Siththan.com » SHRIDI SAIBABA

8.1 – Guru worship

A.N.JAYACHANDHIRAN — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:53:29 +0000

Sri Sai Baba’s beneficent work seen now is exercised through various means; Sai worship is one of the most important one. Guru worship is an important feature of the Sai movement. To understand Sai Baba’s life, Guru sishya relations and nature have to be studied. Sai Baba’s life and leelas explains the full significance and value of Guru marga.

Great Saints like Sai Baba, by their grace, achieve perfection to impart to others. Sri Sai Baba’s ability to conceal his real nature and the working of his mind and body obviously in pursuance of the directions of Sastras and Gurus. The saint must be too difficult to understand and undiscerned; move about like a dullard, idiot. Saibaba’s acting as a Sadguru and a Samartha Sadguru was unknown to the thousands that met him in life or heard of him thereafter. Only by revelation of devotee’s experiences that people now mostly realize that he was Samartha SadGuru and had various grades of devotees and deciples.

His biography is the practical illustration of what Guru and Sishya mean and of the principles that govern their conduct and mutual relation. The marga that Baba followed has puzzled many. Many asked and ask now whether he was a Yogi or a Jnani or a Bhakta or followed any marga of his own. Several thought and think that Baba cannot be classified under any of the divisions applying to saints and sadhus. As a result of study, aided by His own grace, one sees at last that he was an expert of all the margas, though his chief marga, was Bhakti Marga. Bhakthi Marga is described as Guru Marga. By following Bhakthi Marga and by worshipping Guru one can attain Jnana and siddhis including yoga siddhis.

Guru worship: Definition:

Guru may be defined as one who imparts information or gives training to anther. Any schoolteacher or moral teacher or the one who teaches the way to salvation or mukti or even teaches mantras for various religious or secular purposes, high, or low, can be called a Guru.

7.4.3 – HOW CAN POLYTHEISM AND MONOTHEISM BE RECONCILED?

A.N.JAYACHANDHIRAN — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 04:20:59 +0000

To enabling the Jiva to get laya in bliss, Baba similarly expressed his approval of use of music. Baba himself in his early days used to dance with tinklets tied to his feet singing rapturously songs of Kabir, some of which undoubtedly referred to the beauty and blissfulness of infinite God. Like Thyagaraja Swamikal, Baba must have enjoyed musical laya. Thyagaraja Swamikal asked,”Is it possible for a man whose mind does not melt with music and merge with laya. Is there any other way to obtain laya and to reach God?” Baba told Rangari that on the night previous to his coming, there was bhajan and music, and all night he was in rapture. Baba said ‘They abused me’.

Most Hindus revelled in meditating on the details of God forms attained laya or mystic absoption. Thyagaraja did the same with the aid of music. Sufi and Christian adorers of God without form also succeed often in merging their selves in rapt communion with God. Both these groups of mystics show that concentration in the end gives the longed for bliss of God and is the way to reconcile all religious differences. Baba as the pastmaster of mystic bliss and lord of siddhis or psychic powers flowing from mystic concentration helped on the reconciliation of these apparently conflicting faiths of Polytheism and Montheism.

7.4.2 – HOW CAN POLYTHEISM AND MONOTHEISM BE RECONCILED?

A.N.JAYACHANDHIRAN — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:29:12 +0000

But apart from verbal differences, taking essence into consideration, if God is bliss and man is only a spark from God, the spark, after much sadhana, gets reabsorbed in the original flame from which it came. Then, the process of approach, absorption and getting back may be called worship. But merging permanently with the original flame or bliss or love, is called worship.
Worship is usually described as a Sadhana or means. The end of it is reaching God. Persons of all grades of spiritual development were flocking to Baba’s feet, and a very large number of them were incapable of any rhytham or Laya or merger in God. But a few occasionally touched that Laya. In the morning, when the dew was falling, Once Balwant Khaparde and Bhisma went out and the Sun was just rising. The Sun’s rays hit them and threw their shadows behind them. Their shadows began with their feet and continued right on to the distant horizon, and at the horizon there did the piercing of the dew by the Sun’s rays cause a rainbow. Thus the long shadow of each of them was crowned with a halo of the seven-coloured rainbow. This made them marvelous. From each one, who is finite, goes out an infinite shadow, which at the other end is crowned with divine glory! This was by the rays of the Sun who sends his rays upon all. The Sun is typical of god. The halo of glory cast round the head of the shadows was also typical of Godhead, and so each one had a feeling that he himself was identical with that elongated shadow which had a crown on its head. Therefore each one dimly sensed his divinity. The finite body and its infinite and glorious shadow were really one. The Sun showed the oneness. That was the mystic meaning to be attached to their morning experience of the Sun, the dew, and their shadows. They communicated their experience to G.S.Khaparde who said that Baba had kindly given them a mystic experience of Atmananda. Keeping this in their minds, they went to see Baba. Baba gave them a smile of approval and said nothing. One would take it that Baba set his seal of approval on their interpretation of this natural phenomenon of having long shadows of themselves crowned with divine glory, and considering the same as typical or significant of their being in essence divinity, something infinite, blissful, and beautiful, and that their Jivas must be recognized by each one of them as being the Paramatma, that is, Divine, as was demonstrated by their blissful laya absorption for a moment.

