……“Devotees speak volumes about their masters

[Guest guest]

……“Devotees speak volumes about their masters. They

speak on the Master’s glory, personality, activities,

miracles, their personal experiences, and of other

devotees and group activities etc. Particularly, when

it comes to Shri Sainath Maharaj devotees speak more

about dreams with relation to Him, their own

experience, which they call miracles and on their

emotive interaction with Baba. In short, they

experience Him as a Personal God, who can be a Sadguru

or a deity. Some of them worship a number of Personal

Gods at the same time and therefore, find it difficult

to focus on one. In any case the One Ultimate has to

be beyond all the Personal Gods. A Personal God, by

whatever name, is called Saguna (with certain

qualities and powers) Sakara (a form which a human

mind can ordinarily comprehend). A finer understanding

of God is Nirguna (beyond such limited qualities and

powers), Nirakara (beyond specific forms). Nirguna

Nirakara - this means seeing or experiencing the

essence of God or that Ultimate reality or Brahma in

all its creations, i.e., in the devotee himself and in

the entire manifested and non-manifested creation

around him.

 

By this logic all statues or paintings, structures

(like Samadhis), names, Aartis, Mantras, Charan

Padukas, etc. are symbols of God and certainly not

God, the Ultimate. Such symbols are generally

worshipped and contemplated on, as it is easy for the

limited human mind to comprehend them. The question is

whether the human mind should necessarily be limited,

or a path should be chosen to keep it limited. If any

path or any religion prescribes such an approach, it

itself is limited. Hinduism prescribes certain methods

by which a devotee can graduate from Sakara (limited

form of) worship to Nirakara (form-less) worship.

Religion means both ritualism and spiritualism. Unless

one transcends ritualism, it is difficult to enter

into the arena of spiritualism in the true sense of

the term.

Spiritualism means to follow the true diktats of the

spirit within. Generally speaking, ‘the spirit within’

means the soul, which is a part of that God, the

Ultimate who encompasses both the seen and unseen, the

living and non-living aspects of nature and from the

smallest particles to biggest stars. Spiritualism,

therefore, has necessarily to expand the spirit of the

soul from its limited body-bounden awareness to a vast

cosmic awareness. If sheer ritualism like Puja,

Archana, Yagyans does not uplift the spirit of the

individual or expand his mental horizon, it certainly

is not spiritualism.

 

Generally, it is due to the lack of understanding of

what real spiritualism means that most of the devotees

spend their whole life doing certain rituals without

progressing. From multiple forms of God to a single

form God to a formless state of God is the real

prescription for spiritualism. Multiple form worships

(i.e. of deities etc.) do not give focus on a

particular form. Since these various symbolic

representations of different aspects of nature go with

various functions and powers, a person worshipping

these forms gets scared to stop such worship even when

he understands that he has to graduate to a formless

state of worship. For example, Shri Ganapati is for

the removal of obstructions, Shri Durga is for

protection against enemies or Shri Laxmi is for

prosperity or Shri Hanumana for courage, etc. No doubt

that all the four deities are manifestations of the

Ultimate One but then on whom does the devotee

concentrate? Where then is the question of what is

called “Ekagra Chitta” as a sine-qua-non for subtle

experience of God. In such a situation one has to

choose one of the two ways. Either to worship the

Ultimate One (Nirguna Nirakara) going beyond the

worship of these deities or to evolve through these

limited forms to the Ultimate reality through Gyana

Marga (Path of Knowledge). All spiritual practitioners

in all ages, of whichever religion, have gone through

this process of leaving the forms and contemplating on

the formless state of God or in experiencing the

formless state of God through the forms. The Perfect

Masters or Sadgurus always taught the same method to

their disciples at a certain stage of evolution. Those

who followed them and tried to experience the

impersonal aspects of God evolved faster than those

that stuck on to the Personal aspect of God only. Thus

Baba has clearly stated in Shri Sai Satcharitra that

the best way of worship is to experience Him as a

Formless, Universal existence. If not, to worship Him

with a form. Therefore, the devotee of Baba while

worshipping Him with a form, should always try to

experience Him as the formless. But then, the big

question is how to be focused and be in a state of

“Ekagra Chitta” when too many forms are contemplated

on at the same time. Is not the form of the Sadguru

enough!”…….

 

 

 

 

 

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