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The Challenge of the Year 2000
The following
talk was given by David Jevons to an audience of Sai Baba
devotees who were attending a Sai Summer Picnic held in Langley,
British Columbia, Canada on Sunday July 9th 2000. It
has been edited but only for the purpose of reproducing it in
this Newsletter.
As I look around this large gathering
it’s lovely to see so many familiar faces looking back at me
this morning. I know that some of you have travelled long
distances, even from other countries, in order to be here
today. Ann and I feel very humble in the face of such
devotion. I feel that this Sai family of which we are all a
part is something that we should value very highly. It’s true
to say that wherever you are in the world, if you meet someone
from this Sai family, then you know exactly how you are going to
be treated, the human values that will be shared, the devotional
path that will be followed. We are truly one big global family,
which rises above race, culture or creed and which is united in
our love for Sai Baba and in our desire to help him with his
divine mission. So as Ann and I open our home to you today we
do so in the certain knowledge that you would do the same for
us. After all, our home is not really our home, because we own
nothing. Everything belongs to God. Ann and I are really not
your hosts today. God is the host and we are simply His
facilitators.
Here in British Columbia in the past we have
been rather on the perimeter of world affairs, especially as far
as the Sai Organisation was concerned. This, of course, has
both advantages and disadvantages. We were often the last to
hear the latest news or rumours because of the time zone in
which we live and because we are far removed from the world’s
major communication centres. On the other hand, what we didn’t
hear about, we didn’t have to worry about, and so we could stay
more focused on our goals. Today, however, the Internet has
changed all of that. This Pandora’s box can spread information
instantly to the four corners of the world. Lies and rumours
can be spread just as quickly as the truth. So it is for us to
exercise our powers of discrimination and good judgement as to
what we read, where we go to read it and what we choose to
believe as the truth. It is because of what has been put out on
the Internet that I know many Sai devotees have been going
through a very difficult year, and I include Ann and myself in
this number. Many troubling stories about Sai Baba and the
activities of the Sai Organisation have been circulating on the
Internet from sources all over the world. Web sites accusing
Sai Baba of sexual misconduct and the Sai Organisation of
financial wrong-doing have appeared and are being visited by
thousands of people. There has also been some negative press in
several counties and a few critical television documentaries.
We are told that more are on the way. How are we to handle all
of this information, especially when challenged about it?
I believe personally that these events are an
essential part of the divine drama of life and, as such, are
predestined. About three years ago, when we were in an
interview with Sai Baba, he suddenly volunteered the information
to us that “A big scandal is coming” and that “When you come to
the Ashram there will be three rooms available for anyone who
wants one.” We did not then understand to what he was
referring, but perhaps it was to the events that are now
unfolding in the world. I believe personally that they
constitute a gigantic leela or divine game which Sai Baba has
initiated for two reasons. Firstly, it is intended to test the
faith of his devotees. We all individually have to decide how
we are going to respond to these stories. Secondly, it is
intended to make us examine the reality of the physical form,
and of Sai Baba’s physical form in particular. It is a fact,
and I can tell you this from personal experience, that the
closer you get to Sai Baba the more difficult the relationship
becomes. The closer you get to the fire, so to speak, the more
likely you are to get burned. I know of some of Sai Baba’s most
ardent devotees who have never been to India, who have never
seen or spoken to him, but who have absolute faith in the
reality of who and what he is. On the other hand those of us
who have had a closer contact with Sai Baba have been forced to
come to terms with the question of his form. We feel the need
to question and to analyse why he chooses to behave in a certain
way, why he does what are to us inappropriate things, in spite
of the fact that he has warned us “Never try to understand me”.
We must be aware that Sai Baba, like us, is
playing a role in this great drama of life. He is not his body,
just as we are not our bodies. We are all actors playing
roles. We are all aspects of God, sparks of divine energy, that
have chosen to take on physical form. What is important is not
the physical form but is the aspect of God, the atma, the
spirit, that empowers that form. I would like to read to you
now something that Sai Baba said very recently.
“Do not get
deluded because I talk, laugh, eat and walk like you. Do not
get deluded by this body feeling. All my action are always
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 you 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.”
