The Footprints of God

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, in a Janmashtami day discourse, charts the way to imprint God in our hearts—live in God, with God, and by means of God in all places and at all times as His dear gopis (devotees of Lord Krishna’s time) did. 

This is the day when the world celebrates the advent of Lord Krishna [a Divine incarnation], who came down to earth in order to transmute it into heaven and make Gods of men. Hundreds and thousands of times has this day been celebrated, but does man shine today with the jewels Krishna poured into his lap? Has His message been implanted in the heart and blossomed into higher life and aspiration? No. The reason lies in hypocrisy that parades as devotion. Words emanate from the tongue, belying the activities of the mind and senses.

Man forgets that with each sunrise and sunset a day is clipped off the allotted span of years; he leads life in a wobbling line from the cradle to the grave. He denies himself the light of the spirit when struggling through the trackless jungle of matter. That light will reveal the spirit that resides in every thing and being; it will deify and, therefore, unify.

The Krishna whose advent you should celebrate is not the cowherd boy who charmed the village folk with His flute, but the Krishna, the indefinable and inscrutable Divine Principle that is born in the navel of the body (Mathura—Krishna’s capital) as the product of the Divine energy (Devaki—Krishna’s birth mother), that is then transported to the mouth (Gokulam—Krishna’s birth place) and fostered by the tongue (Yashoda—Krishna’s foster mother) as its source of sweetness. Krishna is the visualization of the atma that the repetition of the [Divine] name grants; it is the vision that was gained by Yashoda. You must foster that Krishna on your tongue; when He dances on it, the poison of the tongue will be ejected completely without harming any one, as happened when as a child He danced on the hoods of the serpent Kalinga.

God is bliss, ecstasy, & sweetness

Yashoda traces Krishna to His hiding place through the foot‑prints He leaves. This is the symbolic story to illustrate how the Lord breaks our identification with the body and leads us on to Himself by signs and signals that He provides all round us. These signs are ever present in the nature around each one of us, the beauty of the rising Sun, the ecstasy of the rainbow, the melody of the birds, the lotus‑spangled surfaces of lakes, and the silence of snow-crowned peaks—in fact, since God is rasa (sweetness, ecstasy), all nature that is but Himself in action is also sweet and ecstatic.

With or without form, God is ananda [bliss]. Welcome it into the heart, as Rama (another Divine incarnation]—He who is joy and grants joy—or as Krishna—He who draws you by means of the joy. He imparts joy, and hence live all your moments with the Divine, offering it your dhyana (meditation), puja (worship), and japam (repetition of the holy name). That exercise will open the doors of jnana (wisdom) and liberation. This is the mark of the wise, while those who are otherwise do wander in the wilderness, filling their moments with meaningless trifles, toys, and gewgaws.

“What am I to bewail?” asked Harishchandra (a king who gave up his kingdom and family in pursuit of truth) that night when a corpse was being cremated in the ghat (crematorium) where he was a watchman and fee‑collector. He was once the sovereign of a vast empire who held truth as the highest ideal. A saint asked from him vast treasure that he promised to deliver whenever needed. The saint then wrought vast ruin on Harishchandra’s empire through drought, famine, floods, fires, quakes, and foreign hordes. And, capping it, when the king’s treasury was empty, he [the saint] demanded the promised treasure.

Fundamental fault of man

Harishchandra sold his belongings, sold his wife and son into slavery, and he himself served as a watchman to scrape together the amount for the saint. “Am I to bewail the loss of the empire or the fate of wife and child, or my own heinous occupation? No. I shall weep and shed tears only because I have not yet realized Him (God) and visualized Him,” he cried. “I for You, You for me”—that is all one needs and one needs to pray for.

This wisdom is what the sages have discovered after years of agony and travail and this is what they have taught mankind. Man must repay the debt he owes to the sages by treading the path they have cleared and observing the limits they have laid down to ensure a safe and victorious journey.

Krishna told Uddhava (His friend) that the supreme stupidity is “dehatma buddhi” (the belief that the body is the self). That is the fundamental fault. When that is removed, liberation follows. India holds the secret of this process of liberation. Nevertheless, Indians are enamored by the glitter and glamour of the West, with its insatiable greed for sensation and for competitive triumph of every kind. They do not realize that the western nations are weltering in anxiety, fear, and frustration.

