He Has Come!
In this talk before Baba, the late Howard Murphet, world-famous Australian writer, makes a striking comparison between Swami and Jesus, and he sums up the significance of Christmas in one sublime word.
Christmas at Puttaparthi! We all enjoy it, but what is its special significance?On a visit to India, an Indian who lived overseas bought two lockets, each with a picture of Swami inside. He hoped that his wife, who worshipped Jesus, would accept one of them. She did not want to take it, but he placed it in the palm of her hand. Out of curiosity she opened it, and to her—and her husband’s—amazement, found that the picture of Swami had become a picture of Christ. Now she worships both forms.
It is natural for a person to feel loyalty to a particular name and form of the Divine, especially if through custom his mind has become conditioned in that way. And it is not easy to change. I know because I was taught to worship Jesus from childhood, and I felt a twinge of disloyalty when I began to worship Sri Sathya Sai Baba as God. Oddly enough, I also felt a little disloyal to Shirdi Sai, who had grabbed my heart before I knew the Sathya Sai form.
But Swami began to show me the deeper truth about this in two ways: one, by His parables-in-action, as I call His miracles. There were many of these. In our early Sai days, we took a Christian lady to Swami to be healed of a difficult malady. He healed her and produced for her a small medallion with Christ on one side and Himself on the other. Since then I have seen Him do this for other people and also materialize other Christian symbols such as figures and crosses. Without words He thus teaches an important lesson.
Secondly, there is His constant verbal teaching on this theme—that there is only one God, though people see Him in many different forms and call Him by many names. The one God answers to all. Forms, we begin to see, belong to time; they pass with time, but the true God behind them is eternal. We come to see how absurd it is to think that God might disapprove because we worship Him in one form instead of another. In order that we will not slip back into that strange idolatry, we must constantly keep our minds on the reality behind the forms.
How should we think of Christmas?
We are celebrating an event where eternity stepped into time. God took a human form 1981 years ago this day, (as He had done many times before in the long history of mankind). His purpose in coming was what it has always been: “to raise the sons of earth,” as the carol says.
During World War II, I had the good fortune to be stationed for a few months in Palestine, and I was able to visit Bethlehem. I well remember the day we drove the short distance from Jerusalem through country that somehow reminds me of the country around Puttaparthi. The little town of Bethlehem is on a hill with the Church of Nativity dominating the skyline. That church is built on the spot where once stood the inn or hotel that had no room for the birth of a godman—typical of all hotels.
But, fortunately, the stable where the Christ child was born is still there. It was an underground stable, beneath the inn. This underground grotto was a mass of lights and burning candles like an altar. Well, perhaps, it is the holiest altar in all Christendom. On the wall in one place is an inscription in Greek (of the early Christian period), which tells the visitor that here is the spot where stood the manger where the baby Jesus was laid on the straw.
There is certainly a sacred atmosphere, a holy vibration, in that grotto where God once made His advent on earth, humbly, among the oxen and asses. It was a lowly beginning to an epoch-making event.
Some parallels with Sai Baba
Tradition has a few stories about the boyhood and early manhood of Jesus, but we know little for sure until He began His mission for mankind at the age of about 30. It was a mission of peace and love and righteousness. He showed the compassion for sufferers that Bhagavan shows today. And like Swami He had the miraculous power to help many of them. Jesus also demonstrated the power of divine consciousness over nature, and what we call the “Laws of nature”, when He did such things as turn water to wine and walk on the waters of the lake. All readers of the New Testament know those miracle stories. As a child I believed them, but later modern education led me to doubt them. It was only when I saw the miracles of Swami that I again believed the Christian miracles.
Many spiritual truths that the great teacher taught then He is teaching again today, expounding on them more, giving a different emphasis to suit the modern age. Some of them are not easy for human nature to follow, and few people have lived by them during the centuries between the two advents. Turn the other cheek, for example. Do not return violence for violence. Give love where you find hatred. Love your enemies or those who despitefully use you. Do not dwell on the faults of others; look instead to your own failings and correct them. We could go on finding parallels.
Even one of Bhagavan’s main themes, the divinity of man, was taught by Jesus: “I am in the Father just as you are in me and I am in you.” “The Kingdom of God is within you,” and a few other such statements have come down to us. Now Bhagavan Baba is emphasizing that truth to modern man—a truth that the churches have omitted to teach. Perhaps, as Tennyson put it, “the thoughts of men have widened with the progress of the suns,” and human consciousness evolved to the level where it can accept the fact that we are all children of God, with a divine inheritance awaiting us. All we have to do is brush aside the clouds of mortal sleep, and remember our identity. But is that so easy?
I like the story from the Hindu scriptures about the prince who was kidnapped by robbers when he was a baby. He naturally grew up to think of himself as one of the robbers. Would he have believed it if someone had told him that he was really a prince? I think not. He would have needed some proof. In the end that proof came, and he went back to inherit his kingdom. We are in that situation. But the King himself has come to the “robber’s den” (a rather appropriate name for this world) to tell us we are His children. Won’t we now believe it? And act accordingly?
Love—the keynote
But love is the main theme of both in-carnations. And love is the keynote on Christmas Day. Saint John, who was close to Jesus, wrote: “We love each other because He first loved us.” Does not the truth of that echo in our hearts today, now that He is here again and we are able to experience Divine love? If some-times we fall short of the ideal of loving each other, we know that the Sai family must strive to establish a nucleus of loving brotherhood as an example and inspiration to the world. What hope is there other-wise?
The lamp lit by the Great Teacher of Palestine shone through the dark ages in Europe when Kali Yuga [Iron Age] was at its lowest ebb. It shone in the monasteries and cathedrals, and in the lives of a few true Christians. Without that lamp who knows to what levels of brutality and barbarity the world might have sunk? For the dark forces are always there within us, ready to drag us down to the brute level. But the lamp was there as a beacon to help mankind keep its upward course.
Here again
Yet now, after 2000 years, the light grows dim. The churches stand empty, and the forces of fear, suspicion, greed, and hatred are gathering round a nuclear banner. The threat to man’s existence on earth, and to the Divine plan, is greater than ever it was before.
And so God has come again to re-light the lamp and guide us through the mortal storm. Or, perhaps, to quell the storm, as He once did long ago on the Sea of Galilee. The Child, the Lamb, the Victorious One of Christian imagery is the way we might see him.
And going to the Hindu imagery, in one of the Puranas [scriptures] the gods say, “Shiva Him-self is here playing the active role of His son, Subrahmanyam.” The Father is the Son; the Son is the Father. All we know is that there is only one God no matter what form or facet He reveals to us.
On such deep matters there is little we can know for sure. But we can, anyway, feel something of the wonder of celebrating that long-ago advent in Palestine here at the birthplace of the Sai Avatar [incarnation].
The name ‘Jerusalem’ means a place of peace, as does the name ‘Prasanthi Nilayam’. And there is a place of peace with-in each one of us if we can find it.
In a song he wrote recently, Dennis Gersten has this verse:
So turn your weary eyes
Towards Jerusalem within
Where love is always burning
Now until the end.
Yes, turn against the darkest night
And let His light shine in.
Turn around Jerusalem,
He has come again.
Turn around Jerusalem,
His glory’s on the wind.
He has come; he has come;
He has come again!
Yes, He has come. And, if you can receive it, the Eternal One, in the garb of Sri Sathya Sai Baba, is sitting here before you now.
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, Feb. 1982
