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The Lights of Home
(1906 - 28-9-2004
[Birthday of Shri Shirdi Sai Baba])
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This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to Lord Siva,
without whose timely reminder that another book was due,
that my work on earth was not complete, this book would
never have been written.
In dedicating it to Lord Siva, the book is also
automatically dedicated to our beloved Sai Baba, through
whose lips Lord Siva speaks,
generally, but not exclusively, to the world today.
- CONTENTS:
Part I: Memoirs of Early Years:
Foreword.
Some memories of my mother.
My father.
Schooldays.
Student, teacher and
pastures new.
Part II: Stories, Sai Teachings and Reflections:
The young Avatar.
The Sai cure for stage
fright.
The yoga of love.
War and peace.
Portrait of a karma yogin.
Memories of a Chinese lady.
Two Sai stars.
Signs, strange and
significant.
The mystery of Vibhuti.
The twain are meeting.
What is Truth?
The esoteric Christmas.
Wensley gains more than a cure.
Easter and the dharmic life.
Sai Avatar and mysticism.
Sai miracle children.
Epilogue.
Acknowledgements.
Foreword.
Contents
If we have many lifetimes on earth, and I feel sure we have
hundreds, when does our conscious homeward journey begin? When
do we realise for certain that we are homeward bound?
I think that for many, many lifetimes we are like the prodigal
son in the parable, so engrossed in earthly pleasures, so
seduced by the fleshpots of the world, that we forget altogether
who we are and where we came from and hear no call from our
heavenly home. The poet Wordsworth talks about heaven lying
about us in our infancy, but he was writing about his own
experience and I think he was on his last or his near last
incarnation. Yet, inevitably, after centuries no doubt of the
tough life on earth, every human soul begins to have dim
memories, vague intimations, of that faraway, happy, Beulah Land
where it had its beginnings before it became, for some
mysterious reason, enmeshed in the long earthly adventure.
Something brings back to consciousness but very sweet memories
of where we came from and where we really belong. As the
memories grow stronger, perhaps after many more lifetimes, as
prodigal son, we turn our faces and our footsteps towards our
true home. We feel that the true joys are there, there is no
suffering, and in that home is our own loving Father. In this
homeward journey there are many obstacles, many diversions that
may turn our feet in other directions and we may become lost
again in the temptations of the world's fleshpots and we may
fail to reach our home in that lifetime. Even great Yogis who
are very near home, sometimes fall into temptations and are born
again on the earth like the beautiful "vibhuti baby" that I saw
one year at Prashanti Nilayam. Swami told us that this baby, who
was oozing vibhuti from his skin, was, in fact, a fallen Yogi,
but he was born near to the ashram of the Avatar and I
understand that such advanced souls, who fall from grace in the
last lap of their journey home, are always born into fortunate
circumstances. (I tell the story of the "vibhuti baby" in one of
my earlier books about Sai Baba.)
One sign that I believe shows that you are consciously homeward
bound is when in your life no temptations can assail you and
divert you because they all have a hollow ring; there is really
one desire, one pull, and that is the glory that awaits you in
the heavenly home. Some great teachers say that even when you
reach the gates of your heavenly home, it is only by the grace
of God that you, the returning prodigal, can enter its sacred
portals. Perhaps this is indicated by the fact that in the fable
the loving father goes out to meet and welcome his long-lost
son, embracing him and leading him to the doorway of the home.
Perhaps the truth, the need in grace at journey's end is also
shown symbolically in Homer's Odyssey where the goddess Athena
appears to Odysseus on the shores of his island home and affords
him the great help without which he could never have entered his
palace.
Only the great love and compassion of the divine Father can help
us complete the journey. But, even though no temptation, no
Calypso, no Circe has the power to divert us from our goal,
there is always the chance that Poseidon may raise a great storm
that will drive our homeward bound ship right off its course.
The only thing we can do then is to keep a firm grip on the
tiller and a clear eye on the compass and so guide the ship back
on course where we will see again the Lights of Home shining
over our bows and know we are heading for the home port. Remain
steadfast and faithful and leave the rest to the grace of God.
It seems to me that in the lifetime that will lead to that
homeward bound stretch, where we see the home port ahead, we
can, in review, recognise the pattern of events that lead to the
journey home. From childhood through to old age we can trace the
rainbow through the rain of life, so to speak. That is why I
start this book with some memoirs of early years.
Some memories of my mother.
Paradise lies beneath the feet of your mother - Mahomet.
Contents
My mother was, from my earliest memories of her, a beautiful
woman with a high forehead and large soft grey eyes set wide
apart, which I learned later is a phrenological sign of
magnanimity. A small straight nose led down to a mobile mouth
above a cleft chin. She must have been about five feet five or
five feet four in height and in my earliest memory she is
wearing an Edwardian skirt tight at the waist and flaring out
widely to about ankle level. Apart from her gentleness, one of
the most memorable features about her was a great sweetness. In
fact, it reminds me of the charming sweetness of another woman,
the Duchess of York, now the Queen Mother. I was still a youth
when I first saw the Duchess standing on a platform in a park in
Tasmania beside her husband, then the Duke of York and later
George VI. I was so affected by the sweetness of her smile that
after passing her, I ran through a small gate in the fence of
the park and joined the tail end of the crowd that was walking
past her. By the time I passed her again, I was one of the
stragglers and she seemed to give me a smile of unutterable
sweetness.
Strangely, though very gentle and sweet, my mother was a very
firm disciplinarian. She even used corporal punishment when she
felt it was necessary. Oddly, though, she never used it with my
sister Rita, who was about seventeen months older than I was.
She did not use it very often on me but I have several memories
of her striking the bare skin at the back of my knees or
sometimes my posterior. I felt anger and resentment at the time
but the great love that flowed from her, even when she was
wielding the rod of punishment, made me forgive her quickly and
easily. By the time evening had come and I was kneeling beside
my bed saying the prayers she had taught me, I had forgiven her
completely. Sometimes when both my sister Rita and I received
some stern punishment, we would run away, hide among some
hanging clothes, perhaps in a cupboard, and call "I'll tell Dad
when he comes home!" Whenever we did tell him, he would simply
say, "Well, you must have deserved it." He was wisely always on
our mother's side in such matters.
