeness and the completeness and the perfection of his being, and not dwell on the horror of what he, in his madness, perpetrated on the world.
David: How long did it take you to recognise Sai Baba's divinity. My path was a very slow one, requiring many visits, with much doubting and testing. How was it for you?
Al: I loved Swami the first time that I saw him. I just loved him. As I said yesterday, the very first time that I saw Swami was in the Poornachandra Auditorium on the day of Mahashivaratri. Just before he came out, I had this very powerful deja-vu experience of being back in Nazi Germany. There were the massed flags and the swastika symbols, which of course was the symbol of Nazi Germany, the slogans and banners on the walls, similar to what the Nazis used to do, and when Swami started speaking he was saying the same things that Hitler said! Then I woke up and realised that here was the ultimate of goodness that had come into consciousness, the ultimate in the totality of the history of the world as it is known in the West. There had not been a full avatar on the Earth since Lord Krishna, over five thousand years ago. I recognised that I had experienced both the ultimate of divine goodness and the ultimate of evil in my life. They both used some of the same outer forms, they both used some of the same expressions, they both used some of the same symbols and slogans, and they both used similar mannerisms. In the talk that Swami gave that day he said that it does us no good to go around digging ten metre holes in a field in our search for water. We can dig holes all over a field and still find nothing. He said that we must dig one hole, but dig it deeply, in order to find pure clear water. If we want to know the reality of this Sai Avatar, we must come close to him and dig deeply. The intensity of that experience was so powerful that it has remained with me ever since.
David: You've been so close to Swami, do you think it is because of your actions in past lives or in this life?
Al: I really do not know. All I can say is that there is nothing that I am aware of in this life that would relate to that extraordinary privilege.
David: We both know of people, such as yourself, who were very close to Swami and then have suddenly fallen from grace and been banished from the ashram. I have this feeling that it is safer not to get too close to Swami. It's almost like getting too close to the fire and getting burned. What are your feelings about this?
Al: When the devastating moment of incineration comes it is almost always totally unexpected, like the incident on my 60th birthday that I just spoke about. In some ways, it's a lot like death. We think that death is something that happens to everybody but us! Here is another story with an unexpected result. One morning I got a message to report to the head office of the ashram. Remember that at the time I was a lecturer in the Sathya Sai Institute and, in fact. I was the only Westerner there. Swami also had told me to do study circles for the residents in the ashram and for the staff and students at the University. I also gave talks to the Westerners who visited the ashram. So there were many opportunities for me to slip up and to make a mistake, but in this particular incident even the mistake was missing. I had done nothing wrong. Anyway, I went down to the office, it was just before morning darshan, and waited for the manager of the office to arrive. He was coming straight from seeing Swami, since they have breakfast together. He walked up to me and said, "Pack up your things and leave. You have to be out of here by noon!" I said, "Out of here, what do you mean?" He replied, "You are being told to go. You've got to go." Now this is after I've been there three years. I asked, "What is this all about?" but he replied, "I've been instructed not to tell you." So I returned to my flat and said inwardly "Swami, what have I done? I don't understand it. I have to leave and my whole life is here. This is where all my things are." At that time I had an extensive library of over five hundred books. I began packing and choosing a few favourite books to take with me I picked up a book of Shankara's poems, opened it and read 'Mother, how could you be so cruel to your only son, you're my Mother and how can you not love your son? Somehow I knew that it was no accident that I was looking at this poem. Just then a message came for me to go and see Dr. Gokak, who at that time was the vice chancellor of the University, and who was also my boss. He told me that Swami was very unhappy with me and I had to leave. I said, "What is this all about, Dr. Gokak?" He replied that he had been told not to tell me, but that Swami was unhappy with something that I had said at a public meeting. I returned to my flat and continued with my packing when Professor Kasturi called for me. Now Kasturi and I were like father and son. I spent much time with him. He said, "Drucker, you've done it." I said, "What is it that I am supposed to have done?" He replied "Swami says that you were cracking dirty jokes in your talk to the foreigners" I said "That's just not possible, Kasturiji, that's totally incorrect." Kasturi said that Swami had received a letter from a German lady who had reported this fact to him. He also said that he (Kasturi) had received a letter from the same German lady asking for an introduction to me. I have no idea who this lady is. So I went off for my last darshan and as I'm sitting there in darshan Swami comes up to me and says "You are a Surpanakha." Now Surpanakha is the name of a demon in the Ramayana. She is the sister of Ravana and when she discovers Rama and Lakshmana she desires them so much that, in a jealous rage, she tries to kill Sita. Lakshmana intervenes and with his sword disfigures her, first cutting off her nose and then her ear. She runs back to her brother Ravana in order to raise an army of demons and so avenge herself. Ravana is amazed that she stayed around long enough to have both a nose and an ear cut off, and he asks her why she did not run away. She replies that they were both so beautiful she couldn't take her eyes off them! So when Swami called me "Surpanakha" and jokingly said that he was going to cut off my nose, I responded by saying "0 Swami, you are so beautiful, I'll have to stay around until you cut off my ear too!" Apparently, that was the right answer. Swami told me to take padanamaskara. I kissed his feet and that was the end of the incident. It was over, and I stayed at the ashram. But it was a warning to me that at any moment I could be thrown out, with or without good reason and, as you know, later on it did indeed happen to me. I have always recognised that God can take anything that He likes away from me. I have heard Swami talk of the three zeros, of reducing a true devotee to nothing, of taking away their wealth, their health and their name to prepare them for liberation. I am ready for that.
David: Obviously the fact that Swami did eventually throw you out of the ashram must be for your highest good, but what, do you think, was his reason for doing that? Do you think that he is preparing you for liberation?
Al: I had always believed that the meaning of the three zeros was that God can take any material thing away from me, but that He could not take God away from me. I worshipped Swami as God and here I was getting thrown out of the ashram. So I felt that even God had now been taken away from me. I felt totally devastated, without roots of any kind. I believed that there was no existence left, but then I discovered something. There is no way that God can be taken away from me. The form of God was no longer in my eyes, that was all. Now that discovery was not immediate. It took me about a year to get over the feelings that something horrible had happened to me. Nevertheless, during this period of time, I experienced many remarkable acts of grace, including being in the interview room with Swami every day for some weeks. It was a direct experience. It was not a dream. It was a state of awakened consciousness. I was sitting there and Swami would be sitting here and we were talking. It was no less real than the exchange that we are having now. I realise now that Swami will never take himself away from me.