That,
incidentally, was Sai Baba speaking on Shivaratri this year. He
is clearly warning us not to get attached to his form and to the
role that he is playing, a role which has one purpose and one
purpose only, namely, to help us to gain liberation. Some
devotees, I know, have got some funny ideas about what
constitutes liberation. Some people feel that it’s a gift or a
blessing which Sai Baba doles out for good behaviour rather like
he gives out pieces of candy. I always remember an incident
that occurred during an interview with Sai Baba a few years
ago. He was going around the room asking people what they
wanted. He got to one lady and said “What do you want?” to
which she rather glibly replied “Liberation, please, Swami.”
Sai Baba looked at her very sternly and said “Right now?”,
implying “Are you prepared to die right now and to lose all soul
identity?” The woman hastily added “Well, not right now Swami,
only when I am ready for it!” Liberation has to be earned. It
has to be gained by self effort. It is not a gift. Liberation
comes to us quite naturally as we release our attachments to the
form and stop identifying with the ego-self. The guru does not
grant liberation. He helps the devotee to attain it or, should
I say, to recover it, because we are already liberated. We have
just forgotten that fact. Sai Baba will do or say anything if
it will help us to remember that fact. He will even sacrifice
himself, his name and his reputation if it will help us to
achieve our goal.
Why do we find
it so difficult to believe that we are not our bodies? Why can
we not accept that we are beings of pure spirit? Why can we not
change our programming and so release the firmly held beliefs of
who and what we are? I read an article by Dr. Deepak Chopra
recently on Quantum Mechanical Modes, in which he noted that our
physical bodies change completely every two and a half years.
Every cell in our body is replaced during that period. So why
is it, if every cell is renewed, that our bodies, remain
diseased? Why is it, for example, that if we have cancer cells
in our bodies, when they die we replace them with cancer cells
rather than with healthy cells? It is because our programming
is so strong, is so fixed, that we create cancer cells rather
than healthy cells because that is what we believe we are. It
is just the same with the world around us. We create our world
by how we choose to experience it, which, in turn, is due to our
programming. Sai Baba is continually reminding us that we are
not our bodies, that we should not get attached to our bodies
and to his body in particular. There was a devotee, a retired
army officer, who lived in the ashram at Puttaparthi for many
years after his wife had died. He spent much time in close
proximity to Sai Baba until one day, quite out of the blue, Sai
Baba told him that he had to go and live in Madras. He
protested to Sai Baba that he didn’t want to go and live in
Madras, but to no avail. So he went to Madras, and being an
elderly man, all alone, he was looked after by some Sai devotees
there. A few months later he died of cancer and the devotees
who had looked after him came to Sai Baba and said “Swami, it
was so unkind of you to send that old man to Madras, where he
died alone. He loved you so much. Why would you do such a
thing?” Sai Baba replied “He was too close to me, he was too
attached to my form, and he would not have obtained liberation
unless I sent him away.” So we have to realise that there is a
danger in getting too attached to Sai Baba’s form, indeed, to
any physical form. A devotee that we know recently had a dream
about Sai Baba, which he shared with us. In this dream hundreds
of devotees, all dressed in white, were walking down a road,
filing past Sai Baba, but were paying no attention to his form.
Sai Baba was standing there smiling and was ushering them on
with his hands, obviously very happy with this situation.
We should not
make any form into the purpose and the reason for our being, be
it Sai Baba, a husband, a wife or a child. We should identify
only with God, not with any form of God. Sai Baba himself has
said that his body is not special. Physical bodies come and
go. They are simply dust. That is one of the symbologies of
vibhuti. We come from dust and we return to dust. What we
should identify with is the divinity in the body, the divine
atma. That is why Sai Baba cautions us to be aware of the
divinity that is in his body. That is what is so special about
his body. It is his divinity. He tells us that we cannot even
begin to imagine the reality of this divinity. He has recently
said that we will very soon witness this divine power
manifesting in the world. I quote from a recent discourse.