A story goes that Lakshmi (wife of Lord Vishnu, the Divine protector) asked Vishnu one day whether mankind will ever turn toward God, especially since he had provided them with the skills and materials necessary for comfortable living. Vishnu replied, “I have endowed them with two qualities that will draw them toward Me: greed and discontent.” When man turns toward God, detaching himself from the bondage to the world, he will not suffer from greed and discontent.

See yourself & others as divine

Sarva deva namaskaram (obeisance to all the Gods) that is declared as sufficient to attain God is only half the process; the other half, the reverse, is the sarva jeeva tiraskaaram (detachment from all beings). Between these two embankments, attachment to the Divine and detachment from the mundane, the stream of life can flow unimpaired toward the ocean of divine grace. See yourself as divine, and see others as divine; turn away from all else in you and in others. That is the essence of sadhana (spiritual practice).

Once sage Narada asked Vishnu, “The rishis (sages) who had attained the purest wisdom relating to the Universal atma could not win Your grace, but the illiterate milkmaids of Gokulam who were charmed by Your beauty, sport, music, prattle, sweetness, and inscrutable mystery—they won Your grace. How did this happen?”

Narada himself came to know later that the gopis [the milkmaids] considered Krishna (the Lord) as their very breath, sight , hearing, taste, and touch. Even as they tended the cattle and attended to their husbands and children, doing the numerous worldly chores, they constantly lived in Krishna, with Krishna, and by means of Krishna. Sarvada sarva kaaleshti sarvatra Hari chintanam—under all conditions, at all times, in all places, their minds dwelt on Hari (Krishna, the Lord). How then can God deny them His grace?

Supreme devotion of the gopis

When Narada went to Gokulam to teach the gopis about jnana (spiritual wisdom), they paid him little heed; they considered it a waste of their time. “The hours of day and night are not enough for us to dwell on the name of the Lord. We do not require your verbal acrobatics to convince us that God is sat-chit‑ananda‑swarupa (bliss incarnate); we know, feel, and experience the (divine) bliss every moment.”

It was only after this revelation of the supremacy of Bhakti (devotion) that Narada composed the Bhakti Sutras (scriptures regarding devotion) that have become the guiding lamps for the aspirants. The Vedas save by the power of nada (sound), with their mystic echoes in the cavity of the pure heart. The music of Krishna’s flute that represents the cleansed soul is but the Veda‑nada (sound of Vedas) in another form.

Rama drew the heart through the thrill of joy He gave. Krishna attracted the heart, and got Himself installed therein through the divine delight He conferred. They are but different expressions of the same compassion. From the inexhaustible reservoir of divine grace, you draw joy through Rama or Krishna. That is only a distinction with a difference.

My emphasis on namasankirtan (singing God’s names) and nagarasankirtan (marching choirs) are prompted by these reasons. Unfortunately, mere dialectical skill is being paraded now as spiritual instruction and scriptural interpretation for the common man. This is mostly done by people who have no faith in the doctrines they uphold and in the value of the disciplines they recommend. They are like Harishchandras who propagate the supremacy of truth on stage through their histrionics but lead lives filled with stratagems and subterfuges.

Move nearer to God

Unless you practice what you profess, you stand condemned as “drama bhaktas” (playing the role of devotees on stage). India would not have fallen so low if only her sons and daughters had put into practice a fraction of what each one declares to be his or her duties and obligations toward others and toward God. As the river flows silently and steadily toward the sea however long and arduous the journey, man, too, must keep the Lord in his view and move closer to Him until the ultimate merger.

The Lord is most pleased with dharma. It is to save dharma and restore dharma to its ancient purity and clarity that He condescends to assume the human form and walk among mankind as if He was one of them. Therefore, if you yearn for the God’s grace, let dharma be the inspiration behind every thought, word, and deed of yours. Let the knowledge that all are repositories of the Divine inspire you with love, tolerance, sympathy, and reverence.

Through dharmic actions, you progress toward worship that is filled with the consciousness that divinity is in all. Through that worship you attain the wisdom that divinity fills everything. Work, worship, and wisdom—fruiting, mature fruit, juice‑filled fruit—this is the order of spiritual progress of each individual. When the fruit is saturated with sweetness, it drops. That is the consummation.

Narada once asked Krishna the secret of the attraction that His flute‑play had on the cowherds of Brindavan. ‘Do they run to You, or do You run to them?” he queried. “Among us, there is neither I nor they; how can a picture be separated from the cloth on which it is painted? I am imprinted on their hearts inseparably and inextricably,” Krishna replied. Have God imprinted on your hearts; be ever so inextricably established in Him—that is My message to you this day.

Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 8