My mother was so beautiful to my childhood eyes that I could not
understand why she had not been made queen of some country. But
my mother was not only physically beautiful, she also had
shining spirituality about her. From long before we were old
enough to go to school, she told us many beautiful stories from
the Bible that she knew so well. I learned later that the source
of her copious knowledge of the Bible and her faith and love for
that book came from her father, John Presnell of Ross, Tasmania,
where my mother was born and brought up. John Presnell was a
faithful, sincere follower of John Wesley, who, with his brother
brought a spiritual revival to England in the nineteenth
century. The Church founded in his name is sometimes called
Wesleyan, sometimes Methodist. The one in Ross bore the latter
name and there my grandfather spent his Sundays, sometimes as a
lay preacher, always as a leader of the choir. He carried his
religion into his week days also, holding daily family prayers
and teaching his many children the strict, in some ways
puritanical, rules of living for God as taught by John Wesley.
My mother, Caroline Mary, must have been one of his most apt
pupils. The religion we learnt at her knee while we were still
of pre-school age would be called fundamentalist today. In the
simple language she used, the main features of the religious
teachings she gave were as follows: there is a Father God
dwelling in Heaven above the sky, in whose likeness the first
man, Adam, was made. (This, of course, gave me a picture of God
as an old man, a wise old man, perhaps with a long white beard.
He must, of course, be very ancient because he had been there so
long.) Our mother told us that, though God the Father was so far
away in Heaven, he sees and hears everything we do or say.
Furthermore, he records it all in a Book of Life, so if we do
something wrong, such as telling a lie, or stealing, that is
written down in the great book. But also our good deeds are
recorded there. In Heaven, too, is the Son of God whose name was
Jesus. Once a very long time ago, when the world was becoming
very wicked and evil, this Son had come to earth as a man. He
was born of the Virgin Mary in Palestine and for some years
walked throughout that country healing the sick and, usually to
open air gatherings, teaching the truth about life and death and
the right way for man to live to please the loving Father and so
go to Heaven when he died. If anyone failed to please God, if he
had many misdeeds or sins recorded unrepented in the Father
God's Book of Life, he would go to a terrible place called Hell
where he would suffer eternal punishment. When I was a little
older, I reflected that this seemed rather a harsh punishment
for perhaps one misdeed, but at the time I accepted the
teaching.
Another of her fundamentalist teachings, which I think is still
taught in some Christian denominations, was that at death we
remain in a sleep in the grave until the day of God's great
Judgment. On that day we would be raised in a body similar to
that that had decayed in the grave for years or possibly
centuries and stand with crowds of others before God's great
Judgment seat. Then we would find ourselves either with the
virtuous ones going to Heaven or with the wicked, unrepentant
ones on the road to Hell. This was not a very appealing scene to
my childhood mind yet, even worse, was the prospect of lying in
the cold grave perhaps for hundreds of years waiting the
terrible Day of Judgment. Through the years of my higher
education, I discarded the whole idea and tried to persuade my
mother that it was wrong. She, being quite psychic, had had a
number of strange experiences about death, such as a vision of
her mother being carried up to Heaven with a fleet of angels at
her death, which had taken place some twenty miles away from
where my mother was living. She also sometimes would see the
figure of one of her family who had died standing at the foot of
her bed. Also she frequently heard a knock at the window of her
bedroom at the time some relation or close friend had died some
distance away. Such experiences, I argued, proved that people
did not sleep in their graves but moved on somewhere if they
were able to contact her in this way. She was somewhat stubborn
about the idea of giving up the Methodist beliefs her father had
taught her. I was glad that before she died she discarded the
gruesome idea of waiting in the grave for Judgment Day.
There was another feature of John Presnell's teachings that came
to me through the lips of my mother. That was the puritanical
Victorian age repression of sexual urges. Sex could be indulged
in between married couples only. Any temptation to indulge the
sexual desires before marriage or without marriage at any age
was certainly a sin going against the commandments of the Father
God. This she taught as we grew older though it was before we
knew where babies came from. This delicate matter we learnt from
other sources. Perhaps it was through my mother's influence in
this regard that I did manage to remain virginal until beyond
the age of twenty-one, though this was achieved with great
difficulty and, like many of the youth of that time, I indulged
in a hidden, guilt-ridden sex life in the years before my first
marriage when I was thirty. Through my student years at
University, I met with young men who found different ways of
appeasing this strong, almost unbearable sex urge, including
regular masturbation and visiting brothels. The young
generation, somewhere about the middle of the twentieth century,
threw the Victorian morality to the winds and indulged in free
love with the aid of a contraceptive pill, but this God-given
powerful sex instinct is still causing much suffering and even
tragedy among the youth of the world. What is the answer? John
Presnell did not have it because two of his younger daughters
scandalized their mother after their father's early death by
each having an illegitimate son.
Now, returning to my dear mother, I must mention another way in
which she fulfilled Sathya Sai Baba's statement that a child's
mother should be his first guru. Even though much of her
Methodist, fundamentalist teachings had to be revised and
broadened through the course of my life, it was, I believe,
better than the atheistic way in which many, even most children
today, are brought up. At least it makes one aware of the vital
spiritual ingredient of life. Mother, though a farmer's wife and
therefore a very busy housewife, found the time to teach Rita
and me to read and write and do simple arithmetic before we set
foot in school but she also gave us in childhood an unseen
friend, who had died on the cross for our sake and still helped
us in our day to day lives with problems of what to do and what
not to do. He, it was, we believed, who spoke to us in the voice
of conscience. We loved him very dearly. His name was Jesus.
I want to finish this chapter with a few interesting, and I
believe, significant contacts I had with my mother after her
death in 1957. When she died, I was ninety nine per cent certain
that there was life after death and I eventually contacted her
some months after her funeral through a clairvoyant woman from
Brisbane named Anne Novak. Happily, I discovered that the love I
had shown in my psychic search for her had helped her a great
deal and that she was now in a good place and in good conditions
which seemed to be somewhere in the higher subdivisions of the
astral plane. I have a good hope that I will see her again when
I myself pass from this earth.