David: Ann and I have always created a separation between the forms that we call Sai and Super Sai. We love to go and visit Sai, that is to say the physical form of Sai Baba, but we also recognise that Super Sai, that is to say the omnipresent form of God, is with us every moment of our lives and, indeed, is here right now. It is Super Sai that is for us the God in which we trust and in which we believe and with whom we have no conflict. It seems to me that conflicts such as you have experienced only arise when you get close to the form and have to relate to the form!
Al: Well, David, we have to be willing to get close to Swami and even to risk being thrown out, but even if that happens we will discover that nothing really has happened. How can anything ever come between Swami and his devotees? He is pure love and he yearns for all of us to come very close to him. One reason Swami gives us vibhuti is to remind us that ash is the only thing that survives in a fire. We have to be willing to do what it takes to be consumed in his fire and to realise the truth of who we really are, which cannot be affected by anything.
David: What has been your experience of being nine years in the wilderness, of being removed from Sai Baba for so long a time, after being so close to him?
Al: During the eight years I was at the Ashram I did indeed feel very close to Swami. In the first years Swami would speak to me every day. So I was treated like I was a very special person. But what has come to me in these years of being in the wilderness is sanity. I thought that I was special, but it is now very dear to me that I am not special, none of us is special, and I don't want to shock your readers when I say this, but even Swami is not special. There is nothing special about anything in this world. Underneath we are all exactly the same, one unchanging divine essence; on the surface there is just the changing names and forms of maya, the veil of illusion.
David: When you say Swami, you mean the form of Swami?
Al: Yes, absolute truth does not have a form. It cannot be seen with the eyes, nevertheless, some forms can be used to point the way to the realisation of our true reality. Such is the form of Swami, but we must go beyond that stage to the direct experience of the formless divinity as the truth of our being.
David: Professor Kasturi was always having a hard time with Swami, even though he was very close to Swami. Swami sometimes did some harsh things to him, didn't he, to crush his ego? Is this the price that you pay for being that close to him?
Al: No, I don't think that it's like that; I don't think that it's a price you have to pay for being so close to him. I think that it's the price you have to pay for having chosen to be on the fast track to liberation. You have to pay that price if your ego is to go. The sense of individuality has to go and all that Swami is doing is to help you to realise that all forms of individuality are a mistake. So I think that this sort of thing happens to all people who have made the commitment to liberation, no matter what. There is only one interest in my life and that is the path to liberation, so anything which blocks that path has to be removed, and quickly, because I am not prepared to wait for another five lifetimes. Ann, in her talk yesterday, said that the Book of Brighu astrologer had told you that you were going to incarnate again with Prema Sai and live in his ashram for most of your next life and would die at ninety-five. This, apparently, was confirmed to you at Shivaratri when you did not see the lingam emerge. You have now accepted this as a fact.
David: Yes. That is true.
Al: I think that's a terrible mistake. Excuse me, David, but I have to tell you that that is very foolish. Don't accept anything like that. Your mind has the power of God and you can change destiny by changing your consciousness. You can, I know that! You have the power to do this unless you have talked yourself into wanting to be around for another one hundred and fifty years or so.
David: I have no desire to be here again, even for a life with Prema Sai.
Al: Then don't accept it. Don't accept it and Swami will not support that mistake. It really is a mistake. He would not support it unless that is your wish. So make that decision now and even if the three zeros and all that stuff follows, so what? This world isn't worth anything anyway, so why invest in it?
David: May I ask you a personal question now? Was your decision to marry Yaani, the decision which directly led to you being thrown out of the ashram, made from the heart or from Swami?
Al: It was not from the heart, it was clearly from Swami, although now it has become a thing of the heart. You know, it's an interesting fact that that was the way of most marriages until this century. Parents or preceptors usually arranged marriages, because it was in the best interest of the individuals concerned in their journey to God. The love, which was often very deep, usually came afterwards. I would say that I'm a very reluctant husband. I went through sixty years of life without ever having contemplated marriage and just at the time when I am supposed to give up everything I get married!
David: What game do you think Swami is playing with you with regard to your marriage?
Al: Well this marriage has been my principal sadhana for the past ten years and in retrospect I can say that nothing else that I can think of has been as valuable as this marriage in terms of personal growth and development. From a worldly and a cultural sense we are totally opposite! There is a constant opportunity for friction between us. We have Swami in common, as our common love. Other than that we have few other common interests. What a grand opportunity this presents for self-interest, for ego, to expose itself and to be seen and set aside! It is something of a challenge. Swami has presented us with a final challenge to enable us to finish this silly game.
David: Life is a game, as Swami says, and we must play it, but now that you are allowed back in Prashanti Nilayam can you tell us about your more recent experiences?
Al: Well, my first impression after nine years absence is that nothing has really changed. Everyone says that the ashram has totally changed and, of course, from a physical standpoint that is true, but I didn't pay too much attention to that. I was just aware that Swami had not changed one iota in some twenty-five years. He is the same beautiful being, he expresses the same immeasurable kindness and concern; he emits that same unfathomable unlimited love. There is that same awesomeness and magic when he comes out to give darshan. He inspires us with the same hopeful message of redemption. He coaxes us in the same way, to rise above desire and temptation, to realise our incredible divine inheritance. Swami is totally unchanged. He is still saying what he said when he gave his first discourse, namely, my life is my message. He is teaching us to follow his example of raising our thoughts to heaven above and of using our bodies to serve mankind below. Now recognise that we also haven't really changed. We go through these histories, these life-stories, and we think that so much has happened but, in fact, we are still as we have always been, even before we came into this birth and even after the death of these bodies. We are always whole and perfect and one with Sai Baba. We are love itself, and that is why Swami has always addressed us as Premaswarupa, as embodiments of pure divine love. This is now becoming my direct experience. I can relate one experience that came up for me during the Paduka festival last year at the ashram. They brought out this golden chariot for Swami to ride in and out of nowhere all this judgement came into my mind. Good heavens, I thought, Swami, what are you doing? What have you got to do with this garish obscene thing, this huge golden chariot? Would Jesus or Saint Francis ride in something like that? I was very troubled by it, but at the same time, I was also very much the witness of my trouble. Where did all of these feelings come from? Why should I care what ever this chariot looks like? But still I cared. So I had to quiet myself down. I just had to close my eyes and shut it all out, become very silent and very quiet and, then, when I opened my eyes, Swami was sitting in the chariot and this incredible feeling of love gushed out of me. I started crying. I was just overcome. It was as if I had put on these glasses of love and everything was just pure love. Wherever I looked, at the people, at the chariot, all I saw was pure love. It was a wonderful experience.
