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Summer Showers At Brindavan 2002
Discourse #520 May 02
Monday 9 pm Brindavan
My Dears,
Today we have the events of Summer Course – Day 5. Time goes so
quickly – we are half way through already.
This afternoon began as usual with Swami coming from the lotus
house but each day He has come a bit earlier. Today it was 3:25 pm.
Bhajans began immediately. The altar had been refreshed with new
garlands of red, white and orange. His desk, chair and two podiums
were in place. He came through the back entrance and crossed the
stage to His chair listening to the bhajan “Ram Rahimko”. He sat
and we all sang bhajans for several minutes before He signaled for
the young men in red dhotis to come and chant for us.
After bowing to Swami and receiving His blessing, they left and
the MC came forward to give us the schedule for today. First would
be a summary of what had happened at the morning Summer Course
session, followed by a speaker named Sri Ravi Merebala (not sure
of name of spelling), who has a masters in biochemistry and an MBA
in Marketing both from Swami’s colleges. He has been working at
the Superspeciality Hospital in Puttaparthi (at Swami’s request),
since it’s inception. After Sri Merebala, we would hear from Swami
again, with more episodes of the Ramayana. The summary of the
morning session was given by two students (male and female). The
first young man told us about talks given by Dr. K.Hanumantapa and
Professor Anil Kamar. Dr. Hanumantapa spoke about “My Experiences
With Swami” and the current “universal spiritual revolution” which
is due to Swami’s presence on the planet.
Professor Kumar spoke on the topic of Indian Culture and
Spirituality. Some of his subtopics were a discussion of the
difference between a teacher and a master. A teacher gives
information that has been learned from others – a master shares
his own truth. Professor Kumar also gave 10 commandments of
spirituality (I was only able to get 9) which he listed by their
key words:
I Don’t use this word
We Use this one
Ego Kill it
Love Value it most
Smile Use it generously
Rumor Ignore it
Success Achieve it in spirit
Jealousy Avoid it
Knowledge Acquire it
After finishing his summary, the male student left and a young
female student came up to summarize a talk given by a woman (
Kumari C. ? - did not hear her last name). Kumari C. spoke on “The
Story Of Man”. She spoke on the need for us to take responsibility
for the world as well as individual problems and gave some
practical ideas on how to achieve this. She extolled the Sai
educational system and gave some personal experiences with Swami,
which had helped her grow spiritually.
Her summary over, the young woman left the stage (after bowing to
Swami) and Sri Ravi Merebala came up to the podium to begin his
talk. He took us back in time to the Emperor Akbar’s palace and a
discussion about why God would take human form to come help
mankind. The Emperor did not believe that God would want to do
this. The story illustrated God’s deep love for his creation and
Sri Merebala compared this to Swami’s being here now to help
mankind again. He said Swami’s power comes from His deep Love.
He narrated a story about Swami as a young boy, and a couple of
sweet incidents when he was a student at Swami’s school and how
Swami asked him to work at the Superspeciality Hospital before it
was even completed. Swami sent him and a couple of other boys to
Dehli for training and personally wrote them each two letters
while they were gone, also taking care of all their expenses. He
said there were a lot of skeptics in Dehli, saying the hospital
would run out of money and the “experiment” would be over. But now
after 55,000 successful operations to date, it is certainly no “experiment”.
Sri Merebala continued to talk about his experiences at the
hospital and Swami. One day Swami arrived unannounced, opening the
doors to the hospital Himself and walking into the ICU. The
doctors were surprised, as they are always informed when Swami is
coming and He never comes alone. But there He was, so they
followed Him into the ICU and saw Him give a beautiful raised-hand
blessing to a woman who was recovering from two surgeries. She was
in pain and weakly put her hands up in the namaste position to
acknowlege His blessing. Then Swami left.
The doctors were wondering who this woman was – was she important
or some VIP – that Swami had come to her all by Himself. They did
some inquiry and found that she was no VIP. She had a heart
condition and was pregnant, but the baby had died due to her poor
heart. She had been admitted on an emergency basis. They had to
operate on her heart first, then remove the dead baby. She had
been very sad after the operation and in a lot of pain. She told
them that she had been wondering if there was anyone to share her
sorrow with and Swami had come. Sri Merebala made a point that
Swami came to her, even though she was not a VIP nor did know who
Swami was until later.