“Many events are going to take place very soon. Many mega
projects are going to come up. The time is not far off when
people will see me at different places at the same time. I may
be travelling in a car, but at the same time I shall be giving
darshan at Sai Kulwant hall and at the same time I shall be
speaking at the Hillview Stadium.” This is Swami talking
this year which, he says, marks the start of the Golden Age.
The Golden Age has now begun and, to use the plane analogy of
which Sai Baba is so fond, the plane of liberation is taking off
on his 75th birthday, which takes place on November
23rd 2000. So this is a significant year for all
devotees, because if we want to be on this cosmic plane, then we
have to have a boarding pass! It is apparent that a selection
process will take place in order to decide who is going on that
plane, and that selection process is not carried out by an
outside force. It will be done by our own selves, by how we
behave in thought, word and deed.
How many of you
were present in Vancouver last year when Indulal Shah, the
president of the World Sai Organisation came and spoke to us.
He brought with him a personal message from Sai Baba which he
passed on to us under the heading of ‘Swami’s final
instructions’. Now why would Sai Baba choose these particular
words? ‘Final instructions’ - final before what? In this
personal message Sai Baba made some quite amazing statements
such as “Do not concern yourselves with what I said before
1996. Do not become devotees of my form, become devotees of my
teachings. Do not worship my form or the form of any past
avatars. Get rid of all the photographs of me and the statues
of deities on your altars.” It is apparent that Sai Baba is
trying to bring about a shift in the way we relate to him and,
indeed, to all avatars. He wants us to go beyond the physical
form. Now it is not without significance that Ann and I have
both been going through this difficult process, only in very
different ways. For the past five years Sai Baba has been
weaning Ann off his form, to which she had become very
attached. We’ve been privileged to have a close relationship
with Sai Baba. He knows our faces and the faces of our children
and he has spoken to us on many occasions in the past. So when
you go to darshan day after day after day only to have him
totally ignore you, you can feel very hurt. You begin to say to
yourself “What have I done? Why isn’t he looking at me? Does
he not recognise me? Does he not know who I am? Does he not
know that I am here? Am I no longer worthy of his attention?”
You begin to plead for a look, a smile, some token of
acknowledgement, just to satisfy your ego. You begin to
bargain, saying “Swami if you acknowledge my presence then I
will do this for you or I will give up this for you!” But it is
all to no avail. The process goes on and on, and in our case,
right up until the very last minute. On one three week visit
Sai Baba kept Ann waiting right up until the day she was leaving
before he spoke to her, saying with feigned surprise “Ah, you
are here”, as if he didn’t know!
Now I was
feeling a little smug about this weaning process, because I’m
not really attracted to Sai Baba’s form and being weaned off it
didn’t constitute a real test for me. My comeuppance, however,
came this year. As I began to read all the negative stories
about Sai Baba on the Internet, my faith was absolutely shaken
to its roots. My mind was in a turmoil as I ignored my own
experiences and started to believe the experiences of other
people. Then, one day, it dawned on me that I wasn’t attracted
to Sai Baba’s form, as was the case with Ann, I was attracted to
how I thought his form should behave. If Sai Baba acted in a
way which I thought to be inappropriate, then I suffered from
doubts and fears and questioned my belief in the fact that he
was an avatar. I was attached to how I thought he should
behave. I had to continually remind myself of Sai Baba’s
warning “Never try to understand me.” We will never understand
why Sai Baba acts as he does, if only because he operates beyond
time and space. He sees past, present and future. His
relationship with us is not based on our physical identities of
this life, but on our total destiny path. So Ann and I have
both been going through a difficult period of going beyond the
form and of identifying with the God that’s in us rather than in
any external manifestation of God.