David: The chariot was a donation of love, wasn't it, but Swami did point out that he had no need of it and he did give it away, didn't he?
Al: I don't know and to tell you frankly, I'm not particularly interested in the chariot. I mentioned this incident to show how Swami takes something about which we have made some negative judgement and turns it into an experience of love. Swami tells the story of Jesus walking with his disciples on a road, when they come upon the stinking decomposed carcass of a dead dog. The disciples try to lead Jesus away from the gruesome sight, but Jesus bends down very close to the remains and says, "Look at the beautiful teeth of this dog. How much it must have been loved by its master." So Jesus saw the one beautiful thing in that otherwise unpleasant sight. That is Swami's message to us. Give up your judgements. Put on your love glasses and see the face of divinity, in other words, see Swami's unbounded love in whatever you see.
David: My last question, really, is in the light of all your experience with Swami and the suffering that you had to endure, what do you think is the purpose of life?
Al: Well, it depends what you mean by life. You see, I believe that life is eternal. Life has no meaning outside of truth, outside of oneness, outside of unity, and so the purpose of these earthly lives is to awaken and to realise true life. Life on this Earth is not life. This is death. To live in these bodies and to grow old and to get sick and to suffer and to die, that is an investment in death, that has nothing at all to do with life. Life is when you are free, life is when you are the light and give that light to everyone. Life is when you become an overflowing cup of pure love, a cup that has to be constantly shared. That's life. If there ever was a purpose for this human life, it is to drop all these insane ideas about life on Earth and to return to true life. That is Swami's mission as I see it.
Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter, September 1999, http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter09_99_02.htm
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Copyright Ramala Centre. "You are welcome to reproduce any of the articles published in the newsletter, provided you acknowledge the source."
Sunday, November 25, 2007
A Perfect Disciple.
The story of Dr. John S. Hislop
July 2nd is the holy festival of Guru Purnima. A day when homage is paid to the Guru. A day on which all of us across the world express gratitude to Bhagavan, the Universal teacher, for guiding us on the path to lasting peace. Yes, that is a good thing-to be grateful to one’s Guru. But what does Bhagavan himself want? Praises , we know, mean nothing to Him. What really matters to Him is how much we walk along the path shown by Him. That He says is the greatest way to pay Him a tribute. A Teacher is known by His students, a painter by His art, and a sculptor by his sculptures. A Guru is known by His disciples and an Avatar by his devotees. The perfect devotee who surrenders to the Lord, the Guru, and practises His teachings is the one in whom the Glory of the Lord is reflected most. He becomes a cause, an instrument in bringing several others into the orbit of the Transforming Love of God. He is the one who pays real homage to His Guru. One such devotee of Bhagwan was John S Hislop.
Dr. John S Hislop was one of the fine instruments used by Bhagavan Baba to spread His Message across the continents. Hislop to Swami came via the Theosophy/Meditation route. It all started when as a young man of eighteen he had gone to Taihiti in the Pacific in search of adventure. There he met a priest who told him about Theosophy. As soon as Hislop returned to Los Angeles, he joined the Theosophical Society because he wanted to serve humanity. Soon he became actively involved with the establishment set up in Ojai, California, by Dr. Annie Besant, a pillar of the Theosophy movement.
It was in Ojai that Hislop came into contact with J.Krishnamurthi [from India] who was being projected by Annie Besant as a ‘World Teacher’. About this experience, Hislop says, “Krishnamurthi and Besant were giant figures who filled the horizon, and it seemed to me that they and only they had found the truth of life. I feel eternally grateful to Dr. Besant and Krishnamurthi for their great kindness and great patience with an undisciplined man. But wisdom was not born in me as a follower of Krishnamurthi.”
In between, Hislop went through higher education, finally receiving his doctorate in the School of Education in the University of California, Los Angeles Campus [UCLA]. Thereafter he taught for a while and later switched to business, where he was quite successful. He also got married to Victoria, who shared his passion for philosophical enlightenment. Together, Hislop and Victoria drifted from one Guru to another, ending up in the fifties with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who by then had hit the headlines in the West. Twenty five years of search for that ‘something’ had passed but that ‘something’ was still not in sight.
The year is 1958. Hislop comes to India to help Mahesh Yogi in setting up an Academy for Meditation in the Himalayas. Being an American, he is at first mistaken to be a CIA agent (!) but later allowed to do his work. At this stage Hislop takes a break and goes to Burma to learn Vipassana Meditation practised by Buddhists. Hislop finds that the Buddhist style of meditation is fascinating and wonderful but, in his words,
The Buddhist way was a way of the intellect and the mind. And despite my great appreciation and gratitude for having found the discipline, I felt that my heart was dry; it was a Western heart with very little love left in it. We [Hislop and his wife] had begun to realise that the Vipassana discipline could be dangerous for a life in the world and that to pursue it properly one should become a monk…..
Around this time, Burma had begun to look inwards, closing its borders to foreigners. So, it did not seem possible to stay back in Burma and become a monk. Yet, Hislop clung to Vipassana, lacking an alternative. A few more years passed, and then….
My wife and I first heard of Baba in 1968 through a description of Him given to a friend of mine by a lady who had visited India. She had brought back some sacred ash [Vibhuti], a beautiful ring as a gift to her from the miraculous nature of Baba, and she had many fascinating stories to tell. One special remark struck fire. The lady said that she felt a change in her character while with Baba, and the change persisted even after she returned home. This statement had a strong impact on my mind. Could there be a man, was there a man living today whose being was so subtle, so powerful, so mysterious, so Divine, that He could change a human Heart?
