Transcend Body Consciousness

Dr. P. V. Shankar has been a devotee of Sri Sathya Sai Baba for the last 36 years, during which time he has had numerous opportunities to be in the Divine presence. On one such occasion, Shankar spent nearly 29 days in Sai’s presence in Kodaikanal, South India. The following article is an excerpt from his speech delivered at the San Diego, California, Sai conference in August 2003.

I am nervous to speak about Swami because I know very little about Him.  Many of us have been very close to Swami, but we don’t know how long that will last. He [Swami] says that in the near future, He will not be easily accessible because He has so much to accomplish. So, He advises us to go within.

Today I am going to talk about what Swami asks us to do. First and foremost, Swami alone chooses who speaks, who listens and what is spoken, when and where. So let us open our hearts and let Him run our lives.

Man wants peace, but what does he do? All his thoughts, words, and deeds contribute to lack of peace. Man wants bliss, but the evanescent and transitory things of pleasure attract him every moment of his life. Man wants others to love him, but how many times does he love others without any trace of ego. We just don’t know how to love others. Consequently, despite noble aims and goals, our actions do not facilitate experiencing our inner divinity.

So, what do we do? Janaka, the father-in-law of Rama, was confronted by a similar predicament: Experience of [divine] bliss and universal love besides peace of mind deluded the king despite prosperity in the land, inhabited by virtuous people.  As a result, he sought the royal guru, Ashtavakra—literally meaning a man with eight deformities—for a solution. According to Swami, we are all ashtavakras since we all have the eight deformities, namely ego, ignorance, desire, anger, greed, attachment, pride, and jealousy. In order to experience Swami’s divinity within us, we, therefore, have to conquer these eight deformities as Ashtavakra did.

Ashtavakra’s story goes thus: He was a perfect, learned being even in the womb. His father, on the other hand, was very proud about his knowledge of the Vedas. Unfortunately, he used to chant them incorrectly. The child in the womb could hear his father chanting and explaining the Vedas incorrectly. This upset the child so much so that one day he criticized his father. Angered by this criticism, the father cursed that the infant be inflicted with eight deformities. Swami often emphasizes that when one adopts the path of spirituality, one has to give up the habit of criticizing others. With a judgmental mind, one cannot experience Swami either outside or inside.

Here, I am reminded of Moses when he led the Hebrew slaves into the desert after receiving the Ten Commandments. After traveling for some time, the followers asked Moses: Where was God and where were the treasures that God promised? They said that they were happier as slaves rather than moving about aimlessly without any happiness. This disturbed Moses for he could not understand why people did not understand God and develop faith in Him. So, during the final visitation from God, Moses asked Him, “What should I do when people don’t understand what I tell them and they want to go back to the life of slavery again?” The same pattern is being repeated again when we don’t want to take what Swami wants to give us, but we want to be slaves to our senses.

Moses asked God, “When can I take them to the promised land?” God said, “You are not leading them to the promised land.” Moses asked, “Then can I go to the Promised Land?” God said, “No.” Moses was perplexed and asked, “Why?” God replied, “Even though I have inspired you with wisdom and given you the role to lead My devotees, yet you have developed a judgmental mind. You are questioning their ability to recognize Me. They have deep love and time till eternity to recognize Me and My divinity; and I, as their God, have the same time and patience to wait for them. But you don’t have that faith in your followers.” Moses then realized that the Promised Land was not a physical place but a state of awareness. Similarly the oneness with Swami is a state of awareness. We can have it whenever we want.

After the child [Ashtavakra] was born, his father went to King Janaka’s court to debate with the learned people there to seek recognition. However, he was defeated for want of real scholarship and knowledge and put in prison.

Meantime, as Ashtavakra reached the age of ten, he asked his mother about the whereabouts of his father. She told him that the father was a slave in the King’s court. So, he proceeded to the King’s court in search of his father. But, he was faced with ridicule when people saw his deformities. He was made to wait for three days before he was brought in the presence of the king. As soon as Janaka saw him, he realized that even though the boy was deformed, his eyes were shining and brilliant. A debate was organized and Ashtavakra won over his opponents and was appointed the royal preceptor. Consequently, he secured his father’s release from prison.

One day, King Janaka went to the royal preceptor [Ashtavakra], and asked him why he, the King, did not have peace, bliss, and universal love. Ashtavakra gave his answer in a discourse, which is compiled in a book called the Ashtavakra Gita. Ashtavakra said, “If you want to have peace of mind, enjoy bliss, and feel universal love for people, then remember that first of all you have to acquire wisdom and let go of the senses. You have to overcome your body consciousness.”

Similarly, Swami says that first and foremost, one should not be a slave to the mind; instead, one should be a master of the mind—bend the body, mend the senses, and end the mind.

Secondly, Swami points out that the greatest enemy of man is his ego.  As long as man thinks that he is the doer, the black serpent of ego cannot be killed.

Thirdly, He says, yad bhavam tad bhavati—the events are shaped by the feelings of a person. If one feels that he is free, then he becomes unconditionally free at that very moment.

Kabir, a great Indian saint, said that God gives everyone a pure body at birth; but, in our worldly journey, we weaken it with the eight deformities. Namasmarana [repetition of God’s name] is the only way to cure the body of its eight deformities and make it pure to cross the ocean of life. In other words, we can purify our body with namasmarana and make it fit enough to give it back to God.

