From Moderator's Desk

[Ashok]

With no idea if something can be told in words the way it is felt or experienced, the freedom to express and convey through words is a gift which i will use.
Nothing can be taught before time and nothing can be learnt before time. But for the fruits to ripe someday, we all have to sow a seed sometime long before. We constantly sow all types of seeds which break into tiny plants and then bigger ones, some seeds are sown by choices while others are by chances. But it all in the end confirm so perfectly to the plan of that super power, or may be it is just my thinking.

We can watch and watch hours and days together and still the world will never fail to amaze and surprise us with all its happenings. In the process of understanding and knowing, i am not sure if i am becoming slave of my mind without giving heart a chance to experience and feel. Should we know the price of everything without really knowing the true worth of most of the things. Who decides my choices? Am I making fool of myself by making choices with all the limitations already in place. According to Sai, there is no free will. Everything happens according to the way it should happen. And the only freedom is the way i react to that, if that is so, does the way i react shape my future in any way? If yes then how are things pre-decided and how is there no free will. I might utter knowledge like a parrot, but it has to sink in me deep for it to take effect. Travelling is fun, getting lost is definitely not. How does one know if he is arriving or getting lost?

[Ashok]

Why is it easy to love humanity, but difficult to love your neighbour? Why are we so much afraid of facing ourselves? Why life is so much painful that we try to forget ourselves everytime in activities which keep our attention away from us? Are we becoming slave of pleasure centre in brain which craves for television, books, magazines, friends, social life, woman, man, wine, theatres, internet etc? Are we not trying to run away from ourselves? Why is it that when we face ourselves in certain silent moments, we are left with only pain and boredom. Where has the pleasure and joy supposed to reside in our heart gone?

Why is it that we need to be under the influence of some thoughts for some period of time (like being intoxicated by wine or drug) to act and behave in certain way? When people are in front of you Sai, they are epitome of kindness and the moment they board a bus or train leaving you, all goodness is left behind. Why cannot we realise you, SAI, in our everyday life? Why do we seek you in person and in your physical presence only?

I am just scared at the thought of you not being physically present in this earth anytime. Will we seek you only when we see you in photographs or idols? We need you in every moment of our life. Is all this a part of your plan? Will you every let me know, dear SAI?

[Ashok]

I was watching a video on youtube where a reporter was interviewing "Mata Amritanandamayi Ma" and during the course of interview, Amma said that world is spending so much of money trying to find if there is life on Mars and other planets, while the earth is teeming with life which is in trouble. There are poor and hungry people on this earth and we are trying to satisfy our intellectual thirst by searching for extra-terresterial life. Such a simple yet so profound statement. It can come from a person like Amma only. It made me silent and i kept on thinking about it.

Have we really thought of plight of people around us seriously enough to act on our feelings. Are we only trying to live for ourselves without worrying if there are so many people who are so much behind in this race and for them the utmost concern is not if our nation is doing good in sports or which party will be ruling in the centre. For them the concern is the next meal, forget about a balanced diet.

Let us resolve to do something for disadvantaged people. At least once in a month let us feed a decent meal to a poor family. We are so much devoted to Sai baba, so why not choose any thursday to do this. If you do not have a time to feed people but have the resources, let us work out a plan wherein we can pool in money and do whatever little we can do towards disadvantaged section of society.

[Ashok]

While I was doing engineering, i visited a church with one of my friends on a sunday. The pastor was very friendly and spoke to almost everybody there personally at the end of the mass.

He gave a small but very effective discourse after reading something from Bible. I do not remember the verses which were read, but i remember the explanation. He told a story of a person whose only way to earn money was showing his talent of tight rope-walking at a very high altitude. Beneath the rope would be a furious and overflowing river in a hilly region. However he would balance himself perfectly and go from one bank of the river to another and come back. One day after doing one round of his show, he returned the end of the river which had all the audience. He called upon the audience and asked for a volunteer who would accompany him during the tight rope walk. He said that he would carry the person on his back and there was nothing to fear. However no one turned up. It was simply too risky and dangerous. 

Just then from the crowd, one voice came up. A child who appeard no more than ten years old, said that he was ready to climb on his back. The artist carried the child on his back and walked from one end to another and returned back. All the people were speechless and shocked. It was such a dangerous act and they could not stop praising the the child for his courage.

