Guru Poornima by H.H. Narasimh Swamiji

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OM SAI RAM,Message by H. H. Narasimh Sswamiji for Guru Poornima on 10th July

1956.It is a long established usage amongst Hindus to pay special regard to or

worship the Guru on every Pournima day. It is on that day the moon it at its

fullest and the mind of all is most happy and best disposed to receive the

fullest that the Guru can give. Gurus have often advised their devotees to

approach them on Pournima days especially. Sai Baba, for instance, told Sri H.

V, Sathe that he should come with his puja materials and worship on Guru

Poornima Day. That is a day which is especially attractive and has special

merit more than other poornimas. It is on that day Sri Vyasa's glorious

commentary on Brahma Sutras, etc., was commenced by which so much of flood

light in the spiritual field has been poured on humanity. It is for spiritual

purposes that one must go to the Guru though other purposes are not barred.

Especially in Sai Baba's tradition or Guru parampara, the Guru is the sole

resort of the sishya for everything needed by the latter and so temporal as

well as spiritual benefits alike may "be craved for. Indeed, the spiritual

ought to predominate and not allow temporal ideas to overpower the mind of any

pupil. Yet on

occasions, the temporal needs are so painfully pressing as to require an

approach to the Guru even on a Guru Poornima Day by the pupil. The question of

the pupil's approaching the Guru may naturally be viewed from two standpoints

namely, (1) Gurus standpoint and (2) pupil's standpoint. There are Guru's and

Gurus. 'Guru' is such a broad term as to include even the ordinary college

professor though in any colleges the Gurus have hardly any persona! touch with

the hundreds of students who approach them. Our ideas generally go back to the

Gurus of the earliest Indian history that we know when the pupil went and

stayed with the guru, working for him and depending on him, and therefore,

being in intimate touch with the Guru and all persons belonging to the Guru.

The Guru's wife was mother to the pupil. The pupils were then very young and,

as in so many boarding houses now, it is at a tender age that the pupil was

taken to the Guru and left with him. This is a very great advantage for the

development of the pupil. Beginning one's contact with Gurus at a late age as

innumerable difficulties. By adolescence most of the habits and mental traits

of the pupil become so rigid that fresh imposition of ideas and ideals is often

found to be of no effect, the previous habits being so powerful and so hard to

break. The previous habits are referred to by the term 'Prakrit!'. The habit

has become second nature, and Sri Krishna Himself says in the Gita :—

Sadurscam chesbtate svasyah Prakriteh jnanavan api Prakirtim yanti bhutani Nigrahah kirn karishyati.

This means, 'Even the learned man behaves in accordance with, that is, in

obedience to, his prakriti or nature. Therefore a restraint going against the

grain of his previous habit or nature is ineffective, In the case of those who

are really very anxious for their highest, development, they must always take

care to place the young trainee under the trainer or Guru at the earliest

possible moment, remembering the English form of the above stanza in the

proverb 'Bend the twig and bend the tree'. If we bend a plant in its twig

stage, when it becomes a tree the same bent will be fixed permanently in the

tree which has taken the place of the twig. That is how for big palanquins very

big bamboos are bent up very early prepared, and used. The application of this

doctrine of the need for early approach to the Guru is attended with

considerable difficulty. It is not all people that perceive this truth nor is

it all

people that can easily approach and place themselves entirely at the disposal of

a Guru. The circumstances of many prevent their going to the Guru and living

with him. Moreover a Guru cannot accept any one and every one as a pupil to

live with him. He makes his choice. Only promising children from whom much

development can be expected would be taken up by a Guru, that is, taking the

conditions as they should be. In modern days, this selection of pupils for

training has assumed various forms and the selection of pupils is governed by

principles which can sometimes seldom be recognised as principles. It is often

a bias or an improper motive that guides the selection. So much of howl has

been raised lately about the way in which thousands that offer themselves for

entry into colleges, for instance, a medical college or an engineering college,

have been rejected. The principle of selection can hardly be the community, the

riches or the influence of the pupils to be selected. No doubt

there is a certain limit set to the number of pupils to be admitted in modern

institutions. In olden days, when a pupil provided the labour and cost very

little in the way of maintenance, hundreds or thousands could be easily

admitted into an Ashram or an educational institution And a Guru may well pray

as he does in the Taittiriya Upanishad 'A Mayantu Brahinaeharinah svah' etc.

That is, 'May students pour on unto me as the floods in rivers or as regularly

as the months in ths year'. The more populous an institution the greater the

amount of good it can do normally: far spiritual purposes. However where

personal attention and contact are required, this increase in student

population may be considered a demerit. But this need not necessarily be so.

