Satsang Is Sai Baba a Breaker or Builder? By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

Satsang Is Sai Baba a Breaker or Builder? By Sri Narasimha Swamiji

If one had no other pre-existing loyalties and came to Baba to treat him as
one's Guru-God and his name as the sacred guru mantra, Baba allowed and even
encouraged it. To such people, Baba even touched his own pictures and
presented or returned the same for worship, and assured people that he
resided in the picture thus worshipped, and even gave proofs of such
residence. Baba, however, never gave any picture or other object to Moslems
or Christians that had a strong aversion to the worship of objects. Baba
never disturbed the faith of people in their own scriptures.

Building or creation is a complex process, and involves the replacing of old
forms by new ones. Though the old order change giving place to the new, in
god's plan, several people stick to their old forms and these are called
superstitions. But instead of applying opprobrious epithets to these, it is
better to allay their fears by demonstrating that apparent destruction by
God of the old is an indispensable part of His constructive work and that
really destruction is construction in such cases. When in the march of
evolution, the single cell bursts into two, the death of the old is the
birth of the new. Even where highly complex organisms with sex
characteristics differentiated, the older must wear out and die before the
younger are born and developed.

The old dilapidated temple however sacred must be pulled down before the new
beautiful temple is built on the same site. Similarly, though Baba assures
people of his respect for old forms, old gods and gurus, what happens often
is that a new strong, vigorous, charming and fruitful faith in Sai Baba
replaces the old decadent profession of faith in one's older gods and gurus.
But do those enjoying the new faith deplore the loss of the old or even
declare that they have lost anything? In fact, they have lost nothing
really. What has been given up was not any living faith. People should not
give up their living and fruitful faith in Rama, Krishna, etc. and in their
gurus. They never do give up such faith.

A more recent instance occurring at Kumbakonam may be repeated. A staunch
Vaishnavite Brahmin was worshipping God as Tirupati Venkatesa and refused to
pay any regard to any other form. He was ailing from very acute and painful
Sciatica and Rheumatism. His son-in-law gave him Baba's udhi and asked him
to repeat Sai Baba's name with faith. At first, he resisted this attempt to
subvert his faith in Venkatesa, as he termed it. But necessity is the mother
of faith.

One night, when the pain in his body could not be endured any further, he
suddenly took Baba's udhi and applied it to his legs thrice, calling on Sai
Baba to remove his pain. The effect was instantaneous. The pain was off.
Sleep that he could never obtain instantly supervened. He woke up in the
morning freed from sciatica and was able to walk. He first thought that
Venkatesa had led him into faith in Baba. He finally discovered that Baba
was Venkatesa. Baba's Guru being Venkatesa, or one that had merged his self
in Venkatesa. In fact, there is only one God, however necessary it may be to
start one's faith in God by localizing God and attaching a particular form
and name to Him.

Sai enables men ultimately to see that the fruit of former faith is the
present faith, that Sai is no other than the Old Ishta Devata and guru and
that the unifying and harmonizing influence molding their lives and selves
points and leads to that ultimate unity-Sai-chit-Ananda. Such experience has
come to several. Reader, if it has not come to you yet, you also may get it
one day. It is your own God who draws you through the Sai form.

Freedom
The truly blessed are those who, flinging freedom aside, have clung to Thy
Lotus-feet;
In pain is their gain;
In defeat is their joy;
In sorrow is their dawn of awakening;
In suffering is their victory!
And to those that smite them, they give their smiles!
And to those that persecute them they send out the benedictions of their
love-filled hearts!
They are the truly free! They have broken all fetters-Aye, even the fetter
of freedom!

http://www.saileelas.org/magazines/saipadananda/april1999.htm#IsSaiBabaaBrea
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