We were with Swami for Gurupoornima of 2003, after He had been injured in His hip. The doctors attending Him had told Him that He would not be able to walk for at least a year; but Swami started walking after a month. He was able to do that because He does not pay attention to the body.

We had the opportunity to be in His interview room, and we asked Him, in our ignorance, about His health, His injury, and the resulting pain and recovery. He looked up and said, “When I am not the body, where is the question of health, injury, pain, or recovery? It is all a drama. It is good that it happened because it focused the attention of devotees. They prayed selflessly to Me to cure Myself because they do not know any other God. All along, they have always prayed selfishly for themselves only; and moreover, it united them all in their prayers.”

He added, “I want you to overcome your body consciousness and go beyond it; don’t be limited by it. My physical presence is so limited, but My inner presence is thousand-fold superior and you can experience it. Go beyond your body consciousness.” “ As long as you are attached to the body, it limits your wisdom; let go of it and you become wiser. The truth is there within you.”

One day, when Swami was traveling with His students on a bus, I was also very lucky to accompany Him. After sometime, He asked, “What is for tiffin [snack]?” Someone said that they had forgotten to bring it along. He was upset and said that there should always be food for the growing boys because they are always hungry. Someone else then said that they had a savory mixture [an Indian snack].

Swami then said, “Before we eat the mixture, let me show you the largest diamond in the world.” He waved His hand and held a large beautiful resplendent stone in His fingers. Swami said that it had come from the London museum. After we had all seen it, Swami said, “I brought it to show you that it is man who gives value to the stone, and the stone by itself is of no value.” The diamond disappeared from His hands. Then, He asked for the mixture and a spoon to serve it with. As there was no spoon available, He waved His hand again and created two plastic spoons—thus showing that for Him all was the same, whether it was a diamond or plastic spoons.

Meantime, as we were passing by we saw some devotees lining up along the road to get a glimpse of Swami. Swami said to the boys, “See how devoted and humble these people are. They are standing for so long patiently waiting to get My glimpse, and here you don’t even realize the value of sitting beside Me and this opportunity to be so near Me.” He then looked at the forest and said, “There used to be a lot of animals in that forest.” One of the boys asked Him, “Where are they now Swami?” He replied, “They are all here with Me in this bus!” He was implying that we should let go of our animal tendencies.

Let me share with you a saga of despair, faith, and grace. It is the story of a ten-year-old boy who was lost in the wilderness, yet his mind was in tune with Swami. On August 3^rd 2003, we came back from our visit with Swami. That evening, at about 8:00 pm, I received a call from Ken Johnson who is the special agent for Forest Service of the Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. He informed me that my nephew, Arvind Kumar, who was visiting the park with his parents and grandparents, was missing. Apparently they had all gone hiking in the morning and on one of the trails, he was separated from the family and was now missing. A team of 35 people along with dogs had been searching for him for the past eight hours. The family was also anxious because of stormy weather in the area.

He, the special agent, added that he was calling on behalf of the parents who wanted me to fax a picture of the boy to the rescue center. We faxed the picture and spent the night in great anxiety. We called the parents the next morning at the visitor’s center to get the latest news about the search. There was very little to add to the information we had. The family wanted us to pray to Swami for help. I continued to call the center every half hour to get updates on the rescue.

When I called in the evening, the search had been expanded with about 200 people looking for the boy; helicopters had also been deployed. The superintendent said that the parents were called into a special meeting where they were preparing them to accept the worst-case scenario. Hearing this, we quickly sent a telegram to Swami.

Within fifteen minutes, we got a call from the parents and they said that they had found the boy and that he was in stable condition. The boy was taken to the local hospital. When He saw his mother, the first thing he did was to apologize for drinking the water from the lake as he had been warned against it. When his father told him that a telegram had been sent to Swami, he said, “Why? You didn’t have to. Swami was with me the whole time.” See how a young mind takes Swami’s teachings to heart and lives it.

My nephew explained that when they were on the trail, he ran ahead and took the wrong turn. It was after about half an hour that he realized he was lost. He started crying and hoping that Swami would magically pull him out and leave him with the parents. He started to chant Swami’s Name. Then he remembered a prayer that his grandfather had taught him as a baby. He started chanting it. He saw a lake and he jumped into the lake as he was very hot and accidentally drank the water.

Soon he was hungry, and it started to rain. He was exhausted and fell a few times and broke his glasses. He then found a rock and sat under it, chanting the Name. As he was tired, he slept a little and the next morning, he drank a little bit more water and started walking.  Then, he decided to go back to the lake in the hope that someone would come to see the lake. A party of four volunteers who did not belong to the official party were looking for him and shouting his name; and Arvind heard them and responded. They picked him up and brought him back to the center. These four people are an example of how humanity serves each other out of love.

We wrote a letter of thanks to the Park Services; but how do we thank Swami for all that He does for us. We cannot thank Swami with words because they are too cheap. We cannot thank Him with thoughts because they are fleeting. We cannot thank Swami with the things of this world because He already owns them. Neither can we thank Him with feelings and emotions because they are unsteady. The only way we can thank Him is to live in His image, and to love and serve humanity the way He does.