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From the Form
to the Formless
The following
talk was given by David Jevons to an audience of Sai Baba devotees
who were attending the annual retreat of the Pacific Region North
of the Sathya Sai Baba Organisation of the USA held at the Silver
Falls State Park Conference Centre of Oregon over the weekend of
October 22nd/ 24th 1999. It has been edited
but only for the purpose of reproducing it in this Newsletter.
I wonder if we really appreciate the many
blessings that are continually being showered down upon us by our
Creator. For example, not only are we privileged to be here this
weekend in this beautiful mountain setting, enjoying the good
company of like-minded people in a spiritual retreat, but we are
also all basking in the omnipresence of our beloved Lord, Sri
Sathya Sai Baba. Many of you, I know, have been to India and have
had an opportunity to see, to touch and to speak to him. You have
been graced to receive his physical darshan which, as Sai Baba
says, is a boon that is yearned for by the gods of the highest
heavens. Let us also remember that Sai Baba has declared himself
to be an avatar. A declaration such as this indicates that we are
living in exciting and challenging times, because the stated
mission of an avatar is to restore right living upon the Earth, is
to protect those who follow dharma and to punish those who oppose
it. Now Sai Baba will be 74 years old next month, nevertheless,
he has stated that he will inaugurate a Golden Age of peace and
prosperity here on the Earth before he dies in 2022. Many of us,
I know, find it hard to believe that such a transformation will
indeed take place. We look at the state of the world today and to
our eyes the world appears to be getting worse not better. All
over the world human beings are behaving like animals rather than
like divine beings. We can see, as yet, no outward signs of the
promised transformation. It is therefore self-evident that some
Earth shattering event will have to occur in the not too distant
future if the path on which Humanity is now set is to be radically
changed.
In an interview that Ann and I had with Sai
Baba last February Swami told us that the Earth was sick. He said
that the hole in the ozone layer was getting bigger and that as a
result the Earth was heating up. He also said that the Earth had
a high temperature, a fever, and that she would have to cleanse
herself of this fever. What form this cleansing will take I do
not know, but I believe that we are witnessing the first symptoms
of this fever in the extremes of weather that we are now
experiencing all over the world. Then Sai Baba warned us that Man
was extracting far too many minerals and too much oil from the
Earth for short term financial profit. He said that the Earth was
hollow and was becoming unbalanced. He held his hand up, in the
shape of a clenched fist, to look like a ball, and then he turned
his hand sideways. What this portends I do not know, but it seems
to me to imply that there will be a shift in the axis of rotation
of the Earth. If this is indeed the case then we are all in for
a testing time. Sai Baba also told us that we should not be
afraid of this process as he will protect his devotees. His
teaching “Why fear, when I am here” takes on a new meaning
in this respect. I would also mention here that I had a very
vivid dream about Sai Baba a few months ago. It was quite a long
dream and at the very end of it he walked up to me, put his face
right in front of mine and said “Remember my face, one
day it will save you.” I feel that this message is for all
devotees.
Now it is apparent, to those of us who have
been following Sai Baba for many years, that he is changing the
nature of his relationship with his devotees. Some amazing
statements have come out of Puttaparthi in the last few months.
For example, at the celebration of Dasara on October 14th
Sai Baba walked out of the celebration without giving his usual
discourse, announcing to stunned devotees that he would no longer
give discourses on such occasions. He later said that he has been
giving discourses for so many years but that devotees have not
been listening to what he has been saying. They have not been
putting his teachings into practice. I recall here his warning
“You seek too much information and not enough
transformation.” Earlier this month Indulah Shah, the
president of the world Sri Sathya Sai Organisation, came to
Vancouver and delivered a personal message from Swami. Firstly,
Indulah Shah announced, Sai Baba had said that we should not
concern ourselves with what he had said before June 1996 and that
what he had taught since that time was his final instructions to
us. The information age was now over and the transformation age
was about to begin. Secondly, Sai Baba had said that we should
not to be devotees of his form, but devotees of his teachings.
The worship of his form must stop. He emphasised that we were no
different from him. We were all God, we were all no different
from God. We should lead our lives based on the five divine
qualities that he proclaims, namely, Love, Truth, Peace, Right
Action and Non-violence. The purpose of our incarnation is to
realise that we are not our physical bodies, and that we are in
fact eternal beings of spirit.