After the death of Iris, my second wife, in 1994, I had further
psychic contact with my mother through Iris. How fortunate I was
in knowing the Sai devotee and great clairvoyant, Joan Moylan,
during the time of great loss and sadness for me when Iris left
me for the spiritual adventure beyond. I have told in other
places how she used to come to my studio in the garden of my
house in the Blue Mountains and there, Iris, who seemed to know
what was happening on this side of the veil, always appeared
within a few minutes of our taking our seats in the studio. She
would always stay the whole morning and on one occasion the
whole day while we talked of memories and about her life on the
other side. At some of these meetings, among the people who came
were my sister Rita and the younger one Leone, who was, Swami
had told me, my twin soul. Iris had told me that she had visited
my mother and found her very happy in her astral abode. On one
occasion I said to Iris, that my sisters and several old friends
have come back but not my mother. Immediately she replied,
"Would you like her to come. If so I will get her." She stood up
from her chair and vanished but within less than five minutes
she was back with my mother.
I have learned in my studies of psychic science, particularly
when I was a member of the Society for Psychical Research in
London that on the astral plane, where vibrations are higher and
therefore matter is lighter and more easily moulded by thought,
people are able to iron out any defects in the body which is a
replica of their last body on earth and to assume the appearance
of any age they choose. Though some, like Sri Yukteswar, the
guru of Yogananda, choose to remain at the age at which they
passed away, many return to the appearance of their earlier
life. So my mother came in, looking about the same age as Iris,
that is around the early twenties. Of course the clairvoyant
Joan had never seen my mother in life, nor had she seen a
photograph, so how could she be sure that the spirit or astral
body of the one who had just appeared, was indeed my mother? She
seemed to know immediately and described her to me. One
interesting thing she said, "Your mother has such a sweetness
about her. She reminds me of the Queen Mother." I, of course,
identified her immediately by the things she said to me. When
she first came in, she seemed to forget herself for a moment and
called me "Baby", as if the memory of me as a baby on her knee
was very strong. I noted with some surprise that she was
carrying her favourite book under her arm, the Holy Bible. At
every psychic meeting we had after that, my mother always
appeared very soon after Iris and carried the Bible in her hand
or under her arm and Iris would respectfully vacate the chair we
had placed in position for her and give it to my mother. The
latter always gave me a text from the Bible naming the Book,
Chapter and Verse which she wanted me to read and meditate on.
During the winter of 1998 when I spent a couple of months at a
house in Oyster Cove, north of the Gold Coast, there were
several meetings with clairvoyant Joan who was living in that
area. At one of the meetings a strange thing happened. It should
not, of course, have been strange, because in the well-known
book Narada Bhakti Sutras I had read something to the effect
that when one makes sufficient progress on the spiritual path it
becomes a blessing to one's ancestors for two or three
generations and also to one's descendants for several
generations. Well, I had a proof of this at one of the meetings.
My mother was there sitting in the chair given to her by Iris.
Standing near the chair with his back to the wall was Swami in
his subtle body. At the end of the meeting, Iris stood up from
where she was sitting on the foot of a bed near to Joan and me,
went around behind us to where Swami was standing and knelt to
touch his feet. Joan had mentioned earlier that there was a line
of people along one wall whom she could not individually
identify but knew they were my ancestors. Joan was not surprised
to see my mother stand up from her chair and kneel at Swami's
feet but she was very surprised to see the ancestors forming a
queue and one by one kneeling to make the same gesture which all
Sai devotees know as padanamaskar, or respectfully saluting the
feet. Narada, the great ancient sage, had as ever spoken truth
and I felt great joy at being the means of helping my ancestors.
Yet, for me, an even happier event took place at the last
psychic meeting I had through Joan with my late wife and mother.
It was near the end of the meeting and my mother was talking to
me about the last biblical text she had given me at a former
meeting. She then said, "But I will not be bringing the Bible
any more because I feel now that it is not right to keep to one
spiritual book. Even though I think the Bible is the best guide,
I think I should broaden my outlook and am now going to start
reading books that you and some of the people who come here are
talking about." Of course, I knew she meant the books on the Sai
teachings. As I thought about it afterwards, I felt a very deep
joy in the knowledge that my beloved mother seemed about to make
good spiritual progress which would lead her to higher levels of
joy and bliss in the huge astral realm leading to the Devichan
and Causal planes.
In the next chapter I will tell about my psychic search for my
father.
My father.
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
And if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep and pass and turn again.
"Brahma" by Emerson
Contents
When I was a young boy of eight or nine years, one of my joys
was to sit in the barn with my father, door open wide so that we
could watch the gently falling rain while he told me stories.
Some of these were about the Trojan heroes, such as Achilles and
Hector or the clever Ulysses - my very enjoyable introduction to
the Greek mythology. Sometimes he told me stories about his own
boyhood, his schooldays and the fisticuff fights he had with the
boys from other schools. He always seemed to win these fights so
he became a hero to me, like Hector and Ulysses. Achilles was a
little lower down the scale because he seemed less generous,
less magnanimous.
Sometimes he told me about our family forbears
but all I remember of this was that his own grandfather, with
several sons, came from England to Tasmania somewhere before the
middle of the nineteenth century. Apparently they came from the
county of Cambridgeshire. They must have been farmers because
they bought land in the rich, fertile districts of northern
Tasmania. I remember that one of the sons was named Samuel
because that was the name of my own grandfather but I never saw
him because he died young when my father was only four or five
years old. Grandfather Samuel's farm had been somewhere in the
district of Carrick. This village was, I believe, named after a
village in Scotland. My father's birth was registered in a
church in Carrick. His birth was in November 1872 and his
registered name was Edward Joseph Murphet.