One person from the crowd asked the child if he was afraid anytime. The child said, " No, why should I be? I climbed on the back of my father. That person is my father".

Just like that child, do you trust your "FATHER" - SAI so much? Are you afraid of living in this world with all the turbulences and all the lurking dangers. Why should you be afraid when you are clinging to your "FATHER" always.

SAI's the biggest assurance in this every changing world. Let us climb on HIS back and never get down as long as we are on the tight-rope.

[saivanamale]

OM SAIRAM

BABA's leelas are great

Thanks ASHOK ji, for sharing this, such a graet thought in a  very simple way understood.

Thanks
Vanamale

JAI JAI SAI

[Ashok]

One of the obstacles of believing is how do you tackle your own disbeliefs. Apart from this, how you handle all the negative talks which you may get to hear from people around you is a major function of your belief system.

Is Sai Baba the only way to reach God or realize ourselves? I do not know.

But I believe that there would be many ways and even Sai Baba has always said that people can stick to their respective religion/sect. However I am constantly questioned about my belief in Sathya Sai. Most of the times the conversation is too difficult on this topic as it is not easy to put in words your deepest experiences. 

I tell them about various miracles in people's lives, the way people’s lives take a completely positive turn once they embrace Sai and various references from other spiritual masters.

Someone cited all the negative information about Sathya Sai Baba on internet and said what if someday I discover the same thing personally. I said that that it would not affect me even little as I have complete trust in Him.

Sathya Sai has not let any miracle happen to me. Neither did I have any personal interview with Him. Sai in person is very little of what I perceive about Him.
But I feel Him constantly with me everytime and that is most important.

And does it matter if someday SAI appears to be completely different than what I think about Him. Is not the joy of traveling more than the joy arriving at destination? Mere act of loving is more enjoyable than the person whom we love. A mother loves its child immaterial of  child’s appearance or character. Similarly we all can lead more meaningful lives if we try to imbibe the principles outlined by Sai or any other spiritual master.

There is no need to waste our time in intellectual questions if Sathya Sai or Shirdi Sai are one or if Sathya Sai is a real avatar. Even if answers are obtained, are we going to change our lives. Probably not.

Intellectual pursuit will lead you to ask more questions and there would be no end to it. It is just not important to know who is "SATHYA SAI". It is more important to undersand how we can seize this opportunity to look at ourselves and find out real meaning of life. If someone is showing us the mirror, it does not matter who is showing the mirror.


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I will share a story told by Osho here:

Milarepa and the false teacher

The real thing is not a path. The real thing is the authenticity of the seeker. Let me emphasize this.

You can travel on any path. If you are sincere and authentic, you will reach the goal. Some paths may be hard, some may be easier, some may have greenery on both sides, some may be moving through deserts, some may have beautiful scenery around them, some may not have any scenery around them, that's another thing; but if you are sincere and honest and authentic and true, then each path leads to the goal.

So it simply can be reduced to one thing: that authenticity is the path. No matter what path you follow, if you are authentic, every path leads to the goal. And the opposite is also true: no matter what path you follow, if you are not authentic you will not reach anywhere. Your authenticity brings you back home, nothing else. All paths are secondary. The basic thing is to be authentic, to be true.

It is reported about one great mystic, Milarepa:

When he went to his master in Tibet he was so humble, so pure, so authentic, that other disciples became jealous of him. It was certain that he would be the successor. And of course there was politics, so they tried to kill him.

One day they said to him, "If you really believe in the master, can you jump from the hill? If you really believe, if the trust is there, then nothing, no harm, is going to happen." And Milarepa jumped without even hesitating for a single moment. They rushed down... because it was almost a three-thousand-foot deep valley. They went down to find his scattered bones--but he was sitting there in a lotus posture, very happy, tremendously happy. He opened his eyes and said, "You are right, trust protects."

They thought it must be some coincidence, so when a house was on fire one day they told him, "If you love your master and you trust, you can go in." He rushed in to save the woman and the child who were left inside. He rushed in, and the fire was so great that the other disciples were hoping that he would die--but when he came back out with the woman and child, he was not burned at all. And he became more and more radiant, because the trust....

