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Posted on: April 20, 2017
Sathya Sai – The Dimensionless Phenomenon
And the Unparalleled Dimensions of Sanathana Dharma Exemplified by Sai
by Mr. S Gurumurthy
Part 02
Sai Organisation - The Remarkable Kaleidoscope of Sacrifice
Different people brought me to Puttaparthi to see Swami. I was not taking any effort to come here but He was pulling me. Finally I felt an opportunity came for me to repay this in a very small measure after Swami attained Samadhi.
When the media began doing all kinds of wrong reporting, that gave me an opportunity to study Swami's work. Till then I had not studied it.
I had looked at Swami and experienced Him partly. I had heard about Him but I never knew the tremendous amount of work that was going on and the commitment that was going into it, the efficiency and the expedition with which things were being accomplished, which are unknown in the history of voluntary organisations.
Then I studied what kind of people He has attracted. I asked Mr. V. Srinivasan: “Please give me the story of how He attracts volunteers.”
He said, “We have 600,000 volunteers on our roll.”
I asked “Can you classify these volunteers based on their standing in society?”
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He said “No, we will not be able to give the entire list but I will try and give the partial information which I have.”
Then I wrote an article in The Indian Express in which I summarised the kind of talent He has attracted. Thousands of doctors, lawyers and Chartered Accountants who will normally not leave the profession of making money — everybody was in it, even musicians and businessmen.
A businessman or an IAS officer would give up his career and come and look after the conveniences here. A businessman running a billion-dollar business will look after a small project here; a software engineer will kick his huge career and look after the kitchen here. These are huge questions on which researches need to be done.
It is not a cult; it is something far more serious. This is what made me wonder how this phenomenon is so special and so natural to India. It gets repeated in this country. It is in this perspective that I thought of sharing my thoughts with you.
The Secret to the Continuity of Indian Civilisation for Centuries
We are all here to recall Swami and not to glorify Him. He doesn't need to be glorified. This is an occasion to recall Him.
What does He want? I looked at a very small book, beautifully done during one of Swami's birthday celebrations, as to what He wants of us.
We all want to praise and celebrate Him but if we see what He wants, He says: “You celebrate My Birthday on a particular day. This is only another day in the calendar. You look at it as a special day. My birthday in you is the day when you resolve to put into practice My advice and follow My directives. That is the birthday for Me! I want Tatva Prachara, not Vyakti Prachara – Dissemination of My principles not My person.”
We all look at Swami but He has a message to give and He wants us to look at the message. No doubt the message comes out of the being of Swami and the experience of Swami. He imparts the conviction, commitment and responsibility and elevates us to perform. But He wants us to look at the message and imbibe and internalise it.
He goes on to say, “Not just you but encourage your sons to realise the meaning of My mission.” This is the continuity. This is the tradition which has sustained this country for thousands of years.
Invasions, devastations, what kind of troubles and tribulations this civilisation has not undergone. But as Swami Vivekananda says “If 5000 years back Veda Vyasa was around and he came back today, he will see some of the road maps and also the situation that was prevalent at that time — the same dress, the same Vedas, the same music.” That continuity is denied to all other civilisations.
Swami Vivekananda said the Roman Eagle floated over everything worth having in this world but now it is a mass of ruins; spiders weave their webs where Caesars ruled.
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You can find the Egyptian civilisation only in the broken pyramid. But here is a living civilisation. You know why? That is the message Swami gives — “You impart it to your son.”
That is the Putra Parampara (passing on the civilisation through your children).
Till Vyasa it was Putra Parampara and afterwards it became Sishya Parampara (passing on the civilisation through your students). That is how this ancient tradition has been continuously maintained, despite everything including attack of modernity today which has a very different meaning.
Swami says that we should not celebrate Him but we should internalise Him. All of us have to become some kind of a light radiating the jyoti (illumination) that He emitted.
Swami is universal and His message is an ocean. In fact, I tried to grasp as many things as possible in the last couple of days that I have been reading. I have been reading very extensively and I read very carefully also. You can't really present Swami in a lifetime. It will require several lives to understand Him; one life is too inadequate.
It is so difficult to fully comprehend His one speech, His one day. So what I thought is that I would present a particular dimension which I can see, as someone who has experienced society, culture, economics, traditions and politics.
I thought I would grasp an amalgam of this and see how Swami's basic principles work in practice.
It is not that Swami said something which was in heaven. He was doing an empirical understanding of the society and presenting it in a living form; that's what I am going to share with you.
Since this has been the area of my study for the last 20-25 years, I think I will capture Swami in that light.