Indulah Shah went on to say that Sai Baba is
very keen to get EHV (Education in Human Values)
schools established in every country of the world. Again it is
significant that Swami wants us to start EHV schools here in the
West. He doesn’t want us to start a religion. He doesn’t want us
to promote the worship of his form. He doesn’t want us to recruit
new devotees. He doesn’t want us to talk about his miracles and
ignore his teachings. I know, because of my own struggle in
coming to terms with the Hindu forms of worship practised in the
Sai Organisation, that this is the path that we should be walking
here in the West. We should teach and exemplify the Human Values
that Swami upholds so strongly. We should promote the teaching of
EHV in our schools. There is an EHV program in the United Kingdom
that is now being taught in more than 500 schools. This program
fills a spiritual void in the school curriculum created by the
removal of religious education for the sake of political
correctness.
Sai Baba has asked us not only to stop
worshipping his form but the form of past avatars as well.
If we get attached to his form, or to any form for that matter, we
are inevitably going to suffer when we are denied access to the
form. As the husband of a wife who was very attached to
Swami’s form I know that this is true. When Sai Baba began
weaning my wife off his form he started a painful process, because
my wife regarded this weaning as a form of rejection. When
we go to India to see Sai Baba and the physical Sai Baba ignores
us, the ego-self immediately creates feelings of rejection, of
lack of self worth, of doubt and suspicion. We say that Sai
Baba doesn’t love us any more, that he doesn’t know that we are
there, that he doesn’t understand our wants and our needs.
But Sai Baba is weaning us for a purpose, to force us to go inside
and to contact the force that I call Super Sai, the omnipresent
force of God which is always with us no matter where we are in the
world. We don’t have to go to India to contact this force.
Ann and I have found that Super Sai is so much more powerful, so
much more approachable, so much more responsive than the physical
Sai. Attachment to the form is in fact a limitation to our
spiritual progress.
Sai Baba himself tells the story of an elderly
devotee who, after his wife had died, came to live in the ashram
at Puttaparthi. He was a retired army officer and he was
devoted to Sai Baba. He lived in the ashram for many years
but suddenly, one day, Sai Baba told him to leave the ashram and
to go and live in Madras. Reluctantly he left and as he was
a very old man he was looked after by some Sai devotees there.
Six months later he developed cancer and died. Subsequently
one of the devotees in Madras who had looked after him went to Sai
Baba and said. “Swami, why where you so unkind to this man?
He was devoted to you and yet you threw him out of the ashram just
before he died?” Sai Baba replied “If I had not forced him
to go, he would never have got liberation. He was too
attached to my form.” So there is a danger in becoming too
attached to the form of the guru. We should strive to
release all such attachments and to rely on the omnipresent God
within us, not the physical form of God in India.
In
twenty-two years Sai Baba’s physical form will disappear forever,
as did the forms of all past avatars. That is the nature of
physical life. Nothing is permanent. So we can understand why
Sai Baba is now asking us to move from the form to the formless.
We are not our bodies. We are all individualised aspects of
consciousness linked to a formless and nameless energy which we
can call Super Consciousness. Sai Baba himself has said that he
represents Super Consciousness and that we represent Collective
Consciousness. We must seek to bring forth the God within us, the
force of Super Consciousness. Sai Baba teaches that we are all
God in human form, that we are all no different from God. Having
been brought up as a Christian, I found it very difficult to
accept this statement, for I had been taught that God was in
Heaven, Man was on Earth, and that God had to send his only son
down to Earth to save us from ourselves. I found it very
difficult to accept that God could be on the Earth. For many
years I struggled with this concept before, eventually, with Sai
Baba’s grace, I began to understand the real meaning of what he
was saying. I once asked Sai Baba “Swami, is the Christ coming on
the Earth again?” Sai Baba responded most vigorously “No, No,
No! There is not one Christ, but many Christs. You are all
Christs.” Please note the use of the plural not the singular.
Sai
Baba has asked us to use the So Hum mantra. So Hum means I am
God. It is the sound of our own breathing as we breathe in - So -
and breathe out - Hum - on average 21,600 times each day without
our even being aware of it. We are therefore declaring every
second of the day that we are God. Sai Baba asks that perhaps on
just a few of those breaths we can be conscious of the fact that
we are God. He says that deep breathing is especially useful in
the conquering of anger, greed and lust and in handling the many
negative thoughts that suddenly pop up in our conscious minds. We
can do this by closing our eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, and
observing the process of our breathing. Sai Baba has also asked
us to do the Jyoti or light meditation each day. This is the
meditation when you focus on the light in a candle, bring the
light into your body and become that light and then send that
light out into the world. By following these two simple
procedures we will transform not just ourselves but the world as a
whole. Sai Baba has also given us a vision of the Golden Age that
is to come. He says that in this Golden Age there will be no need
for seva or service, there will be no need for bhajans or
devotional singing, there will be no formal worship, there will be
no religions as we know them today. Why will this be the case?
