“Baba is God”

It was a lovely cool morning in Prasanthi Nilayam [the abode of everlasting peace], in the second week of May 1964. The time was about 6:40 in the morning.  The sun had risen and devotees were slowly proceeding towards Prasanthi Hall, one by one, for the morning bhajan [devotional singing]. Some were reverentially looking up to the balcony with folded hands, yearning written on their faces, for the sight of the God they loved, and looked up to for help in their distress. A few were circumambulating Prasanthi Nilayam.

I was standing under a tree on the left side of the Yoga Kamala Circle. This was my first trip to Puttaparthi. My mind, which was ‘educated,’ was the mind of an enquirer. Devotion was not one of its attributes then. I watched keenly all those that happen­ed to be there at that time. While I stood watching and wondering, two feet away from me quietly came and stood a graceful lady, tall, well built, aged about seventy. She was very fair with lovely blue eyes. Her grey hair was tidily knotted at the back. Dressed in a spotless white sari and blouse, she was standing erect with a rosary of black beads in her right hand. Her palms had crossed to touch her shoulders. Her expres­sion of serene calmness, of the peace that reigned on that wrinkled yet beautiful and dignified face, has been deeply engraved on my heart. Her thin lips—reddish, like sprouts—were whispering in a hushed tone “Baba is God; Baba is God!”

The Train of Thoughts

And a train of thoughts started in my doubt­ing mind. For the first time I realized the necessity of fully understanding and determining what the concept of God meant. I felt that more `opinions’ of great men should be gathered about what was styled “divinity.” Is God an infinitely strong Being who judges mankind, who has created men and matter, who punishes the wicked and rewards the good, or, is He someone sitting on a throne in heaven as is propounded by Christianity and Islam to judge whether beings are to be sent to heaven or hell at the end of a certain period or at the end of eternity?” These thoughts also reminded me of my son’s question at Kathgodam [a town in north India] when he had the first sight of the majestic Himalayas at the age of five. “Who made this mountain, mum?” he asked. “God” was my automatic answer. “From where did He bring the cement and stones to make this mountain?” was his next query. Finding it impossible to satisfy his curiosity the only effort that could be made was to divert his attention to a beautiful stream that was flowing close by.

When we speak of A or B, I thought, it is not his body that we usually refer to. When a certain A or B is a good or a bad man, in our opinion, it is the `feeling and thinking being’ behind the body of A or B that is referred to; in short, it is a part of his inner conscious­ness. So, when one speaks of Baba as God it has reference not to His body but to His consciousness, to the inner reality of which the outer is only a tabernacle.

In fact, all those who are not animals or “animal like” are aware of some power manifesting through not only every animate being but also through the in-animate molecules which sustain this visible world. They worship this power in awe and are ever anxious to try to understand the mystery that under­lies this great universe.

We Hindus are fortunate to inherit our knowledge through Upanishads [ancient sacred texts] and other scriptures that make it clear that every manifested molecule is not without its “atom” or ‘atman‘ [universal soul], and thus indirectly teach us to see God in everything, may it be inanimate stone or lump of earth. Hindu reli­gion is not a collection of dogmas or tenets dictated by a single prophet. It is a philosophy of life, a history of experiments in consciousness performed by high minds. They have not forced us to accept the results reached by them, but have left it to posterity to examine their findings, to judge and to realize the truth.

I was fortunate in the next few days to get an interview with Baba. The first time He granted it, He precisely put down the definition of a Hindu. He said, “He is a Hindu who believes in (i) the theory of karma [causes and effects of all actions], (ii) the theory of reincarnation, and (iii) the theory of Avatar [divine incarnation].”

Thus we Hindus who are born and bred in this philosophy should not indeed find it difficult to under­stand the idea of God, which is divine consciousness descending on earth and taking a human form. We can then well believe that this power manifested itself through a pillar of stone for Prahlada [child devotee of Lord Vishnu]. There are innumerable references to Avatars in the Tantra, Man­tra, and Shakta books [pertaining to the divine mother, Vedic hymns, and the Goddess Shakti] and Puranas [ancient narratives] in Sanskrit literature. Indeed there is not a single word for God in Sanskrit, an artistic yet scientifically meticulous language, which cannot be etymologically explained, and there­fore even satisfies the faculty of `reason’ in a human being. The most common words out of these are Bhagavan [Lord] or deva [divinity]. Bhagavan is one who possesses “Bhaga.” In fact it is a degree that adorned many a great sage, e.g. Bhagavan Panini, or Bhagavan Vyasa. Bhaga is the collective mastery of six qualifications as it were: aishwarya, virya, yash, shri, dhyana, and vai­ragya [abundance, strength, popularity, wealth, contemplative nature, and detachment]. Deva is derived from the root div to shine, which connotes self-luminance and consequently absence of darkness, shade, or illusion, that is, maya.