There are Gurus and Gurus. Some Gurus can manage very large numbers, especially

with the aid of trained subordinates, and one might therefore expect that at

least for spiritual purposes when people flock to a powerful Guru, their might

be

scope for all people that approach to get attended to. The fact, however, is

that the number of pupils who approach a Guru for spiritual purposes is

extremely low. The amount of vairagya and sacrifice implied in the approach is

seldom achieved. Very few pupils possess such vairagya, especially longstanding

vairagya as opposed to mere evanescent vairagya. In the case of Gurus par

excellence like Sai Baba, these problems can seldom arise. The Gurus themselves

are quite competent to decide as to when and how a pupil should approach them

and how he should be dealt with at each stage. But the vast majority of

spiritual Gurus are hardly to be ranked with such high names as Sai Baba. The

bitter experience of those who have approached a Guru for their spiritual or

all-round development has been that the Guru promises a great deal and takes up

a pupil, but is found to be sadly deficient in those excellences of Sai which

ensure the pupil's safety aadadvance. A very great amount of vairagya is

necessayto prevent a Guru from taking advantage of the factthat a sishya is

prepared to obey the Guru in every particular. The pupils are mostly blind and

ready to receive and carry out any order given by the Guruwhom they believe to

be competent to issue orders to them. Unfortunately, Gurus with defective

development have proved to be the bane of a good number of pupils :that

approached them. That is the bitter fact that is constantly heard or lamented

in spiritual circles. It is often said that some prominent person is a proper

Guru and people approach that prominent person. After considerable time, the

discovery is made that the image golden at the top has only a clay foot and

cannot therefore be of real service to the people. Luckily in, the case of Sai,

the main fact is that he does not offer himself

as a Guru. He is not known to be a Guru nor is he anxious to be known that he is

a Guru. He has often followed the advanced soul should conceal his merit. : -

Budho Balakavai kridet : .Kuscalo Jadavat charetVadet Unmattavat vidvanGocharyam Naigamah charet.

This means, 'Though a person is a Jnani, he must behave as though he is a mere

child. The person who is extremely skilful conceals his skill and behaves like

a dullard. The person who is a great vidvan, highly learned talks like a crazy

person or an idiot. And the Jnani well versed in all the sastras behaves like a

quadruped', Sri Seshadriswami of Tiruvannamalai actually gave this advice to

Vallimalai Swamiyar - 'telling him that he should pose as a crazy or insane

person, for then no one would molest him and every one would leave him alone.

Sai Baba for long decades constantly behaved in such a way as to lead even

those very closely moving with him to fancy that he was a mad man. Mahlsapathys

who was constantly with Baba, writes in his memoirs that Baba behaved at times

like a mad man. G. G. Narke, noting the conduct of Baba on one occasion,

thought Baba must be mad. Baba had to correct that impression in

him when he (Narke) approached him by saying, 'Narke, I am not mad', having read

his heart though Narke never uttered his thought. This convinced Narke that Baba

had only appeared to be mad while at the same time he was able to see the

impression that was produced in Narke without any extraneous aid, that is,

purely by his power of antarjnana. Narke was convinced that Baba was a Jnani

and an Antar-jnani, and therefore a highly developed person competent to be a

Guru, but was only posing as a mad man. The advice that a person should pose as

a mad man can never be given to the vast majority of the Gurus, for they would

forfeit the esteem which they value so much by reason of being thought to be

crazy. It is only great souls like Sai Baba who deem honour and dishonour as

the same, who are not anxious to secure applause or praise or esteem, that can

pose as crazy men. But coming back to the main subject, we may say that Gurus

like Sai Baba prevent many persons from knowing their real

worth. Therefore some approach them for very low purposes. Yet when a competent

person approaches a great personage like Sai Baba, the latter notes who is

competent and who is not competent. Such Gurus draw unto themselves persons

specially fit for development under their influence. In the case of Anna Saheb

Dabolkar for instance, when he was pressed by his friend Sri H. S. Dixit to go

and meet Baba, his great difficulty was that he could not see the use of a

Guru. He thought that unless a Guru could save a boy from death, he was not fit

to be called a Guru. Such absurd notions get into the minds of persons who are

mostly the sort of persons that approach Gurus. Baba had to disabuse Dabolkar

of such faulty notions. He himself drew Dabolkar on and corrected his erroneous

notions. He enabled him to approach him through Chandorkar's pressure and by the

timely intervention of a Muslim friend who gave him proper directions for

reaching Shirdi. And when pursuing his own line of thought,

having reached Shirdi, was indulging in a hot debate with Bhate whether a Guru

was at all necessary and expressing strongly his opinion that a Guru was a

fetter on one's freedom. Baba got over the previous bent and the dire influence

of similar ideas working in Dabolkar's mind by a sudden revelation of his

knowledge of everything that passed far beyond his ken. He asked Dabolkar's

friends when Dabolkar first approached him. "What was this Hemadpant saying?"

