Obstacles and Objections

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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)