Life Is the Best Teacher
I remember the first time I came to Prasanthi Nilayam [Sai Baba’s ashram; literally, “abode of the highest peace”], in the summer of 1977. I expected to find various classes and seminars on hatha yoga, meditation, Patanjali, and Vedantic philosophy; a separate hall for meditation; and one-man rooms in which ashram visitors and residents could meditate all day long and have peace and quiet. I expected that Sai Baba would speak to us every day and explain the various spiritual truths and the techniques with which we could realize them directly. I expected an atmosphere of silence somewhat like a monastery: reflective and peaceful, with plenty of time for contemplation.
During my first two visits, in 1977 and 1979, I was able to create my own little world, somewhat in line with my expectations, because I managed to have a room to myself—a luxury no longer possible with the ever-increasing number of devotees who arrive here every day.
Then, during my subsequent three visits, I gradually began to understand that a different game was being played here, that a different method of spiritual growth was being applied. I had been asking myself why we were packed three, four, or five to a room, why we were packed into sheds with 50 to 100 others, why so many dogs barked day and night, why building went on all day long and even at night when we were told that our lights should be off and we should sleep? Why was no room provided for meditation, for quietness, no classes, seminars, techniques being given? (Although lately some have been started for foreign devotees). Why did Swami not speak to all of us every day and explain to us what to do? So many whys? Finally, when my mind stopped asking why and started listening to why, some answers began to become apparent, and they seemed very logical and important. What were they?
The School of Life
I realized that here at Prasanthi Nilayam (and for that matter, all over the world) life itself is the teacher. Life is God; God is life. Need there be any other teacher than life itself? This process of learning from the experiences of life seems, how-ever, to be accelerated here at Prasanthi Nilayam. It feels like an electromagnetic field in which lessons come fast and heavy, and our weaknesses, fears, egoism, and various other obstacles to spiritual growth come up to the surface. We begin to understand that absolutely nothing in life happens by chance or accident, that there is a divine hand guiding our every experience, giving us in every moment exactly the objects, persons, and situations which we need to come face to face with our ego and overcome it.
This process is not always pleasant, and often those experiences we need are the last ones we would want. We may be put in the sheds to stay where there are hundreds of mosquitoes, babies crying, people coughing, sneezing, talking, laughing, snoring, opening and closing doors, and walking across the floor with sandals that bang with each step. When there are large groups, one person may shout to another across the hall while we are trying to sleep or meditate. All this occurs not only during the day but also occasionally at night.
It would be silly to think that Swami could not build hundreds of thousands of other rooms, giving one to each pilgrim. His power is unlimited. He, however, has directed this energy toward other projects—that is, schools, hospitals, housing for the poor, and first-aid and hygiene centers. We can only assume that the conditions we’re experiencing exist for a reason.
Purifying the Butter
An image from my childhood in some way helps me to understand this reason. When my mother made Easter sweets with butter, she heated about 6½ pounds of butter in a large vessel. As the butter was heated, it began to send foam (with various impurities) up to the top of the vessel. She then scraped the foam off the top, and in this way purified the butter.
Prasanthi Nilayam is a large vessel. The sheds, dogs, colds, coughing, snoring, loud neighbors; the waiting for hours in the heat or rain; the rubbing together of thousands of people having different ways of acting and different living habits and conditions—all this creates much psychic heat and inner turmoil. We are the butter that begins to melt, and the foam with our impurities flows up to the surface of our beings in the form of negativity, resentment, anger, doubt, and feelings of injustice.
We experience indignation at being treated in this way and that, at things not being run as “they should be,” at no consideration being given to our “problems,” at Baba not paying any attention to us, at the others not paying any attention to the rules, at Baba taking for an interview those not following the rules—on and on goes the monkey mind. All this creates friction with other people, with other groups, bet-ween groups and individuals, between us and ourselves, between us and how we see Baba. The mind comes into conflict, confusion; the foam floats up to the surface with all the impurities that have long been stored there, not only since childhood but from many of our past lives.
Then comes the Cosmic Mother in her long flowing orange gown, waving her hand in circles, scraping off the foam with a word, a smile, or a gesture. Relief comes; the impurity has been removed, at least lessened; the predisposition from past lives slightly weakened. The butter is a little lighter, purer, and more wholesome. But the Cosmic Mother sees that the butter still has many impurities and continues to boil it in the cauldron of experiences here at Prasanthi Nilayam. Again, I am not saying that this does not happen at every moment of our lives wherever we may be. Here, however, the heat is turned up a little higher because the Mother is physically present to our physical eyes so that we can be relieved of our foam more easily.