When I was in
India for the celebration of Sai Baba’s 70th birthday
I had a wonderful experience which brought this truth home to me
in a very personal way. It was the occasion of my 60th
birthday and I felt, because I had a close relationship with Sai
Baba, that he would do something really special for me on that
day. I had read in a book about a little ritual that Sai Baba
did for some devotees on such a significant birthday. Well, of
course, you can guess what happened. I was in the front row of
darshan, full of expectations that I would be blessed, and Sai
Baba came in and walked by on the other side, totally ignoring
me. I might just as well have not been there. The form was
ignoring the form and I was very disappointed. My ego quickly
raised its ugly head and said “Swami how could you do this to
ME!!”, as if the ME was important! I walked out of darshan to
find that my sandals had been stolen yet again. This was the
third pair that had gone missing on this trip. I don’t know
what it is about my sandals, about why they get stolen, because
I have size 13 feet and no Indian that I know has feet that
size! Anyway, a short time later, I found myself walking down
the high street of Puttaparthi to go to a cobbler that I knew,
who would make me a new pair of sandals. I was walking down the
busy street, just minding my own business, when suddenly I
noticed a Caucasian male walking straight towards me. Now I’d
never seen this person before in my whole life, but as he came
close to me I did notice that around his neck was the
identifying scarf of a group from The Netherlands. He stopped
in front of me, grasped both my shoulders firmly with his hands,
looked me in the eyes and in a beautiful loving voice said in
perfect English “Don’t you know that Swami loves you very
much.” He then released his hold on me and walked on. I stood
there dumbfounded. I was overcome with many emotions and tears
welled up in my eyes. I know for certain that that man was Sai
Baba. He was showing me that the omnipresent God is
everywhere. Moreover, at the end of our last interview on that
trip, as we walked out of the interview room Sai Baba looked at
Ann very deeply and said “Remember, I am always with you. I am
always with you!” The ‘I am’ is always with us. That is the
message that we have to understand. This omnipresent,
omnipotent, omniscient Force that we call God is always with
us. If you think that when you leave Puttaparthi you are
leaving Sai Baba, then you haven’t even begun to understand the
truth of what he’s teaching us. The omnipresent aspect of Sai
Baba is as much here to-day, now, sitting in this building, as
it is sitting in the ashram in India. There is no place in the
whole cosmos where God is not present.
Many of us, I
know, have trouble identifying with the force of spirit within
us, our atma. We ask ourselves “Where is it? What is it? How
do I know when I am in contact with it?”. I would like to read
to you now an excerpt from a wonderful article which describes
someone’s experience of this reality. We say that we are God,
that we are no different from God, because Sai Baba has told us
this, but do we really believe this? Do we act out of this
belief? Very few of us have had a near death experience, when
we have been thrown out of our bodies and been forced to realise
our true identity. I would like to tell you of the experience
of one man who has! Incidentally this story is related by a
doctor.
Sometime people
stumble upon the experience of God accidentally. I had a
patient a couple of years ago, who was repairing an antenna on a
neighbour’s roof when he quite accidentally picked up a piece of
wire, which he thought was a dead wire but in fact it had 12,000
volts of electricity flowing through it. So as soon as he
touched it he died. How do you die? 12,000 volts of
electricity going through your heart causes a phenomenon called
ventricular fibrillation. So he fell from the roof to the
ground about 15 - 20 feet below but, as luck would have it, he
fell on his chest at the precise angle, at the precise location,
with the precise impact to start another current to defibrillate
him. It was an extraordinary thing, as if God called him and
then suddenly changed His mind. All this took place in a few
seconds. This man was being transported from the scene of the
accident to the hospital and he says “My mind kept going back to
this gap”. He called this little incident, this interval of
time when he was dead, ‘the gap’. They say “Well, what was
there in the gap?” He said “There was pure unbounded joy. It
was absolute bliss.” And they say “You were aware?” He said
“Oh yes, I was aware.” They asked him “What were you aware
of?” He said “I was aware that I was aware.” They say
“Can you be more specific? You were aware that you were aware.
What does that mean?” He says “Yes. It was pure wakefulness.
The only thing I could say is: I am. I am not this or
that. I just am. It was the experience of my own
immortality. It was the experience of eternity. It was the
experience of bliss. It was the experience of pure joy. I was
so grounded in that experience that I realised that everything
else was a concept. And once and for all, entirely and totally,
I got rid of that experience that people call fear.