Avatar is derived from the root “tri” with prefix “ava” that means descent. Bhagavad-Gita [the Lord’s song] says, “Yadayadahi Dharmasya glanirbhavati Bharata, Abhyuthanamadharm asya tadatmanam, srijamyaham.” Apart from the authority of Bhagavad-Gita, a modern English Yogi can be profitably quoted here: “Sometimes an advanced God-like being from another planet has deliberately reincarnated himself on our earth so as to help its benighted humanity, be­fore, during and after a critical time: this happens when human character sinks into deep materialism and has to endure its attendant sufferings. Such an act is neces­sarily wrapped in a mantle of mystery.”

The Mystery that is Baba

The mystery that is Baba, or that was Sri Krishna or Jesus Christ is before the world to perceive, examine, and see for itself. The Being who is a perfect Being can thus consciously manifest itself through a human form. The Yogi further says, “It represents a tremen­dous sacrifice, a veritable crucifixion of consciousness”. If the sacrifice of limiting his own consciousness and taking a body out of compassion for humanity is to be understood, Baba’s own statement in Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 1 can serve an excellent purpose. “The Lord cannot come down with His Mahashakti [supreme divine energy] unimpaired. He has to come with diminished splendor and limited effulgence so that He can become the object of bhakti [devotion] and of dedicated service.”

But to realize the truth of this statement or the statements in Bhagavad-Gita, a human being must possess some faculty higher than reason, the sixth sense, or faith. Recently an article written by a famous Western scientist appeared in a local newspaper explain­ing how a human being must develop intuition in order to rise higher than more intellect.

Turn Within

The flights of reason and intellect are indeed majestic and the altitude that they can achieve is amply evident from the creation of supersonic jets and atom bombs. But as man cannot live by bread alone he can neither live “without” only. There comes a moment in some one of his numerous lives when he yearns to turn `within’ and instead of `expanse’, he longs for depth. It is a turn-back of consciousness from the empirical existence toward the source of all. Freud, Jung, and other psychologists of the West have evidenced this yearning for turning within. Jacob has put forward this idea in his book “Western Psychiatry and Hindu Sadhana [spiritual effort]”. Many Western Scholars and scientists have independent­ly experimented in the laboratory of their `within’ and have expounded their own findings. Their attitude toward the subject of their investigation and discovery is strictly `scientific’ in the modern sense of the term. P. D. Auspinsky, Gurdjieff, and several other known and unknown European Yogis are referred to here.

The great Upanishadic sages of this ancient land performed all these psychological and para-psychological ex­periments and their findings are noted in the scriptures. Unfortunately the knowledge remained locked from us for a long period of two centuries of foreign rule. As Baba says, “The aim and goal of the present educational system is bhukti, enjoyment or earning of livelihood, and not bhakti or mukti” devo­tion” or “salvation”. While the knowledge of words and of material science may also be given a place of due honor, this information-cum-knowledge was put in the category of “Apara Vidya [lower knowledge]” and thus Swetaketu [son of a sage Uddalaka from the Upnishads] who knew not the Para Vidya [higher knowledge], was challenged by his father, when he came home after a 24 year course of Apara Vidya, whether he knew “that, by knowing which one, knows all”. “Sa vidya ya vimuktaye” proclaim the ancients.

A great set-back

Thus the children of this great land have suffered a great setback on the path of evolution. We have started walking hand in hand with westerners. It was not until the beginning of this century that westerners turned within and began to see that education was much more than inculcating habits of thought and behavior in a child. An example would be of interest here. Sir P. Nun, in his book “Principles of Education,” has devo­ted a whole chapter on ‘Nature and Nurture’, the share of heredity and environment in the building up of human personality. Yet the question of heredity was itself so puzzling. Experiments of glandular extracts and temperamental observation must necessarily have taken many words, and much time—while I as a stu­dent, wondered, whether Bhagavad-Gita that is sup­posed to be composed about 3000 years ago had not solved the question completely when it said, “Tatra tam Buddhi samyogam labhate poorva dehikam [on taking such a birth, he again revives the divine consciousness of his previous life].”

All these experiments are performed scientifically by the sages but the difficulty is that one has to turn inward to test their authenticity. If one has not got the capacity of experimenting, “faith” is of great help. It is a very arduous and difficult path; as the Kathopanishad [a scripture that unveils the mystery of death and the meaning of life]says, “the razor’s edge is sharp and difficult to cross; wise men say it is difficult to tread upon this path.”

At this point, again, faith is of very great help. Faith is the companion of intuition and is placed beyond reason that in its turn has to be used to pierce intellect to go to the path of intuition. Katha, speaking about Nachi­ketas, says, “Shradha tam Avivesha.’ That is a reference to the moment when intuition is unfolded. Whether this is purely the outcome of the grace of God, or the ripen­ing of that layer of consciousness as a result of ‘sans­karas‘ [mental impressions] from the past is for the Master to say. But there is some ultra-voluntary or supera-mental condition involved in such a moment. This is the humble reading of the present writer from a sentence in the same “Upa^­nishad”, “Atma evavrinute [Indeed it is the choice of God].”

