Sathyam Sivam Sundaram - Part I (Sl# 35)

May 10, 2006

SaiRam

Sai Baba Again (Continued..)

While the cars of Sai Baba's party were traversing the streets of Trichinopoly, one of the vehicles accidentally ran over a little boy; he was badly injured. A crowd quickly gathered around him. He was carried to a house nearby and lay bleeding and hurt on the porch. The police came to investigate, but meanwhile Sai Baba had come and touched the boy. They had nothing to report, for the boy who had been hurt was now running about telling everyone how one touch from Sai Baba had made him whole. Long after Baba left, that boy was fondled and fed by an admiring crowd which was amazed at his miraculous experience.

There was another boy who was similarly honored by an admiring crowd and who perhaps even today is thankful for the intervention of the Lord. At a public meeting near Trichinopoly, held to honor Sai Baba, someone doubted His Divinity. Sensing this from the platform, Sai Baba immediately called up a deaf and dumb lad who was standing near the aforesaid person; making him stand in front of the microphone, He asked him, "What is your name?" Immediately the boy spoke into the microphone for all the thousands to hear, "Venkatanarayanan!" The doubter kept silent and hung his head in shame. There was another consequence. Baba often speaks of this incident with laughter. When morning dawned, the entire length of the street where He was residing was packed with deaf and dumb! It had become a silent lane of pain! No one knew until then that Trichinopoly had such a large number of people with that unfortunate malady. Sai Baba moved out of the bungalow to avoid the clamor

of the relatives seeking more miraculous healings.

The devotees at Karur and Trichinopoly vied with each other in decorating their houses and streets and in the magnificence of reception arrangements. But Sai Baba was unaffected by all the pageantry. He moved freely among the people, both rich and poor, sometimes more among the poor than among His hosts. He cared more for the prayerful heart and the heart filled with remorse than those puffed with pride and contaminated by greed. The mantapams, the many pillared open halls built for festive occasions, which were erected for seating Him and offering worship to Him, were gems of artistry, bedecked with flowers of variegated hues. Sai Baba told the people countless times that He attached value only to the unsullied blossom of a pure heart and the fruit offerings of good deeds.

Once at Mysore, seated on one such floral bedecked mantapam, Sai Baba was receiving the adoration and homage of a family of devotees when a cobra appeared from nowhere and crept onto the heap of flowers at His Feet. Shortly it was accompanied by another cobra. Baba assured the family that there was nothing to be afraid of, and after a while, the cobras disappeared into the "nowhere" from whence they had mysteriously emerged.

Sai Baba is not content merely to instill faith in His devotees through these miracles. He is a hard taskmaster who is satisfied with nothing less than absolute integrity and a sincere striving for spiritual discipline. This explains why, of the very large number of men and women who are drawn to Him by the stories of His miracles and who even get their first impressions of His Divinity confirmed by many subsequent miracles, some fall away from Him, unable to cope with the demands He makes in character reform, renunciation, spiritual practice, repeating the Name of God in prayer, and in meditation on the Form. Baba reiterated even in those early days that He wards off physical calamities, cures bodily ills, heals, consoles, and gives solace, only as a first step towards spiritual practice which must automatically follow the experience of His Presence. Many monks and ascetics have fallen into the mire because of their anxiety to keep themselves in the good books

of rich and influential patrons. But Baba, who has come to illumine the paths of holy men and great seers, has never minced words when He has had to correct the faults of those around Him. His Grace is so overpowering that it disregards the obstacles of age, scholarship, or length of association. He blesses everyone with His correctness and evaluation. Complete resignation to His Divine Will alone can make each one full and free.

(Sai Baba Again To be continued..)

SaiRam