It is because they all represent duality, separation from the
Godhead. They all promote separation from God and deny the
omnipresence of God in each and everyone of us. Sai Baba says
that this Golden Age will be a time of peace and prosperity
because people will be leading lives based on the five human
values. People will be aware of their birthright, they will know
that they are indeed God.
I would now like to talk very briefly about the
vedantic understanding of the nature of human existence. Firstly
there is dvaita or dualism which holds that Man and God are
quite separate, that the individual soul and the Supreme Soul are
separate and distinct principles. Then there is
vishishtadvaita or qualified dualism, which holds that Man is
separate from God but is in a unique relationship with Him.
Finally there is advaita or non-dualism, which holds that
God, the soul and the Universe are all one. This latter
understanding is held to be the ultimate goal for Man and when you
achieve this state of being then you will attain liberation and
will no longer need to return to the plane of Earth unless you
choose to do so in order to lead others into this understanding.
All the great gurus, of course, live in a constant state of
advaita. They are at one with everything and everybody. Sai Baba
has used the three stages of Jesus’ life to explain this vedantic
understanding. In the beginning Jesus regarded himself as the
messenger of God, that is to say he was living in dualism as he
regarded himself as being separate from God. Then Jesus went into
a time of retreat, his forty days in the wilderness, and he
emerged saying that he was the son of God, that is to say that he
was related to God. This was the state of vishishtadvaita. It
was from this understanding that he carried out his ministry.
However Sai Baba says that it was not until Jesus was on the
cross, enduring the pain of crucifixion, and was being tormented
by the soldiers who had crucified him, that Jesus entered the
state of advaita. Jesus, quite naturally, was having negative
thoughts about the soldiers who were tormenting him, when he heard
the voice of God inside him say “All are one, my dear son, be
alike to everyone.” He then realised the reality of advaita and
merged with it
When you go from this retreat, if you remember
nothing else, I would like you to remember those words.
“All are one, my dear son, be alike to everyone.”
Sai Baba says that at that point the last doubts of Jesus dropped
away and Jesus was able to declare “I and my Father are one.” He
had become a realised being and was one with his Creator. If you
listen to the voice of God inside you it will proclaim the same
fact, that there is no separation between you and God, that there
never was any separation, that the separation that you perceive is
only in your mind, is a figment of your imagination. To reach
this highest truth, do not think that you and God are separate.
Think always that God is within you, that you yourself are God,
that you are an infinite and an eternal being. Throughout your
many lives there has only ever been one, never two. There never
was duality. You and God are one and the same. So develop
self-confidence, or should I say soul-confidence, in that fact.
Know that you are atma, divine spirit. Do not become body
conscious, become soul conscious. Keep away from anything or
anyone that leads you into body consciousness.
When you realise that God is not separate from
you, then you gain immense self-confidence. You begin to manifest
Love, Peace, Truth, Right Action and Non-violence as a natural
part of your being. Do not think that you are your body, for the
body is just a water bubble on the ocean of life. Your body is
just a dress that you put on and will discard when it is worn
out. Bodies are not special. Sai Baba has said that his body is
not special. His body will die just like ours. Only the divine
spirit is eternal. I would think that most of us here, I know
that I am, are in a state of vishishtadvaita, of qualified
non-dualism. Through our association with Sai Baba we have moved
into the stage when we know that we are in relationship with God,
that God is our true Mother and Father. Let us now take that final
step, which Sai Baba is inviting us to take, and move from the
form to the formless, from the finite to the infinite, from
duality to the oneness of all life.
