BABA'S PUZZLING PERSONALITY

[Guest guest]

BABA'S PUZZLING PERSONALITY

 

Baba's personality was always puzzling to those who made an effort to

understand him fully instead of being content with accepting one part

of him as Baba and ignoring rest. The latter is the widest course for

the majority and is ordinarily adopted by most of his devotees. But

the more intellectual and the more curious amongst those approaching

Baba make an effort to understand him and try to grasp as much of the

facets of his complete personality as is possible. There they meet

with apparent contradictions and mutual inconsistencies and they are

baffled. So much so that a Parsi doctor named Dr. Jal, told this

writer not to attempt to understand or write the life of Satpurushas.

He said it was simply impossible to understand them. Evidently in his

own case, he had tried and failed and was impressed by his own

failure so as to give the kindly advice to others not to waste their

mental efforts in trying to grasp a Satpurusha's personality. but if

we do not understand the whole personality, there is at least some

satisfaction that we have succeeded in understanding a good portion

of that personality. In point of fact when we talk of ourselves and

other personalities around us, we do not grasp the whole personality

either of ourselves or of others. We go on understanding more and

more of both and with a working knowledge of both get on in the

world. Similarly in respect of a Satpurusha's personality, we must

try to understand more and more, for it is our nature to desire more

and more of such knowledge and to get on better with deeper

knowledge. When a person is attempting to place before the public a

picture of the life and lilas of a great Purusha it is incumbent on

him to present all sides of the Divine Personality. The task is

difficult on account of the various apparent inconsistencies that are

bundled together in the personality, but all the same we shall

attempt it as we have already stated in an earlier portion of the

book.

 

Emerson has stated that the human and divine are not separate, but

rather various grades in one continuous series. When qualities arrive

at a certain stage and are of a certain sort, people declare, `This

is divine', for they are far above the average human. Whether the

superiority is in respect of power or of kindness or other qualities,

the words are uttered at once, `Those are divine qualities'. At

present we are not concerned with the intricacies of Christian

theology, and we are at liberty to take Jesus Christ as a human

person and point out the divine qualities in him. Tennyson wrote of

him in the opening lines of, In Memorium, `Thou seemest human and

divine', and many readers would certainly note the human feature of

Jesus Christ as beaming out of the gospel, touched not infrequently

with the divine features. Similarly those who came in contact with

Sai Baba have come in contact with his human peculiarities and the

divine peculiarities mixed up so very closely that the two seem to be

inseparable. So, Thou seemest human and divine, may be applied to Sai

Baba as well as to Jesus Christ. We may note in passing that this

combination, far from being an undesirable mixture, is a necessary

one. If some being existed with all divine perfections only, human

beings would not be able to approach or appreciate him. It is the

fact that this satpurusha has his human body, human touches and human

limitations that makes us feel that he is also a human being, and we

draw inferences about his inner nature from knowledge of our own

nature and that of our fellow beings; we have the confidence that we

have understood the nature and qualities of Satpurusha to some extent

at least, therefore, we are emboldened in approaching and dealing

with such a Satpurusha. Unless there were such human features and

limitations, this personality would be of no use to us. That is why,

avatars are described in the Hindu scriptures as promoting human

welfare. They combine human and divine features. Especially in the

case of Sri Rama, the seventh Avatar, the human features come out

constantly, and yet are supported by the divine features so as to

enable the Rama personality to be of great service to us, spiritual

and temporal. Rama dhyana, Rama smarana and Rama Lila, in general are

found to be very useful for spiritual and temporal purposes alike on

account of the human element in Rama. Similarly in Sai Baba, who is

often termed Sai Rama, partly because Ram Navami was chosen by Baba

to be the day for his Urs to be celebrated at Shirdi and partly

because he showed himself as Rama. His human elements and divine

elements are both mixed up so finely as to help us to understand him

and approach him.

 

(Courtesy: HH Pujyasri B.V. Narasimha Swamiji)