Monday, March 24, 2014

Tat Wale Baba - A rare discourse.




It was March 30, 1969, news quickly spread that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi had invited "the wise man of the mountains," Tat Wale Baba, to come visit us that afternoon. In the early afternoon we all anxiously waited for our guest to arrive.
Tat Wale Baba began his discourse in unstrained, forceful Hindi, and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi translated.
"What is the aim of all the beings? It is the attainment of infinite happiness. A life free from suffering, and the attainment of eternal happiness is what we want. Now, we should discriminate and analyze if there is anything in the world which can give us permanent, eternal happiness. From the ant up to the giant of the Creator, all are in the field of change, that is, relative values. Infinite happiness can only come from something which could be immortal, non-changing, eternal. This which is the goal of everything, this infinite, is our own Self. And in order to experience that Self which is the basis of all, we don't have to seek, we don't have to search, we don't have to make efforts. It's there, present everywhere. Wherever you are, in whatever reign of time or place, that Self is there - wherever we are in whatever time. Only, we have to take our awareness to that level and that is it. Having forgotten that level of life, we are seeking for that eternal happiness. That Self is. It is being and it is blissful. Having forgotten that, we now are seeking for it. We have forgotten what we ourselves are and we're trying to find that in the world. As long as we don't enter into that area which is infinite happiness, free from suffering, so long we will not be free from suffering and we will not get into that eternal happiness. There is no happiness of significant nature in the world; the child is gone, and the youth is gone, and the man is old, and even then he is not fulfilled in the world. When he gets established in the Self, then automatically freedom from suffering and attainment of bliss will be there."

H.H.Tat Wale Babaji's Thougths on Human Life:

Tat Wale Baba at age 70
~ To find God and attain Self-realization you must have faith, trust and love.

~ If you want to become something new, you must completely destroy what you were before.

~ With a dirty mind it is difficult to find God.

~ Using trickery and cunningness it is impossible to find Self-realization.

~ Don't desire things that are impossible for you, and what you have don't misuse.

~ Using japa, tapas and spiritual pursuit anyone can change their destiny.

~ If you want to have the same happiness you have now in this life again in your next life, you must do tapas.

~ Someone engaged in selfish activities is human.

~ Someone engaged in selfless activities is like a Demigod.

~ In times of faithlessness, when a person comes to help you he or she is like a God.

~ If you want peace in your life, be content with what you have.

~ If you want to end your suffering, then you must renounce the source of the suffering.

~ A devotional truthful person cannot understand the intelligent person.

~ If you want to control your mind, then develop a friendship with God.

~ If you want to clean your brain, then do service to the guru, God, saints and the elderly.

~ If you are criticizing other people, you are wasting your time and energy, and losing power.

~ It is not a sin to criticize the hypocrites.

~ Beside planet Earth, there are no other planets that have human life.

~ Yoga practice is a universal, spiritual super-science.

~ Your karma is your destiny; your destiny is God.





Thursday, March 6, 2014

Old Mandir Nostalgia - Young Swami's first discourse



Prof. (Mrs.) Jayalakshmi Gopinath, Warden, Anantapur Campus, of the Sri Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Learning, electrified the audience with her touching stories of the Lord's love and glory drawn from her 57 years of association with Him! (12th March 2006)


Jayamaa talked about SWAMI's 1st public discourse in 1951.

"Way back in 1951; till then Baba had not given formal discourses in public. That day He called the men devotees and said, "Put a table for me; I am going to speak".

We were all enthralled. Baba was young then.

He came down; of course, none of us had the doubt that Baba could not speak well. We were all waiting anxiously, breathlessly. All fellow devotees, youngsters and elders, if I tell you what He said that day; it will make your hair stand on end.

SWAMI just thumped at the table hard and then said: "Remember, I am God. Take it in. So many of us cannot take it in because we do not know God, we do not love God and if God were to come and tell "I am God", we would be blind to the reality. That was the 1st declaration!!!

The 2nd announcement, He thumped, "I am the Upanishads";

The 3rd announcement, "I am the Vedas";

The 4th announcement, "I am the scriptures"!!!

"I have come down for the sake of humanity." And then He said, "Why are you vacillating? I have nothing that is personal in what I tell. It is for your benefit. Cast off all your doubts, all your vacillations."

