We are all child like in front of Baba. No matter how old we get, no matter how long we have known him and worshipped him, we are all child like towards him and we treat him like our guru, our friend and our divine mother. We can talk to him without any reverence and in the ways we converse with our mother. We complain to him, We cry in front of him and we can even gently remorse him when things don’t go our way. Who said that we need to only thank him for all the good things? In a true sense of doership, if he is responsible for everything, isn’t he responsible for all our sufferings and trials too?
That said, at times, I’m nervous. While we can try to restrain our ego and feel close to him, at the end of the day, our lives being intertwined with him are not due to our efforts but due to his blessings. In Sai Satcharitra, Damu anna asked about, whether all those who come to visit him benefit from his teachings? Baba said NO. He used a metaphor of a fully blossomed mango tree and whether all those flowers would become into fruits. He said that many of those would fall before ripening or fruition and only a few would survive. Being of ill temparement and distrust, how could I survive to have my devotion come to fruition? By mother’s blessings, our association has been for a while, almost more than three decades, but I do wonder how many of them were spent in his service and how many of them were spent in pestering him to fulfill my desires?
Baba’s standards for being a disciple are listed in multiple stories across Sai Satcharitra. Baba himself amply demonstrates being a good discipline adhering to rigorous standards and that makes you question on what his expectations could be for you. In the earlier chapters, Baba was a steadfast disciple to Johar Ali, a fake guru and despite knowing that, Baba never questioned him and followed his orders devotedly. In later chapters, we get to know of how Baba surrendered to his Guru, who came in the form of a tribal person and was held upside down in a well tied to a rope. Even though Satcharitra tells us that this story is a metaphor for Samadhi state, Baba demonstrated through his work about never questioning the guru and following his orders. I can tell easily a million instances where I cribbed and questioned baba even for the slightest discomfort.
Baba definitely seems to test his devotees occasionally to test their worthiness. As he did so, in the case of H.S. Dixit, Shama and Bade baba. In this story, hemadpant talks about three kinds of devotees: 1) The best kind, who anticipate the needs and wishes of their guru and act accordingly. 2) The average kind, who listen to the wishes and needs of their guru and act and then 3) The unfortunate kind, who despite hearing Guru’s wishes multiple times do not act and even if they do act in a substandard fashion with ample mistakes and failings. No surprises there, on where I would fall in that group.
Still, all is not lost, as so it seems. The words of Baba about stepping into Dwarakamai once and Baba being there forever offers me hope. As humans, the sense of doership and vanity are very strong and to dissipate them, we need the blessings of the Guru. Many a times, we don’t even have the wisdom to acknowledge that we are not the doers and the things that we have are due to your guru and God. Luckily, this problem has been not so great in my life, thanks to his leela’s where I’m constantly shown my place and in doing so, I see my own fraility and also get to acknowledge the superiority and the magnanamity of my Guru in bestowing those upon me.
Omsairam!