If it were indeed true that such a man lived in today’s world, then nothing else in my life could equal the urgency of seeking Him out. I prayed that through His Grace and kindness, He might touch my dry Heart and make it alive and vibrant.
My wife and I heard the story of Baba on a Monday, and the same week we were aboard a plane to India. ….
Hislop continues:
Upon meeting Baba, I knew at once, without doubt, that for me, here was the true source of Wisdom. …….It is difficult and probably impossible to express in words the effect upon myself of that first meeting with Baba. My entire being was profoundly affected and changed. Immediately, Baba became the centre of my life, and has remained so. In His presence at that first meeting, the world fell away from me, my entire consciousness was drawn inward and, at a most subtle level of awareness, Baba appeared in my Heart as Love. Love was unmistakable and that Baba was this Love was equally unmistakable. It seemed to me that only God Himself could enter my Heart as Love and, since then, this feeling of Divine Presence has never changed. ……I found to my great surprise that although I had always used an intellectual approach to spiritual life, the devotional path became very natural to me as soon as I encountered Baba.
Swami gave Hislop innumerable experiences so that the latter could get a feel for all aspects of Divinity. Baba also granted Hislop any number of Interviews, answered his questions in detail, came to his rescue during illness, saved him from disaster, created unusual objects for him and once even blessed him with a vision of Krishna. A sample now of a few these, in Hislop’s own words. We start with the famous episode dealing with the creation by Baba of a crucifix for Hislop. Interestingly, the crucifix was created on Mahasivarathri Day in the year 1973, deep in the forest! This holy festival was celebrated by Baba in the company of a small group almost in privacy, and not before massive crowds as normally happens. Let us hear Hislop recall the event:
The crucifix was created by Baba on a most auspicious day, Mahasivarathri. ……The evening before, we were told to be ready in the early morning for a trip; and that when the cars were loaded and ready we would know the destination. Swami had decided that only a handful of people would be with Him….
Our destination was the Bandipur Game Sanctuary in Bandipur Forest, several hours away from the city of Mysore. We arrived at the Forest rest-house in the early afternoon. Later we took various winding roads hoping to come upon one of the Forest’s wild elephant herds. ….. the elephants remained in their secret places and not even one was seen. But the drive through the hills had another and more important objective……
As we crossed a bridge above a sandy, dry riverbed, Baba indicated that this would be the place. … The cars halted at the side of the road, and we started to climb down the bank to the sandy river bottom. I was beside Baba. As we passed a bush, Swami broke off two twigs, placed them together and asked me, “What is this, Hislop?”
“Well Swami, it is a cross,” I answered. Baba then closed His fingers over the twigs and directed three somewhat slow breaths into His fist, between thumb and forefinger. Then He opened His hand to reveal a Christ figure on a Cross, and He gave it to me.
He said, “This shows Christ as he really was at the time he left his body, not as artists have imagined him. His stomach is pulled in and his ribs are all showing. He had no food for eight days.”
I looked at the crucifix but found no words. Baba then continued: “The cross is made of wood from the actual cross on which Christ was crucified. To find some of the wood after 2000 years took a little time! The image is of Christ after he died. It is a dead face.”
I noticed something odd and asked, “Swami, what is that hole at the top of the cross?” Baba replied that the cross had been originally hung from a standard.
A little while after the materialisation of the cross, Sivarathri was celebrated on the sandy river bed with devotees singing Bhajan and Baba bringing out a Lingam to mark the holy day and the significance of Creation - quite a change from the normal circumstances under which Sivarathri is celebrated.
A couple of years later, some American devotees asked Swami about the cross materialised for Hislop. Baba replied:
Yes, I made it for him. When I went to look for the wood, every particle of the cross had disintegrated and returned to the elements. I reached out to the elements and reconstituted sufficient material for a small cross. Very seldom does Swami interfere with Nature, but occasionally, for a devotee, it will be done.”
The story of the cross does not quite end with its physical materialisation. Hislop had a strange experience a few months later, when the cross was being shown to a few friends. This is what he says:
Within a few weeks we were back in our home in Mexico and were soon to witness an amazing series of events in relation to the crucifix. ….. [One day] the time was about 5 P.M. On this afternoon, the sky along the Mexican coast was clear and peaceful. But suddenly without warning, there was a loud crash of thunder and as our eyes turned towards the windows, lightning flashed from a dark cloud where a moment before there had been only clear sky. A violent wind rushed through the house, causing windows and doors to open and shut with such force that the glass was in danger of shattering. The curtains were flying in all directions. We were much startled by this turn of events, but my wife at once said, “It is 5 P.M., the time Christ died on the cross, and what is now happening is described in the Bible.” She later brought a Bible and we looked though until we found the pertinent paragraph, which said that at the moment Christ gave up His life, a violent storm arose with lightning and thunder, and winds rent the curtains of the temple. We concluded that we had witnessed a wonder totally beyond our power of imagination. Before our eyes had occurred nothing less than a recapitulation of events related to crucifixion. The following day, newspapers in San Diego carried a brief story commenting on the sudden and mysterious storm that had arisen without warning on the Mexican coast, near Ensenada. ….A year or so alter, I sent a description of the event to Dr. Eruch B. Fanibanda for his book, Vision of the Divine. He showed the memo to Baba. After reading the memo, Baba said that the event had occurred as described and that the significance attributed to it was correct.
Bhagavan Baba has saved innumerable devotees from danger and imminent disaster, when they appealed to Him. Swami saved Hislop also, but Hislop’s experience was one with a big difference.
One evening in 1973, we left Brindavan at about 8 P.M. to return to Bangalore. There were five of us in the taxi, plus the driver. The Bangalore road is only two lanes. Some miles from Brindavan, we overtook a bus. Although the driver of our taxi saw some lights ahead, he estimated that there was plenty of time to pass the bus. He could not have been more mistaken – the lights ahead were that of a car moving at a very high speed towards us. ……
In this particular area, the layout of the road was also deadly. The road was under repair, and there was a high bank of dirt and rocks covering the side of the road. Thus, there was no possibility of the oncoming car being able to swerve off the road. We, too, could not take evasive action, for the bus was on our left and the road-repair material on the right, and by this time the oncoming car was directly in front of us. A foolish driver in that car and an equally foolish driver in our taxi! …. The lights of the oncoming car now struck directly into the windscreen of our taxi. The cars could not have been more than a second or so apart. We were stunned. Not one of us remembered Baba or called out to Him. We felt we were as good as dead, and we instinctively tensed for the crash. But at that very moment something happened that was without any rational explanation. At one moment the two cars were upon each other, about to be smashed in a fatal head-on collision. The very next moment, the oncoming car was behind us, and we were continuing to pass the bus with a clear road ahead. Looking back, we could see the red tail-lamp of the other car. There was no crash. ….