He said, "Let us remember this, it is the same people who come to me, adoring me and offering me gifts; the very same people after some time malign me. It does not affect me. Whether you give anything to me or you do not offer anything to me; it makes no difference"!!!


We read about the 10 Avatars and we wonder why God had taken all these forms? It was one such day, when it was evening, almost dusk coming in, it was getting a little dark. We were all there, and suddenly Baba disappeared. Where is Swami?

Because in those days those hills were thickly forested, and we were told there would be cheetahs and tigers around. Baba was small and delicate. Where is Swami? But we heard His voice right on that hill.

"Look here", He said, a stentorian voice, the voice of Divinity which can reach out to the periphery of eternity itself. And dumbfounded, aghast, we were just tantalized. We were just looking upon the hill, a brilliant dazzling light.

The panorama of all the 10 Avatars one by one went across, as if, I would say it was the silver screen. Each one of them perfect, we were just standing there aghast, not petrified, but looking at the whole thing with such wonder. Ultimately, it was Bhagavan's image in a bright halo of light.

Oh! Then we knew the director behind all this. We knew that it was His Will. "Oh ye devotees! Oh ye human beings! Remember, I am the Creator; I am The One who has presented before you all the various aspects of my creation."



                 

===============================================================



In the South Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, there happened the epochal Divine Advent – Sai Pravesh and the result was Prasanthi Pradesh (Prasanthi Nilayam). How, almost seven decades ago, a young Sathya of barely sixteen years granted a fantasy glimpse of the would be Prasanthi Nilayam to one lucky soul. Read on as Pujari Lakshmaiah narrates his maiden encounter with The Lord Walked The Earth. Extracted from Sai Spiritual Showers archivals.

Is it true? Can it be true? A boy calling himself Sai Baba! And consoling the dispirited, curing the ill, exorcising ghosts and teaching the old! I heard of this sixteen year old prodigy and entered Puttaparthi, with a woman - mad since two years, and her husband. That was in 1943.

At Bukkapatnam, people laughed at us; they thought all of us were mad to believe in the miraculous powers of that boy. Yet, having come so far, we decided to complete the journey, instead of turning back. We engaged a bullock cart for twelve annas and came to the riverbed. I left them there and moved into the little haggard group of houses, along narrow tracks.

I peeped into a Brahmin house (Karnam Subbamma’s house); the verandah was full of groundnut heaps. Inside I found a charming young boy, with a bright, intelligent face, talking with the labourers. I accosted him and asked, “I heard there is a boy in this village who has become Sai Baba; it seems he cures madness. Which is his house, can you tell me?”

The boy looked at me very lovingly and replied. “Poor fellow! The mad woman you brought with you is giving terrible trouble to her husband in the river! Go and take bath; and bring them also after their bath is over. I shall then show you the boy you are after.” While returning from the river, the woman ran wildly hither and thither and it was a job to bring her to the Brahmin house. Sai Baba (for, it was none other than He) told me, “I’ll call you one by one” and took me in, first. He created Vibhuti and applied it to my forehead. Then, He called in the couple. They had bought some bananas at Bukkapatnam for Sai Baba. He gave the woman to eat one banana out of the number. He also gave them both the materialised Vibhuti.

It was six in the evening, by then. Coming out on the road, the wife told her husband “Well; what about our meal? Get some rice from the shop; and ask for vessels. I shall cook food for us, pretty quick.” The husband was overjoyed; her madness had gone!

But, Baba called us in and we sat with Him for the night meal. Baba mixed all the items served by Subbamma into tolerably big balls, and He gave one for each of us. It was tasty beyond words!

That night, we slept in the verandah of that house. We were disturbed often, by the howling of packs of jackals, and the braying of donkeys. At about three, some woman shrieked, “I am dying”; she was stung by a scorpion! A few minutes later, some one cried, “Kill; Kill “ and many ran in that direction. It was a cobra, this time.