As some of you may know I was an airline a
pilot for all of my working life and Sai Baba often makes jokes
about this. In my very first interview he put his arm around my
shoulders and said “You are my pilot, but remember, I’m your
pilot!” Sai Baba also uses the analogy of a plane to describe his
mission. On the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday he said that
his plane was taxiing out from the airport building in preparation
for take-off. On his seventieth birthday he said that his plane
was lined up at the end of the runway, with its engines revving
up, ready for take-off. On our visit last February Sai Baba told
us that on his seventy-fifth birthday, in November 2000, his plane
will take off. Now this plane is not a physical plane, like a
Boeing 747, it is a plane of consciousness. Nevertheless, to get
on that plane involves a selection process, because you have to
get a boarding card in order to be on that plane. I feel that
this plane is the plane of liberation and that in order to catch
this plane we have to lead lives that will make us worthy of
liberation. We have to follow the spiritual disciplines that Sai
Baba has asked us to follow. We have to make a great effort to
discover that we are indeed no different from God. I feel that
many of us have been waiting for this final step for many
lifetimes. Now Sai Baba is offering us the chance of liberation
by simply following him and his example.
I had a dream the other day in which Sai Baba
told me that I would have to come and live in his ashram in India,
because I simply did not have the self-discipline to follow a
spiritual path whilst living in the outside world! He said that I
was continually getting distracted by worldly matters and that the
only way for me to get liberation was to come and be subject to
the discipline of the ashram. He said that the time would soon
come when I would have to release all my material possessions and
concentrate on the real purpose of my life, namely, to attain
liberation. Well, hopefully, some of you are more disciplined
than I am and you won’t have to go to India and be subject to
ashram discipline! It is a fact, though, that when Ann and I go
to the ashram, we liken the experience to going to a spiritual
health farm, because we recharge our spiritual batteries, we
re-establish our spiritual disciplines, we get in touch with our
inner selves and we always leave with an inner glow of
well-being. Unfortunately, as the subsequent months pass by, we
tend to slip back into our old habits, to allow the pressures of
the outer world to interfere with our spiritual disciplines. So
if we really want to move from the form to the formless, then, we
will have to put some energy into this transition, to make this
quest the most important aspect of our lives, our very reason for
living, and not treat it as an intellectual pursuit.
Now Sai Baba says that there are two
paths towards liberation that are available to us at this time;
the path of knowledge and the path of devotion. Of these two
paths, the path of knowledge is a difficult path to walk as the
outer world is such a distraction for us, especially here in the
West. The path of knowledge demands silence and meditation and
time for the induction and the practice of knowledge. When we
walk this path we unite with God through our own efforts. However
the path of devotion, the path of devotional service to God, is
open to all of us at this time. When we walk this path God unites
with us because of the efforts that we have made. Sai Baba uses
the analogy of the cat and the monkey to distinguish between the
paths. The path of knowledge can be compared to the baby monkey.
The baby monkey has to cling to its mother in order to stay with
it. The baby monkey clings to the mother’s body through its own
self effort, and the mother monkey then carries it to where she
wants to go. The path of devotion can be compared to the baby
kitten. The mother cat carefully picks up the baby kitten in its
mouth and carries it to wherever she wants to go and then puts it
down. The kitten has to make no effort save that of being in
relationship with its mother. That is the path of devotion and
that is the path that Sai Baba is advising us to follow. I would
now like to give you an example of this mother cat principle at
work, as it happened to me.
I was in India, staying in Sai
Baba’s ashram at Puttaparthi, last February. After morning
darshan was over six small lines used to form in the darshan
area. Devotees queue in these lines in order to get into the
temple for the morning bhajan session that follows a short time
afterwards. Now it is difficult for devotees to get into the
temple because the ashram staff and the students from Sai Baba’s
school are allowed to go in first and they can take up much of the
space that is available to the men. Moreover, unless you are
actually sitting close to where the lines form, it is well nigh
impossible even to get into these waiting lines. I tried on
several mornings to join the lines but got nowhere. It was just
like a rugby scrum, with some people throwing themselves into the
lines in order to get a place. The situation was hopeless! I
mentally said to Sai Baba that I was not going to demean myself by
taking part in this scrum, and I stopped trying to get into the
lines. A few days later, however, my inner voice impelled me to
go and try again, but when I reached the lines they were all
full. I was about to give up when an illegal seventh line began
to form! Feeling very guilty, I hastily sat down in this illegal
seventh line and waited for the inevitable order from the seva
dals to move. To my utter amazement that morning the seva dals
allowed this seventh line to stay! The usual little cosmic
lottery then took place and my seventh line drew the number one
token and I was the second person into the temple that morning.