The next day we drove out to Brindavan as usual at 8 A.M. so as to be waiting near the veranda for Baba to appear for morning Darshan. As soon as He came into the room, I touched the Lotus feet and said, “We want to thank Baba for saving our lives last night.”
Baba smiled and said, “Yes, that was a close one. You were so shocked that not even one of you called out for Swami! But Swami saved you anyway.” Then He turned to a group of men and in Telugu told them the entire story of the incident.
I then said, “Swami, You must have altered time and space in order to save us.” Baba just smiled and did not answer.
From time to time, Swami has orchestrated situations wherein devotees have been blessed to see Him in some of the other forms He is worshipped in. Hislop was among the lucky few to get a glimpse of Baba as Sri Krishna. That story follows, in Hislop’s own words:
A number of years ago I was in Baba’s car. He was in the rear seat with two other persons. I was in the front seat with the driver. We were on our way to Puttaparthi. Driving in the car with Baba is a fascinating experience ………
At some point in the journey, perhaps about half-way, Baba was talking and I turned to look. My breathing stopped and was transfixed. I could not credit my eyes. ….
What transfixed my movement and stopped my breathing now, was His face …..The Baba I knew was not there! Instead, there was a face of the most extra-ordinary beauty – quite different in shape and cast from the features of our beloved Sai. The charm was so great, so poignant, that my heart seemed to twist, almost as though it were in pain. Never in my life, not in photos, nor in paintings by great artists have I seen a face of such exquisite beauty. It was beyond imagination and concept, totally beyond experience.
And His colour was blue. Not just blue, not the blue with which artists paint Sri Krishna, but a deep blue like the velvet blue that can sometimes be seen in a dark sky, like a blue that I have, at times, seen from the deck of a ship thousands of miles from the shores of the Pacific Ocean. I do not know how else to describe it.
I could not take my eyes from Baba’s face. …. The two men sitting with Baba were beginning to look at me with somewhat puzzled expressions….
After a few miles, Sri Vittal Rao (on Baba’s left) asked me, “Hislop, why were you staring at Swami like that?”
Instead of answering, I directed a question to Baba, “Swami, what was that blue colour?”
He replied, “Oh! That? Whenever there is something of unfathomable depth, it appears deep blue.”
That was the end of the conversation about the incident. Naturally, the thought had come to mind that maybe this was Lord Krishna, but neither then, nor at any time in connection with this experience, did I ever mention Krishna to Baba.
There the matter rested until November, 1975. ….
One day, shortly before Birthday, Swami called a family for Interview. Hislop also was called. Swami spent some time talking to the family ad then turned to Hislop. Over now to Hislop for that part of the story:
After a while, Baba said to me, “Hislop, tell them about your experiences.”
I complied and, after mentioning some incidents, I told them the same story [about seeing a deep blue face]. … The man was deeply impressed and words broke from his lips, “Oh! That had to be Lord Krishna!”
Baba smiled and said, “Yes, that was Krishna; not the Krishna pictured by artists and imagined by writers. I showed Hislop the REAL KRISHNA.”
Hislop was clearly a specially chosen one for he had many wonderful experiences like few have been blessed to have. Here is Hislop’s description of one of them that helped him to eventually see Swami everywhere.
After I had been going to Prasanti Nilayam for about three years, coming back to America, as I got off the plane, I felt that Swami’s head and shoulders were superimposed on mine. I felt that way. I was aware of the hair. So I said, “Well, welcome to America, Swami!” That feeling lasted for three years. Every place I would go, there would be Swami standing in the room. When I would talk to people at the Centre, Swami would be standing behind every person in that room! Behind every person would be Swami’s head. When I look at the wall there would be a row of Swamis standing along the wall. That vision finally came to an end, and I told Swami, “Swami, that phenomenon has come to an end now.” Swami said, “Hislop, don’t you know that all phenomena come to an end?” He added, “You have had that vision of Swami without any effort on your part whatsoever. Now you have to deliberately see Swami wherever you look!” So I do that.
Here is another of those unique Hislop-experiences:
One time, Swami went to Madras and arrived unexpectedly at the house of His hostess. You know, when the Avatar come to visit your house, I am sure you would want to have something with which to greet Him – some flowers or a tray of food or something to the welcome the Lord to your house. That was the case with this hostess too.
Swami came to the door and knocked. The hostess answered, saw Swami standing there, and exclaimed, Oh Swami, Swami, I am so happy to see You. But Swami, You didn’t tell me that you were coming, and I don’t have anything to welcome you with. I don’t have flowers or fruit. I don’t have anything.” The poor lady was quite distraught. So Swami said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” Then He turned around and beckoned at the car.
Out of the car came two angels with wings, carrying a big silver tray, loaded with fruit and flowers and everything the hostess would need to welcome Swami. The angels brought this tray up to the house and gave it to the hostess. Then Swami turned to the angels and waved them back to the car. They floated back to the car, folded their wings, got into the car, and disappeared!
Later on, as the years went by, Swami acquired another vehicle. He had a bus, and He would take the students for excursions in the bus. One time. He took them on an excursion to Madras.
First, He went to the house of the hostess, where He would be staying; the students would be staying someplace else. When the hostess came to the door and saw the busload of students, she went back inside her house and brought out the silver tray. It was still there, and she told the students the story of the angels with wings …..