Early morning, we touched Baba’s Feet and stood before Him. “No sleep? Too many snakes in this place. This is a very holy place; but, under a curse! Sai will save it” He said and then added, “The Sai Pravesh (Advent) will make it the Prasanthi Pradesh (Region). Upon that hill, I shall have a grand Bhavan. By that time, hundreds, (why hundreds?) thousands, (why thousands?) lakhs, All India will be here; The whole world will come and wait for Sai Darshan.” I said, on hearing this, “What? I cannot believe this will happen.” He laughed and said, “You will have to believe it when you will be standing at a great distance, trying to catch a glimpse of Me!”


Now, in 1972, I stand at a great distance and yearn for Sai Darshan; I now believe in the Prophecy He made in 1943.


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A small divine desire


Who is Sri Sathya Sai - Early days

Are we Alone - A lightworker remembers!

This article was written by a friend who kindly permitted me to share it with others.


Is it just me, or is everyone also feeling this sense of being in "stand-by" mode?

I feel as if I've done all I can do, and that when I wake up in the morning, the usual drive that
I had is not there. As a matter of fact, it is hard for me to wake up in the morning. I'm in a deep sleep and often in different levels of dreaming that are so lucid that I can't tell the difference between the dreaming and reality. These dreams are my reality. So, waking up means I'm going to sleep over there, where ever "there" is; and waking up, in this world or realm, is the "dream".

Then, there's the "apathy" or lack of desire to do any "thing". It's as if  I'm “Complete” - or have completed whatever I was set to do and now I'm in the "waiting" state, waiting for whatever unfolds next.

I observed myself making the bed in the later part of the day. I picked up a couple of items of clothing and folded them to put them away, and I had this “knowing” that I was picking up after myself, as one picks up when one leaves one job to go to the next. It was as if I was picking up my belongings and the things I used to do the job with in this corporation, and I was taking whatever I needed to go to the next corporation in whatever job-capacity I had been assigned.

So, I Know that my assignment is done. The program for Earth is coming to a close, in whichever way it will close. I have this sense of excitement in me that is growing exponentially the more I internalize what is happening.

I Know that I Know that I am finally going “home”, or at least back to the point that I was before I embarked in this assignment.

I had been a loner all my life, more like a fish out of water. I knew in my heart I was here for a purpose, only I didn't know what. At an early age of 4, I knew I had powers that were "normal"to me. I hadn't realized yet that these were not a common thing on this planet - I didn’t know this was a different world than where I had been all the time.

When I was 5, I began to draw pictures of space craft with crew members that were humanoid, but not totally the way humans looked here. I drew worlds that I remembered and the different decks of the ships I remembered. I would spend a lot of time looking up at the night sky, watching, vigilant, with a heavy heart, wondering if I had imagined what I thought was a “memory” of who I really was. I looked up, hoping to get a glimpse of one of my ships, of my kin coming to pick me up - for I knew it was a mistake that I was here.

 When I was 17, I was watching “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof” on TV for my Drama class and my brother, who is two years my junior, and a skeptic who would tease me all the time, came running to the living room to tell me there were UFOs outside. I told him to be quiet because I was trying to watch the movie. He left, and five minutes later came back. “Quick”, he said, “you’ve got to come to Mom and Dad’s room and see this for yourself!” Since, he was such a skeptic and teased me all the time about my looking up in the sky, trying to spot UFOs, I didn’t want to fall a victim to his ridicule again. I told him to go away, and that if he kept interrupting me, I was going to tell Mom and Dad.

He left again. Ten minutes later, he was back. He stood in front of me and the TV and said, “You have to come see this right now!”

So, now I’m curious. He led me to my parent’s room and we both got on top of their king-sized bed and looked out the window that was right over the headboard. There was nothing there.
Except a humongous, ominous white cloud that took up the entire sky.

Then, it started. I remembered the information I had read in all the UFO books that I had collected - over thirty of them. I remembered the signs to look for, as per my MUFON field investigator training - it was a “Mother Ship”. There it was: a cloud that would intermittently give off white, electronic light in the same spot, over and over again. This happened at intervals of 10-20 seconds. This was not lightening. I swallowed hard. My heart began to race - Was I seeing what I thought I was seeing?

Then, after about 15 minutes of this “lighting” display within the cloud, my jaw dropped. I watched over 50 scout ships come out of the end of the cloud, blinking red and green, red and green; and somewhere in the background, as my head spun, I could hear my brother say “Look!” and my father, who had just arrived say: “Quick, there’s a flotilla of UFO’s over the house!”