Then he told another story about a young female child who had been
admitted to the hospital for heart valve replacement. The doctors
told her father that they could fix her heart, but she would need
400 rupees a month in anti-coagulant medicines. In front of the
child, the father said he could not afford this medicine, that he
had 3 sons to raise, he could not pay for his daughter’s medicine
also. It was matter-of-fact – girl children are still not valued
in India. The child was tearful, hearing this from her own father.
So, the doctors went to Swami and He said of course they would pay
for the medicines. So now they not only pay for the operations and
care, but for post operative medicines as needed. They tried
several different medicines and techniques, but nothing was
working. It was looking bad. Sri Merebala had been in the
operating room for many hours, and was given a break. While on the
break, he said he had the thought (which he said must have come
from Swami) that maybe prayer would help, when nothing else was.
So, he went to a quiet place and visualized Swami and said a
little prayer for this patient, whom he did not even know. Then he
went to have a quick bite of food before returning to the
operating room. When he got back there, he saw that the monitors
and dials Sri Merebala finished his talk at 4:30 pm. Seva dals
brought microphones for Swami and Anil Kumar came up to the podium
to translate. It was time for Swami’s 5th discourse of Summer
Course 2002.
Swami sang the introduction as usual. None can estimate the power
of love. Though we are ignorant, we are prepared to criticize and
analyze. One may praise and another may blame, but Divinity will
say the same. Those who are for name and publicity have no place
here. Thousands of students are educated free of cost without
advertisement or publicity. Swami is blissful, because our bliss
is His food. Swami said the Ramayana explains certain things about
Divinity. Bharatha did not reach Ayodya with Rama’s sandles on his
head. He stopped and built a hermitage and stayed there with his
wife Mandari for the rest of his life. They both sang about and
meditated on Rama all the time. Lakshmana went to the forest with
Rama & Sita to serve them. But what about Satrughna? No one knows
about him.
Since the death of King Dasaratha, and with Rama and Lakshmana in
the forest and Bharatha in the hermitage, who was going to rule (administer)
the kingdom of Ayodya? It fell to Satrughna as his service. This
allowed Bharatha to stay in the hermitage. Satrughna was an able
administrator and the kingdom flourished under his care.
The four brothers demonstrate unity. They were not after publicity.
Satrughna had surrendered his life to serving Bharatha. Satrughna
ruled Ayodya for 11 years. The brothers always supported each
other. So when Bharatha stayed in the hermitage, Satrughna
naturally helped by administering the country.
Swami told the episode about how upset Rama was when Lakshmana
fainted and Hanuman went to get the plant from the Sanjivi
Mountain to cure him. Hanuman ended up bringing the entire
mountain, because He didn’t know which plant was which. News of
Lakshmana fainting came to Ayodya and Urmila (Lakshmana's wife)
heard it. After Rama, Sita and Lakshmana went to the forest, she
painted pictures of Rama and Sita with full concentration. She
never stopped painting even when she heard this news about her
husband. She had such awareness that she felt Lakshmana was not in
danger. It was Rama who was suffering due to His upset about his
brother fainting.
The four brothers were noble and of high character and so were
their wives. The character of the wives is responsible for the
good of the husbands. The four brothers demonstrated to all
mankind how brothers should be. No one wanted recognition. Just as
the brothers set an example, so did the four wives. For 11 years
Satrughna ruled Ayodya without complaint or publicity. Ayodya was
very peaceful and successful. He devoted himself to this job – he
did not want Bharatha to get a bad name. Bharatha did not really
have anything to do with ruling Ayodya. He always followed the
suggestions that Satr Swami said that if you have four children
now days, they would all take different directions – no unity.
Swami related the story of Surpanaka being teased by Rama and
Lakshmana and how they cut off her nose and ear when she tried to
harm Sita. When she went to Ravana to ask for revenge, Ravana
asked why she didn’t do anything to defend herself. She said the
beauty of Rama and Lakshmana was such that she was unable to move
to defend herself.
Swami ended his talk with some brief words about the
Superspeciality Hospitals and how many times there are medicines
needed after the operations that are very costly. Sri Merebala
came back up to the microphone and explained this further – saying
that many times patients need costly hormones to help recover
properly and that Swami will always provide what care is needed
fully.
Swami finished his discourse at 5:15 pm by leading us in a rousing
rendition of “Prema Mudita”. We all sang and clapped along, loudly.
After finishing the song, He lit the arti lamp. He walked down the
stairs from the stage on the women’s side and exited the hall as
we finished with the Loka prayer. Day 5 of Summer Course 2002 came
to a lovely end.
At His Feet – love, April
From:
http://www.geocities.com/saicenter_us/snl/snl_052202.htm |
