DIVINE GIFT - DAS GANU’S SPECIAL CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND

[Guest guest]

DIVINE GRACE – DAS GANU’S SPECIAL CAPACITY TO UNDERSTAND

We shall mention, however, a few facts showing how Sai Baba favoured Das Ganu in

addition to relieving him of the two great hampering curses upon him, namely,

the dance mania and the Fouzdar mania. Baba gave him a special capacity to

understand things which others could not ordinarily understand. Baba gave him

special hints on special occasions. We shall instance two of these below.

Das Ganu Maharaj wished to write a Maharatti commentary upon Amritanubhava, a

famous Maharatti religious treatise, and that was considered to be impossible.

A pandit told him that he could possibly catch all the meaning of Jnana Dev,

the author, and express it in his work. Das Ganu went to Baba, prayed for and

immediately got his blessing. Then, he began to write his explanations of the

riddles, seeming contradictions and apparently meaningless dicta of

Amritanubhava. He found the heart of author and brought it out by a number of

illustrations. The illustrations he mostly drew from Baba’s talk, which

he heard at Shirdi. So, he succeeded in presenting Amirtanubhava in such a way

as to satisfy even keen critics; and the pandit who first considered it

impossible was satisfied that Das Ganu’s work was a success.

Next Das Ganu was anxious to render even a Sanskrit Upanishad, namely, Isavasya

Upanishad, into Mahratti. This famous Upanishad consists of only 18 verses. It

is full of great thoughts and has been considered by Mahatma Gandhi to be

peculiarly important. Mahatma Gandhi said that if the whole of Hindu spiritual

literature were gone leaving only this Isa Upanishad, the whole of Hindu Dharma

could be reconstructed with this alone.

Though the Upanishad has received such high encomia, it is a very difficult and

tough Upanishad even for separation of sentences and phrases in it, and much

more for the interpretation of the same. Different writers have adopted widely

different course, taking even the very first verse, the punctuation varies:

Having so many difficulties in the way of his ambition, Das Ganu Maharaj went

to Baba. Baba said, ‘What difficulty is there in this? You had better go,

as usual, to Kaka Dixit’s bungalow in Ville Parle and there that (cooly

girl) Malkarni, will give you the meaning.’ People would laugh at a great

pandit like Das Ganu getting interpretation of an Upanishad from a cooly girl.

But all the same Das Ganu went to Kaka’s bungalow. He slept there. When

he woke up in the morning, he heard a girl (it must be the Malkarni mentioned

by Baba, he thought) singing songs in great joy. She was praising some orange

coloured silk sari, wondering at its fineness and thus beauty of its border,

and the floral embroidery on it. Then he just peeped to see who the songster

was. The songster had no sari, She wore a rag, which was not silk, nor orange

coloured, had no borders and no embroidery. He pitied the girl and got a friend

to give her a sari – a small cheap sari. She wore it just one day, and

went about enjoying it. But the very following day, she cast it aside, again

wore her tatters and again began to sing joyously the song about the orange

coloured sari and its beauty.

Then Das Ganu understood the Upanishad. He found out that the girls happiness

lay not in the external sari which she had ‘thrown away’ (tena tyak

tena which means, that being thrown away) but in herself. And Isavasya Upanishad

says the same thing. "All this world", says the first verse, is covered by the

Maya of Iswara. So enjoy bliss, not by having the externals, but by rejecting

the externals. (Tenat yaktena)’, ‘Tena Tyaktena’ might mean

being content with what God gives you. The girl was happy, as she was

contented. Thus Baba taught Isa Upanishad to Ganu through a cooly girl.

Baba’s ways of teaching were and are peculiar and different in the case

of different individuals.

Courtesy: HH Pujyasri B. V. Narasimha Swamiji

(Vasuki Mahal Shri Shirdi Sai Baba Trust, Coimbatore-641025, India)