The eldest of Samuel's family was a boy called George, while
between George and young Edward were four or five girls. These
became so scattered through the years, after their father's
death, that I met only two of them, Aunty Lily and Aunty Ada,
both of whom lived in Melbourne when I was a boy. My paternal
grandmother, whose name was Susan, must have had many problems
on her hands with this large family, now fatherless, on a farm
with nobody to run it. Samuel's brother, David, whose farm was a
good many miles away, agreed to help her by taking the little
boy, Edward, always called Teddy, to join his own family,
consisting of two sons and two daughters. They were all some
years older than the little Ted, perhaps about the age of our
Uncle George who was then presumably in his mid-teens. So my
father became part of his Uncle David's family. I remember
seeing Great-uncle David once when my father took me to see him
in his home of retirement in the small town of Perth in the
north of Tasmania. To me he was a very impressive but rather an
awe-inspiring figure, sitting in an easy chair, with his back to
a high garden wall with a few creepers growing on it. I thought
his beard was very long indeed. It was completely white except
for a few tobacco stains on it from the pipe he smoked. He sat
there talking in a kindly, almost loving manner to my father who
had spent the years of his boyhood and youth on Uncle David's
large and apparently very rich farm. There, along with his two
cousin-brothers, Horace and Arthur, he learned to be a farmer.
When I heard an old jockey, who had lived nearby, refer to Uncle
David as "a gentleman farmer", I gained the impression that this
venerable old man had left most, if not all, of the farm work to
his sons and farm labourers.
My father told me once that his uncle had offered to give him
further education so that he could go into a bank if he wished,
instead of being a farmer. But my father felt that he owed it to
the kindly uncle who had taken care of him from childhood to
remain on the farm as long as his uncle needed him. And so he
became a farmer instead of a bank employee. Yet, I must say,
that my father did not have the build and appearance of the
average farmer, as I knew them. He had small, light bones,
delicate hands with the long fingers of a musician and
altogether rather fine features. I thought myself that he was a
handsome man, with warm brown eyes, black hair, a shapely nose
with nostrils that flared out above a brown, Edwardian moustache
that curled to the sides as if it had an inclination to become a
handle-bar moustache. He had a good baritone singing voice and
loved to stand at the piano singing hymns. When Uncle David
retired from the farm, presumably selling it, my father went and
joined Horace, his eldest cousin-brother, who had bought Mill
Farm near Hagley Village. Rita and I were still children when we
first went to Mill Farm, one corner of which reached the Hagley
railway station and another corner led through a gate to the
village of Hagley. Uncle Horace, as we were supposed to call
him, had a big black beard and was more of a rugged farming type
than my father. For some reason, Rita called him Uncle Dobby and
that was the name we both knew him by until he retired to the
biggest house in Hagley, where after a few years he died.
It was on Mill Farm that my father first met my mother, Caroline
Mary Presnell. She was staying at the time as companion and
helper of a very rich old lady, who occupied a large house near
the railway station. The easiest way for Caroline Mary, then a
young lady in her early twenties, to reach the village to do any
shopping she required, was across the laneways of Mill Farm to
the exit gate to the village. It was a pleasant walk along
smooth lanes and the hawthorn hedges that fenced off the various
paddocks. One day, as she was walking from the railway station
along a lane on Mill Farm she saw a young man burning farm
rubbish somewhere along the lane. The smoke from the fire was
blown by a breeze across the lane. As she drew near, he threw a
lot more heavy rubbish on the fire, causing the smoke to
thicken. She thought the forward young man had done this
purposefully to make her come on his side of the fire, instead
of going through the smoke. To avoid him, she walked through the
thick, acrid smoke. But she did not manage to avoid him. When
she came through the smoke, he was standing by the lane on the
other side to give her an apology for the thick smoke he had
caused. And so, as he had intended, they had met and very soon
afterwards the young man, named Edward Joseph Murphet, called to
see her at the mansion by the railway station.
The marriage, which eventually came about, took place in Ross,
my mother's native village. Grandfather John Presnell had died
some years before but Grandmother Caroline and some of her
daughters were present. My handsome father seems to have become
very popular with those ladies as he did with most people.
After the marriage, the couple went to live on a farm in the
north-west of Tasmania which my father had been sharing for some
time with his brother George. I can dimly remember Uncle
George's family of boys and a few girls. My memory of Uncle
George himself is very dim indeed because he died while I was
still quite young, probably between three and four. But he was
very popular in the memories of Rita and myself because, being a
handyman, he had made us a high-backed chair which I inherited
from Rita when I was old enough to sit at table and she could
manage with an ordinary chair. I think that the farm must have
been sold because we eventually went to live on our farm in the
district of Westwood, which lies about seven miles from Hagley
and approximately the same from Carrick. The farm was called
"Meadow Lynn," which apparently means a meadow with a pond in
it. It was in the pond in the meadow that I had a near-death
experience, which I relate in the book "Where the Road Ends." In
the same book I tell the strange story of my vision of a large
window in the sky through which I saw heavenly figures and heard
sacred music. At the time it seemed like a testament to my
mother's teachings but perhaps I should regard it as a preface
to my homeward journey.
We spent many of the innocent childhood years on Meadow Lynn
farm with my loving mother and father. My father in many ways
was more a companion than a parent. He had no discipline except
occasionally to shout but he always supported my mother in any
disciplinary measures. I was about two months short of the age
of ten when my father took my sister and I into my parents'
bedroom to see a wonderful thing. It was a tiny baby girl with
black eyes and a mop of black hair. She was lying in bed in my
mother's arms. With great excitement, we asked Dad, as we called
our father, where the baby had come from. We knew that a nurse
had just taken up residence in our home and we thought perhaps
that she had brought her. "But no," my father informed us, "I
found her this morning under the lilac tree. She was in a hole
there." We rushed out to look at the beautifully perfumed lilac
tree. It was spring and the lilac was in full bloom. Under the
tree was a newly dug hole, rather like a little cradle in the
ground. "Who dug the hole?" we asked our father, who had come
out to join us. "Why, of course, the angels did," he replied.
The thought passed through my mind that the angels had done some
very neat spadework. I myself by this time had learnt to use a
spade. Anyway, the great thing was that we had a new and
wonderful addition to the family. She, too, was called Caroline
with a second name of Leone, by which she became known. The year
was 1916 when she was born and it was about half a century later
when Sathya Sai Baba informed me that my young sister Leone was,
in fact, my twin soul. Then I understood the reason why we had
been so close, each often knowing what the other was thinking,
and why she felt the bump on the head that nearly knocked her
downstairs when I, some twenty miles away, fell off my motorbike
on my head and knocked myself unconscious on the road.
