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Sai Vichaar Jun 25, 2009 Volume 12, Issue 07 (In its twelfth year of publication) 01.Feature of the Week 02.Contributed Article 03.Experiences of Devotees 04.Devotees Say 05.Sai Activities 06.Prayer Club 07.Quote of the Week 08.Question of the Week 09.Subscribe to Sai Vichaar 10.Email Newsletter to a friend 11.Submit Articles to Sai Vichaar 12.Un-Subscribe Sai Vichaar 13.From the Editor's Keyboard 14.Back Issues 15.Disclaimer From the Editor's Keyboard... Sai Vichaar has learnt that several have received their weekly email into their unwanted email folder due to the email filter function of the respective email providers. Please check your email folders before deleting to make sure Sai Vichaar is not delivered into Spam mail. In the true spirit of Sai devotion, contributors are requested to remember to suit the content, language, style, and presentation, appropriate to a worldwide readership. It should also be noted that when a section from any material other than their own is quoted or referred to, it is the authors' responsibility to acknowledge the source appropriately. Sai Vichaar requests the devotees to continue to submit to Sai Vichaar using the pages intended for various sections of Sai Vichaar. Sai Vichaar gratefully appreciates the patience of its readers during the past few weeks of revamping of our database. A Sai devotee suggested the The "Question of the week" for this week as,, Q. How does a Sai devotee deal with deceitful relationships and situations where there is abuse of trust? Humbly Yours, The Editor
Disclaimer Sai Vichaar is devoted to the philosophy and teachings of Shri Sadhguru Sai Baba of Shirdi, and will take every measure to avoid topics or themes contradicting the same. Sai Vichaar team or saibaba.org is not responsible for the opinions expressed by individual contributors.
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 Feature
of the week: Why know the nature
of "Self"?
Sai Baba's famous parables and cryptic remarks are well known. These comments were always impregnated with a message directed towards the individual who is addressed. Once, a devotee wanted to take a photograph of Baba. When Baba was approached regarding this, He said, "No, it is enough if he knocks a wall down". The devotee stood confused. Later, an explanation was given as follows: The photograph is one's likeness of Baba. The wall is "I am the body" idea, which is an obstacle that interferes with identifying the supreme spirit. One straightforward remark of Baba has always been "awaken the self". The nature of self is not easily explained. The pursuit to know the self is as varied as the individuals themselves. However, it is said that one must have an honest yearning and God's grace to know the nature of self. Now, why should one know the "self"? The Geetha says, " With the self unattached to external contact, he finds happiness in the Self; with the self engaged in the meditation of Brahman, he attains endless happiness". Swami Chinmayananda on his commentary on The Geetha explains further, "Why should I deny myself the brilliant flashes of momentary joys in exchange for a steady stone-like, impregnable monotony, call it equilibrium or equanimity, peace or God-hood? Any sensible seeker entering the halls of spiritual study with his intellect bright and clear should come to doubt its efficacy and utility. Though the process of self-development is essentially a process of detachment, this technique of negation does not take us to an empty and purposeless zero, but when we have negated all that is false, we come to experience and live a total positivity. When the dreamer has renounced all his contacts with the dream world and thrown away his dream personality, he does not become a non-entity, but he re-discovers himself to be the more vital, more effective personality, the waker". Sadguru Sainath's remarks on awakening one's self refers to this state of awakening that is more vital, blissful and permanent, by Sadguru's grace.