I think that
that is a wonderful description of the true state of our being
and, in part, describes the reality of the atma. It’s hard to
realise, firstly, that this reality is within us the whole time
and that our natural state is one of unbounded joy, bliss, peace
and tranquillity and, secondly, that this reality is the
reality of God. Someone once complained to Sai Baba that it is
so easy to say “I am God” but so difficult to know it and to
live it. In response Sai Baba picked up his handkerchief and
just dropped it, saying, “It’s as easy as letting go of this
handkerchief. If you did but know it, it takes more energy to
hold on to your ego than to let it go.” This is the reality.
We have to fight so hard to establish and maintain our ego
identity, the person who we think we are, our name, our fame,
our wealth, our culture, our education, our position in society,
which will all disappear when we die. So why do we attach so
much value to them? Why does life become a battle of egos with
one ego facing off against another ego? Why is our opinion so
much more important than someone else’s opinion? If we are all
One with God, then where is this separation but in our minds.
It is not real. It is an illusion.
I would like to
give you another interesting example of this ‘oneness’. About
six months ago I had a dream about this riding arena in which we
are sitting today. I guess the dream is either symbolic or it
refers to some time in the future. In my dream this arena was
full of people sitting on the ground, just like you are today,
but it was serving as a shelter and as a canteen because we were
feeding people. Outside the building a severe storm was raging,
or some other kind of natural disaster. We were acting as a
rescue centre. I thought that that was an unusual if
interesting dream, but I kept it to myself as it was a little
apocalyptic in nature and I don’t like to talk about such events
as it creates fear in some people. However two weeks ago
Marina, a dear Sai devotee friend of ours, came to see me and
said “I want to share a dream with you that I had quite
recently, the more so since you were in it.” She then went on
to relate the same dream that I had had six months earlier. So
it is apparent that when God builds a building he builds it for
more than one purpose. Outwardly we are sitting in a riding
arena, built to satisfy my wife’s need to ride her horses in the
dry during our wet B.C. winters, but if the dreams are accurate
it would appear that this building has another purpose as is
also evident today.
Sai Baba says
that we are God, that we are no different from God and, as such,
we can create whatever we desire. We can do whatever we want to
do. We can be whatever we want to be. We can programme
ourselves to do or to be whatever we want to do or to be. We
are no different from God. We possess all the powers of God,
only we are suffering from amnesia! We’ve forgotten that one
important fact. Of course we have eternity in which to
rediscover that fact, nevertheless, physical time does play a
role in the drama. Remember the analogy that Sai Baba uses of
the plane taking off. If we want to be on that plane of
liberation, then we have to start preparing in the little time
that remains to us. We have to reprogram ourselves, to follow
the disciplines that Sai Baba has given us, to live dharmically,
to purify our bodies and minds, to prepare for the great events
that are coming, events that are “more glorious than you can
ever imagine”. Listen to Sai Baba’s words again.
“You as
body, mind or soul are a dream, but what you really are is pure
existence, knowledge and bliss. You are the God of this
Universe. You are creating this whole universe and are
drawing it in. To gain the infinite, the miserable little
prison of individuality must go. Follow the heart. A pure
heart seeks beyond the intellect. It gets inspired. Within you
is the mighty ocean of nectar divine. Seek it within you. Feel
it. Feel it! It is here, the Self. It is not the body, the
mind, the intellect. All these are simply manifestations of
it. Above all these is you. You appear as the smiling flowers,
as the twinkling stars. What
is there in this world which can make you desire anything?”
What magical
and meaningful words those are. What can you desire more than
that? That is the true nature of our reality. We are the God of
this Universe. Sai Baba says that Man’s original sin was to
forget that fact, was to believe that he was separate from God.
That is why he says -
“You are God!
You are God! You are not the ego. You are the atma. You are
the self. You are permanent. The physical body is not
permanent. The physical is not the Self. You are the Self, not
the physical. You are God. You are God. Think like
this always. Do not think about your body. Think about God.
The body comes and goes. For the body there is birth and death,
but you are not the body. The body is just rust and dust. You
are eternal.”