The first effect on me of my little sister's presence in the
world was to make me feel grown-up and able to help my father on
any job he was doing on the farm. My mother had noted this with
some alarm and apparently once said to my father, "Remember, he
has not grown up yet." But I thought that I had and my father
seemed to have agreed. In the next five years he taught me to
use every farm implement except the reaper-and-binder. For most
of these implements, I had to drive a team of three big farm
horses. Of course, I learned to ride every horse on the farm and
a racehorse on a neighbouring farm. But my favourite was a fat
little pony called Taffy. I used to ride him barebacked and had
many falls. Sometimes Taffy would wait while I got up and
climbed on his back again. On other occasions he would continue
his galloping journey home and I had to walk the distance. But I
never was hurt through these falls in learning to ride a horse,
so I learned to love it and became a good rider. Yet, at the age
of about eleven I felt a great desire to ride a pushbike. Having
a bike would allow me to go further afield, even to the village
of Hagley or Carrick or even ride the fourteen miles to the city
of Launceston where long ago in my grandmother's house I had
first seen the light of day. My good father could easily have
afforded to buy me a bicycle but, for some reason known only to
himself, he said that I must earn the money to buy it. "How was
I going to earn the money?" I asked him. He thought for a few
minutes. "Well," he said, "you could trap the rabbits that leave
their tracks under the fence between the thirty acre paddock and
the bushland." I said nothing but the thought seemed like a
terrible doom laid upon me. For a boy, I had a very soft heart.
Some years earlier, when I was about five years old, I used to
shed tears when I accidentally stepped on and killed a little
spider on the floor and, we had at one time had some pet rabbits
among our pets, which included guinea pigs and pet lambs when
perhaps the mother sheep had died or was unable to care for the
lamb herself. Now I was expected to trap and kill and skin
little bunnies. "I don't know how to set a trap," I told my
father. "I will teach you," he replied. And so he did but I was
not a very good pupil and caught very few rabbits in the traps I
set along the fence by the bush. The first one I took out of a
trap I nearly let run free but, noting that his front legs were
broken and badly damaged, I forced myself to kill him. This gave
me a feeling of horror, especially when I felt his warm furry
body tremble against my leg as I broke his neck. Then my father
taught me how to skin the rabbit I had killed and how to peg out
the skin so that it would dry and become saleable.
I think that the greatly desired bike would have remained just a
dream desire if something special had not taken place. One
evening just before the sun set, when I was trying to set traps
away at the back of the farm on the edge of the thirty acre
paddock, a man rode quietly up on a horse. He greeted me, then
jumped off the horse and came to where I was busy with the
traps. I knew him. In fact, in a way he had become my hero. His
name was Vern Jones. I knew he had been a scholar at the
Launceston Church of England Grammar School and had then gone to
the University of Tasmania, after which he had travelled in the
outback areas of Australia, "on the track," as it was called.
Now for some months he had been living at Westwood, with some
farmer friends, helping them and other farmers, including my
father, especially at harvest time. He was a well-known and very
popular character in the district of Westwood. At social
functions, such as a dance in the woolshed on some farm, he
could easily be persuaded to sing one of his comic songs. Once
when Vern was staying in the district during the winter months,
he did something that ensured his permanent popularity with the
Westwood farmers. They were trying to get a team together to
play the Hagley football team. The football, incidentally,
played in Tasmania, was the popular Australian Rules football.
It was not easy for Westwood to find eighteen good men who knew
anything at all about football. So Vern managed to bring about
eight of the required eighteen from his old school. They were
all from Grammar's First Team, which always seemed to win the
Tasmanian interschool matches and were first class footballers.
They stayed the night before the match in the district and, to
me, with their colourful school caps and football jerseys, they
were very glamorous figures and I longed to be one of them.
Well, of course, with this kind of expert help, Westwood beat
Hagley by a large margin. The Grammar boys, along with Vern
himself, had played brilliantly and the farmers, including my
father, had had very little to do. There always seemed to be a
colourful Grammar boy wherever the ball landed. Well, it was
this heroic figure who now began to teach me how to set a rabbit
trap. He made quite an art of it, so that in future it became an
art to me. But I still hated killing the little rabbits that now
were caught in the traps in large numbers.
Eventually I had a good many skins dried and ready for the buyer
when he came on his regular rounds, but still not nearly enough
money to buy a bicycle. So my father decided to help me. On
bright moonlit nights, he took me and his double-barrelled
shotgun over the wooded hills on the edge of the district. I
enjoyed this wandering in the bush in the moonlight. We seemed
to be going out almost to the Western Tiers, the formidable blue
wall that seemed to me to form the edge of the Westwood
farmlands. Sometime in the early hours on the first night of our
possum hunting, when the moon seemed to be getting too low, we
decided to make for home. My father handed me his gun to carry,
slinging the bag of about half a dozen ring-tailed possums over
his shoulder and headed off in what I thought was quite the
wrong direction. "Are you sure this is the right way home, Dad?"
I asked. He stopped and pointed to the sky filled with
glittering stars. "I steer my way by the stars," he said. "See
that very bright star towards the horizon over there?" "Yes," I
replied. "Well, if we walk towards that, it will bring us to a
point in Westwood not far from home." Then he strode off again
among the ferns and logs while I followed with the gun on my
shoulder.
My Dad is like the mariners of old, I thought, who used to steer
ships by the stars before the invention of the compass. This
revealed a side of him that I had not known before. Well, we
went far afield on a good many nights after that and eventually
I had the money to buy the prized bicycle. It was a great thrill
to me after I learned to ride and I explored all the roads of
the district, eventually riding fourteen miles to the northern
city of Launceston.