As I sat down, close to the front
and just to the right of the thin strip of red carpet that divides
the men from the women, I was amazed to see that Ann was sitting
in the exact mirror position of where I was sitting, but on the
ladies side. Now Ann, unbeknownst to me, had gone through just
the same process that I had had to endure, but on the ladies
side. Now what are the odds, out of 40,000 or so people, all
wanting to be in the temple close to Sai Baba, of a husband and
wife winding up in a mirror position along side each other, close
to the front. A few moments later Sai Baba entered the temple and
walked down the carpet towards us. My wife, who is never shy
about talking to Sai Baba, said “Swami, my husband is here.” Sai
Baba smiled at her and said “Yes, yes, I know.” Then he turned
and talked to me, asking me about my eldest son. Now that, to me,
is the miracle of Divine Omnipresence. That, to me, is a far more
striking testament to Super Sai, to God’s Omnipresence, than any
interview, any manifestation, any miracle. That is the reality of
God’s Omnipresence, which can impel two people to walk two
separate paths in order to place them in the same position, at the
same time, for a moment of destiny. That is the divine Mother Cat
at work and, you know, the same thing has happened to you, if you
did but know it, in getting you to be here this morning, listening
to this talk.
In my very first interview with Sai
Baba, back in 1993, the most important thing that he did for me
was to give me a mantra that changed my perception of myself and
of my role in life. He slowly recited to me -
“You are God, you
are God, you are no different than God.
You are the Infinite Supreme, the
One Reality.
You are Sat Chit Ananda Swarupa.
You are Om Tat Sat Om.”
He told me to say
that mantra to myself every day, for that was the truth of my
being. Now for a Christian this was a difficult thing for me to
do. Nevertheless it started a whole process of change in me.
Although, at first, the mantra was just words, and meant little to
me, the fact that they are such powerful words, and the whole
statement is so transformative, gradually began to imperceptibly
change my understanding of my own divinity. I would like to quote
to you some of Sai Baba’s own words on this very same subject.
“You are divine,
that is the truth.
You and the Universal are one.
You and the Absolute are one.
You and the Eternal are one.
You are not the individual, the particular, the temporary.
Feel this. Know this. Act in conformity with this.”
If we know this
as the truth of our being then we will achieve liberation, we will
attain the goal that we have been pursuing for so many lives, in
so many bodies, enduring so many karmic settlements. This is why
Sai Baba is in incarnation at this time, to reveal this great
truth, which has been hidden from us for so many lives. We are no
different from God. We are God.
I
often wonder where I would have ended spiritually in this life if
I had not come into contact with Sai Baba. I would probably be
stuck in my Western Esoteric Philosophy and seeking too much
information and not enough transformation! I would not have been
introduced to the path of devotion and to the concept of ‘Love
All, Serve All’. I would not have discovered that when
you serve another person you are in fact serving God. I would not
have been able to face someone I did not like with the thought in
my mind “All are one, my dear son, be alike to everyone.”
It is so difficult to understand the reality of Oneness with God
if one has not experienced it personally. I always recall a
description of oneness by that great teacher Jiddu Krishnamurti
who Ann and I used to go and listen to every year until his death
in 1986. There are some who regard him as the World Teacher.
Krishnamurti was one day watching a man repairing a road in Ojai,
in Southern California. Suddenly he became one with everything
around him. He was the workman repairing the road, he was the
pneumatic drill in the hands of the workman and he was the road.
He was at one with everything. He was experiencing the feelings
and emotions of everything. Few of us will have such an
experience, but we can all begin to act in accord with it.
I would like to finish now with a
quotation from Sai Baba, in fact these are the words that Sai
Baba said on Shivaratri day this year.
“Do
not get deluded because I talk, laugh, walk and eat like you. Do
not get deluded by this body feeling. All my actions are selfless,
selfless, selfless. There is no trace of selfishness in me at
all. Have firm faith in that truth. If you have total faith,
wherever you are, all your desires will be fulfilled without your
even asking. Only those who don’t have total faith will suffer.
So develop self confidence. That is the first spiritual
discipline that you must follow. You must undertake to follow
this now. Liberation can be gained in this lifetime. Millions
know me. Millions will come to me, but only a handful will obtain
liberation.”
May we all be in that handful. May
we all move our consciousnesses from the form to the formless,
from the individual to the whole. May we all become one with the
One.
Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter,
March 2000,
http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter03_00_01.htm
Visit Ramala Centre Website:
http://www.ramalacentre.com
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