The New Reality
Mrs. Karuna Munshi is a graduate of the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, Anantapur, from where she earned her B.A. and M.A. (Philosophy). Currently she volunteers with Radio Sai in Prashanti Nilayam, India. She spoke at the Flushing, New York, Sai Center on May 15, 2011. Reproduced below are select excerpts from her talk.
As far as I am concerned, I have only a singular but very significant claim to fame. I am a graduate of a university that was founded by the force that created the universe. I am a grateful alumna of an alma mater that bears a name so sacred that at this moment in time millions of hearts from the North Pole to the South Pole are invoking that name for courage, blessings, faith, and help, and for me that is an enormous privilege I never take for granted.
I have lived most of my life against the background of Sai’s presence because Swami is the God that I grew up knowing, and I played out all my aspirations, successes, fantasies, disappointments, and emotions against that unshakable, eternal canvas. However, a few weeks ago, on the 24th of April at 7:40 a.m. Indian Standard Time, that backdrop just disappeared from all of our lives, and it seemed as though the rug that we always stood on so securely had been pulled from under all our feet, and today millions of us are faced with a new reality.
And this sudden “new normal” is so paradoxical. Swami taught us to believe that He is not the form and neither are we. So in this new normal of ours, for a moment it appears like everything has changed, but actually nothing has. And to internalize and understand that profound truth is what we have to live for from this moment onward.
There’s been a wide range of emotions that all of us have been through in the last little while. There’s this strange sense of numbness, and a void, and this physical pain in the heart. And one day you wake up wondering, do I really need to get out of bed when Swami is not even in the form anymore? But, then, every dawn is a new beginning. And Swami has told us that everything is perfect. At times like the present, it sounds so unreal, but we have to accept the fact [although] the changes and transitions in our lives are difficult to live through, it is all good, for renewal is necessary and everything happens for a purpose.
On the morning of 24th of April, which was the 23rd April night here in North America, each of us passed the most critical milestone in our personal journey on this planet. It forced us to step out of the kindergarten of our spiritual lives. It was the first day Swami enrolled us into the school of hard knocks and actually forced us to walk the talk we have been talking for the last 60 years or so. It is the moment of truth for people like myself who have enjoyed living our lives in Bhagavan’s shadow, ever protected and guided by the Lord of Puttaparthi. And in this new situation, we‘ve been thrown into a reality that Bhagavan tried to prepare us for a very, very long time.
We were in Toronto when the news came, and because the Sai movement in Toronto is enormous, the centers remained open 24 hours a day for three continuous days. Thousands poured in, grieving, hurt, and confused. We had continuous prayers 24 hours a day for three days, and subsequently every weekend and every Thursday and so on. There was extensive media coverage of Bhagavan’s hospitalization and maha-samadhi both in India and around the world. In Toronto, all major newspapers and television channels carried the news from Puttaparthi.
Why has there been such an upsurge of interest at the passing on of a so-called 84-year-old God-man from India, a spiritual leader. Let’s recap what the big commotion was all about.
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba was born as Sathya Narayana Raju on November 23rd, 1926 in a small and remote part of South India, in a village called Puttaparthi in the district of Anantapur. That event and the place went unnoticed and unrecorded in the history and map of British India. Eightyfour years later, when He made the transition from His form to the formless, the entire world descended on a little international township called Puttaparthi. Puttaparthi was on the map of every news channel in the world. And a whopping 500,000 men and women – from simple villagers, to middle-class Indians, celebrities, politicians, sports personalities, actors, and the beneficiaries of His numerous humanitarian projects poured into the little village of Puttaparthi in complete discipline and silence to pay homage to the Master whose life and message had inspired them to seek personal transformation.
How can one person impact so many and achieve so much in a short span of 85 years, and why is the world feeling so lost in His passing away? As we grapple with this new reality, or the new situation in our lives, there are many things at stake. Personally for me, it really is a huge deal, because two years ago my husband and I made a very conscious decision to fold our well-entrenched lives of 20 years in the city of Toronto and relocate to India. We wanted to spend the next 10 years at Bhagavan’s lotus feet, in His vicinity, serving Him. Barely had we settled down, that Bhagavan’s health deteriorated, He was hospitalized and in a matter of weeks, everything was over.