I felt weak. Was I dreaming this? But then, my mother comes in through the front door screaming, “Hurry, there are UFO’s over the house!”

I got off their bed and tried to quickly walk to my room to grab my Kodak Ekta-Sound Movie camera and my telescope. My knees were weak and I kept fumbling and trying to grab things that kept slipping from my fingers.

I don’t know how I made it outside, carrying all those gadgets and myself out the door. But when I looked up at the sky, my heart stopped.  There they were. They had shown up, finally.

I ran to the grassy area and stood there watching them. They had lined themselves across the sky, a bit higher than a tall building. There were five of them, the size of a football field each, glowing red. They breathed like a Being, and looked like Plasma, as the others glided over the sky and became make-shift stars. I sighed, and fell to my knees, dropping the camera and telescope. I let out a long cry of anguish. “Please, please,” I said, “take me home..... I don’t want to be here anymore.... Please.....”  They clearly spoke in my head, “It’s not time yet....”
I bent over on the ground, my head touching the grass as I cried. “Please, please....”, I kept saying, “I don’t want to be here.....”

After a while, my angst left me. I looked up to watch them shoot up into the night sky.
I tried taking a movie, my vision fuzzy from the tears, but the camera didn’t work. I did manage to point the telescope at one of them that hovered above. It was transparent, plasma. Another ship came and went through it like water....

They left me with a promise that they’d be back for me - I guess when my tour of duty was up.
From then on, my communication with them has always been there. They have always had several ships over my house or any place at any given time. They have guided all my steps by giving me confirmation of what I already “Know”. They also guided me to Nashville, where I have been for sometime now, and never questioned why I was sent here.

So, today, I felt I was packing to go home from a long trip abroad. I smiled with this realization and felt peace in my heart, and closure.

I know I did the best I could with the tools provided to me. I hope I haven’t disappointed and that I have helped at least one human being awaken because I lived and because our paths crossed in a moment in time in a coffee shop or in cyberspace.  If that has happened, I am content.

I am happy for all the memories I have made and all those beings I have called friends, and for my wonderful mother and father, brother and my children and grandchildren and for my Twin Flame, who has allowed me to be me.... What an experience this has been!

Soon, I’ll be where I belong - back in my “pond”. Soon, we’ll all realize how important each and everyone of us has been and how we all played a vital role in birthing this New World.

I know we’ll all get the “job well done” certificate at the end. Will I do it again?
Sure. But, not until I take a long vacation!


El Ari AN      Ari ~ Lion of Judah~



Mothering God - Gopal Ma

Given below is a brief information on Gopal Ma, the saint who Mothered God and from whose life i got a better understanding of the Life of Harbans Ma.

Early Years


Aghormani was born in 1822 in Kamarhati, a northern suburb of Calcutta. As per the prevalent social custom, she was married at the age of nine. Her wedding was the first and the last time she saw her husband - he died before the marriage was consummated, leaving her a widow of fourteen years of age. However, she was initiated by her husband’s family guru and was given the ‘Gopala mantra’, establishing the child Krishna as her Chosen Deity. Since Aghormani was born with natural spiritual tendencies; she plunged whole-heartedly into intense austerities and worship in order to have the vision of her Ishta. Thus, the love and attention that Aghormani would have given to her husband and children were diverted towards her beloved Gopala.

Aghormani lived a sheltered life of a typical Brahmin widow, in the tiny room located in a corner of a temple-complex of Govinda Datta in Kamarhati, on the bank of the Ganga. Her elder brother was a priest of the Radha-Madhav temple. The holy atmosphere of the beautiful temple fascinated her pure mind. This tiny room with bare necessities, where she did intense spiritual practices, was her abode for almost her entire life. She hardly moved from that room - except for a pilgrimage with her landlady. Sister Nivedita wrote about her room, "Her little room was absolutely without comforts. The handful of parched rice and sugarcandy formed her only store. But the place was spotlessly clean, washed constantly by the Ganga water of her own sturdy carrying. And in a niche in near hand, lay an old copy of the Ramayana, and her great horn spectacles, and the little white bag containing her beads. On those beads Gopaler Ma had become a saint! Hour after hour, day after day, for how many years, had she sat, day and night, absorbed in them!"