Contributed
Article: The Sage of Arunachala Ramana Maharishi, one of the greatest sages of India, was not a mere life but a manifestation that descended on to this earth on December 30, 1879. It was a Monday and more important the `Day of the Arudra Darshan', (celebrated as the birthday of Siva). He was apparently an ordinary baby at birth. What he made out of his life, however, was extraordinary. When he was barely 17 years old and in the summer of 1896, he experienced a feeling of death and life thereafter. The aftermath of the experience left him not scarred or scared but enlightened. The boy Ramana, magnetized by the vibrations of the sacred hill Arunachala at Tiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu, India, reached there on September 1, 1896. He never moved out again except for his heavenly abode. Aware that the time of his departure was due, the Maharishi tried to console his devotees and assuage their grief in many words, "Where could I go?" he queried. "The body is itself a disease; when we have finished a meal do we keep the leaf plate on which we have eaten it?" Just as a servant rejoices to lay down his burden at the place of delivery, so does a Jnani rejoice at being relieved of the body by death." For a man who gave up just about everything, except his loincloth, the Maharishi did indeed have a large family of devotees. They came in hordes and from all strata of life - queens, princes, ministers, Presidents, philosophers, foreigners, musicians, the ardent seeker, the curious intellectual, the rich zamindar and the pauper. He viewed all of them with the same compassion. In his heart there was place for all creatures great and small. His demeanor towards the quadruped, the winged and the reptiles is worth pondering over. He never referred to an animal as `it' but always as "he" or "she". When he said, "Give Lakshmi her rice at once," it was the cow whom he meant. In fact the rules of the Ashram dictated that at mealtime, the dogs be fed first, then the beggars and only then the devotees. Squirrels used to hop through the window on to his couch and he always kept a little tin of peanuts besides him for them. The animals felt his Grace and once a devotee asked him what it felt to have a snake pass over him and he replied "Cool and soft." It was a delight to watch very young children run up the hill to be with the Maharishi. Ramani, a nonagenarian fondly recalls with tears in her eyes, "We never knew that he was a Maharishi. He was `Omachi thatha,' to all of us (children). It was Kavyakanta Ganapati Sastri, one of the earliest disciples of Bhagavan, who first addressed him as Maharishi. My father Manavasi Ramaswamy Iyer was a great Ramana bhakta. He was a poet who composed many songs on `Bhagavan.' He was popularly referred to as Saranagati Thatha on account of the popular Saranagati song he composed on the Maharishi. But more poignant is the fact that on the day Bhagavan died, Ramaswamy realized that he could compose no more. The stream of songs that gushed out uninterrupted for 40 years dried on the day of the Mahanirvana." Bhagavan was a simple human being. In everyday life, he was punctual, meticulous to the last detail, and simplicity incarnate. Devotees recall that he would never allow privileges of any kind to be shown to him. He shunned ostentation of any kind and refused to be garlanded on any occasion. In the dining hall, if anything extra or special was served to him he would immediately express his displeasure by refusing to eat the food. On another occasion when a devote reprimanded a European lady for not crossing her legs, Bhagavan, in spite of his arthritis and rheumatism, crossed his legs that a rule was applicable to all and refused to straighten them till the lesson had been driven home. In the last years of his life, the Ashram authorities commissioned a sthapati to carve a statue of Bhagavan. Hearing the stone being chiselled, Bhagavan jocularly remarked, "The stone God is getting ready to sit upon the stone sofa." F. H. Humphreys, the first European visitor to the Ramanashram penned his experience, of seeing Ramana Maharishi, to a friend in London. "For half an hour I looked into the Maharishi's eyes, which never changed their expression of deep contemplation. I could feel only that his body was not the man: it was the instrument of God." But Humphreys was neither the first nor the last to experience God in the form of Ramana Maharishi. Paul Brunton, who arrived at Tiruvannamalai more a skeptic than a believer records the impact of the eloquent silence of Maharishi: "Before those (eyes) of the Maharishi, I hesitate, puzzled and baffled ... I cannot turn my gaze away from him. I know only that a steady river of quietness seems to be flowing near me ... " Scholars came to Bhagavan Ramana Maharishi to get their doubts clarified but his teachings were not theoretical in the least. In fact they were simple and practical. He would constantly urge the process of self-enquiry. His oft-repeated advice to aspirants was, "Constantly introspect - Who am I? That which is peace. All that we need do is to keep quiet. Peace is our real nature." (Source: "The Hindu" dated May 9, 2003) Mahi Srinivasarao Krishnaveni Jagannathan Sudha P S Rudra Neha Silpa Indu Satyanarayana Raju Sharma Sandhya Rajnish Saroj Ritu Quotation of
the Week: Question of the Week: Q. What is the attitude of Sai devotees towards raising their children? A. Your answer can go here.
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