So did Swami shortchange us by 8 years? Did He shortchange the millions of His devotees who were so sure that Swami is going to live to be 95 years of age because He said so, and He can never speak an untruth because truth is His first, middle, and last name?
Throughout the decades of His active teaching and guiding, Bhagavan repeatedly told us two things: love My uncertainty and never ever try to fathom Me. Even as a little boy, Swami categorically stated something that I can’t think of any little boy in the whole wide world who would have the audacity or the confidence to say, which is that if all the intelligence of all the entire human population was pooled together, never would they fathom even an iota of His reality because the truth is huge, and to understand it we have to become it and that challenge is very easy to speak of in words and very hard to live out.
So when we moved to Puttaparthi two years ago, we planned our lives in terms of: a decade from now we’ll do this, a decade from now we‘ll do that. But, as in hindsight everything is 20-20, now we know, unfortunately very late, that Swami was speaking in time frames that are beyond our comprehension. Perhaps He was alluding to the lunar calendar, and there was no miscalculation on His part.
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba lived for 30,388 days on the face of earth in the form that we are familiar with. Lunar calendar-based Indian astrology has two streams, and typically the average length of a month is 27.14 days. If you do the math, He lived for about 95.6 years by the lunar calendar. He kept His word. We were blinded by maya [illusion].
Why did nobody see this coming? How come we never thought of all this? Everything has a reason. Perhaps because the 27 days that Bhagavan was in the hospital were the most important 27 days of His Avataric career. Can we even think of any time when we prayed with such intensity? During those 27 days, didn’t millions of us pray as if our lives depended on it? [With] every breath, every second, everywhere, people were chanting Rudram, sending love and light, repeating Gayatri mantra, offering prayers.
In India, in the villages around Puttaparthi, the Hindu community was praying in all the traditional temples; the Moslem community was praying in mosques; people were chanting every kind of possible mantra for Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba to recover. And I think in His illness, Swami brought about the greatest miracle of all times: He united us as one family, for in our grief we became one. Everyone was shocked into silence; everybody was helping each other cope, offering courage.
Suddenly, the dynamics of interpersonal issues seemed to dissolve, we forgot all our hurts, our grudges, and personal prejudices because the looming fear was big enough to override our ego-driven pettiness. We realized that everything else could be put on hold, we simply had to pray and make sure Swami got well. That unity of purpose and the oneness we experienced was totally unprecedented. Imagine what momentum our personal transformation and the Sai movement would have gathered if we had achieved this same unity, prayerfulness, and sense of purpose 20 or 30 years ago!
Why did we not get there sooner? Everything that Swami does has a purpose and everything He does has a lesson. I guess we became so comfortable and complacent knowing that someday, when everything in our lives would become perfect, then we could go to India and have Swami’s darshan [sight of a holy person]. Or just knowing that Swami was there, if we had a problem, we could always write Him a letter and sit in front of the altar. We took Him for granted. We all wanted to become the way He wanted us to be, but we were not in a rush to get there, and in this process our timeline and His timeline did not match, and then all our time lines dissolved and all of a sudden He put us in our now or never moment.
What has been the net outcome of the recent grieving and the situation that we have all faced? Many believe the re-birthing of the human consciousness that Bhagavan had willed and predicted has happened. This is the first time that humanity has prayed so intensely with such oneness.
Our new reality has also left us with a number of new challenges. First and foremost, thanks to the media frenzy, the question on everybody’s mind is when, where, and how are we all going to find Prema Sai Baba?
Lately I have been telling everybody, that a Baba in hand, or rather a Baba in your heart, is worth nine in the bushes of Mandya district [where Prema Sai will take birth], so worry not too much over the matter because, as the Isavasya Upanishad tells us, the Self will determine the moment to reveal Itself to us. And just as Sathya Sai Baba introduced us to Shirdi Sai Baba and told us about Prema Sai Baba, in time to come, let us trust Him to reintroduce Himself to us in His own time and in His own way. The only guarantee about this experience that I can make is that no one can predict how anything will play out. If our experiences with Bhagavan are any indication, by now we must learn to trust Him and His judgment and be ever prepared for the unpredictable.
The other question on many people’s minds is about succession—who is going to succeed Sathya Sai Baba in the interim period? If you really must know, then bear in mind that I work in the ashram, and hence I have access to some insider information and I am very happy to share it with you [laughter]. The heir apparent to the throne of Sai’s empire of love is you and I and millions of Sai devotees and seekers around the world. But to accept that royal role, we’ve got to live it, inside out, not just be pretend princes and princesses of Bhagavan’s empire.