I have told in the book "Where the Road Ends" about how my
father's health failed when he was in his early sixties, how he
left the farm and came to Sydney, where I was working, and how
he died there at the age of sixty-five. His death was a great
sorrow to me as it not only took away the great companion of my
boyhood but also made the first break in the family circle that
had meant so much to me. As the years passed and my thoughts
went back to our good companionship, my love for him grew more
and more and I began to look forward to the time when I would
see him again on the other side of death. Then came the time
when, as I described in the last chapter, through Joan Moylan I
began seeing my deceased wife again and she told me about
meeting my mother and two deceased sisters in the realms beyond
death. I began wondering about my father. She had not mentioned
him. When I asked her if she had seen him, she said, "No, I
think he must have reincarnated." Then my deceased sister
Caroline Leone walked across the lawn into the garden studio and
stood close to me, I said to her, "What have you done with our
Daddy?" She told me that he had, some years before, reincarnated
into the very small mountainous country in Europe called
Lichtenstein. "Whatever is an Australian farmer, who never in
his life went out of Australia, doing in that tiny mountainous
country?" She replied, "He said there was a family living there
who could help him with one of his main problems and that he
knew he could help them too. That's why he went to that part of
the world." Leone told me his present name and approximate age.
How strange it would be, I thought, if I went there and told
that young man that he was my father. But I was too old for such
an adventure and had to content myself with the thought that I
would locate him again in some form in the vast forever that
lies beyond earthly existence.
Schooldays.
The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts - R.L.S.
Contents
I crossed the red gravel road from the far corner of Meadow
Lynn farm to a weatherboard cottage with walls unpainted. I
heard that it had been brought to this central spot in the
district to act as a schoolhouse. I spent most of my primary
school years in this little cottage school known as the Westwood
State School. It was not until the last year of my primary
school life that a brand new schoolhouse appeared in the same
playground. On the first day there, when our mother thought we
were old enough to attend school, she walked with Rita and me
across the paddocks and along the road to the schoolhouse where
she handed us over to the teacher. As was the case in the
majority of small country schools, there was only one teacher
for all the seven classes from preparatory to sixth class and
the brave young teacher, who welcomed us to the Westwood school,
was a bright, smiling figure by the name of Olive Doak. She was
perhaps in her mid-twenties and was known respectfully by
parents and children alike as "Miss Doak." Among the fifteen or
sixteen children who sat at the long desks were several wild
young farm labourers' boys. They regarded Miss Doak as the enemy
but Rita and I thought of her as a sweet, kind friend. While she
set some of the other classes to work, I looked around the
schoolroom. It was quite a large room, making up the whole of
the front of the cottage and, being pine-lined, it seemed to
have a subtle, pleasant odour. Behind us, as we sat in our
desks, about six children to each desk, were the cottage windows
that looked out on the road which led to a junction of roads
just beyond the school. In the middle of the wall in front of us
was a door which led, I found later, to two back rooms, which,
as I was to discover, had various uses. One of these was the
administration of corporal punishment but Miss Doak was a very
mild disciplinarian so there was not much corporal punishment.
On that first day, as she set all the other children to work,
scattered as they were among the four long desks, she came back
to us, sitting with two other children in what was called the
preparatory class. I remember she took a chart and began to
teach the alphabet, which we had already learned from our
mother, in a new way. Instead of calling the letters a, b, c etc
they acquired new names which were, in fact, the sounds the
letters made when pronounced in a word. I found this very
interesting and very easy and I saw it would help spelling a
great deal. "M", for example, was something like the noise a cow
makes when she is speaking gently. We made it with our lips
closed. The rest of the school subjects were just as easy and
interesting to me, especially after the good grounding we had
had from our mother guru. Sometimes, hardly more than once a
day, we would hear the clop-clop of horses' hooves on the road
outside. Miss Doak would come from her high desk and look
through the windows, while the children all jumped up from their
forms, turned around and watched the passing vehicle with its
driver and passengers. Or, sometimes, it would be just one rider
on a horse. This was in the days before cars. When Miss Doak had
satisfied her curiosity, she would call to us severely, "Sit
down, children! Sit down!"
Instead of going home for lunch, as we only had an hour, we
found it more pleasant to bring sandwich lunches and eat them
with the other kids, many of us on the branches of the oak tree
while we ate or, if the weather was bad, in one of the back
rooms where there were forms for us to sit on. Another use for
the oak tree and the back rooms was for reading classes. Miss
Doak would choose the extrovert of the class as monitor, then
send the class under the oak tree on bright, sunny days and into
a back room on rainy days. Topsy Pontiac was always the
extrovert she chose for the responsible position of monitor.
Topsy would make us read in turn diligently for a while and
then, when we all grew bored, we would stop reading and just
talk. When Miss Doak appeared in the distance, we would go back
to reading and so the teacher never knew how little reading
practice we had. Our little blond monitor was also a tomboy.
Often she used to swing above us from branch to branch like a
monkey or, if we were in the back room, she would swing from
beam to beam. It did not seem to worry her, or maybe it pleased
her, that her colourful underwear was always on display during
these feats. Miraculously, she was never caught but was always
back on ground level seriously monitoring the reader when Miss
Doak appeared.
Somewhere during the years of my primary school
education, this lively, daredevil young blond became my secret
sweetheart. I don't think I ever told anybody, not even my
sister Rita about this secret and I don't think that Topsy
herself ever guessed it.
These happy-go-lucky schooldays, that were largely play days,
came to an end suddenly when Miss Doak married a farmer in the
district. I was hoping that this might mean no school for a time
and therefore more free and happy days on the farm with my
father. But it was not very long before a new teacher came. Her
name was Flora Macarthur and she was very different from the
dreaming Olive Doak, not only in appearance. Her grey eyes told
us how very serious she was and the sound of her voice, though
kindly with a loving tone, was firmness itself. She proved on
the very first day that firm discipline had come to the school.
In the days of Miss Doak, we pupils all did a good deal of
whispering to each other. On the first day of Miss Macarthur's
reign, one of the boys whispered a few words loud enough for her
to hear. Immediately she called him out in front and gave him
one cut of the cane across the palm of the hand. Hushed silence
fell on the school and nobody ever whispered audibly again.
Over a year must have passed before I myself had a taste of her
corporal punishment. She thought I was breaking one of her very
firm rules, that we must not write on the desks. I was sitting,
holding a pencil in my fingers, as if I was writing on the desk,
whereas in fact I was away in deep thought. She called me into
the back room, gave me four severe cuts across the palms. It
stung very much and for a time I hated her but, before the
school day ended, my love for her had returned. I think all the
children loved her because we knew there was love behind her
discipline that, because of her love, she very seriously wanted
to educate us all to the best of her ability. So, like my mother
before her, she demonstrated what I heard Swami say almost a
lifetime later, "Children should have firm discipline and, if it
is wrapped in love, they will not resent it."