knowing fully well what he had been saying. So Dixit answered, 'Baba, you know

it very well'. Baba was operating on the mind of Dabolkar by stunning him with

surprise at the wonderful and extraordinary powers of knowledge of all things

transpiring at various places far beyond his ken of neighbourhood. Dabolkar was

thus ready to receive Baba for the Guru, and Baba impressed Dabolkar also about

the need for a Guru by answering Dixit and some other friends who asked him

about that time as to the way. Baba said, 'The way (the way

upward) for spiritual amelioration is very hard to tread. There are bears and

tigers on the way.' Then Dixit asked, 'If there is a guide?' Baba then replied,

'If there is a guide, the bears and tigers move away'. Thus he impressed upon

Dabolkar that a Guru God was absolutely essential, and Dabolkar was drawn more

and more powerfully by Baba into a mood of surrender. Dabolkar became and

excellent devotee of Baba.The Dewan of a Native Stale (N. R. Sahastabuddhe)

wrote to Sri Dixit that when he tried hard to get various persons as Guru his

attempt was a failure and that he had given up his quest practically when

suddenly the real Guru Baba drew him to his feet. That is the way in which the

really great Guru operates. People are not always as lucky as Dabolkar and

Sahasrabuddhe. They do not find Guru drawing them to their feet. Then the

complaint is heard that there are no Gurus. But the truth is that there are

Gurus but the persons who wish to

become pupils are not yet competent to be pupils. Considerable humility and

dispassion must spring in the soul before one is competent to approach a great

Guru. The Guru in his level is like an Emperor and the sishya (pupil) that

approaches is in the position of (or more like) a beggar. But the beggar

fancies that he is as good as the Guru. The stoic idea of human equality and

the feeling 'Why should I stand in awe of such a thing as I myself?' spiring up

and make a man unfit to be a pupil. That is why, approaching a Guru when one is

really very young and has not yet developed ideas of haughtiness, self-respect,

etc , is the best.On this Guru Poornima Day, if any readers are really desirous

of getting a Guru for themselves and if they desire Sai Baba to be their Guru,

the advice or message to be given to them is that they must first fit

themselves to be sishyas or pupils of such a great Guru ‘Sai Baba’, The Guru

his nothing to gain by

yourgoing to him and you have to gain everything by approaching him. It is the

realisation of this cardinal fact that will give you proper humility, and the

approach should be with love, admiration, and veneration. Therefore one must

prepare one's mind by a proper study of works about Baba, and by personal

contact with really sincere devotees and acquire correct notions of Baba. There

are hundreds of persons who call themselves Sai bhaktas but hardly five per cent

amongst them realise that Sai Baba is a Samartha Sadguru, a teacher of the

highest sort armed with superhuman powers, acting purely out of beneficence

towards those approaching him. The famous lines,

'Scanta mahanto nivasanti santah Vasantavat Loka hitam charantah Tiraah svayam

bhima bhava Arnavam janah Abetuna Anyanapi tarayantah.'

mean, 'There are great souls in enjoyment of perfect peace, who are as

beneficent as the spring season showering blessings over vast masses in order

to make them happy and blessed. Though they have themselves crossed the

terrific ocean of samsaric life and though they receive no consideration for

their kindness, they ferry people across that ocean'. This is the description

given of great Guru in Vivekachudamani, and many a reader wonders where to find

these Gurus. If any of our readers should be in that mood, this message is

specially directed to them and announces to them the fact that Baba is at

present living, more living than many of the people who talk to them as Gurus

and whom they can approach in the flesh. That Baba is highly powerful and is

able to mould the mind and heart of all people that approach him and of all

others that it may be necessary to influence for the benefit of the pupil. That

Baba's assuming the position of a Guru is quite dissimilar to the position of so

many present day Acharyas who assume the position of a Guru but who can achieve

really very little for the benefit of the pupil. Baba on the other hand when he

assumes the position of a Guru undertake complete charge of all affairs of the

pupil who thereby becomes his 'Ankita' child. Baba looks after him with all

concern and kindness of a parent and with a thousand times the power of any

ordinary parent. Things which others find it impossible to do, Baba does on

behalf of his 'Ankita' child. This is the experience of hundreds or thousands

from the contact of Baba, long after his Mahasamadhi in 1918. The pages of Sai

journals like 'Sai Lila Masik' and 'Sai Sudha' abound with illustrations

proving the above fact. Therefore this message is given broadcast so that all

who care might develop proper humility and love and reverence towards Baba and

earnestly endeavour to approach him immediately. From this

moment forward try to establish contact with Baba, and by Baba's grace you may

succeed and secure for yourself a blessing which is far superior to other

blessings and which, in fact, amounts to the securing of every blessing that

you desire!Jai Sairam

Gathered by Anita Sakthi