After many years of wandering and unfulfilled yearning, Swami finally drew Hislop to Himself, granting him the blessing of Divine proximity. Hislop, for his part, took full advantage of the opportunity given, not for himself but for the sake of humanity. He became a roving ambassador, and through his talks as well his books [widely known justifiably], Hislop did yeoman service in spreading Sai’s Message far and wide. Even when afflicted by cancer, he did not hesitate to travel and speak about the Lord he had discovered. He says:
In this modern society, a dry and joyless life is the general experience. Witness the frantic search for distraction and pleasure the world over. An almost universal prayer springs up from adult persons caught up in today’s culture: O Lord, may there be a new season of Spring in my heart. May the river of Love flow deep and strong again in my heart!”
Here, to me, is one of the most wonderful miracles of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. The fettered heart, turning to Baba, can break free from all bondage. Seeing Him, being sure that He will never abandon, is a most wonderful feeling. With joy, the heart responds to this trust. With each day, love for Baba grows stronger and stronger. He is the Divine Mother and the Divine Father to His devotee. One may love Him without reserve, without guard, without fear …….
Hislop constantly chanted Baba’s Name, right till the very end. As he gave up the mortal coil, friends gathered around him kept chanting the sacred OM, even as the soul journeyed to its eternal resting-place, the Divine Lotus Feet. Some time later, Swami asked an American devotee on the veranda, “Where is Hislop?” The devotee looked up, as if to signify that Hislop was in heaven. Baba then said, “He has come to Me. Good man; always thinking of and working for Swami.” There cannot be a better eulogy.
July 2nd is the holy festival of Guru Purnima. A day when homage is paid to the Guru. A day on which all of us across the world express gratitude to Bhagavan, the Universal teacher, for guiding us on the path to lasting peace. Yes, that is a good thing-to be grateful to one’s Guru. But what does Bhagavan himself want? Praises , we know, mean nothing to Him. What really matters to Him is how much we walk along the path shown by Him. That He says is the greatest way to pay Him a tribute. A Teacher is known by His students, a painter by His art, and a sculptor by his sculptures. A Guru is known by His disciples and an Avatar by his devotees. The perfect devotee who surrenders to the Lord, the Guru, and practises His teachings is the one in whom the Glory of the Lord is reflected most. He becomes a cause, an instrument in bringing several others into the orbit of the Transforming Love of God. He is the one who pays real homage to His Guru. One such devotee of Bhagwan was John S Hislop.
Dr. John S Hislop was one of the fine instruments used by Bhagavan Baba to spread His Message across the continents. Hislop to Swami came via the Theosophy/Meditation route. It all started when as a young man of eighteen he had gone to Taihiti in the Pacific in search of adventure. There he met a priest who told him about Theosophy. As soon as Hislop returned to Los Angeles, he joined the Theosophical Society because he wanted to serve humanity. Soon he became actively involved with the establishment set up in Ojai, California, by Dr. Annie Besant, a pillar of the Theosophy movement.
It was in Ojai that Hislop came into contact with J.Krishnamurthi [from India] who was being projected by Annie Besant as a ‘World Teacher’. About this experience, Hislop says, “Krishnamurthi and Besant were giant figures who filled the horizon, and it seemed to me that they and only they had found the truth of life. I feel eternally grateful to Dr. Besant and Krishnamurthi for their great kindness and great patience with an undisciplined man. But wisdom was not born in me as a follower of Krishnamurthi.”
In between, Hislop went through higher education, finally receiving his doctorate in the School of Education in the University of California, Los Angeles Campus [UCLA]. Thereafter he taught for a while and later switched to business, where he was quite successful. He also got married to Victoria, who shared his passion for philosophical enlightenment. Together, Hislop and Victoria drifted from one Guru to another, ending up in the fifties with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who by then had hit the headlines in the West. Twenty five years of search for that ‘something’ had passed but that ‘something’ was still not in sight.
The year is 1958. Hislop comes to India to help Mahesh Yogi in setting up an Academy for Meditation in the Himalayas. Being an American, he is at first mistaken to be a CIA agent (!) but later allowed to do his work. At this stage Hislop takes a break and goes to Burma to learn Vipassana Meditation practised by Buddhists. Hislop finds that the Buddhist style of meditation is fascinating and wonderful but, in his words,
The Buddhist way was a way of the intellect and the mind. And despite my great appreciation and gratitude for having found the discipline, I felt that my heart was dry; it was a Western heart with very little love left in it. We [Hislop and his wife] had begun to realise that the Vipassana discipline could be dangerous for a life in the world and that to pursue it properly one should become a monk…..
Around this time, Burma had begun to look inwards, closing its borders to foreigners. So, it did not seem possible to stay back in Burma and become a monk. Yet, Hislop clung to Vipassana, lacking an alternative. A few more years passed, and then….
My wife and I first heard of Baba in 1968 through a description of Him given to a friend of mine by a lady who had visited India. She had brought back some sacred ash [Vibhuti], a beautiful ring as a gift to her from the miraculous nature of Baba, and she had many fascinating stories to tell. One special remark struck fire. The lady said that she felt a change in her character while with Baba, and the change persisted even after she returned home. This statement had a strong impact on my mind. Could there be a man, was there a man living today whose being was so subtle, so powerful, so mysterious, so Divine, that He could change a human Heart?
If it were indeed true that such a man lived in today’s world, then nothing else in my life could equal the urgency of seeking Him out. I prayed that through His Grace and kindness, He might touch my dry Heart and make it alive and vibrant.
My wife and I heard the story of Baba on a Monday, and the same week we were aboard a plane to India. ….
Hislop continues:
Upon meeting Baba, I knew at once, without doubt, that for me, here was the true source of Wisdom. …….It is difficult and probably impossible to express in words the effect upon myself of that first meeting with Baba. My entire being was profoundly affected and changed. Immediately, Baba became the centre of my life, and has remained so. In His presence at that first meeting, the world fell away from me, my entire consciousness was drawn inward and, at a most subtle level of awareness, Baba appeared in my Heart as Love. Love was unmistakable and that Baba was this Love was equally unmistakable. It seemed to me that only God Himself could enter my Heart as Love and, since then, this feeling of Divine Presence has never changed. ……I found to my great surprise that although I had always used an intellectual approach to spiritual life, the devotional path became very natural to me as soon as I encountered Baba.