One day they were going somewhere, they were to cross a river, and they told him, "You need not go in the boat. You have such great trust, you can walk on the river"--and he walked.

That was the first time the master saw him. He was not aware that Milarepa had been told to jump into the valley and told to go into the burning house. But that time he was there on the bank and he saw Milarepa walking on the water and he said, "What are you doing? It is impossible!"

And Milarepa said, "Not impossible at all! I am doing it by your power, sir."

Now the Master thought, "If my name and my power can do this to this ignorant, stupid man.... I have never tried it myself,"...so he tried. He drowned. Nothing has been heard about him after that.

[Ashok]

What is the natural state of us? If being alive was the most comfortable state of ours, we would always be happy every time. However, this is not the case.

After any organ transplantation in a human body, the human body always rejects the same and identifies it as a foreign object. The physicians have to suppress the immunity system of the body to accept a foreign organ. When we live in our circle of friends, we are always comfortable. Left stranded in a foreign land and foreign people can be scary experience for most of us. Birds always return to their nest at the end of the day and we return to our sweet homes at the end of a tiring day.

Why is it so that we always find peace when we are closer to our centre? Why is it so that even after reading a good book or watching a game of soccer or cricket or viewing a blockbuster we are left with emptiness? We try to fill our emptiness with toys when we are kids, we try to fill our emptiness with friends when we are adolescents, we feel lonely when we become adult and want to fill our emptiness with a lovely partner, after sometime we try to fill our lives with work and kids and so on. Why are we so empty that we want to fill ourselves with all these things? Why cannot we stay happy with ourselves? When we die, we die empty-handed signifying the inner emptiness.

Rejection in love, rebuke by parents and not being able to compete with peers lead people to take extreme steps in life and this definitely makes me wonder if those things are so much important in our lives. A peasant dreams of a saving of few thousand rupees and a businessperson always dreams of a saving of a million rupees and so on. Is there a real happiness contained in money? Does being the most beautiful face on this earth fill your heart with an everlasting content and happiness? If this were the case, all models and actors would have been the happiest persons in this earth.

The fact is that life itself is painful. The pain starts when we are born. We give immense pain to our mother. We develop a sense of ego as soon as we understand this world and from that point, our pain starts. Any unfulfilled need or desire becomes cause of our pain. If things do not go our way, we are sad and so on. We embrace pain in our lives when all what we were trying to achieve was happiness. In the process of attaining happiness, we end up gaining more pain. We never try to understand the reason behind unhappiness and as a result keep on accumulating more and more pain for ourselves.

Being alive in a body is the root cause of pain. The natural state of a soul cannot be the body. How can a free spirit be encased in a body for years and lives altogether. Why would an energy or consciousness like to be encased in an inert substance like body? A body puts so many limitations on what a spirit can achieve. However, body is also the means to achieve that freedom and this is the most interesting part of the entire story. The bondage will lead us to freedom.

When Ramana Maharishi always advised us to enquire “who am I”, the most fundamental question, it was for us to realize that behind the various masks, which we wear, we are something else. The fact that we come empty handed in this world and go empty handed signifies that nothing in the world really belongs to us. Otherwise, we would have carried our earned objects from one life to another. Therefore, where our real home where all things earned will be really ours. Where is that place where we will be perfectly happy and content? Do not you wish to break away from mundane life and visit a place where there will be no pain and only happiness? Do not you want to know that before you arrived in this world where were you and why did you come to this earth?

Why do we want to live in prison of body? We need to know who we are and where do we really belong to. Do not you think that we are more like contract laborers who keep doing work at different places and for different assignments in every life? Who is that “GUY” who is managing our affairs? Don’t you want to ask him to stop doing this with you? Is the only difference between him and you is that he is intelligent while you have not still discovered your intelligence?

And the moment we ask probing questions to ourselves we will lose identification with our body. In that moment when we will drop that knowledge and a new awareness will arise in us. This will not be a fact; it will be awareness and the awareness that will permeate every cell of our inert body.

We will never come to know our real nature by any external means, we will have to experience it ourselves and experience it in the most right manner. It is always wise to choose a guru who can guide us and if we are unable to find a guru, let us repose faith in the supreme God himself and what better than the supreme God being our guide.