Chapter 1 / parts 8 - 11
8 The
Birth of the Human Being, the Death of the Lord
My favorite book of Swami's
is the Bhagavata Vahini. It is a marvellous storybook. It is filled
with the play of the Lord, relating the wonderful happenings in the
life of Krishna. In this book, Swami has rewritten the Srimad Bhagavatam,
the great Indian scripture. He presents it somewhat differently from
the original.
In Swami's book, it starts out with the birth of
a child. That child is Parikshith, the only heir to the Pandava throne.
The Pandavas, as you know, of whom the most well-known was Arjuna,
represent the side of good, whereas their cousins, the Kauravas, represent
the side of evil. These two sides fought a war of total annihilation,
which is the Mahabharata, immortalized in the great Indian epic of
that name.
Swami said that the Mahabharata represents the inner
war being waged between the forces of good and evil inside our own
hearts. We cannot win this war on our own. We must turn towards the
Lord. Then he will come and take hold of the reins of our chariot,
just as he did for Arjuna in the Maha-bharata. That is our only hope
of winning this inner war.
In the story, at the end of the war, the Pandavas
were victorious, but the war exacted a terrible price. In a dastardly
deed on the last night of the war, one of the last surviving fighters
on the Kaurava side broke into the Pandava camp at night and killed
all the Pandava children while they were sleeping. The Pandavas were
devastated. Their only hope for continuing the royal succession was
the child that was growing in the womb of the widowed wife of Arjuna's
son. But the same warrior who killed the other children resolved to
destroy this last vestige of the Pandava line, by sending an arrow
into the womb of the helpless woman.
The royal foetus in the womb, saw that terrible
missile coming towards it, spitting sparks of fury and destruction.
But then he saw a beautiful blue boy with a lovely smile on his face,
whirling a discus and hurling it at the arrow. The lethal missile
broke into a thousand pieces. The babe in the womb was saved. Immediately
afterwards the beautiful blue boy disappeared.
After the child was born, all he could think of
was that lovely blue boy who had saved his life, and he sought for
him everywhere to see that beautiful face again. "Who was he?"
he asked himself. "Why did he come to save me?" In every
face he saw he wondered,"Is this him?" Because he was always
searching for something so intensely, they called him, Parikshith,
which means the one who seeks.
There also, close to the beginning of the book,
we find an account of the death of Krishna. The Lord had finished
his work on earth and left his body. So, the beginning of the book,
as Swami tells the story, has the birth of a human child and the departure
of the Lord. Then the whole book is filled with the wonderful stories
of the life of Krishna, mostly the wonderful play of the young Krishna.
These stories are related by a great sage to Parikshith, after Parikshith
had become the emperor of the realm. They are told under unusual circumstances.
The Lord had left the earth and the Kali Yuga, the age of materialism
and unrighteousness had begun. That dark age took hold of everyone,
including even King Parikshith.
One day the king was hunting in the forest and got
himself separated from his party. He was very thirsty and saw a little
hut nearby, in which a sage was sitting in meditation. Parikshith
did not realize that this was a sage immersed in trance; he thought
the man was just asleep. Parikshith tried to awaken him but he could
not bring the sage out of his trance. Parikshith was desperate for
some water but he could not find any and he could not get this sleeping
person to tell him where it was. So in frustration he left, but before
leaving, he picked up the dead skin of a snake and draped it around
the sage's neck as a parting gesture of disgust.
The sage's young son discovered his father sitting
with this snake skin on his shoulders. The lad became so furious seeing
this insult to his father, that he cursed the man who had perpetrated
this outrage to die seven days later from a snake-bite. When the father
came out of his trance and heard what the son had done, he said, "Son,
you shouldn't have done that. He didn't mean any harm. I cannot now
set aside your curse, but you made a great mistake. He is a good king
and he doesn't deserve this ignoble end. Go and tell him what happened.
Let him prepare himself and turn this curse into a blessing, by using
the chance to elevate himself spiritually."
And so, Parikshith finds out that he is under a
sentence of death, to die in seven days. But for him this news is
a tremendous relief. His burden of worldly life has now been taken
from him. He takes off his crown and his royal robes and goes down
to the banks of the Ganges to immerse himself in contemplation on
the Lord. Sages come and sit with him and then the great God-realized
saint, Suka, comes and tells the king the stories of the divine play
of the Lord. And that is what fills the Bhagavata, the inspiring stories
of the Lord related to a man who is under a sentence of death.
9 Making This
Life Our Last Life
Swami says that we are all
under a sentence of death. How are we spending these last days that
we have left? Do we know when that last day will be? Those thousands
who were herded together just a few steps from here, did they have
any idea the day before, that they would be sent off to their death
the next morning? When I went flying for the joy of it, did I have
any idea that within minutes I would be in mortal danger? Are we ready
this very second to end this life joyfully, if the god of death comes
calling?
If we are immersed in the Lord, one hundred percent,
body and soul, then it makes no difference when death chooses to come.
Then we are always ready, and we don't have to be concerned about
that huge warehouse filled with future lives. It will be reduced to
ashes.
