“Get Up! Get Up!!”
On the morning of December 1, 1988, I sat watching in ecstasy, as Sathya Sai Baba made His rounds of the darshan [public audience] area, accepting a letter or two here, manifesting vibhuti [sacred ash] for someone there, giving joy to all who could witness His graceful walk and loving glance. It was my seventh trip to Baba’s Prasanthi Nilayam ashram in India (the first having been in 1981), but each visit is as thrilling as the first.
Having only arrived the previous afternoon, I was caught completely off-guard when I looked up to see my husband on the verandah, signaling me to come up. Before I could quite comprehend what was happening, the volunteers had taken hold of my wheelchair and pushed me up to the verandah. Baba greeted me, spoke to the friend with whom I had traveled, then came toward me with His arms stretched out as if He were going to take hold of my hands. Instead, without touching me, He said, “Get up, get up!” I got up. It would never occur to me to not do anything Baba asked. The reaction of the group assembled for darshan surprised me: everyone clapped.
His remarks during the interview seemed to center around the theme of self-confidence. He spoke of the importance of having faith in God, faith in yourself, and faith in yourself as God. I am sure that many of the devotees from Holland, Germany, India, and the United States, who were in that same interview, heard different things; but for me these were the central points.
As the interview came to a close, Baba walked out and I followed. The wheel chair was waiting for me on the verandah, and I realized that I had a choice. I could return to the chair, wait to be pushed back to Round Building One (a distance of about two city blocks, part of which is uphill and uneven with the additional hazard of loose stones), or I could accept the healing that Baba offered. It was up to me. I chose to go forward, leaving the chair behind. My friend brought the empty chair as she left the verandah.
Power of faith
The questions I asked myself were: Do I have faith in Baba as God? Do I have faith in myself as God? Faith is the key issue. All avatars, masters, and healers have recognized the power of faith as healer. Even allopathic physicians acknowledge the healing effect of the placebo and recognize the importance of the patient’s faith in the physician. Jesus told those that He healed, “Thy faith has made thee whole.” Baba’s mission, like Jesus’, is not to do our work for us but to show us how to become master of the body and the senses.
Baba’s recent fall, in which He fractured His hip, was a vivid example to all of us of the importance of rising above pain. When asked, He said that His pain was great. He stressed the fact that His body was subject to the same natural law as ours. When we fall, the body reacts with pain. His does the same. But He was able to get up immediately, to unlock the door of His room, and to stand for 2½ hours only a few days later to serve the devotees who had come to celebrate Onam [Hindu festival from Kerala state, India] at Prasanthi Nilayam. It was, He said, a matter of not allowing the mind to dwell on the pain.
Growing pains
I have suffered from painful knees since birth. The doctors called the condition “growing pains” when I was child. They removed my tonsils and adenoids in an effort to alleviate the pain, but no treatment was ever effective. Many times in my teen years I had to withdraw from activity and retire to my bed doubled up in agony. During college, motherhood, and a career as an educator, I was not bothered a great deal by the condition. However, about 12 years ago, the pain and weakness increased to the point that I was barely able to walk.
A team of specialists at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in California took a series of x-rays and made extensive tests. The diagnosis was deterioration of the knee joints, which would progress with time. They recommended immediate surgery to replace the defective joints with artificial ones. However, they also told me that the success rate for such surgeries was low. (I understand it has since increased.) I decided to accept the crutches they offered me rather than to have the surgery. As the condition worsened, I went from crutches to a walker and finally to a wheelchair.
On my first visit to Baba, I asked only for His love and for the opportunity to be His instrument. It was not until the third trip that I mentioned my physical problems to Him, and His response at that time was, “Forget it!” As I look back to the events of the past seven years, I see a steady and easily definable program of regeneration that has been going on in an orderly way. I estimate that the same amount of progress might have taken life-times to achieve without the benefit of Swami’s grace.
Learning the lessons
Mental confusion, emotional problems, and ignorance had to be overcome. These were brought to the surface one by one—sometimes through Baba’s direct intervention and at other times through what appeared to be just coincidences of daily life. These experiences are described in detail in my book Life is a Game, Play it! To quickly summarize, they involved such spiritually relevant developmental tasks as learning to surrender the ego will to the divine will (humility), to balance male and female qualities, and to love the Divine in others even when appearances might make them seem to be enemies.
Last year, when Swami asked my husband what he wanted, he asked that Baba heal my knees. Swami indicated that He would do as Raye had requested, and said, “I will give her a lingam [symbolic form of God] before you go.” We thought that He meant He would manifest a lingam for me as He had done for others. However, in a second interview, He manifested a crystal rosary for me but no lingam. This was a mystery to us until several months later we saw this quotation in Sanathana Sarathi:
Swami is the very embodiment of compassion. He will pardon all errors. This principle that guides and guards you along the spiritual path is the lingam in the center of the consciousness clustering around the inner and outer senses.
—Chinna Katha [The Little Story]
I realized then that the lingam Baba had given me before I left was the pardon of my errors. They were not forgiven so that I could be free from punishment, but they were corrected so that I might not repeat them. The process was dramatically difficult over the past year. Two major crises occurred that forced me to give up long-standing mistaken behaviors. I see these now as two major obstacles I had to surmount before Swami could heal my knees.
The miracle of miracles
Over the past few days, since Baba told me to “Get up!” people have photographed me standing, walking, and sitting, and physicians who witnessed the event have questioned me. The major question asked is: Was this a genuine miracle? I have attempted to answer each question as factually as possible.
Since there has not yet (and probably will never be) any comparison of before and after x-rays, I can report only this physical change: Prior to December 1st, whenever I walked a few steps, my joints became so terribly inflamed that I experienced considerable heat and greatly increased pain for several days afterward. As of now, after walking more than I have for the past several years, there is no joint inflammation at all—no heat. Of course, muscles used after years of relative idleness have gotten sore, but this reaction is not at all out of the ordinary. Whether the condition will return or be permanently vanquished depends, I feel, strictly on me. Swami has done His job. Now it is up to me to do mine.
I am, of course, extremely grateful for every aspect of this experience, but I know that Baba wants us to understand His adherence to, and fulfillment of, the law. He has continually stressed that He is God, and that each of us is God—that whatever He does is possible for us to do also. If rearranging molecules or exchanging one substance for another is considered miraculous, then He does perform miracles. Many hundreds of people can testify to witnessing such events. That He is able to regenerate a badly deteriorated knee joint is not more difficult than causing a ring to slip on a finger easily when seconds before no amount of force could push it on.
However, the miracle of all miracles is the unwavering, unchanging love that He pours out freely to everyone who will open his or her heart to receive it. What has happened in my experience is only a tiny speck of what has happened in the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Each one has been healed of diseases, pardoned for errors, and freed from addictions as rapidly as he or she would permit. The miracle of miracles is a life regenerated. Baba’s mission is to regenerate lives—and through such, to guide us into the realization of non-dualism and the experience of peace on earth.
~Joy Thomas,
Cherry Valley, California, USA
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, January 1989
