Bhagavan, The Divine Child

Very few of those who have had the supreme good fortune of being close to Bhagavan Baba for many years and have been privileged to enjoy His company in many situations and revel in the blessings conferred on them have equaled the experience of Professor Kasturi. Many delectable incidents are described in Professor Kasturi’s autobiography, Loving God. Here Professor Kasturi writes about one such incident that occurred during the early days of his arrival in Prashanti Nilayam.

One day, Baba ventured into the backyard of the very first tenement of Brindavan (the ashram in Whitefield). While we were peering into the northern distance to spot Him the moment He emerged from the front door of that house (and we would be getting busy ourselves), He managed to get through the back door and walk unnoticed along a narrow gap between numbers six and seven, and slide behind poor innocent me from the South end. He closed my eyes with a quick placement of His palms, in order to grant me the sweetest of surprises. When He asked me, “Tell who?” my reply was a cascade of tears. Childish? A blind-man’s buff, between persons nearing thirty and sixty? Yes, His form was the evening of youth, but the content was a child, the child that has come to chide and change, the child that has come to reveal the hypocrisy of homosapiens and make mankind aware of the humbug he was hugging firm.

Legend relates the pompous pride of an emperor who rode on a caparisoned horse, preceded and followed by knights and courtiers, wearing regal clothes that were too diaphanous to exist. In truth, the crafty Weavers had promised to clothe him in the gauziest of golden raiment, and he believed, as his naked body was gazed at by his subjects, that he was magnificently attired. No one among the millions who watched the triumphal procession with the Emperor, in his birthday suit, dared announce the ugly truth. But a little child shouted, “Why? The Emperor has no clothes on!”

Baba is the child come to reveal the hollowness of pundit pomp and to ridicule us until we realize Reality. The Divine child applies the balm of cool benediction, with His soothing palm on our eyes, the Inner Eye loses its blinkers; there is no division thereafter—only the vision of Him who asks each one all the time, “Tell who?” This child draws us to Himself by spontaneous and spotless love and by His untarnished authentic wisdom.

The Divine Child The human child sees himself as the center of the universe and the world as an extension of his being. This Divine child knows that is so. The human child arrives without the label of a name; we stick one on his brow. Baba the Divine child, has announced, “I have no name; I respond to all names.” Baba has declared, “I have no place that I claim as my very own; I belong to all places. I am wherever I am wanted.” Children are most concerned with the “now.” Baba reminds us, “The past is past. Do not turn back and look wistfully or wailingly on the road you have traversed already.” Children do not see the world as fragmented by walls: Chinese, Berlin, or those erected just to tease. They are involved in everything and with everyone; they represent true innocence, love, forgiveness and fraternity. The child has no conceit or contempt of gender. This Divine Child affirms, “Among men, I am man; among women, I am woman. Among children, I am a child.” This statement is echoed in the Upanishads (Hindu scriptures), which describe God: “You are woman, you are man, you are girl, you are senile leaning on a stick.” The human child delights in pouring sand through its fingers. This Child, I saw, grasped a handful of Chitravathi (a river in Puttaparthi) sand; it became a book, the Bhagavad Gita. Sand coagulated into pearl when Baba jogged gleefully on the white beach at Cape Comorin, where three seas lap the shore. This Divine child sat on the Seashore and played with both hands in the sand. An 18-inch golden idol of Krishna emerged! This child inspires us to become children again so that we may be ever with Him, of Him, in Him.

Awareness of this truth came into me clearer as the years went by. It persists even today, when He is in His fifties and I am in my eighties.

The Lord’s Pastimes

Playfulness is inherent in the relationship of God to man. Baba has written, “I created the world for my pleasure.” On another occasion, He declared, “I am directing this puppet show, and I am pleased with it.” Pricking bubbles, exploding ego balloons, demolishing aerial castles, playing hide and seek-these are favorite pastimes of His. “Love my uncertainty,” is what this Divine phenomenon advises us. And who can be more uncertain than a child? When distributing laddus (an Indian sweet), inducing each devotee to catch the gift when He throws one in his direction, once in a while, He throws with an empty gesture and laughs at the discomfiture He causes us. The next moment, He may give us two, with a pat on the back, to soften the impact of the disappointment.

A Mouse from the Camera

I remember one evening in 1959 when Baba sent someone to bring me to His room at the mandir (temple). He told me that the editor of a daily newspaper published from Hyderabad had asked for my photograph, for he was announcing me in his paper, alongside a nice write-up, as the editor of Sanathana Sarathi. Baba had promised to send him my photograph and He asked me to prepare myself for being shot within minutes by Baba Himself, with a brand-new camera He had especially selected for the purpose. Oh! My joy knew no bounds! I rose to the eighth heaven. I rushed down the eighteen steps to reach home for a quick face-lift.

I returned to the Presence, within minutes, shaved and starched, with a big broad smile on the frontispiece. Baba held me by the shoulders and positioned me at an appropriate distance. He peered at me through the lens and congratulated me on my photogenic face. I was elated that my picture would catch the eye of at least 30,000 readers all over Andhra Pradesh. My smile swelled into a toothful grin! Baba gestured and I swallowed the grin in one gulp. He cautioned me with a “Steady,” followed immediately by a “Ready.” He clicked   A black hairy blotch with a flashing tail bounced on my neck from inside the camera! With a shrill screech, I hopped into the corner of the room, casting away the horrid, hirsute Was it a rat? Was it dead? No, it was a cotton mouse that was cunningly tucked inside the dummy camera, to be released when clicked. Baba had a hearty laugh at my panic. I too laughed to relieve the tension.

He reprimanded me mildly for swallowing the story He had invented to deflate my ego. He reminded me that my being the editor was not the kind of news that the world was interested in. Lasting fame is to be sought not through newspapers, which turn into waste paper the very next morning, but through dedicated service to God and the godly.

I left His room, a leaner and wiser man. Baba mercifully helps us, slowly and subtly, to shed the burden of the ego. He condemns modesty as a mere pose intended to draw attention and admiration to oneself. He advises that we should just be ourselves and not wear masks behind which we hide our smallness. “What greater status can you attain than being the medium for packaging and posting My message to thousands of devotees every month?” He asked me.

Baba is too bright a sun for human eyes; we can bask and bathe in sunlight, but we cannot gaze at him. The sun must itself diminish the splendor and become a beautiful red disk, as it does twice a day, so that man can imbibe the golden grandeur. Baba too gives us frequent glimpses of the Glory that He is.

Loving God, pp. 153-156
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, November 1991