Swami once came up to me on the verandah at the
temple and asked me, "Do you think that I'm fat?" Swami
has a little belly. I replied to him, "No, Swamiji, I think you
are beautiful." "But what about this pumpkin?" he said,
patting his belly. I replied, "Swami, it's just the folds of
your gown." He said, "Not gown, pumpkin!" And then
he whispered in my ear, "It is Prema Sai. He is growing inside."
We know that Swami is coming in another incarnation. In the same way,
we are also pregnant with our next incarnation, which even now, is
growing within us.
Whether we consider ourselves as males or females,
Swami says that in the spiritual context we are all females. And we
are all heavy with our next birth. Swami once said that the whole
world can be compared to a play put on in a girl's college. On stage
they will play the part of gents or ladies, of young or old, of saints
or sinners, of beggars or kings. The dress will be different, the
make-up will be different, the bodies will look different, but all
these varied parts are just being played by the same class of girl
students. There is one man. He is the director of the play. All the
rest are ladies.
And so it is with the one Lord who is the director
of this world play, The feminine principle is this whole creation,
and like the dream world and its characters, it can but do the bidding
of the dreamer. As long as we are caught up in the illusion we are
players in the Lord's play. That great drama features the wheel of
birth and death and rebirth.
So, where will our next birth be? Will it be with
Prema Sai, the final incarnation of the Sai avatar, who will usher
in the golden age? It may not be. We may be reborn in another era.
Or we may be reborn in the ghettos of Calcutta or in a world ravaged
by destruction. We don't know. Therefore, we must make every effort
to evoke the Lord's grace, and make this birth the last birth, this
life the last life. We must live with the conviction that when we
finish this time, we will be finished for good.
The way to do that is to be established one-hundred
percent in Sai at the last moment. And we get there by being established
one-hundred percent in Sai at this moment. And at every moment from
now on. It is constantly reaffirming Swami's prescription: "Let
go of the world, hold on to God and never fear death."
"My grace comes like a flash," he says. "When you least
expect I act. You must always be ready."
10 Let Go, Let God
Once I complained to Swami, "Swamiji, the spiritual path is so difficult." "No," he said, "it is very easy, easier than anything else in the world." He took his handkerchief and grasped it in his hand very tightly. He said, "You see, this is difficult. But spiritual path is not this. Spiritual path is very easy." He just opened his hand and the handkerchief fell down to the ground. "You see how easy it is. Letting go is easy. That is all there is to it."
So when we reach the point when we want nothing else
but God and to fill ourselves only with God, then we are on the spiritual
path. And that is not really so difficult. All we have to do is just
let go of everything else.
One time he came up to me on the verandah and asked,
"Drunker, what do you want?" I laughed at his twst of my name
and I answered his question, "Swamiji, I'm very content. I'm satisfied." "You
mean you want nothing?" he asked, with some astonishment in his
voice. I said,"Swamiji, all I want is God!" "That's
not NOTHING," he said quite forcefully, "That's EVERYTHING...
that's health, wealth, freedom, liberation, bliss..." And he continued
on with a long list of good things. Then he added, "Nothing is
there!" pointing to the world outside the ashram, "Everything
is here! Everything!" and he pointed to my heart.
So, it is all already here within us, one hundred
percent; nothing more needs to be given. Only the veil of ignorance
must be removed. The room may have been dark for thousands of years,
but the sunlight will always be waiting. Pull away the curtain and instantly
the darkness will be replaced by a dazzling flood of light.
11 The
Death of the Human Being, the Birth of the Lord
Now, let us get back to Swami's
Bhagavata Vahini: When the book is almost finished, on the very last pages,
Suka tells the story of the birth of Krishna. So, this book starts with
the birth of a human child who seeks everywhere to find his savior. He
cannot forget the powerful vision he had of that beautiful boy who saved
his life.
After the royal child is born he discovers that the
remarkable uterine brother who had come and saved him in the womb was
none other than Lord Krishna. But soon thereafter the Lord left the earth.
The child became a man, a king, involved in the affairs of the world.
With the onset of Kali, his spiritual roots become more and more dimmed.
Only his name, Parikshith, remained to remind him of his indefatigable
quest as an infant to find the Lord, who was so close to him in the womb.
But then the king came under a sentence of death. Now,
after all these years, he returned to his quest. But now he looks inside
for the Lord. He fills his heart with the sweet stories of the miracles
and play of the Lord. And then finally, at the end of the book, Swami
tells the story of the birth of the Lord in human form as Krishna.
Krishna was born in a dungeon cell, the eighth child of Devaki and Vasudeva.
The mother and father were chained to the wall of this dark dungeon cell.
It had been prophesied that their eighth child would kill the evil king,
Kamsa. Kamsa threw them into the dungeon so that each child as it was
born could be taken by him and destroyed.
You can almost get a sense of what those poor souls
must have felt like, with each of their children and all their hopes shattered,
if you go out to that rock a little distance from here and see those holes
in it, which could have held the chains that shackled Krishna's parents
to the dungeon wall.
Suddenly, their candle went out; they were plunged into
darkness. Then this beautiful golden light filled their cell and they
made out the image of Narayana, the Lord, with his four hands, one hand
raised in blessing. The Lord said to them, "In a moment I will be
born as your child. Do not have any fear. There is no force on the earth
or in the wholecosmos
that can harm me in any way. The mission for which I have come will