Each of us has to live like a true child of God, the one whose grace we have received so profusely all our lives. If Swami personally scripted this saga of love till now, then we must accept that Act One, Scene One is over. It is we who have to continue this script along the same standards of selflessness and purity that He set for us. We have to author it in a manner that is worthy of the legacy He has left behind because His is the greatest story ever told, the only story worth telling, the story of pure love on two feet. This is the story that will survive the test of time, and thousands of years from now this is the story that will give hope and direction to posterity.
Even though Swami’s transition from the form to the formless has been a huge personal tragedy and loss for all of us, it will be some time before we quite realize its importance in the history of humanity. 500 years, 5,000 years, 50,000 years from now all history will be written as before Sathya Sai and after Sathya Sai, B.S.S. and A.S.S., as we did with before Christ and after Christ. And you and I have lived through the transition.
We represent the generation of continuity who is going to take over the Sai mission and take it further. Swami has planned everything to the last ‘T’. He has set up His organization with foresight and vision that only the master of time can possess. Bhagavan has handpicked every important office-bearer running His mission personally. That is why His organization and trust are run by individuals of highest integrity and caliber and are seen as a model for humanity.
Where is this movement headed? Many devotees appear concerned about the future of the Sai mission. Let me take you back in time, when Gautam Buddha attained nirvana and cast off His body. How many disciples did He have around Him? Just a handful. And there was no Air China to fly them to Shanghai or Air Japan or Singapore Airlines to take them to the Far East and Southeast Asia, but Buddhism spread around the world, even in those days, because the disciples of Buddha became His instruments, His arms, eyes, and ears.
Again, when the Prophet Mohammed, peace be upon Him, left His mortal coil, Islam was not an organized faith, yet millions of people around the world have embraced it as the religion of peace. When Jesus was crucified, even those He trusted betrayed him. Today Christianity represents the message of hope for millions of Christians around the world. When Sathya Sai Baba left, millions around the world were already following Him, fully convinced of His Divinity. He has personally set up a well-established organization in India and abroad, and, if I may add, effective communication mechanisms in place including Radio Sai [applause] to keep His message alive.
Call it history, call it destiny, or your unique karma, but you and I are standing at a very critical threshold in history, we are at a most important junction; continuity and renewal depend on us. The onus is on us to utilize this unique opportunity to act as the true instruments of God with love and humility as our path in life. Should we fail the Avatar, history’s judgment of our performance will indeed will be harsh.
Take the example of the invincible warrior, Arjuna the great. When Krishna was getting ready to leave His body, He gave Arjuna one simple instruction—to take the women and children on this big caravan from Dwaraka to Mathura, for their safety. As they were traveling through the forest, the news of Krishna’s passing reached Arjuna and he was so devastated and lost that he just stood helplessly while bandits looted away everything. We cannot fail our Sai Krishna in His mission; to live for God is the only worthwhile activity, and to love for God is the only life goal worth considering. Let nothing and no one hold us back. Swami has categorically said to us when you work for Me, I will take care of your work.
All this time, Bhagavan gave us all many good memories of knowing Him, interacting with Him, listening to Him. This is the fountain of bliss that we can go back to and dive into and draw strength and courage from. Even though crying is very therapeutic and a natural part of the grieving process, we can’t be teary-eyed all the time. Sooner than later, we need to pick ourselves up, remind ourselves who we really are, treasure our divine magnificence, and be courageous and bold.
As Bhagavan always urged His students to be majestic and fearless, it is time for us to feel our Godliness and experience it as our fundamental awareness. Let us align ourselves with our source of Being, and recognize that we are here for a reason. We can’t just go through life morning to evening working, complaining, and ever so entangled in our self-created confusion. If we pray to Swami, He will show the way, because in the end you and I and everybody is a nobody and nothing, and the moment we realize that truth, the vast sense of emptiness connects us with the cosmic consciousness and God flows through us. And after that, life is just Oneness, there is no duality. If we wish to discharge our roles as the game changers, then Unity, Purity, and Divinity—Bhagavan’s oft-quoted words must become the mantra of our lives.
I leave you to contemplate on this feeling of Oneness. Thank you so very much for the invite. Sai Ram.