Swami gave Hislop innumerable experiences so that the latter could get a feel for all aspects of Divinity. Baba also granted Hislop any number of Interviews, answered his questions in detail, came to his rescue during illness, saved him from disaster, created unusual objects for him and once even blessed him with a vision of Krishna. A sample now of a few these, in Hislop’s own words. We start with the famous episode dealing with the creation by Baba of a crucifix for Hislop. Interestingly, the crucifix was created on Mahasivarathri Day in the year 1973, deep in the forest! This holy festival was celebrated by Baba in the company of a small group almost in privacy, and not before massive crowds as normally happens. Let us hear Hislop recall the event:
The crucifix was created by Baba on a most auspicious day, Mahasivarathri. ……The evening before, we were told to be ready in the early morning for a trip; and that when the cars were loaded and ready we would know the destination. Swami had decided that only a handful of people would be with Him….
Our destination was the Bandipur Game Sanctuary in Bandipur Forest, several hours away from the city of Mysore. We arrived at the Forest rest-house in the early afternoon. Later we took various winding roads hoping to come upon one of the Forest’s wild elephant herds. ….. the elephants remained in their secret places and not even one was seen. But the drive through the hills had another and more important objective……
As we crossed a bridge above a sandy, dry riverbed, Baba indicated that this would be the place. … The cars halted at the side of the road, and we started to climb down the bank to the sandy river bottom. I was beside Baba. As we passed a bush, Swami broke off two twigs, placed them together and asked me, “What is this, Hislop?”
“Well Swami, it is a cross,” I answered. Baba then closed His fingers over the twigs and directed three somewhat slow breaths into His fist, between thumb and forefinger. Then He opened His hand to reveal a Christ figure on a Cross, and He gave it to me.
He said, “This shows Christ as he really was at the time he left his body, not as artists have imagined him. His stomach is pulled in and his ribs are all showing. He had no food for eight days.”
I looked at the crucifix but found no words. Baba then continued: “The cross is made of wood from the actual cross on which Christ was crucified. To find some of the wood after 2000 years took a little time! The image is of Christ after he died. It is a dead face.”
I noticed something odd and asked, “Swami, what is that hole at the top of the cross?” Baba replied that the cross had been originally hung from a standard.
A little while after the materialisation of the cross, Sivarathri was celebrated on the sandy river bed with devotees singing Bhajan and Baba bringing out a Lingam to mark the holy day and the significance of Creation - quite a change from the normal circumstances under which Sivarathri is celebrated.
A couple of years later, some American devotees asked Swami about the cross materialised for Hislop. Baba replied:
Yes, I made it for him. When I went to look for the wood, every particle of the cross had disintegrated and returned to the elements. I reached out to the elements and reconstituted sufficient material for a small cross. Very seldom does Swami interfere with Nature, but occasionally, for a devotee, it will be done.”
The story of the cross does not quite end with its physical materialisation. Hislop had a strange experience a few months later, when the cross was being shown to a few friends. This is what he says:
Within a few weeks we were back in our home in Mexico and were soon to witness an amazing series of events in relation to the crucifix. ….. [One day] the time was about 5 P.M. On this afternoon, the sky along the Mexican coast was clear and peaceful. But suddenly without warning, there was a loud crash of thunder and as our eyes turned towards the windows, lightning flashed from a dark cloud where a moment before there had been only clear sky. A violent wind rushed through the house, causing windows and doors to open and shut with such force that the glass was in danger of shattering. The curtains were flying in all directions. We were much startled by this turn of events, but my wife at once said, “It is 5 P.M., the time Christ died on the cross, and what is now happening is described in the Bible.” She later brought a Bible and we looked though until we found the pertinent paragraph, which said that at the moment Christ gave up His life, a violent storm arose with lightning and thunder, and winds rent the curtains of the temple. We concluded that we had witnessed a wonder totally beyond our power of imagination. Before our eyes had occurred nothing less than a recapitulation of events related to crucifixion. The following day, newspapers in San Diego carried a brief story commenting on the sudden and mysterious storm that had arisen without warning on the Mexican coast, near Ensenada. ….A year or so alter, I sent a description of the event to Dr. Eruch B. Fanibanda for his book, Vision of the Divine. He showed the memo to Baba. After reading the memo, Baba said that the event had occurred as described and that the significance attributed to it was correct.
Bhagavan Baba has saved innumerable devotees from danger and imminent disaster, when they appealed to Him. Swami saved Hislop also, but Hislop’s experience was one with a big difference.
One evening in 1973, we left Brindavan at about 8 P.M. to return to Bangalore. There were five of us in the taxi, plus the driver. The Bangalore road is only two lanes. Some miles from Brindavan, we overtook a bus. Although the driver of our taxi saw some lights ahead, he estimated that there was plenty of time to pass the bus. He could not have been more mistaken – the lights ahead were that of a car moving at a very high speed towards us. ……
In this particular area, the layout of the road was also deadly. The road was under repair, and there was a high bank of dirt and rocks covering the side of the road. Thus, there was no possibility of the oncoming car being able to swerve off the road. We, too, could not take evasive action, for the bus was on our left and the road-repair material on the right, and by this time the oncoming car was directly in front of us. A foolish driver in that car and an equally foolish driver in our taxi! …. The lights of the oncoming car now struck directly into the windscreen of our taxi. The cars could not have been more than a second or so apart. We were stunned. Not one of us remembered Baba or called out to Him. We felt we were as good as dead, and we instinctively tensed for the crash. But at that very moment something happened that was without any rational explanation. At one moment the two cars were upon each other, about to be smashed in a fatal head-on collision. The very next moment, the oncoming car was behind us, and we were continuing to pass the bus with a clear road ahead. Looking back, we could see the red tail-lamp of the other car. There was no crash. ….
The next day we drove out to Brindavan as usual at 8 A.M. so as to be waiting near the veranda for Baba to appear for morning Darshan. As soon as He came into the room, I touched the Lotus feet and said, “We want to thank Baba for saving our lives last night.”
Baba smiled and said, “Yes, that was a close one. You were so shocked that not even one of you called out for Swami! But Swami saved you anyway.” Then He turned to a group of men and in Telugu told them the entire story of the incident.
I then said, “Swami, You must have altered time and space in order to save us.” Baba just smiled and did not answer.