I remember one happy day when Flora Macarthur took me a step
forward towards my life's goal. One day I was sitting at my
place at the desk, working silently on some lesson the teacher
had left me to do, when I heard her voice. It sounded like music
and I realised she was reading poetry to a girl, the one pupil
in another class. The poem turned out to be Matthew Arnold's
"The Forsaken Merman." I had never heard it before and now,
through the rhythm of the words as she pronounced them, I could
hear the rhythm of the waves and the sad sigh of the sea. I
stopped my private study and sat listening as the rhythm of the
words brought the roll of the sea into my heart. I had always
loved the sea. Now began my great love of poetry. No longer was
it just words put in an awkward way, trying to say something
that could have been said better in prose. After that day, the
love of good English poetry stayed in my blood.
It was through this woman of the serious grey eyes and soothing
voice, that I began to love all school work. It began to appeal
to me even as much as farming. These were happy, quiet,
well-ordered school days with a touch of beauty showing itself
from time to time. But suddenly a blow fell that shattered them.
Flora Macarthur fell badly ill and was taken to hospital.
Perhaps the Education Department thought that she would soon be
back so they did not send another teacher. Weeks went by with
Westwood school closed. I certainly had freedom. I spent the
days in the open air on the farmlands with my father. In a way,
this was what I had always wanted but now, somehow, I missed the
school. Had I taken a step, or just perhaps half a step, in what
my father and the whole Murphet clan would have considered a
wrong direction? My mother would, of course, have approved of
the half turn I had taken.
Eventually, any hope of Flora Macarthur's recovery within any
reasonable time was abandoned and the Department sent another
teacher. This was a widow, named Mrs Dunstan. She had had more
years of experience than either of the other two and, I think,
was a born teacher. She was firm but did not require to exert
much discipline. Her strong personality and air of assurance
were sufficient. It was almost as if my destiny had brought her
to the school to put my feet on the first step towards my
far-off divine goal for this incarnation. One afternoon she
asked me to remain behind for a while after the other children
had left. I had no idea what she had in mind and was stunned
into speechlessness when she said, "How would you like to sit
for the Qualifying Examination this year? I know you have missed
many months at school but I think, if you will work hard now,
that you will pass. What do you say?" Many thoughts and emotions
were going around like a hurdy-gurdy in my mind. Surprise and
pride that she had suggested this, fear that I would fail her
and, deep down, some inarticulate feeling that here was a great
opening to something wonderful. But all I could say was, "Well,
I will have to ask my parents. If they agree, I will try my
best." "I hope they will agree," said the teacher. "Tell them
that you would have to come at least one hour before school
starts in the mornings. I will come earlier than that and have
on the blackboard notes and summaries of the subjects in which
you are far behind because of the months you missed."
My mother agreed enthusiastically, my father slowly and
dubiously. And so the plan began. The news soon spread around
the whole district because nobody before had attempted this
examination despite the fact that the state high school in the
northern city of Launceston had been there a few years. But how
could young country kids from a one teacher school be expected
to pass the difficult qualifying examination for entry? The
housewives' tongues wagged a good deal to the general effect
that I didn't have a chance and it was foolish to try. Their
husbands, like my own father, seemed rather stunned and said
very little. What they did say, or mumbled, was the question,
"Why should a boy, destined to be a farmer, waste his time on
high school education?"
Well, in the five months of cramming, before school, during
school, and also in the evenings, with Mrs Dunstan's enthusiasm
and full belief in my success, I really enjoyed this extra
study. When the time for the great examination came, I felt
somewhat nervous because the examination was held in a big city
school and I felt rather like a country bumpkin among the crowd
of quick-witted city kids who were sitting for the exam. I had
stayed the night before at my Aunt Harriet's place in the city.
She was one of my mother's sisters and my favourite aunt. My
mother had instructed me to get a good night's rest but a friend
of my aunt's, who was also staying with her, took me to the
cinema where there was a horror film which she wanted to see. It
had the effect of giving me a sleepless night, with the result
that I was not in the best frame of mind to sit for this tough
examination. Well, I did my best under the circumstances and,
when it was over, I was inclined to think unhappily that I had
not passed.
The following day, when my good mother drove in from Westwood to
pick me up, I resolved to tell her the truth, even though it
might make her unhappy. As we sat together in the forward-facing
seat of the rubber-tired phaeton, a recent acquisition, my
mother held the reins of the one horse. "How do you think you
got on?" she asked in a serious, gentle voice. "I doubt really
if I passed, Mum," I replied. She was quiet for a few minutes
and I had the feeling that she was praying. Presently she asked,
"When will you know?" I told her that the results would be
published in "The Examiner" on a date about three weeks hence.
"The Examiner" was a daily newspaper that circulated throughout
northern Tasmania. We got it regularly so that my father could
read it under the lamplight in the evenings.
On the important day when the results of the Qualifying
Examination were to be published, I could not wait for it to be
delivered. I rode my bike up hill to where it was delivered in
bulk and I could pick up our copy as soon as it arrived. Leaning
against my bicycle, I opened the paper with anxious fingers,
fumbled through and found the page where the names of those who
had passed were printed. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I
saw my name there. It was the first time I had ever seen it in
print but there it was, no mistake. I had passed!
I rode rapidly down the hill to convey the news to my mother and
father. My mother's face glowed with the good news. Even my
father looked pleased and rather proud of me. All he said was,
"Congratulations! You did well, lad."
Harvest time was beginning on the farm and I worked extra hard
to save him the wages for at least one labourer because he had
agreed, probably through my mother's persuasion, that I could go
to high school for just one year. That was really all I wanted.
Then I would return to my destined life on the farm. I loved the
harvesting but my regret that year was that my hero, Vern Jones,
had not made his appearance on the harvest fields. This was a
mystery to me and nobody seemed sure what had happened to him.
One of his friends, a Westwood farmer named Roy Wise, mumbled as
if he did not believe it himself, "I think he's gone back to
school." This did not make sense. If he meant back to
University, that would be closed, having even longer summer
holidays than the schools. So the mystery remained.
