Sri Sathya Sai—The Shiva
This is the 10th Birthday of the Sanathana Sarathi. It is the form of the eternal words, the nitya [everlasting] the vibhu [the supreme Lord], of the Sanathana Sarathi [eternal charioteer] who is eternal. He has no beginning, and no end; He has taken a human form as a result of the love he bears us.
Bhagavan Sri Krishna says in the Bhagavad-Gita [the eternal song], “Avyakta hi gatirdukham dehavadbhiravapyate—for those who are manifest in the form of a body, it is difficult to understand and realize that which is not manifest.” Taking upon Himself all suffering that the body is prone to, He, the formless, has taken form to come to this earth, to His beloved India, the land acclaimed as the guru of the world in the spiritual field.
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba emphasizes in each of His discourses that we must awaken to our great heritage and be aware of our privileges. He advises us not to run after material success but discriminate between what is ephemeral and what is everlasting. He warns us against identifying the false “I” and the body with the true “I” and the soul.
Bhagavan is sathyam-shivam-sundaram—truth-bliss-beauty incarnate. He is bliss, Shivam. Baba is Shiva, the ever auspicious, for He is all love. Who among His devotees—big or small, high or low—has not experienced the very special love, the very special consideration He shows to each? His essence is love, and power is His attribute. Therefore His love is greater than His power [shakti]. On Mahashivaratri day, out of His great love for all His devotees, He manifests His power and demonstrates the most glorious of all miracles, the creation of the linga.
“Eating, sleeping, fear, and mating are common to both men and animals,” says the Subhashita [Hindu religious text]. How then, are men different from animals? Is it their reasoning faculty or does the instinct overtake his reasoning? For example, when a dog is threatened with a stick, he runs away; was it instinct or was it his mind reasoning that the stick would hit. The real distinguishing mark of a human being is his sense of wonder.
Man alone is capable of being in awe and wonder. The Vedic singer was struck by the spectacle of the tropical dawn, and the intense force of lightning and thunder of the torrential rains of the equatorial belt; consequently, he went into raptures and sang aloud in praise of Ushas, Indra, and Varuna [Lords of the elements]. He could not contain himself. But today, our senses are benumbed with the glamour of materialism that infects the objective world. We are complacent and do not appreciate the beauties of nature. Nothing seems to shake us from our stupor.
Bhagavan has come to shake us out of this stupor and awaken us to the awe and wonder. While thousands look on, He creates on Mahashivaratri day, the linga, the symbol of creation. The “form” of the “formless,” emanating from the “formless” with “form,” awakens us to this awe and wonder. What a grand spectacle it is! How much grander is its spiritual significance! As Baba says, He manifests His mahimas [glory/greatness] to express the love He bears toward mankind, and to demonstrate His grace and to make them realize who He is. The lesson of the Mahashivaratri miracle is something divine and profound that evades description.
Mahashivaratri, the night of Shiva, is supposed to be the darkest night of the year. The moon and the mind have a great affinity, as Baba shows quoting the Shruti, “Chandramaa manaso jaatah,” “Out of the moon, the mind was born.” Therefore, Baba explains that the night of Shiva must be the night when the mind affects us the least, and Shiva affects us most. Those who have no faith in the Shruti might argue that the mind and the moon have nothing to do with each other; but even they have learnt to use the word, “lunatic,” for those whose madness waxes and wanes with the moon. The cosmic forces are too subtle for our gross intelligence to comprehend. All that we have to do is to believe in them and forge ahead. If we have no faith, we have to start the experiments all over again. Yet, we, Bharatiyas [Indians] do neither because we are too engrossed in petty squabbles.
When children fight amongst themselves over an insignificant toy, the mother distracts their attention; she does not take the trouble of ending the fight, by trying to judge to whom the toy belongs. That is what Sathya Sai Mata [the divine mother] is doing today for our fortunate country. Differences, disputes, and quarrels permeate this age of political, linguistic, and other ideologies. Those who do not get the opportunity of being selfish in the field of politics indulge in narrow selfishness in the fields of their personal existence. But, Sai Mata is ever vigilant, patient, and persistent for She wants to hold our hands and lead us on to the light.
With His loving persistence, everyday and on every occasion, Bhagavan reminds us that we are human beings, much higher than animals. He asks us to awaken from slumber, and realize that the gross world outside is to be given a place lower than the inner world. In His Divine way, He wraps the pill of spiritual training in tasty words so that it is palatable to the minds immersed in the mundane.
Mahashivaratri reminds us that by sadhana [spiritual practice] the mind has to be reduced to its minimum. After all, what is this mind? It is our own creation, woven out of the warp and woof of desires. The cherished ideal is “to be” and not “to become.” Desirelessness is the ideal to strive for, and not mere fulfillment of materialistic desires. If we find the effort strenuous, all we have to do is simply to keep faith, and cry for our Sairam, and pray to Him, “Asato ma sat gamaya; Tamso ma jyotir gamaya; Mrtyor Ma amritam gamaya.” (Lead me, Oh Lord, from the unreal to truth, from darkness to light, and from death to immortality). A moment will surely come, when His grace will descend on us and will grant us the cherished state of desirelessness and everlasting peace.
Bhagavan never spares Himself in this tremendous process of aiding us to transform the petty mind into the realized soul. He never denies us anything. He is concerned with the material well-being of many thousands for He knows that they will be attracted later to the Divine that dwells in their own “self.” As Sai Baba used to say at Shirdi, He draws His children toward Him by promising them sugar so that they may then swallow a dose of spirituality.
In the morning, on Mahashivaratri day, when Baba moves about in Prasanthi Nilayam to unfurl the flag of Prasanthi [eternal peace], then in the auditorium for the vibhuti-abhisheka [bath of sacred ash], and in the evening to the Shanti Vedica for upanyasa [divine discourse] and bhajan [divine songs], we see Him as the premaswarupa [epitome of love], Sai-Shiva, moving amongst us.
The atmosphere is resounding with Om as it were; it is laden with thoughts of Sai—the Shiva, the ever-auspicious and the ever-blissful one. The atmosphere is still; it is permeated with the eager but silent hope of the devotees that their loving Father and powerful Mother will surely and unfailingly guide them along the difficult path of spirituality. Awake and arise to this good fortune that has come our way.
He has come to move amongst us, to talk to us, but we forget His true nature, even as we have forgotten our own. We tend to look upon Him as just one of us, for our human minds have a narrow outlook. On Shivaratri and other holy days, He reminds us that He is not what we imagine Him to be. He is the Lord, the goal, and the ideal. He is the star to whom we have to hitch our wagons.
The Mogul Emperor Shahjahan thought of Kashmir as heaven on earth, but the spiritual atmosphere of Puttaparthi on Mahashivaratri day and the glory of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba fills this writer’s heart with the feeling that if there is a heaven on earth, “It is this! It is this! It is this!”
~Dr. Damayanthi, M. A., L.L. B., Ph. D.
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, March 1967
