Divine Seeing – part 1

A few years ago, Jack and Louise Hawley spoke at the Sathya Sai Baba Center of San Diego. For the past fourteen years, they have spent five or six months a year with Baba. Jack is a management consultant. He is also the author of two books which Swami directed him to write: Reawakening the Spirit at Work: The Power of Dharmic Management has become a bestseller (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco); and The Bhagavad Gita: A Walkthrough For Westerners, recently published by New World Library, Novato, California. Louise was a community activist, part-time teacher, and an events-producer until she received the message to detach from it and embark on her real mission in life. The following is an edited version of their talk. This is part one of a two-part article.

Jack’s opening prayer: Pranams at the lotus feet of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Please Swami, accept all these words as offerings to you. Please think through me, feel through me, speak through me, act through me, and most of all, Swami, please love through me. And as You do these things, Bhagavan, make me aware that You are doing them. Awareness is life.

Louise’s opening prayer: Every morning and every evening I take vibhuti (sacred ash) and touch my eyes, my ears, my forehead, my tongue, my throat, and so forth, and say, “Dearest Swami, grace me to see Divine, to think Divine, to hear Divine, to speak Divine, to act Divine, and, most of all, Dearest One, grace me to BE Divine Love.”

Jack: Swami often says, “We have to develop God-vision.” He uses the term tanmana, which is Sanskrit for seeing God everywhere, in every being, every creature and in all things. Indeed, that’s probably the reason that we (all of us) have taken form in these bodies—to develop this capacity to see Divinity everywhere, no matter where we look, including of course, within ourselves.

This is a very important topic because, when you think about it, life is a battle—a battle which we all wage daily. The enemies, the dragons we have to face are very, very powerful: anger, greed, attachment, desire, egoism, and selfishness. They’re so strong we don’t stand a chance against them. Look at them: anger, greed, desire, et cetera—they’re so strong! They’re winning, especially nowadays, in this kali yuga (Iron Age); we’re losing.

If these forces are so mighty and we’re losing, what do we do, give up? No. Swami tells us to turn toward God. He tells us that we have to learn to see in a different way: to see God, Divinity, everywhere (including, even, in those arch enemies); we have to see all of life as aspects of God. As we develop this “Divine Seeing” we grow stronger and more able to fight the good fight. As we begin to see Divinity everywhere we look, our whole life changes. That’s what sadhana is: the gradual reprogramming of our consciousness, a rewiring of how we basically think, feel, and act. It’s a rearranging of the way we see the universe around us.

Swami, when He was Krishna, granted Divine Seeing to His loving devotee Arjuna with just a quick swoop of His divine power. In His modern form nowadays as Sathya Sai Baba, He is again offering that divine swoop. He’s pointing out to us the crucial importance of Divine Seeing. He’s telling us that we can, and must choose to see our world and all things in it in a certain way.

I’m a long-time management consultant, and more recently, a writer. To do these things I’ve had to study, read, research, and so forth. I spend much of my time putting ideas, thoughts, and words, into a logical, linear sequence. Louise, however, learns in a quite different way. She has a university degree and has done her share of reading and studying, but concepts and books are sort of boring to her. She always has had a quite different way of learning. She learns from butterflies, dogs, cats, bullocks, birds, children, and so forth. She also learns through dreams, but only if they’re direct and don’t require deep thinking or analysis, because she’s not very interested in thinking or analysis. She’s not interested in anything that pulls her away from her main mode of learning that is through the heart. Nowadays, this way is often called “right-brain.”

I mention this because this mode of learning is more helpful on the spiritual path. Thinking is not very useful spiritually. Also, this right-brain mode of learning is probably gender-related—easier for women. Why do I say that? Because when I mention this and look out at Sai audiences, I see on the women’s side smiling faces and nodding heads, “Ah yes, that’s right.” But from the men’s side I see blank faces and wrinkled brows, “Huh…what’s he talking about?”

So today let’s put our attention on Divine Seeing. It’s not an easy subject to grasp. It requires a little leap from our left-brain, logical, analytical ways of “seeing” to our right-brain, non-logical, learning through the heart. It requires suspending our usual ways of thinking. It requires us to put on the shelf, at least for a while, that part of us that’s skeptical, that evaluates. That kind of thinking holds us back. We need to get into a quite different way of looking at ourselves and everything in the world. And of course it doesn’t come easy. Like all higher learning, it’s “subtle,” which means it is finer, more delicate, harder to see because it’s less gross. It requires, therefore, a rearranging of how we perceive, how we see the cosmos and our relationship to it. These things are deeply ingrained, so learning to see this way entails a gradual refinement—I think the Sanskrit term is samskruti— a slow but sure purifying of how we look at our universe and ourselves, and at our relationship to Divinity. That’s a tall order!

