Being Near Sathya Sai Baba

From countries all over the world, people come to a small place in India called Prasanthi Nilayam, “the abode of peace,” to observe and be near the Avatar, Sathya Sai Baba, that again, like Krishna promised 5000 years ago, has descended upon earth to restore dharma. Normally, we all think that we have to come near Him for one particular reason or another so that He really can see us and pay attention to us and thereby better hear our prayers. Maybe by seeing us face to face He can cure our disease, fulfill our long-cherished desire, or fix all the problems that have become so enormously unbearable back home. But is this the only way to get attention from the Lord, to sit in first line at darshan in Prasanthi Nilayam? That is a question that should be contemplated upon at least once before going there or while staying in the Ashram.

Sai Baba Himself has said so many times that people come to Him for so many reasons, but very few indeed do come for that which He has descended upon the earth to give humanity. We can never understand Him, He has warned us, but can we understand that mysterious thing He wants to offer us? To make it short, Sai Baba has revealed that what He offers, the solution to all our difficulties, is Self-knowledge. So don’t we know ourselves well enough? Are we not the only ones that know our own needs and longings, our pleasures, and difficulties? That could be, but the one we think we are, the person we know, is not the one Sai Baba teaches us that we are.

The individual that has travelled so far to be near Sai Baba, the person with likes and dislikes, with hopes and fears, with desires and attachments is no other than the person Swami wants us to get rid of. We are born with one reason, He says, that is to die. He does not refer to our physical body, because to die physically is the easiest thing to do. What has to die is the ego, the mind, our tendencies that have been clinging to us life after life, not wanting to let go, and that may not seem quite easy. But remember, the world is just like a film, Baba says, and having seen the film once we know the story and we don’t need or want to see it over and over again. Same with the world. Why come back again and again to the same show?

Rather, we should pay attention to the screen on which the film is played, that is to say, to our own Self. Maybe we already have tried that, gone to courses to live out the ‘real me’, tried psychotherapy, tried to get in touch with our deepest feelings, anger, sorrow, happiness, and so on, and live them out in the moment they arise. This is the only way to cling to the false, because identifying with feelings and thoughts is no better than identifying with the body. As many great teachers have taught, these misperceptions are the cause of all sorrow. The biggest illusion is to think of oneself as separate from that which is, from the only thing that always has been and will be.

To think that these tendencies are us is to believe that there are two Selves, one that can be known and one that is knowing. As we can agree that we can know or look at our own thoughts, see our own feelings, there must be one that these vrittis or actions is pertaining to. We should turn our attention toward That. Since mind, as the Gita says, is part of prakriti, matter, it can be turned toward purusha, spirit, and That which is beyond both these, but it can never experience the Real. Mind can only experience the external world; atman can only be what it is. By asking ourselves “Who am I?” we can only layer by layer disclose what we are not, neti neti¾not this, not this, as the scriptures say. The paradox of creation is that the seeker can gain its goal only by losing itself.

If we want to be near God, we must pay attention to Bhagavan’s teachings, try to absorb them and then practice them. His teachings are based on the understanding that God is in everything, everything is in God. What the body is for the individual, jiva, the world is for God. To be near God is thus not equivalent to be in Puttaparthi. To be near God is to be near your own heart, the essence of being. When we move from the circumference to the center, we will find that Sathya, Truth, like Sai Baba, the Divine Mother and Father, is everywhere. It is the only thing Which is.

Why should we ask our Lord for small things when He can give us the only thing worth having, atmajnana, direct experience of the True Self? Why should we try to get in the first darshan line, why should we pray to Swami to look at us, why should we expect this or that only to get more disappointed when it does not happen¾when we know that nothing but God’s Will can happen? What is meant to be will be, no matter how much we try to prevent it. What is not meant to happen can never happen, no matter how hard we try to make it be. If we could only be at ease in that conviction, totally surrendered to God, nothing can be difficult, nothing is to be gained, and nothing is to be lost. Peace is inside, it can never be attained by gaining this or that in the world. Peace is nearness to God and can be attained in the world but not of it.

The Avatar descends upon the earth, guides us, gives us directions in life, gives us His love, shows us how to do service to society, not because He needs our help or the world needs it. He will let us do seva, let us spread love, let us use this world because we need it. We need this to perform our highest duty¾to transform ourselves and thereby transform the world. We need God, and that is all we need. It is truly a divine gift to be able to closely experience the Avatar of the Kaliyuga, our present age. But unfortunately being physically near does not, although it may in certain instances, grant one realization of the truth that the Avatar is proclaiming. We can come nearer to God wherever we are in the world by praying to Him that His Will may happen, praying not for a task equal to our strength, but for strength equal to our task.

We can come nearer to God by giving up, one by one, our desires and wishes. Only God knows what we need, only He can see the full divine play that we are all part of, only He knows everybody’s present, past, and future, so why ask for small things that we think will make us happy instead of asking that whatever He thinks is best for us may happen? Life itself is a pilgrimage, Swami says, and without stops we are travelling through night and day, womb to tomb, pleasure and pain, tears and laughter. But when the road ends and the pilgrimage is over, the pilgrim sees that he has only travelled from himself to himself, and that God Who led him into the journey was all the time with him, in him, and around him.

~Anne Irene Larsen, Oslo, Norway
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, May 1998