Between You and Us

Dear Readers,
The 2nd of July is the sacred festival of Guru Purnima. The spiritual calendar at Prasanthi Nilayam starts with Guru Purnima every year and it is the most important event after Swami’s Birthday celebrations. Why does Swami give such importance to this festival? Let us go back to the 1940s, when Swami declared His Avatarhood, to get a clue to the answer. On that occasion, Swami sang,

Manasa Bhajare Guru Charanam, Dusthara Bhava saagara tharanam

Worship the feet of the Guru and cross the ocean of Birth and Death !

Swami has always emphasized that implicit Faith in one’s Guru is the quickest and surest way to Self realisation. He often quotes the story of King Janaka of ancient India who obtained self realisation in a split second because of his complete and total surrender to his Guru, Ashtavakra. Even in the recent times, there is the example of a renowned saint in India, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897-1981) who exemplified the power of implicit faith in the Guru. When asked how he attained the Knowledge of the atman, the saint said
“My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it and remain with the sense 'I am'. It may look too simple, even crude. My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it worked!”

Today, we have the good fortune of Swami, whom we all revere as the Avatar, teaching us day in and day out
“You are not the body. You are not the ephemeral ego. You are Divine! You are verily GOD!”
How many of us really pay heed to His words is the question that we should ask ourselves this Guru Purnima. You may say that it is difficult to really get established in the faith that we are Divine. Difficult ? Yes. Impossible? No. There are a number of exemplary devotees of Swami who have achieved that state because of their efforts and His Grace. Dr. John S Hislop is one such man. H2H is privileged to carry a cover story on this great devotee in this issue.

Apart from this, we have a story, by Ted Henry, on a special group of American Christians called the ‘Amish’. They are a living example of ‘being in the world, but not of the world’. Makes an interesting reading.

Readers have been requesting us to revive the feature ‘Getting Spiritually Better’ for the past few weeks. We thank them for their appreciation and are happy to restart the feature again, starting this issue.

The feature ‘Down memory lane’ which carried lots of beautiful pictures of Swami from the past, has been renamed as ‘Divine Impressions’ to give it a wider scope.

Hope you enjoy this issue of H2H and continue to support us in this noble endeavour. Happy Guru Purnima!

In Sai Service
SGH team