Obstacles and Objections

[Guest guest]

Obstacles and Objections

By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

 

SEEK NAUGHT ELSE BUT GOD

 

" When you are right everything goes well. "

Seek your centre - the Divine

Who is the pivot of the worlds?

Know, all revolve round it

At His bidding and call,

Then you have freedom and joy,

True harmony and peace

All other quests are vain

 

" The objection to Sai worship did not come always from orthodox

sections. It came mostly from the inertia of human nature. People do

not wish to move out of ruts or sloughs into which they have fallen.

Sai bhakti is now a fact of very great religious importance to

millions of souls in this country and the SAI light is being carried

across the waters to illuminate distant corners of the earth. Sai

bhakti is a live force.

 

Some times persons ask these questions: -Do you ask us to give up our

Rama worship and Shiva worships? And if we have those worships, why

should we worship Sai? Why should you go on propagating Sai and not

Shiva or Rama?

 

In the first place, one has to give up all hope of satisfying such

curious objections because the objections arise not from reasoning

but from the underlying mentality or emotional factors.

 

The first question reminds us of the opt-quoted illustration of a

leading question - Have you left off beating your mother? Answer Yes

or no - there is a vicious assumption, which is patent in the

question about the mother. Nobody would object to people worshipping

Shiva or Rama. Sai Baba sent Appa Kulkarni to worship Mohiniraj i.e.,

Shiva at Nivas before appearing to answer in a court case. He sent

Shama to worship Goddess Vani on a hill and Megha to worship

Khandoba. He blamed Chandorkar for bypassing a Datta temple.

 

The second question is again a baseless assumption. Nobody asked

people to give up Shiva or Rama worship and take Sai as a substitute.

The question may be however referring to the fact that several

hereditary worshippers of Shiva or Rama or other Gods have taken

ardently to Sai worship which at the final stage drowns all other

worship in rt. Sai becomes finally the one God and so the same as the

other forms of God eg., Shiva, Rama etc., The worshippers find

enormous, unmistakable and clear benefit accruing to them from the

heartfelt Sai worship that they are going for, and above all they

felt the presence of Sai as an ever present guardian with them,

undertaking to safeguard and advance all their temporal and spiritual

interests and carrying out the undertaking by most miraculous or

remarkable means unavailable to such worshippers and undreamt of by

them till they came to Sai Baba.

 

Coming to the objection to any propaganda being done for Sai, the

short answers are this. The honey and flavor in the flower do

propaganda for the flower to attract bees and carry on the work of

more reproduction of the plant so that the earth may be replenished

and more fruits may be had. This is nature. Similarly the bhakta

after achieving so much of welfare desires in his heart of hearts to

share it with others, and therefore communicates his experience to

others so that the others may also have the same benefit following

the well-known principle – " When you get nice things to eat, do not

monopolize it, but share it with others. "

 

Ramanuja's Guru gave him a sacred 'mantra' for 'Moksha' consisting in

the utterance of the holy name of God and advised him not to reveal

it to others, but keep it a profound secret. What did Ramanuja do? He

got up on the temple tower and shouted the 'mantra', and later

said, " If I have committed a sin, let me go to hell. But if

the 'mantra', being heard by others, will save them, let all these

innumerable people who hear it get saved hereby. I am willing to be

damned to save all.

 

This is exactly the feeling of propagandists of Baba. Sai propaganda

is downright truth without the least tinge or taint of falsehood in

rt. The present Sai propaganda is unselfish and absolutely true.

 

• It was Thirukkoshti Nambi, who initiated Sri Ramanuja into

the ASHTAKSHARI - 'Om Namo Narayanaya' - the Moksha Sadhana.

 

(Source Shri Sai Padananda April 1998)