How many times
does Sai Baba have to say this before we to listen to him and
start to investigate the true nature of our reality. One of the
little games that I play, which helps me to do this, is to
always imagine that God is sitting on my shoulder. Wherever I
go, whatever I do, I’m aware that God is there constantly
watching everything that I’m thinking, saying or doing. If I am
faced with a decision to make, how to act appropriately in a
certain situation, after I have decided how I am going to act,
then I ask the God that is sitting on my shoulder whether what I
intend to do is correct and appropriate. Almost immediately I
find that the God on my shoulder which is, in reality, my
conscience, will respond saying “Yes” or “No.” If the voice
says “No” then I re-evaluate my action. Of course there are
many times when I forget to do this but, even so, the God on the
shoulder concept is good for evaluating actions that we have
taken earlier as a matter of reflex.
One of the many
things that I have learned from my relationship with Sai Baba is
that he is a perfect mirror. He reflects back to us exactly
what we are, what we want to hear from him. This can obviously
lead to confusion, especially in the interview room, when he
says different things to different people. If devotees’ reports
are to be believed, then Sai Baba has appeared to make
conflicting statements about, for example, whether or not Jesus
died on the cross, whether space beings and UFOs are real,
whether the Earth Changes and the so called cataclysm are going
to take place. It’s this apparent confusion that leads some
people to think that he does not know what he is saying, which
is absolutely ridiculous. He knows exactly what he is saying
and, more importantly, to whom he is saying it. The difference
lies in the fact that he is reflecting back to the person
concerned exactly what they want to hear. He is a mirror to
you. Big misunderstandings can happen when people go to Sai
Baba and say, for example, “Swami can I marry so and so?” Sai
Baba will say “Yes, yes, I bless” but then the marriage does not
work out at all and they blame Sai Baba for it. One has to be
very careful when asking questions of an avatar. The question
should always be “Should I” or “Is it in my destiny to” rather
than “Can I”! I personally believe that Sai Baba will always
give us what we want, even if it is not appropriate for us, if
he thinks that it will help us to get over it, to release our
desires and attachments to it and to advance more quickly along
the royal road to liberation. Sai Baba has said “I give you
what you want, so that you will want what I have come to give.”
So always be very careful in your relationship with Sai Baba,
especially when in the interview room. I regularly find, after
Sai Baba has said something that is controversial in the
interview room, that when we compare notes afterwards we have
all placed very different interpretations on what he actually
said.
Most of us will
go through three stages on the road to liberation, which have
been defined as Dualism (Dvaita), Qualified Dualism (Vishishtadvaita)
and Non-Dualism (Advaita). We begin by seeing ourselves as
totally separate from God. God is the all powerful Creator, a
perfect being living far removed from us in Heaven.. That is why
we worship Him. Then we progress to the stage when we establish
a relationship with God, when we still see Him as separate but
also as part of our family and directly concerned with our
welfare and spiritual advancement. Many devotees who worship
Sai Baba as God are at this stage. The final stage is when we
realise that we are one with God, that there is no separation
between us at all. All self-identity is an illusion. There
never was any separation and there never will be. This is the
great step in consciousness that we have to take. This is the
great step that Sai Baba is asking us to take right now. The
plane of liberation is about to take off. Sai Baba is asking us
to be on that plane. Now that doesn’t mean that we have to be
out in Puttaparthi in order to board that plane. It means that
we have to have become non-dualistic in our daily lives. We
have to have realised that all is one, that all is God and that
the energy of God is love. May we all regard this as our
primary task in life. For here on the Earth is the avatar of
the Age. We are privileged to be here in incarnation at this
time. Sai Baba has said that in years to come our photographs
will be on the walls of our grandchildren and they will honour
and revere us for our knowledge of and our contact with this
great avatar. They will say that there was someone who knew Sai
Baba. You will be remembered for that contact. May we all be
worthy of this birth. May we accept the challenge and try to
board the plane of liberation. At the same time may we be
conscious of Sai Baba’s warning. “Millions know me.
Millions will come to me, but only a handful will obtain
liberation.” May we all be in that handful. How can we
ensure that this will be so. It is so simple. Love all. Serve
all. See the God in everyone and everything.
Source: Ramala Centre Newsletter,
March 2000,
http://www.ramalacentre.com/newsletter09_00_01.htm
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