It has to do with where we put our attention. We have to put aside our analytical skepticism and cynicism, and allow ourselves to increase our spiritual capacity. That’s also a tall order. Louise has a quick example…

Louise: A few years ago we were traveling a lot, giving presentations on Swami’s spiritual teachings. One of the places we visited to give a talk was Malaysia. By the time we got to Kuala Lumpur I had come down with some traveler’s bug and was quite sick. I was lying down in our hotel room. “Swami,” I said, “I’m not feeling well.” Suddenly, from somewhere, I became aware of a bird chirping, very adamantly, yelling at me, “Squawk, squawk, squawk,” I looked around the room and didn’t see anything. I got up, even in my weakness, and went to the window of our hotel room. We were on the third floor in a small hotel, overlooking a tree-filled rear area. I opened the window so I could lean out to find this bird because I knew he was trying to tell me something. And right there, sitting right on the ledge outside the window was the bird! “Squawk, squawk,” he said. “What do you want?” I asked. And then, just like that, he flew away. As he flew away I felt my sickness leave me. Suddenly I was well!

Jack: See what I mean. It’s a different way of seeing things in the world, which brings a whole different way of being in the world. It begins with a different way of taking-in the world around us, a different way of relating to the things of the world. Louise and I have been together for so long that now her way is beginning to rub off on me. We’ll be sitting somewhere, in a garden for example, and a butterfly will flutter by, or birds will start chirping. Louise’s head will immediately start moving; she’s looking around to find them: “Where are they? What are they telling us?” She knows it’s Swami coming to us with a message, and wants to make sure we receive that message. It might simply be a reassuring, “I’m here with you” message, but to her (and me, now) it’s God, right there, reminding us. That awareness of His presence at that point changes our mood, our level of consciousness—and therefore, it changes our lives.

Look back at Louise’s prayer. It’s not just nice words, it’s a physical thing. Every day, two times a day, she actually reaches out, physically, and takes vibhuti and touches herself with it, beseeching, reminding God (her own Divinity) to be with her at all times in every way. This is how she constantly strengthens her ability to see through different eyes, through Divine eyes.

When we observe the world through worldly eyes, things are often not what they seem. I received a good lesson in this several years ago in Prasanthi. I was writing the first book (Dharmic Management), and working really hard. I would go to morning darshan (literally, “being in the presence”) and then zoom right back to my room and get on the computer and work all day. No bhajans (group singing), no breaks at all, except a quick lunch, until I pulled away for a while to go to afternoon darshan. Then I would go right back to the computer and work through afternoon bhajans until Louise came home for dinner. I like bhajans, and I missed going to bhajans. My ego felt very self-right-eous about “sacrificing” this enjoyment to do my duty.

One morning, I had just finished working on a long hard chapter, so I decided to treat myself. I figured that I could reward myself for all my hard work by walking down to the mandir (temple) for bhajans. And besides, I was in one of my fed-up periods about India. We love India and live there half of each year, but every so often I get fed-up with the crowds, the dirt, the heat, the hot food, the pushy sevadals (volunteers), and all that. After all, I self-righteously thought, I deserve this one little reward.

Want to hear God laugh? Tell Him what you deserve. When I got to the mandir gate a sevadal stopped me, “You can’t go in now because Swami is on the verandah.” (In those days they would not let you go inside the grounds and move around when Swami was out on the verandah.) And to make matters worse, Swami was behind one of the pillars, out of my line of sight, and I couldn’t even enjoy watching Him from afar while I waited. I stood there, disappointed, grumbling, waiting, waiting—5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Suddenly, the bhajans began in the mandir and Swami immediately walked inside. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of His orange robe.

By then I was steamed. I turned and walked away. “To heck with this,” I mumbled, “Here I am, all ready to see my Lord for a change, and I can’t even do that. Well, hrrumph, I’ll go back to my room and write.” When I got back to my building the accordion gates at the entrance were shut and locked, and a grumpy sevadal was standing inside waving me off. (They locked all the buildings in those days for security reasons.) What is this, I pouted, inside, now I can’t even get into my own home! I tried to talk him into letting me in but failed, of course, so I wandered off in a morose funk, not knowing where to go or what to do with myself.