When Does One Deserve Freedom
When I looked at Swami's message and His followers, I saw a parallel between Him and Shri Krishna. If we take what Swami did — from miracles to mukti, the miracle was the entry point and Swami says it is His visiting card. He even materialised a visiting card once and said, “This is irrelevant. Please don't look at it. Look beyond. I have something to tell you.”
I will take you to the Kurukshetra War. Two warring groups have assembled in millions. They have a duty to fight and win for the cause which they believe to be right. Arjuna suddenly develops confusion. The first chapter is Arjuna's confusion and despondency — Arjuna Vishadayoga. He says, “I won't fight.”
Then Krishna begins to remove his confusion and says, “You are neither a man nor a woman. Are you a man?”
He attacks his lowest ego to provoke him and then he teaches him Gnana Yoga, Karma Yoga, Sanyasa Yoga and Moksha Sanyasa Yoga. Then He reveals Himself as the Almighty and carries on the discourse further and in the 63rd shloka of the 18th chapter, He says:
Iti te jñānam ākhyātaḿ
guhyād guhya-taraḿ mayā
vimṛśyaitad aśeṣeṇa
yathecchasi tathā kuru
He says: “I have revealed to you the secret of secrets. I give you the freedom of action. You do whatever you want.”
I was addressing a Gita Conference in Cochin several years back before an audience of very erudite people. I did not know how to talk about the Gita. So I stopped talking about the text of the Gita and spoke instead about the context of the Gita.
I said, “This is a question in my mind. Why did Krishna not give freedom of action to Arjuna in the first chapter? Why did He give it to him only in the 18th chapter, almost at the end?”
The answer that came to my mind was that the confused mind does not deserve freedom. So Krishna removed Arjuna's freedom and gave him freedom of action.
In a confused society, you have to attract people and that is the miracle which Swami did. Miracle was the beginning of Swami but many people ended with these miracles.
This is how I analysed how He produced this huge committed cadre, an unbelievable amount of work which is not just charity; charity cannot do it. You can donate money but you can't do the work. You cannot lay 2,500 km of pipelines, construct 1,200 overhead tanks, 130 large reservoirs (many of them in high and low-end areas) and in 18 months provide water to 3 districts and 20,00,000 people in a manner unknown.
The Planning Commission normally does not take notice of the good things done by the society but it took notice of this and said it is an unbelievable work. This cannot be done by mere charity. It requires a motivation of a very high order. You have to make an ordinary man a superman.
You have to do it and create a team, weld people's minds together on one focussed point and say, “Yes, this is your sense of duty.”
God came as a teacher for Arjuna and Arjuna did not know he was God. God came as a teacher for all of us and all of you particularly; you have all experienced Him very intensely. This is a great fortune for all of us that God came as a Teacher. There is no way you can define, describe, understand or experience God, except when you see God.
When Sai Subtly Revealed Himself
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As the young man who introduced Swami's familiarity and erudition in music said that when Swami Purushottamananda said it was God who had sent Him, Bhagawan said, “It is God Himself who has come.”
(Mr. Gurumurthy is referring to an incident narrated by the compère prior to the rendering of the Sai Pancharatna Kritis on April 24, 2014.
Once as Bhagawan was going to the Badrinath temple, He took a detour and went to the Vasishta Guha Ashram where Swami Purushottamananda was living. Seeing Bhagawan, Swami Purushottamananda was lost in joy. Bhagawan too was happy and asked him “Ask what you want.”
Bhagawan's entourage included the great Carnatic musicians B. V. Raman and B. V. Lakshman as well as Mr. Raja Reddy, the great devotee who lived in close proximity with Bhagawan for many years and was a wonderful singer.
Spontaneously, Swami Purushottamananda asked, “I'm staying away from the world, Swami, but I like music so much. I want to listen to two particular kritis of Thyagaraja.”
Bhagawan immediately said, “Yes, ask which ones you want to listen to.”
When Swami Purushottamananda told the names of the two kritis, the great musical geniuses who were there in the entourage had not heard of them but Bhagawan instantly burst forth and started singing the two kritis.
Swami Purushottamananda was so ecstatic and lost in a trance. When Bhagawan completed the kritis, Swami Purushottamananda embraced Him and said, “He has sent You! He has sent You!”, meaning that Lord Rama had sent Bhagawan. But with a twinkle in His eye and a mischievous smile, Bhagawan looked at few of the people around and said, “Who has sent whom? He has Himself come.”)
It requires a very higher understanding about everything for someone to say this. It is not a declaration. It is an admission!
- Radio Sai Team
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