Satsang Mahasamadhi Message

(Message delivered by Pujya Narasimha Swami ji and printed
in Sai Sudha Magazine)

Are these births and deaths, if we may term them so, matters
for exultation and weeping? If they are not, then there is no
greater reason for one's taking seriously to heart the appearance
of Baba on earth and disappearance there from. Baba himself
gave his Bhaktas the strong faith that his actual death was
really no death.

Mrs. M. W. Pradhan at the time of Baba's passing away had a
dream in which she saw Baba passing away, and she said
"Hello, Baba is dead." Baba at once corrected her in the dream
and said that saints are not dying. The term to use in their case
is that they attain Samadhi. Saints never die. Several devotees
were frightened at the idea of Baba leaving them to themselves
by leaving his body. Baba told one of them, a Bombay lady,
"Mother I do not die. Wherever you are, if you think of me, l am
there at any time you please (whether I am in the body or out
of it), and Damodar Rasane was given the same assurance.

The latter informed B. V. N Swami that after Mahasamadhi of
1918, Sri Rasane saw physical, living and moving body of Sai
Baba with his own (Rasane's) eyes any number of times and
talked and moved with that body. If this is not proof of Baba's
survival, it is difficult to conceive what can be termed proof. It
is not only persons like Rasane who had physically met Baba
before 1918 that have seen and moved with Baba's figure, but
also persons born long afterwards.

Infants in Madras have seen Baba and had udhi smeared on
their foreheads to cure them of their fever. An elderly Vaishya
lady at Madras who heard of him only recently sees him
frequently. These are only a few out of many which prove that
Baba is not dead. Alt this argument is necessary only in the
case of those who are not perfectly convinced that life survives
beyond the process termed death, that life is ever life and
never extinguished, i.e., in other terms that souls do never die.

Long ages back in Sanath Sujathiya, Sanathkumar said that
there is no such thing as death i.e., extinction of the living jiva.
This ancient truth as generally been disregarded by people,
and that is why vast masses are dreading the approach of
death for themselves or for those that they love. The life of
ordinary human beings is so little understood that this has
always been a very important question amongst the thinkers
and philosophers.
In the Brahadaranyaka Upanishad, Yagnavalkya invited
questions and undertook to answer all of them. One question
put to him by Artbabhaga was "What becomes of the soul
when death overtakes the body? Yagnavalkya instead of
answering it openly took him aside for a secret talk and then
told him that this was a matter very ill-understood and was
therefore a matter for secrecy. Re added that souls passed
beyond the physical life and good souls were rewarded for
their good deeds and wicked souls were punished for their
wickedness in their after life.

Similarly at the time of Katopanishad, embodying the
Nachiketas traditions, Nachiketas went to Yama and
received from him the right to ask for 3 boons. The highest
and most important boon that h« asked for was that Yama
(God of death) should reveal to him what was beyond death
i.e., in effect, the nature of the procees called death or
extinction—whether it extinguished life or whether life
survived beyond the grave and if so, in what form? Yama
requested Nachiketas not to press this question as even
gods had no clear information on the subject and as it was
a very intricate and mysterious one. Nachiketas insisted on
reply being given by Yama. Yama declared then that he had
only tested the earnestness of the pupil Nachiketas; Finding
him sufficiently earnest and deserving of a reply, Yama informed
him that the question was tantamount to the other great problem,
namely, whether all phenomena which appear and reappear are
permanent or whether they were transient and if so, whether they
left any reality behind or beyond them. In the second place the
question, he added, may be treated as a question relating to the
phenomenon of bodily death and wanting information as to the
state or phenomenon pertaining to the soul after experiencing
death. He answered both the aspects are parts of the question.
In the first place he said that all phenomena are fleeting and that
death (meaning change) inevitably overtakes everything that
appears or comes to life, and that the only thing that does not
die and is perpetual is Brahman which is present in the hearts of
persons as in all the phenomena experienced outside the persons.
He then answered the meaning of the phenomenon, death i.e.,
what we ordinarily call death. He said souls after their experience
of death pass on to other states where they receive good as their
reward for good deeds and punishment for their evil deeds, the
punishment necessitating their taking up lower forms as beasts
and reptiles.