From time to time, Swami has orchestrated situations wherein devotees have been blessed to see Him in some of the other forms He is worshipped in. Hislop was among the lucky few to get a glimpse of Baba as Sri Krishna. That story follows, in Hislop’s own words:
A number of years ago I was in Baba’s car. He was in the rear seat with two other persons. I was in the front seat with the driver. We were on our way to Puttaparthi. Driving in the car with Baba is a fascinating experience ………
At some point in the journey, perhaps about half-way, Baba was talking and I turned to look. My breathing stopped and was transfixed. I could not credit my eyes. ….
What transfixed my movement and stopped my breathing now, was His face …..The Baba I knew was not there! Instead, there was a face of the most extra-ordinary beauty – quite different in shape and cast from the features of our beloved Sai. The charm was so great, so poignant, that my heart seemed to twist, almost as though it were in pain. Never in my life, not in photos, nor in paintings by great artists have I seen a face of such exquisite beauty. It was beyond imagination and concept, totally beyond experience.
And His colour was blue. Not just blue, not the blue with which artists paint Sri Krishna, but a deep blue like the velvet blue that can sometimes be seen in a dark sky, like a blue that I have, at times, seen from the deck of a ship thousands of miles from the shores of the Pacific Ocean. I do not know how else to describe it.
I could not take my eyes from Baba’s face. …. The two men sitting with Baba were beginning to look at me with somewhat puzzled expressions….
After a few miles, Sri Vittal Rao (on Baba’s left) asked me, “Hislop, why were you staring at Swami like that?”
Instead of answering, I directed a question to Baba, “Swami, what was that blue colour?”
He replied, “Oh! That? Whenever there is something of unfathomable depth, it appears deep blue.”
That was the end of the conversation about the incident. Naturally, the thought had come to mind that maybe this was Lord Krishna, but neither then, nor at any time in connection with this experience, did I ever mention Krishna to Baba.
There the matter rested until November, 1975. ….
One day, shortly before Birthday, Swami called a family for Interview. Hislop also was called. Swami spent some time talking to the family ad then turned to Hislop. Over now to Hislop for that part of the story:
After a while, Baba said to me, “Hislop, tell them about your experiences.”
I complied and, after mentioning some incidents, I told them the same story [about seeing a deep blue face]. … The man was deeply impressed and words broke from his lips, “Oh! That had to be Lord Krishna!”
Baba smiled and said, “Yes, that was Krishna; not the Krishna pictured by artists and imagined by writers. I showed Hislop the REAL KRISHNA.”
Hislop was clearly a specially chosen one for he had many wonderful experiences like few have been blessed to have. Here is Hislop’s description of one of them that helped him to eventually see Swami everywhere.
After I had been going to Prasanti Nilayam for about three years, coming back to America, as I got off the plane, I felt that Swami’s head and shoulders were superimposed on mine. I felt that way. I was aware of the hair. So I said, “Well, welcome to America, Swami!” That feeling lasted for three years. Every place I would go, there would be Swami standing in the room. When I would talk to people at the Centre, Swami would be standing behind every person in that room! Behind every person would be Swami’s head. When I look at the wall there would be a row of Swamis standing along the wall. That vision finally came to an end, and I told Swami, “Swami, that phenomenon has come to an end now.” Swami said, “Hislop, don’t you know that all phenomena come to an end?” He added, “You have had that vision of Swami without any effort on your part whatsoever. Now you have to deliberately see Swami wherever you look!” So I do that.
Here is another of those unique Hislop-experiences:
One time, Swami went to Madras and arrived unexpectedly at the house of His hostess. You know, when the Avatar come to visit your house, I am sure you would want to have something with which to greet Him – some flowers or a tray of food or something to the welcome the Lord to your house. That was the case with this hostess too.
Swami came to the door and knocked. The hostess answered, saw Swami standing there, and exclaimed, Oh Swami, Swami, I am so happy to see You. But Swami, You didn’t tell me that you were coming, and I don’t have anything to welcome you with. I don’t have flowers or fruit. I don’t have anything.” The poor lady was quite distraught. So Swami said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry.” Then He turned around and beckoned at the car.
Out of the car came two angels with wings, carrying a big silver tray, loaded with fruit and flowers and everything the hostess would need to welcome Swami. The angels brought this tray up to the house and gave it to the hostess. Then Swami turned to the angels and waved them back to the car. They floated back to the car, folded their wings, got into the car, and disappeared!
Later on, as the years went by, Swami acquired another vehicle. He had a bus, and He would take the students for excursions in the bus. One time. He took them on an excursion to Madras.
First, He went to the house of the hostess, where He would be staying; the students would be staying someplace else. When the hostess came to the door and saw the busload of students, she went back inside her house and brought out the silver tray. It was still there, and she told the students the story of the angels with wings …..
After many years of wandering and unfulfilled yearning, Swami finally drew Hislop to Himself, granting him the blessing of Divine proximity. Hislop, for his part, took full advantage of the opportunity given, not for himself but for the sake of humanity. He became a roving ambassador, and through his talks as well his books [widely known justifiably], Hislop did yeoman service in spreading Sai’s Message far and wide. Even when afflicted by cancer, he did not hesitate to travel and speak about the Lord he had discovered. He says:
In this modern society, a dry and joyless life is the general experience. Witness the frantic search for distraction and pleasure the world over. An almost universal prayer springs up from adult persons caught up in today’s culture: O Lord, may there be a new season of Spring in my heart. May the river of Love flow deep and strong again in my heart!”
Here, to me, is one of the most wonderful miracles of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. The fettered heart, turning to Baba, can break free from all bondage. Seeing Him, being sure that He will never abandon, is a most wonderful feeling. With joy, the heart responds to this trust. With each day, love for Baba grows stronger and stronger. He is the Divine Mother and the Divine Father to His devotee. One may love Him without reserve, without guard, without fear …….
Hislop constantly chanted Baba’s Name, right till the very end. As he gave up the mortal coil, friends gathered around him kept chanting the sacred OM, even as the soul journeyed to its eternal resting-place, the Divine Lotus Feet. Some time later, Swami asked an American devotee on the veranda, “Where is Hislop?” The devotee looked up, as if to signify that Hislop was in heaven. Baba then said, “He has come to Me. Good man; always thinking of and working for Swami.” There cannot be a better eulogy.
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