7.4.1 – HOW CAN POLYTHEISM AND MONOTHEISM BE RECONCILED?

A.N.JAYACHANDHIRAN — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:06:56 +0000

This question rises in the minds of most of the people. Monotheism and polytheism reflect different levels of thought and action and that the two are poles apart. In one sense that is true. Yet it is also the recognized truth in the lives of great souls and in the history of nations that the two co-exist and are reconcilable in Mysticism. This is well illustrated in Hinduism.

Is God really one or many? In the case of the one God, is worship necessarily external and formal or might it be equally advantageous, if not more advantageous, without external formalities? The realization of pure Sat Chit Ananda is worship? If it can be termed worship, then probably the term worship must have an extended significance, which ordinarily it does not have. When a person is simply enjoying Satchitananda he is generally referred to as in a blissful state, and he might even express his own condition by the words Main Allah Hum, I am God, Aham Brahmasmi, Soham, that is, if the individual soul has so completely surrendered itself to and got identified with the Paramatman, then there may be no such thing as relation of one soul to another. Worship is usually understood as the attitude of one soul, a Jiva, towards God, viewed not as identical with it, but as in some way different from it, though the Godhead might include the Jiva. One might worship a God, which includes oneself because it includes others also, and is thus different from one. If worship must necessarily bring about differences between the worshipper and the worshipped, it is not correct then to say that the merger of the individual soul in the Paramatman is an act of worship. It may be the ultimate end of worship. There is Atma Nivedana worship ends. But ordinarily no one would think loss of identity is worship. As in the pages of Wordsworth, we come across passages where the soul is lost in admiration of the beauty, the infinite character and the glories of Nature treating them as expression of love and joy arising on God’s Visitation. That is described sometimes as an act of worship as loss of self is only temporary. Even the person who worships a God-form is lost in it for a time and then comes back to himself and treats that from as different from him. A mystic has various stages, one stage of which is losing himself in Nature or in a God-form other than Nature. Thus Nature and he are two different objects, and that is how the term worship may be applied to such cases.

7.3 – Unification and Purification of Hinduism

A.N.JAYACHANDHIRAN — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:33:46 +0000

For example,Siva is the essence or heart of Vishnu and Vishnu is the heart or essence of Siva. It is a faith that any one who makes the slightest difference between the two goes to Hell. There are many similar authorities. But why go to authorities? Does any one think that God, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, who is responsible for the creation, maintenance and dissolution of the universe can be many? If there are many, the universe will be chaos, not a cosmos. The above are functions or aspects of one and the same God. Baba always impressed this silently on all the people. We have the opposite ideal deeply ingrained in us. We are bodies, we think. So we think Siva, Vishnu and Brahma are embodied beings, murthis with eyes, legs, nose and crown. It is absolutely essential for the seeker after salvation to discard these and consequent differences. So Baba stressed unity just as even Srimad Bhagavata stresses unity. The Vedas on which all schools rely seem to support the idea of multiplicity of Gods and in fact multiplicity of objects in the universe.
The Vedas affirm the existence of duality and that duality is but an illusion. Refuting that duality at the end, the Vedas are satisfied. Baba did not stop with stating the principles on which all could be brought to a common basis. He went further and worked out the actual unity of the groups by brining men from different groups and making them all form one solid block of Sai devotees under his own care. Those who came to him saw in him their only God, recognized him as their Guru deva.
They had that highest religious sentiment. There was no possibility of their tearing themselves off into divisions, though their original loyalties were maintained in other respects. Baba hated intolerance and made people tolerate each other’s views and peculiarities. He did not allow Hindus under him to fight against Muslim devotees. He removed disparities and made them work in unison as fellow devotees, as brothers in Sai faith.

Thus, he worked out not merely the unification of Hinduism but also the unification of Hinduism with the other great religion in India, namely, Islam. When the essentials of Sufism are put forward, it is difficult to say whether those essentials do not constitute real worship according to the Bhagavata doctrine as well as esoteric Christian doctrine. Sai Baba is both a perfect Sufi and a Parama Bhagavata following the Bhagavata or Parama Guru of the Guru Gita embodied in Skanda Purana. The one thing that religions must agree upon is that God, the Supreme Power, is SAT CHIT ANANDA; the highest bliss that man can know is represented to be GOD, and GOD is, therefore, the ultimate goal of all religious striving, and every effort should be made by every sincere and honest seeker of truth to realize this real Sat Chit Ananda as the basis of the Universe and the basis of his own personality. All personalities will, therefore, finally merge in the one grand personality, Paramatama, that is God, which is Love. This is the essence of Baba’s teaching and practice and is well fitted to be the basis of unification of all faiths in India and in the world.