Sri Sathya Sai Baba

Surrender - Part 10

Dear All,

From today onwards, for the next few posts, we are going to deal with step by step process a human being goes through to rise from Manava to Madhava. What are the steps?? How does the journey from man-man to God-man flow???? Here it is!

 ATTRACTION

Spiritual journey in the path of devotion actually starts when a human gets attracted towards God.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa says that there are 2 loadstones available, one is God and another is World and the mind is the iron that is there in between the two.

If the world loadstone is more attractive, mind draws towards the world loadstone. If God is more attractive, then the mind draws towards God. In most human, the loadstone of God is covered with impurity/ignorance and hence, the attraction towards the world loadstone is more.

Let us also refresh our thoughts on our learning from a previous post on LOVE FOR GOD, the circumstances leading to ATTRACTION towards God.

• Though it looks as if the world is all right and people are all right, they seem to be all right only for some time, and not for all times. This fact enters our mind occasionally, on certain conditions of experience such as when we are frustrated, defeated or done a bad turn, as we say, which makes us feel a kind of resentment towards everything which we originally felt to be worthwhile.
• In such a situation, our feelings for the world withdraw themselves.
• This pushing back of the force of the main current, which was channelizing itself in different directions, only increases the potentiality within, but it does not move it in the required direction. Here the feelings get intensified, no doubt.
• They become more powerful than they were earlier, and they must find an outlet for their expression.
• Not finding an outlet, they struggle inside and begin to search for an outlet. In this condition, our feeling for something that is not visible, though one may not be quite clear as to what it is, becomes strong; and if the pressure which has brought the feeling back to its source continues for a long time, it breaks its barriers, and perhaps move in the direction of God.

If the author can recall the experience of his own family, it so happened that we all (author was 10 year old at that time), happened to visit a Sai bhajan at Tambaram, Chennai and heard Sri Mohan Rao singing "O Bhagavan… araj suno mere Sai Bhagavan" followed by "Brahma murari sada pujita". In his powerful voice, the whole bhajan hall got filled with divine vibrations. 

The Bhajan ended and then Sri Mohan Rao enquired author’s mother - “Have you visited Parthi and seen Sai?”. At that time, she had no clue of Sai. But the next 15 minutes talk by Sri Mohan Rao sowed the first seed of ATTRACTION towards Sai. The story was then as if , “WE WENT, WE SAW AND WE WERE CONQUERED”.

FAITH 

"I will not accept it if you say that you are an atheist with no faith in the Lord. For what is the root of that faith in yourself? Who are you that you should believe in yourself? No. You believe yourself because your Self is God and you have an unshakable faith in God, deep down in you. Faith in yourself and faith in God are identical; you tap the strength of the God within when you stand at attention against an enemy without." (Baba, SSS2, Chap. 46)

There is never that a man is not faithful. Even when he says, I do not believe in God, is it not a  firm faith not to have faith in God?.

The basis of faith in a man is so beautifully given by Swami above when He says "...you believe in yourself because your SELF is God and have unshakable faith in God, deep down in you...”.

When appropriate moment comes in a man’s life, attraction for God makes him see God, experience God and then, at that moment, the hidden deep faith in himself (his true SELF which is always divinity) gets linked with the God seen and experienced and the deep faith within manifests!!!

Continuing with Sri Mohan Rao’s talk which appealed to mother, the ATTRACTION towards Swami made her undergo all the ordeal in  1976 and she reached Puttaparthi. Traveling by train, then by bus, then by walk. She  saw Swami for the first time, Swami calls her on the second day itself, narrates her entire life’s story till that day in few minutes and also indicates something in store for the future which of course did happen in future.

So, her attraction drew her towards God, she visits  Lord, gets glimpse of God, has experience of God and her faith deep down within manifests!!!

ADORATION/WORSHIP

"When you believe in God, you develop faith in the divinity of all things. Faith is the basis of worship. Worship leads to oneness with the Divine. The sense of separateness will persist as long as there is not God realization. Separateness ends with Realization.... When you have faith in yourself, you will have faith in God. Realize that there is nothing beyond the power of God".

Love God with that supreme faith. Then you will be drawn towards God. It needs purity. A magnet cannot attract a piece of iron covered with rust.

Similarly, God will not draw to Himself an impure person. Hence, change your feelings and thoughts and develop the conviction that God is everything. God will not give you up when you have this conviction”. (Baba SSS28, Chap. 4)

Author’s mother develops attraction, visits Lord, sees, gets experience, gets darshan, sparshan, sambashan with the Lord within 24 hours of her visit to the sanctum sanctorum and this leads to her adoring and worshipping the Lord which got aligned with her life breath thereafter. 

We children were put in Swami's path from that very moment. The adoration and worship which started that day found mother fulfill all her worldly responsibilities and retire early to stay near ashram in Parthi thereafter, she still lives there, with her  faith and steadfastness towards Swami remaining unshakable!

To repeat Swami's words- “Faith is the basis of worship. Worship leads to oneness with the Divine.”

Love.