Not that the relief comes only through that physical form clothed in orange. Mother Sai is not limited to the form that gives darshan twice a day at Prasanthi Nilayam. This, too, is one of the important messages that Baba might want us to take with us when we leave. We are being asked to see Sai in every being we meet. There is no value in bringing our hands together at darshan if we come into conflict with Sai in the form of our roommates or ashram personnel later on. The message from life comes on strong that God is everywhere. Sai can speak to us through our roommates, through the dogs, through our diarrhea, through the ‘Thought for the Day,’ the day’s lecture, our meditation, a book we are reading, or any annoyance that a person or situation may stimulate in us.
The Problem and the Gift
Every person, animal, situation, or event that stimulates negative feelings within us is a blessing in disguise. It is a blessed opportunity to discover our weaknesses, attachments, aversions, fears, expectations, insecurities, or selfishness. We never feel angry or upset out of strength or correctness. We feel upset only when deep inside us there is some fear. That fear may be expressed as many emotions—such as anger, hurt, bitterness, jealousy, hate, or insecurity—but all are based on identification with the separate vulnerable ego body and the ensuing fear.
Every time this fear is aroused in some way by our environment, we come face to face with ourselves and have a chance to discover the very false beliefs about ourselves that prevent us from feeling inner peace, inner security, and love for ourselves and others. These beliefs, the result of ignorance (lack of evolution of the soul) cause us to think that we are weak and vulnerable and need certain things, persons, attitudes (from others), and situations to feel secure, content, and affirmed as a being. As long as we are controlled by such beliefs, we will try to find happiness, security, and affirmation through establishing specific conditions in our environmental reality.
When conditions here (or wherever we may be) do not allow us to fulfill those pre-requisites that we believe we must have to feel okay, then we usually feel insecure, hurt, bitter, or angry and sometimes even revengeful. If we, on the other hand, accept that nothing comes into our life with-out it being Baba’s will, the plan of God, our own plan for our release from the dark prison of body identification, then we will ask, ‘What is life trying to teach me in this situation?’
Once we ask this question with sincerity and accept that we have exactly what we need to learn the next lesson on the spiritual path—the room, the roommates, the heat, the illness, the reactions from Baba, the behavior of others—then we will start having daily lessons from God, the true teacher Himself. Life is the best teacher.
Psychodrama Therapy
Thus, Prasanthi Nilayam as a whole becomes a great classroom, a continual seminar, and a technique in itself—the technique of life, which requires no class-rooms, teachers, or gurus. It becomes a “psychodrama” in which we are projecting our own problems and obstacles within our mind and onto the people and environment around us—and many times even onto Baba Himself. We become purified and renewed in this way as our blockages are brought to the surface and healed by the underlying love pervading the atmosphere as a result of Swami’s example, presence, and teachings.
A hundred seminars, a thousand classes and lectures, a million books, could not be as effective in creating such real and permanent changes on the mental, emotional, and physical levels as this psychodrama is. Thus, here we are forced to employ the philosophy of love, patience, and unity or else we suffer. In this way, there is the potential for feeling the greatest happiness, bliss, and love and also for moments of the greatest separateness, fear, and depression. Some people, especially when they first come, experience an emotional roller coaster in which they rise and fall bet-ween these two extremes many times a day.
The veterans begin to see that it is all a game, a purification process, a process of learning, and self-discovery. Although they still go through the ups and downs, they try to stop identifying themselves with those movements taking place in the sheaths of the body and the mind. They try to identify with the witness, the pure consciousness onto which this illusory drama is projected. They become more identified with the atman, the sea, rather than with the personality, the wave. But the process is endless, and the tendency toward identification with the body is one that we have developed over millions of years during our life cycles on earth. So as seekers we are forced to develop love and patience until we can free our mind from its fluctuations.
Thus, the Cosmic Mother continues to apply heat to the cauldron and to remove the foam. The only thing we can do is to realize that it is happening, accept it, enjoy it, and not resist it. We can look for our impurities (rather than blaming our environment and others) and offer them up willingly in the form of purification to the Divine Mother.
When we start to do this, life the best teacher will always be with us, everywhere we go will be “Prasanthi Nilayam,” and every moment will be an “inter-view.”
~R. Najemy
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, September 1985