Reason and Tolerance

All this leads to only one conclusion, that each individual has for himself a unique and personal point of consciousness and has it strictly reserved for himself in the infinitely great expanse of this cosmos.  All points of view such as pantheism, monotheism, atheism as well as the principles of Charvakas [that there are only four independent elements of fire, earth, air, and water]; Naiyayikas [that valid knowledge is obtained by perception, inference, observation, and study]; Buddhists, Mus­lims, and Christians were all generously accepted and tolerated by the Hindu religion. Religion is a matter of inner consciousness of a man regarding the relationship between him and the ultimate reality. Any religion based on reason cannot but point to tolerance and thus Baba always asks people to leave others to themselves and never ridicule those who think or feel differently.

Thousands of fortunate men and women have come under the protective wings of Baba. Many of them have a personal story to tell about their experience of “miraculous” that has come their way. To them Baba has come a veritable divine consciousness limited by the frame of a body made up of the five elements. It requires a divine eye to realize His Divinity, even as intellect is required to appreciate intellectual feats. Yet, reason can guide us to find out same fraction of the mystery that is Baba. If omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience are taken to be divine attributes, even the few incidents described in Baba’s life-story can give proof of Baba having them. Sathya, dharma, shanti, and prema[truth, right conduct, peace, and love] are Baba’s principles and Baba’s nature. His universal love is to be witnessed in order to be be­lieved.

Mahatma Gandhi in his article “God is” des­cribes God as `the greatest democrat’; Baba also receives all alike, rich and poor. Indeed, of the thousands that go to Puttaparthi, each one feels Baba loves him the best and cares for him the most. He showers His grace on all alike as the sun sheds its light equally on all. However, even as we admit the light to the extent we keep the door open, our own individual distance from Him varies.

Physics and Metaphysics

Little do we realize that Baba is master of meta­physics and alchemy. It will be a great moment for the modern world when physics joins hands with metaphy­sics. Yet the addicts of physics are cynical and skepti­cal. This article is not a challenge; it is a humble request to go beyond mere intellect that can only analyze what science calls “matter.” Despite all his discoveries, the scientist has found it impossible to substitute even two centimeters of this vast cosmos. Baba is the embodiment of love, peace, and happi­ness and urges all to acquire them. He extols our ancient scriptures, profusely quotes from them while He speaks, but warns us, that at the most, they are useful only as maps or guidebooks. They cannot substitute experi­ence and in order to achieve it one must perform sadhana [spiritual effort]. He awakens us spiritually and makes us realize our own divine nature.

The Avatar

It is easy for some to believe in Krishna as an Avatar because he lived in the  distant past, but they cannot believe in Baba as He came in 1926 and as they can see Him in 1966 with their material eyes. If Baba is an “Avatar” why does He not solve the problems of India, some people ask; God solves all problems of well being, but as Baba explained to the present writer quot­ing the couplet from the: “Ananyaschinta­yanto mam ye Janah paryupasate, tesham nityabhiyuk­tanam yogakshemam vabamyaham [But those who worship Me with devotion, meditating on My transcendental form-to them I carry what they lack and preserve what they have].” We are apt to forget the condition precedent for the solution of problems, of contemplating upon God, and that too unyieldingly.

In fact such questions arise from the impulsive and illogical belief that God acts capriciously toward mankind, distributing favors to some and special mis­fortunes to others, or that God is temperamental and a contradictory mixture of likes and dislikes. Every human being is only a manifestation of consciousness at that particular point; so, no two human beings are at the same point; therefore they differ in thought, feel­ing, and action. To some Baba is God, but to others Baba is a mystery. Sadhana and disciplined penance are required to understand even a fraction of that mystery. Baba often says, “India has lost the spirit of sadhana, and therefore her children are immersed in poverty and suffer starvation. To day the cry is “Savoham” “I am dead”, instead of “Sivoham” “I am Siva” that once resounded in this great land.

The Double Spectrum

Those who have faith in the manifestation of divine consciousness through human form necessarily believe in the infinite and the immutable. It has no form of its own but it can and does make token gestures to aspirants to indicate its existence and these gestures may take a personal form. It is true that such personal appearances are transient images. It is the mental attitude of the seeker which is of the utmost importance. Says Sri Bhagavad-Gita” Ye Yatha man prapadyanto Tanstathniwa Bhajamyaham [In whatever way men identify with Me and worship Me, in the same way do I carry out their desire]. ”

Mind alone is thus the double spectrum that gives the owner the view of the empirical world as well as the inner reality.  The Chandogya Upanishad[one of the oldest and longest Sanskrit scriptures] says “Mano Brahma iti upaseeta” [All this (that we perceive through the intellect) is indeed the Absolute]. When Baba sanctified this great city of Bombay last June, His visit invoked different reactions. One went so far as to warn the “intellectuals of Maharashtra” to `awake’ and not follow like blind sheep this `man of miracles’! Yet, strange is the diversity in this unity! The same incident struck a different note in thousands of others: “Baba is God!” “Baba is God!”

~Dr. Damayanthi Doongaji, M.A., LL.B., Ph. D., Bombay
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, Jan. 1966