Why Fear?

“Why fear, when I am here?” is an assurance that Baba often grants to those who hesitate to accept His word about the fulfillment of some wish of theirs. While at Shirdi, Baba put the same comforting question to those who feared despite His promise to save them from disease, disappointment, or distress. The pose with the right palm raised up to shoulder level and presented to our view is often interpreted as abhayahastha, the palm that guarantees freedom from fear. Pictures of Baba with the abhayahastha and the question printed underneath, “Why fear when I am here?” are kept in the domestic altars and devotees pray that the promise might be ever carried out in their cases.

Baba said one day that the palm was raised thus only to warn people against “talking too loud!” True. When you start talking low, anger subsides, pride is humbled, the desire for verbal victory weakens, and tolerance prevails. Shouting, clamoring, boasting, abusing—all these undesirable practices provoke others into opposition and enmity, thus causing fear. But man can shout with the eye too. Every sense can clamor and drag us into fear.

What Baba means is, ‘Don’t let your senses to call out aloud; keep them under restraint, then, you have no reason to fear.’ The upraised palm teaches us to equip ourselves with brakes and constantly examine their condition, not only on the tongue and the other senses, but also on the mind and its vagaries, the reason and its conceit, and on the ego and its antics.

What does Baba teach us by the word, `here?’ Where is He when He says, `I am here?’ In the shrine room or altar? On the wall? Over the doorsill? Or in the heart? Should we carry the picture of the abhayahastha always in our purse? Or wear one on our body? Baba assures us that He is ventane (with us ever), jantane (inseparably with us), intane (as well‑wisher, provider, guide, guardian, father, mother, brother or sister, son), and kantane (before our eyes as every being that we see). This is the experience of hundreds of thousands of fortunate souls.

When Baba says, `I am here,’ it is a mark of His omnipresence, for people from all the regions of the globe know and experience Him as `here,’ wherever they are.

Baba had created and given a ring to Johanessen Tideman, of Norway at Whitefield. A month after it had slipped into the Chittagong River in Bangladesh Baba said, “It fell into My hands; I am everywhere; I was in that river when it fell.” So when Baba says `here’ He means `everywhere.’ Call on Him and He answers.

As Rama Baba declared, “I shall confer fear-lessness on all beings; this is My vow.” Sai also makes the same declaration. What does the word `fear’ signify when Baba says, “Why fear?” Fear is often morbid, like the fear of death. Baba rescues us from this fear, by drilling into us the fact of the inevitability of death. He tells us that death is only the close of one term in order to begin another in the schooling we have to undergo. Fear of death is futile and foolish, Baba teaches.

Then, there is the fear of poverty and privation. In a letter to a truant Pundit Baba wrote, “I foster and feed all beings in all the worlds. Therefore, do not conclude that you are miserably poor since I cannot feed or foster your family! I am inflicting these troubles and anxieties on you so that you may learn a few lessons.” For those who have realized His truth, whatever happens is in conformity with His plan. There is no reason to fear, falter, or fumble. There is every reason to rejoice, for troubles are signs of Baba’s compassionate and continued interest in giving us lessons, so that we might win the goal of life.

Baba, we should remember, reacts to the tremor of fear that causes anxiety not only in the hearts of His ‘devotees,’ but in the hearts of all beings, wherever they may be, whatever their attitude to this present personification of the impersonal named Sathya Sai.

He has come to confer courage on all; whether they call on Him or not, whether they are aware of Him or not, whether they are aware of the availability or the need for ‘courage’ or not! ‘I have come’, Baba wrote to His brother, at the age of 21 ‘to save all mankind by the grant of ananda [bliss]’; ‘save’ involves rescuing from fear. Raksha is the Telugu word used; it means, guarding from enemies, inimical forces, inducements, inflows, impulses, influences. For Sai, there is no ‘other’ no ‘near or far.’

Baba also emphasizes that, “All are Sai.” There is Sai in all, “Every person you meet or contact is a house with a portrait of Mine over his door; adore the Sai inside him; revere him as you would revere My portrait or Myself,” says Baba. When all are Sai, whom are we to be afraid of? Who will cause us harm? Baba says, “You do not fear that your finger will hurt your eye. You do not fear that your pockets will be picked by your own fingers. You do not fear that your teeth, in a fit of vengeance, will snap your tongue in two. The Upanishads [holy texts] ask, ‘When there is only One, who fears whom?’” The very root of fear is thus removed by Sai, by His declaration that He is in all.

This brings us to another facet of Baba’s declaration: Why fear, when I alone am here? For devotees of Sai, the ‘I’ means Sai; for others who seek Sai through His other names, ‘I’ means those other names, and they can be fearless because the Divine, demarcated by those names is present in every being as clearly and as truly as in themselves. The ‘I’ (Aham) is but the wave of the ocean, which is Sai. Soham (I am He), Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahma), Tat twam asi (That thou art). When I am that, how can I ever fear that. No one is afraid of his reflection in the mirror. One only loves oneself, one does not fear oneself.

Baba says that, in the statements from the scriptures quoted above, there is a tinge of duality, still tarnishing the truth. When that is removed by a stroke of intuitive illumination by the grace of Sai, only That remains. There is no other to assert the unity, to assert the ecstatic bliss or express it. Only Is is, with no bounds of was or will be.

That abhayahastha will confer, as it promises, the boon of this illumination on all beings.

~Taraka Das
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, May 1974