I noticed that the canteen was open, so I went in and got a cup of morose tea and sat, vacantly gazing out the window at nothing in particular. As I sat there, I became aware of a dog about 200 yards down the lane. It apparently had something wrong with its hind legs—hip displaced or something—and couldn’t get up. I wasn’t really interested and sort of ignored it. Then a western woman came by, petted the dog sweetly, and moved on. About five minutes later a western man came by and gently lifted the dog’s head and stuffed some most welcomed bread crusts into its mouth, and then he walked on. All of this was just vaguely registering in my consciousness. Then, a few minutes later, an Indian man walked by. He noticed the dog lying there and began yelling at it and making threatening gestures, “Go! Go! Get out of here!” When that didn’t work he started kicking the poor dog. The poor dog, trying to obey, attempted several times to get up. It would strain to rise, but its back legs just wouldn’t work and it would fall back to the ground. Finally, the man realized there was something wrong with the dog and walked away.

I sat there, watching this little drama. Remember my mood, not only had I been denied my bhajan treat, but this was one of my down times regarding India. I had seen enough; I had all the “evidence” I needed to make some nasty generalizations about this country. But then a faint voice came into my head. “Don’t judge,” it whispered. I almost overlooked it. It came again, a bit louder, “Don’t judge.” Okay, I thought, I’ll try to be obedient, and sat there for awhile thinking about those words, then I finished my tea and returned to my building. Bhajans had finished and the building was now unlocked. I went to my room, closed the shutters and sat on the floor, my back against the wall. There, in the quiet semi-darkness, I turned my mind toward the “Don’t judge” message. It came again, a bit louder here in the quiet, “Don’t judge.” Then it repeated, even stronger, “DON’T JUDGE!” This time it added, firmly, “YOU DON’T KNOW!”

I sensed this message was important and somehow, by Swami’s grace, I was able to suspend my judgment. Despite my personal “scientific” observations of western versus Indian treatment of animals, I was somehow able to keep from making judgments about that little drama. The reward came immediately. My whole mood changed. My pouting left me. Like magic, I was suddenly no longer angry or negative. I felt very cheerful. My whole day turned from dark gray to bright and joyous. What a wonderful gift that was! I had, through God’s grace, been able to bestow upon myself the GIFT of not judging, and it worked! For the rest of the day I worked merrily in this glow. I told Louise about my God-given happiness as soon as she came home. I went to darshan that afternoon and could swear that Swami looked at me and smiled. I worked happily that evening and went to bed happy, and slept peacefully all night long in the arms of God. I woke up the next morning feeling the same way. I went to darshan that morning and sat with a friend and told him the story. Normally a rather skeptical, negative guy, he listened very carefully, perhaps sensing there’s a lesson in this for him also. As I finished the story, the Indian man who kicked the dog walked by. I nudged my friend, nodding in the man’s direction. “That’s the guy,” I whispered. After the man was out of earshot my friend said, “Don’t you know that fellow? He has been around here for some time. He’s mentally retarded.”

Later, I began to see the deeper lesson in all this. It’s true, we really do NOT know. We may think we know, but we really, really don’t. We must not leap to hasty, negative judgments. Most of us tend to do that. We have no “license” to judge anyone or anything, or in any way pass judgment on what we think we see. God hasn’t given us a free pass to be negative. When, by the grace of God, we’re lucky enough to free ourselves from making snap judgments, our whole world turns around and changes for the better. Grayness leaves. We begin to see things more clearly. Joy comes. Bliss swoops in.

Louise: Swami says look at your own faults, not the faults of others. We need to see the Divinity in others.

Jack: Right, and that’s very hard for most of us. We’re so conditioned to judge. From birth we’re taught that things are good or bad, right or wrong. We learn to like or dislike. We get so caught up in these good or bad, right or wrong dualities of life—referred to as raga–dvesha (attraction-aversion) in Sanskrit—that we don’t even think about it. We just do it. To us, it’s just our natural way of being—just our nature. Thus, without being aware, we become stalled in our sadhana, our path to God.

(Continue to Part Two – July 2001)

Freedom

Freedom is independence from externals. One who is in need of help of another person, thing or condition, is a slave thereof. Perfect freedom is not given to any man on earth because the very meaning of mortal life is relationship with and dependence on one another. The lesser the number of wants, the greater is the freedom. Hence perfect freedom is absolute desirelessness.

~Sri Sathya Sai Baba~