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Sai Vichaar Nov 19, 2009 Volume 12, Issue 28 (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... Please visit the Sai activities section for details of upcoming events. To post an event in your temple, please send details by email. We are continually striving to upgrade our technical capabilities. We thank you for your patience and contiuned support. Please check your email folders before deleting to make sure Sai Vichaar is not delivered into Spam mail. It will also help greatly if you send us email to update any changes in your email accounts as that will prevent us from sending Sai Vichaar to closed or discontinued email accounts. 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.What can be learnt from the experiences of Sai devotee Sapatnekar in Sri Sai Satcharita? Humbly Yours, The Editor
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 Feature
of the week: GURU-BHAKTA RELATIONSHIP
Shri Sai Baba gave tremendous importance to the adoption of the Guru in one's spiritual "Sadhana". With an innate compassion Shri Sai Baba often declared -- "I am your savior, not only from the weight of sin, but from the weight of care and misery." "Guru is all the Gods", said the Saint of Shirdi, thus putting into a nutshell his trend of thought. Moreover, the Baba declared reassuringly that though as the all pervading Guru he would naturally expect complete surrender, obedience, and loyalty, he promised that through his supreme powers he would extend complete protection to those who put their implicit faith in him. The security and vastness of such a protection is indeed a tempting bait. Bharat's ancient seers also gave considerable importance to the concept of Guru. The "Vedas", which incidentally are the oldest of all "Shastras" are often called "Shrutis" because the "Vedas" are supposed to have been Revelations given by the Vedic Rishis. The authority of these scriptures is undisputed. According to these ancient Vedic seers, the concept of the Guru is like the fundamental axiom for any spiritual path. It may be that some seekers do not consider it necessary to have a personalized Guru or a transcendent Guru. They feel that the self in one's own being acts as the immanent Guru. Nevertheless, whether transcendent or immanent, the Guru is the supreme reality in all our endeavors for seeking absolute salvation. The Guru is necessarily the perfect spiritual preceptor, but the disciple too must fulfill his obligations by cultivating in himself a true spirit of dedication to the Guru. The entire matrix upon which the relationship is founded is the familiar idea of reciprocity. The gracious act of giving by the Guru would lose much of its benefits, if the acceptance of such gifts were not equally gracious and spontaneous. The human soul, even though initiated in the spiritual path, cannot love an abstract power; and it is for this reason that the scriptures advise us not to venerate those who lead us to God and to love their physical presence as the Divine manifesting itself in human form. The Guru's physical body is just a receptacle of the mighty Divine, and as such worthy of the utmost devotion and reverence. The central principle is that the Almighty and his medium of manifestation are identical. The art of being the perfect disciple is in itself an arduous sadhana in India. The spiritual impulse is certainly latent in every man, but it needs great inspiration to bring it to the surface, and that inspiration can come only through inspired contacts with the great Seers and Saints who have taken birth among men to conscientiously fulfill this sacred purpose. Theoretical knowledge derived from books can never achieve what the Guru's compassionate guidance can do. It is said that an intense hunger for God in a sadhak inevitably summons a supreme force that responds from above -- and lo! The genuine Guru tenderly manifests himself to help and guide him (the sadhak). The sadhak's task then is to lay himself exclusively open to the Guru's power, protection and love. Once this divinely ordained contact is established, the relationship between the Master and the disciple becomes a thing of beauty, where each completes the other to bring about a rare and lyrical fusion. It must be remembered that the Guru too has his needs and longings, because once the link is established, once the Guru admits a sadhak into his heart, the Guru actually craves to sustain the link for life, if not for eternity. Such indeed is the Guru's infinite compassion. On the other hand, the indulgence that seasoned sadhaks shower on their sadgurus is no less moving. If the sadhak succeeds, achieve or gain in any field, they attribute