Spititual Practices

Thus, placed in an environment which was extremely conducive for leading a life devoted to spiritual pursuits, undisturbed by the din and bustle of the world, her latent devotional sentiments gradually blossomed forth and she plunged into repeating Gopala’s name oblivious of day and night. That tender love, which had so long remained dormant within and had not found any suitable outlet for expression, now welled up in torrents of tears and made her almost sleepless. Her daily routine was a uniform round of prayer and service which she followed with unabated zeal for thirty long years in the solitude of her room. She used to get up at two in the morning and ceaselessly did her japa throughout the day and night with small intervals for meals and rest as well as for the morning and midday services of Sri Radha- Madhava in the temple. She had to face many pecuniary difficulties; so much so that she had to weave sacred threads and sell them to support herself. But no hardships could dissuade her from maintaining the strict routine of her daily spiritual practices. Writes one biographer of Sri Ramakrishna, "Lest her telling of beads get disrupted, she used to use her left hand for cooking while her right hand remained busy with her rosary." Suffering and tenderness, aches and ecstasies of her motherly loving heart were her only companions over all these years.


Meeting with Ramakrishna

The fame of Sri Ramakrishna as a God-intoxicated saint had by 1880’s spread far and wide; hence Aghormani Devi felt an urge to meet him. One autumn afternoon in 1884, accompanied by the devoted widow of Govinda Datta, she went to Dakshineshwar. She was now about sixtytwo, fourteen years older than the Master and had already done severe austerities; therefore, her mind was completely occupied by Gopala, the child Krishna. Sri Ramakrishna welcomed them cordially, made them seated in his room and sang a few devotional songs for them. He could easily gauge the depth of devotion of the two ladies. Later he remarked about them, "Ah! How beautiful is the expression of their face and eyes! They are, as if were floating on the current of the love of God. Their eyes are full of the intense love of God." He saw them off in his characteristic affectionate manner and asked them to come again. It was not a routine courteous invitation. The magnet was pulling the iron to itself. Aghormani felt a strong desire to visit the Master at the earliest opportunity. A few days later she again visited Dakshineshwar with some stale sweets purchased from a wayside shop. With great hesitation, she offered the sweets to the Master who savored them and said, "Well, you need not spend money for sweets. Prepare sweetened coconut balls and vegetable curries cooked by your own hand." Aghormani’s visits to Dakshineshwar now became very frequent. Her fascination for the Master, however, was a little shadowed by the puzzle why the Master talked to her mostly about food and not on spiritual matters. Sometime, she resolved not to go to him again but every time she found herself automatically dragged in the direction of Dakshineshwar. Thus, during the next three or four months she regularly visited Sri Ramakrishna, always carrying some of her culinary preparations, and the Master ate them praising, "Ah, how deliciously cooked! It is, as it were, very nectar." She always returned to Kamarhati with a tingle of joy lingering in her heart with an irresistible yearning for the next visit.


Was Sri Ramakrishna her beloved Gopal?

Time thus rolled on and Aghormani was basking in the soothing presence of the Master. Her ardent longings brought about a spirit of complete self-surrender in her. Slowly, the time to reap the fruits of her intense tapasya was approaching. 


It was the beautiful morning of the spring of 1885. Following her regular routine, she had just completed her japam, and to her great astonishment, she found Sri Ramakrisha sitting to her left side, smiling sweetly, with his right hand clenched. In utter curiosity, she tried to touch him but found that Sri Ramakrishna’s form had disappeared and in its place appeared the real Gopala - a child ten months old crawling towards her and begging for butter while fixing his bewitching gaze on her! In the words of Aghormani, "I was so surprised! I cried in excess of joy and said to him, ‘Alas! I am a poor widow. Where shall I get butter for you, my child?’ But Gopala would not listen. ‘Give me something to eat,’ he

said to me again and again. With tears in my eyes, I got up and brought for him some dry sweetened coconut balls I had. Gopala sat on my lap, snatched my rosary, jumped on my shoulders and moved about in the room, so that all my efforts to carry on further repetition of the mantra were baffled." With the first streak of light the next morning, an inebriated Aghormani started for Dakshineshwar, with Gopala clasped to her bosom, his tiny rosy feet dangling gracefully.

