Dr. Philip Gosselin Speaks on Swami’s Birthday
Following are some thoughts on Sri Sathya Sai from a talk by our guest speaker, Dr. Philip Gosselin on the occasion of Swami’s birthday celebrations in Manhattan on November 20, 1993.
Today is a day for remembrance, remembering our Sathya Sai and remembering all that He has meant to us. It is also a day to ponder all that He will mean to us in the future. Birthdays are a marker of time; in this case it reminds us that His career has 26 years more. In one sense, this is a lot of time and, in another sense, it is very little time—if we really are to learn and put His teachings into practice.
This day of remembrance is also a time for us to realize how often we forget Him. Sai Baba warns us about “getting and forgetting” and tells us that ” being is lost in becoming.”
There is a well-known Hindu story that Vishnu incarnated as a pig for a special mission. He then forgot to return to His God nature and even resisted revelations from his fellow Gods about his Divine nature. They eventually had to kill him to reawaken him. This is an example of the Divine “being”, lost in “becoming.” If Vishnu had this problem, just imagine what a problem it is for us!
The theme of forgetting or sleep and eventually awakening is widespread in popular secular stories as well (e.g. Sleeping Beauty or Rip Van Winkle). An inner meaning might be that God has disappeared but will reappear when the brambles are cutaway and the fog lifts from our inner life. We forget and remember God within a single day. Within longer cycles, even years, we also forget and remember God. From Baba’s perspective, these cycles of remembering and for getting may go on for lifetimes.
When we forget (and/or despair), let us at least know that this whole game of hide and seek is a constant aspect of God. To our complaint, “Why doesn’t He show us His presence more directly?” Baba seems to reply, “I found you. Now you find Me.” (Notice how in many religious traditions the altar is deliberately closed and then opened at special times. Even God in the altar seems to play hide and seek.)
Certainly, children the world over love to hide their eyes and then open them, testing whether or not something out of view still exists. Psychologists call this the search for object constancy. As devotees, we are like children attempting to grasp the fact that Baba is constantly there—even when He seems hidden from us or even when we try to hide from Him.
Although we may complain about distance or lack of contact with Swami, there is never any shortage of experience. With Baba, we may become used to super-human experiences, but then we feel deprived when we don’t get them. Our spiritual life can become a quest for more and more of these extraordinary experiences (leaving us always hungry, with the feeling of never getting enough). Spiritual life is also a process of slowing down to see the extraordinary in even the most mundane experience.
ln my work, I often see the truths of the Buddha about the suffering in life before me. People present myriad varieties of physical pain, loneliness, and misunderstanding. Baba’s teaching that evil is a reaction to grief often comes to mind. It is heart rending that people that need Sai so much, can’t know of Him. We, as devotees, need to thank Him that we can even think of Him. It is also heartrending trying to tell a young adult that there is a world of pain out there. Even with our imperfect science with its short-term point-of-view, we can see that most of our pain is self-inflicted (e.g. poor health habits, etc.). However, on an auspicious day like today we should also remember that we have within each of us a world of joy—as close as our breath, so close you can almost touch it.
In counseling us as to how to deal with the world, Baba has told us to take the sweetness of the fruit and throw away the peel. Perhaps this means that we should focus on the positive and avoid the negative of this world. Unfortunately, we all know those who eat both the peel as well as the sweet fruit of life. Even worse than that are those who just eat the peel—but even worse than that is seeing that type of person in the mirror! Remember the commercial, “l can’t believe I ate the whole thing?” We don’t have to take in all and sundry stuffs in this life. “We don’t have to eat the whole thing.” On this day we should resolve to take in just the sweet!
No Birthday talk about Baba would be complete without an attempt to answer the impossible question of “Who is He?” Like the proverbial blind men examining the elephant, we each come up with partial understandings and often foolish misunderstandings. Some will say that Sai is the one who makes them high. Others will say He is the one that makes them low. Some will say He is the one that makes them happy and others will say He is the one who makes them sad. All explanations of Him are incomplete. Perhaps we can use our speculations about Him like beads on a thread of remembrance, keeping our minds focused on His sweetness.
A recent personal answer to His identity came in a dream: I was looking at pictures of Baba hanging in a University corridor. I was thinking, “How wonderful—this must be a religion department”. When a fellow devotee came up and explained, “No, it’s actually a science department because Baba is about the nature of origins and He is also part of our sustenance like oxygen.”
If that isn’t a satisfying enough explanation of Baba’s identity, let me leave you with Elsie Cowan’s explanation. She and her husband, Walter were sitting up front with Baba at an interview in 1971. After the Cowans and Swami talked of many things. Elsie turned to our group sitting on the floor. “Now kids, if you ever have any doubts, just know that we think He’s the greatest!” I’ll never forget how Baba chuckled.
May God bless us all on this auspicious day and on every day, and may we bless each other with the remembrance of the Divine Presence. now and forever.
Jai Sai Ram