it to the Guru's Grace: If they fail and falter, they accept it as just retribution for their own shortcomings. Such self-effacing dedication, however, is also a gift bestowed by the Divine Himself! The Guru's mission is two-fold -- the first and the more important are to help the aspirant to achieve a total surrender to himself as God's true representative. Knowing full well that the human mind cannot be awakened without an alter of dedication, the Guru projects himself as an ideal. For, to constantly contemplate on some Divine embodiment establishes a divine channel of reflection, which automatically leads to meditation. Thus to awaken, elevate and transform are the Guru's sacred mission. But the second purpose of the Guru is paradoxically to help the sadhak to transcend this state of complete dependence, which he (the Guru) himself in partnership with the sadhak took such pains to foster. For, the final spurt of Realization is exclusively the bhakta's job, and the Guru withdraws his tangible hold on the one who is now ready to go beyond all that is personal and individual to a universal realization of Truth. The concept of the Guru is a very ancient one in Bharat, for, it dates back to the ancient Puranic age. Possibly, the doctrine of Brahma manifesting as Iswara who is a sadguna aspect of God attributes predicated of Him, gave rise in time of a belief in the possibility of God Incarnate. In fact, it was this faith in the visitations of God as persons incarnate that was considered a great contribution of the Puranic period. This belief in Incarnations was further strengthened by actual appearances from time to time on this holy soil of ours of spiritual Giants endowed with extraordinary qualities. Through a great faith in Incarnations and the traditional respect accorded to all teachers of spiritual knowledge was created a happy fusion of ideals that had created the concept of the Guru. The Gurus, in India initiate their chosen bhaktas in many different traditional methods -- they are (1) by Look (2) by Touch (3) by Speech --or all them combined. Very often the Guru bestows a holy and a secret Mantra which generates a tremendous help in the sadhak's spiritual evolution; for the Mantra is bestowed as the outcome of a penetrating scrutiny of the recipient's vital psychic needs. An attempt to analyze this exquisite relationship can never be complete or satisfying, for, it is replete with inexhaustible possibilities. Almost every Guru enriches its lyrical composition with some delicate nuances, some subtle touches from perennial beauty of his own Impersonality. Thus, an ancient Bharat gifted to mankind through its mighty seers an incredible depth of scholarship which is as profound as it is beautiful and which has not been duplicated in any other civilization or culture. (Source: "The Saint of Shirdi" by Mani Sahukar) Contributed
Article: As close as it gets! Is Sai Baba just a saint and none more? Is he just Guru, a sadhu, a mendicant that lived a century ago in Shirdi? People then, and now, have the confounded perception that Baba was just an ordinary mortal that perhaps was a saadhaka and none more. Is Sai Baba like Lord Krishna or Rama? Grandiose vision of God as explicitly described in religions does in fact confound the man from seeing God in simple things. Such as the begging fakir that roamed in the streets of Shirdi. With a little bit of faith and devotion, it is possible to see right through the Saint, the Universe that the Saint Himself represents! Shri Sai Satcharithaamritha depicts such events. Somdev had to eat the humble pie, the greedy Ramdasi, and even Dasganu maharaj who thought Pandharpur is several koss away, while Sainath made the poet momentarily realize that all pilgrimage is at His feet! Acharya E Bharadwaja eloquently describes one aspect of God in his great work, "Sai Baba the Master" as follows: "Everything is God's creation, and God's own. Yet He possesses nothing and covets nothing. On the other hand He lavishes all that is His on His creatures, though only a few can receive what he gives. Others have eyes but do not see; they have ears but do not hear; they have understanding yet do not consider. The greatness of a saint or prophet depends on how near he is to this aspect of God. And such God-men arise amidst us only to tell us to be perfect "even as the Father in heaven is perfect". (Source: Sai Vichaar)
A Sai Devotee Rao Payal Shankar A Devotee A Devotee A Devotee Krishnaveni A Sai devotee Manjuparesh A Sai devotee Quotation of
the Week: Q. What can be learnt from the experiences of Sai devotee Sapatnekar in Sri Sai Satcharita? A. Your answer can go here.
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