What a blissful experience! She was clasping her Chosen Ideal in flesh and blood! She realized that Sri Ramakishna had granted her this boon, and he was none other than the Gopala she had been meditating upon for the last three decades. Ecstatic, completely oblivious of the outer surroundings, totally absorbed in the thoughts of the Master, she reached his room, crying frantically "Gopala, Gopala." As soon as Aghormani sat down in the Master’s room, the Master, over-powered by Samadhi, readily sat on her lap like an infant. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and she began to feed the Master with the delicacies she had brought with her. After a while the Master regained normal consciousness and returned to his bedstead. The blessed Aghormani began to dance in joy, since she was transported into the realm of Gopala. In that state she said, "Gopala is now on my lap. Oh! Now he has entered your body. Ah! He has come out again. Come my darling; come to your poor mother." Sri Ramakrishna expressed great joy at this wonderful state of Gopaler-Ma, stroked her body and brought her to normal consciousness. He fed her sumptuously and in the evening sent her back to Kamarhati. After this incident, she was addressed by Sri Ramakrishna and others as Gopaler-Ma (Gopala’s mother), as, she actually became the blessed mother of Gopala and enjoyed perennial bliss in mystic communion with the child Krishna.

Sri Ramakrishna used to praise Gopaler-Ma for her devotion. Once, pointing to her, he said to those present in his room, "Ah! There is nothing inside this body but God. He fills it through and through." On another occasion he commented, "During Krishna’s incarnation she was a fruit-seller of Vrindavan and she would feed Gopala the sweet fruits."


Visions of Gopala

On her return journey too, she visualized baby Krishna resting in her arms. Reaching her room, she started telling her beads, but her Chosen Deity, for whom she had practised japa and meditation all her life, was playing besides her, pestering and demanding various things and snatching her rosary. To calm him down, she tried to make him sleep by caressing him, but he complained that the pillow was too hard! Gopala also assisted her in collecting the firewood. The mother with a heart overflowing with love, sometimes fondled the child and sometimes rebuked him for his naughtiness. Thus a divine sport continued in the sacred temple- garden of Kamarhati - a phenomenon so rare in this age! Gopaler-Ma’s life is the verification of the Hindu scriptural truth that God can be attained by Vatsalya Bhava, worshiping Him as a child. With a pure mind and one-pointed devotion, she could raise her consciousness to such a state that she could actually feel the living presence of her object of worship. She was convinced and the Master too assented that he was none other than her Gopala.

For about two months Gopaler-Ma had unbroken communion with her Gopala, after which the frequency of her visions decreased. She complained to the Master, who consoled her by assuring that in Kaliyuga, it would be impossible for a person to sustain the body with one’s mind attuned to the highest plane of superconsciousness. Gradually she felt the presence of Gopala in everything and a radical change was observed in this orthodox woman. All the distinction between high and low, the touchable and untouchable and all the scrupulousness in the matter of food and rituals vanished altogether from her mind. Later she could receive a ‘foreigner’ like Nivedita without the least hesitation and even lived with her till her end. Gopaler-Ma was thus transformed into a saint radiating bliss and joy, and she continued to inspire people with her devotion, purity, sweetness and simplicity.

Modern man, inclined to be skeptical and scientific, has great difficulty in accepting as real such experiences as Gopaler-ma's. However, from the traditional Hindu point of view, there are much finer states of consciousness than the one in which we experience the sense world, and this has been substantiated again and again by the experiences of saints and seers. When the mind is pure and saturated with Spirit, such high states of consciousness are possible. Gopaler-ma meditated on her beloved Gopala so much that her mind became very pure. As a result, she entered the superconscious realm, and wherever her eyes fell, she saw Gopala. In this realm of mystical experience, verbal expression, mental cognition, and intellectual reasoning do not function. The only consciousness is the direct consciousness of God.




Sri Ramakrishna once shared "The Brahmani of Kamarhati (Gopal Ma) sees many visions. She lives all by herself in a lonely room in a garden on the bank of the Ganga. She spends her time in Japa. Gopala sleeps with her. It is not imagination, but fact. She saw that Gopala's palms were red. He walks with her. She suckles Him at her breast. They talk to each other." When Narendra (later Swami Vivekananda) heard this story, he wept.

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