He Is There
After two years my husband and I were again at Brindavan (in March 1982), suddenly choked and breathless as that longed-for flame-colored Form appeared through the gates. Later, Swami said to me: “How are you?” and added, “You are sad!”
How to explain the pain of separation that the Form engenders at my level of consciousness wherein the sense of duality still exists? Perhaps much more so while in India, for one’s thoughts are apt to run on geographical lines. Baba is in Madras… Baba is in Bombay… Baba has come…. Will He look? Will He speak? and so on. It is inevitable that when that Form disappears from view there is the ache of separation, however much one has experienced His omnipresence. As Baba once pointed out to Dr Hislop, “You know Swami to be omnipresent, yet when you return to your hotel in Bangalore you think of Swami as being at Brindavan!”
Whenever there is form there is the pain of parting, for form is maya [illusion]. But our essence, the atma, is encased in form! It must express itself through a physical vehicle. At the same time as we are striving to rid ourselves of body-consciousness, identification with the form, and to realize the One in the many, we can only learn to love the Formless through the Form, the Unmanifest through the Manifest.
So “the Lord has to come in human form, so that He can be listened to, contacted, loved, revered, and obeyed. He has to speak the language of men and behave like human beings, as a member of the species…. The human mind cannot grasp the Absolute, Attribute-less Principle; it is abstract and beyond the reach of speech, mind, and intellect.” (Baba)
This is the devotee’s dilemma. And the limitation and paradox of the human condition often takes on ludicrous aspect. Here am I, in private interview, in the Presence of the Formless Absolute manifesting in this unique Form “invested with the totality of Cosmic Power,” and what am I doing? I am foraging in my handbag in order to lend my spectacles to my husband who needs to read something! The mind boggles.
And then we are speaking of organizational matters, and He sums up a complicated situation in just three words which are so comical, so apt, that one wants to burst out laughing! We are talking so informally, so naturally, like ‘Partners’—with God Incarnate.
And then I am speaking to my Dearest Friend, from Whom no secret is hidden.
There is time to ask three or four of the 100 questions I’ve longed to ask for months—and which now got out of my head! As He answers, and explains, there is that divine smile and I am rivetted to those Eyes which are all-seeing, all-knowing, dark pools of Love, sometimes even twinkling because in that communion He knows that I know that He knows what remains unspoken.
I take the Hand of my Mother and lay my cheek against it. And finally, the Father lays His Hand on both our heads, saying, “I will bless your efforts … Come back this evening.” And in a moment, He has floated through the curtain.
Once more we are privileged to become electrified by the students’ bhajan singing, grouped around the Feet of their beloved Lord, singing their hearts out. As the Arathi is nearing the end, with a final smile to treasure He disappears from our mortal sight. Perhaps I shall never see that amazing Form ever again, except when He wills it so, in a dream. For, next morning we are going—leaving Him behind, (it would seem) as we fly to Bombay, my heart crying out “Oh Swami… Swami…”, and the tears come. The bliss and gratitude for incomparable blessing becomes tinged with sadness at the parting from the Form.
But when I got home to England He was there! When I go in my little car to the supermarket He is there. In my kitchen, in my study, He is there. When I feed the hungry wild birds He is there. When I go to sleep and when I wake He is there. I can talk to Him to my heart’s content for He is there, so often pressing down on my crown chakra—the beautiful, tingling pressure that for years has indicated to me that “someone was there”.
When I asked Him about it He explained that it was “God contact… God consciousness… the Super conscious.” “You mean, Swami, that it has to do with You?” He put His head on one side, smiled with infinite tenderness, and said: “Of course!”
I feel like an ant at the foot of a mountain, seeing only the next stone. Or a bird in a cage. Or a butterfly struggling to emerge from a chrysalis in the rays of the life-giving Sun. But always He is there …
—Peggy Mason, London
Do not aspire to be a servant of God, working for wages; you reduce yourself to that level if you ask for this and that from Him in return for the praise that you offer or the sacrifice you undergo. Even if you do not ask, if the bargaining attitude is in your mind, or if you feel disappointed that God did not give you desirable objects in return for all the trouble you took to please Him, do not calculate profit; do not count on returns, do not plan for the consequence; do, since you have to do, since it is your duty. That is real puja. Dedicate the deed as well as the consequence to Him. Then you become His own, not, a cooly (day laborer) demanding wages. That is the highest level a bhakta can reach through sadhana. That is the reason why nishkama karma (desireless action) is so highly extolled in the Gita by Krishna.
—Baba
Source: Sai Sarathi May/June 1982