A parent was expected to escort a new pupil to the high school
on opening day. So my stalwart mother, who was shy at meeting
new people, especially scholarly men, took me into the
headmaster's office. He proved to be a smiling, affable man with
curly greying hair, topping a large forehead and kindly eyes; so
my mother was put at her ease. From the book-room near the
Head's office, my mother bought me the textbooks I would require
that year. There seemed to be an awful lot of them but I was
proud to carry them under my arm and I remember to this day the
pleasant smell of new paper. But when my mother left me to drive
back home, the Westwood farm seemed to me not only fourteen
miles but half the world away. It had been arranged for me to
board with my Great-aunt Mary, the sister of my maternal
grandmother. She was a homely person living in a homely house
just a short walk from the school. My parents would drive into
Launceston to pick me up for the first weekend at home. After
that, arrangements would be made for me to ride my bike to
Hagley, leave it at Mill Farm, go to the city by train, return
by train on the Friday following and then ride my bike from Mill
Farm to my home in Westwood.
In memory, my first year at the high school was a time of joy. I
think I enjoyed every minute of it. The new subjects, such as
Geometry, Algebra, Physics and Chemistry and even Latin, seemed
to be pushing away barriers that allowed my mind to expand and
my reasoning powers to open up, bringing a wider world into
existence. I met Shakespeare through his play "Julius Caesar,"
of which I learned long passages and used to quote from them
whenever opportunity offered. We had a wonderful staff of
teachers, all of them wearing their black academic graduation
robes over their clothing. We had a different teacher for almost
every subject. I considered them all to be a brilliant band of
mind-openers. I think my favourite was our form master, Eric
Scott, who had just returned from Oxford University, England,
where he had gone on scholarship and obtained a degree. He took
us for English Literature and Chemistry. I think the latter was
my favourite subject at that time, but English Literature ran a
very good second. Eric Scott was editor of the school magazine
that year and he encouraged me to write an article for it. It
took the form of a satirical piece about our French teacher, who
had caused a great deal of emotion in the class by expecting us
to stand up and recite fairly long passages of French prose,
which we had been forced to learn in addition to our other
mountain of homework every evening. One of the girls in the
class broke down and wept because she could not remember it
properly and I played the truant one afternoon because I had not
had time to learn my long passage of French prose. Afterwards
the French teacher changed her teaching practice but I was not
very popular with her. I was rather proud of this, my first
article in print. It brought me some fame among my fellow
students but now, in retrospect, I feel more shame than fame.
Of the sports, I felt myself enjoying cricket more than anything
else. This was a sport my father taught me in the orchard at
home. He himself was very keen on the game.
After a successful and happy year at the High, I was back on the
harvest field for the Christmas holidays. Then I was permitted
by my father, probably at my mother's urging, to return to High
for another year. But during the first two or three weeks, I met
with an accident. Perhaps it was through some bad karma
surrounding the bicycle. Anyway on a Monday morning, riding from
the farm towards Hagley station and perhaps thinking I was late
for the train, I was riding too fast down a fairly steep hill
about a mile and a half from home. The front wheel bumped into
an unexpected pothole and twisted. I went over the handlebars
and landed face first on the road. When I managed to get to my
feet, my face was swollen so badly that I could not see to ride,
so I walked, pushing the bicycle back home. At the sight of my
swollen, bloodstained face, my alarmed mother put me straight to
bed and sent for a doctor. The result was that I had to spend a
few weeks in bed and after that was not permitted to return to
school until near the end of the first term. I remember that
less than a week after my return, the terminal examinations
began. During my time at home, I had studied the textbooks,
particularly the one on Chemistry, which was still my favourite
subject. I remember I startled my second year Chemistry teacher
by coming top in the class for Chemistry. He was pleased, of
course, but also I felt he was a little put out as this seemed
to make him rather superfluous; but, of course, he was not.
Well, the year continued at High without any other major events.
It continued to be stimulating and mind-expanding. But I did not
care much for a new subject introduced in Maths. This was
Trigonometry, and there was too much memorizing of formulae for
my taste.
Harvest time on the farm again came after the academic year. My
friend Vern Jones was still missing. Why was he not there, I
wondered, sunbathing his bare arms and chest among the sheaves?
But the mystery remained. Then came a very pleasant surprise.
After Christmas, before the academic year began, my father told
me that he was sending me this year to Launceston Church of
England Grammar School. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.
I would be among the boys with the colourful caps and blazers.
As before, it was my valiant mother who took me to meet the Head
at the old Grammar School in Elizabeth Street, the building it
had occupied since its foundation in 1842. The Headmaster was a
shy man, almost as shy as my mother. His name was the Reverend
Bethune. He was an ordained minister of the Anglican Church.
This year I was to board with my Aunt Harriet, whose residence
was in the same street as one entrance to the school. It was a
shorter walk for me than it would have been from Great-aunt
Mary's. My father paid Aunt Harriet my board, as he had done to
Great-aunt Mary. Now I realised he had to pay school fees as
well. I found out, during the first week at school, one reason
why he had transferred me from High to Grammar. I was in the
Fifth Form as the grades were called here. The classroom was
almost full of boys, some of them quite noisy when no teacher
was present. We had finished one lesson and were waiting for the
master to come to give us the next lesson, which was, I think,
in Australian History. I heard his footsteps come through the
door and proceed towards his high desk in front. At the sight of
this new master, who was also new to the school, a silence fell
over the classroom. I saw him walk to his desk in front, then
put a book on the desk and turn around. To my great
astonishment, it was my friend and hero, Vern Jones. Seeing me,
he left his high desk and came down to where I was sitting. He
stood there for about five minutes talking to me while the rest
of the class looked on, silently, perhaps in some surprise.
Anyway he did a great deal for my prestige. Years later Vern
told me that it had been a help to him, too, to see someone he
knew so well sitting at a desk in front of him. I understood now
why he had been absent from the farmlands of Westwood. He had
been studying, mainly at the University, to complete a degree to
gain a position as teacher at his own old well-loved school.
He proved to be a very good teacher indeed and, some years after
I had left the school and begun my travels abroad, I heard from
an ex-student of Grammar that Vern had become the Headmaster of
that school. I heard this news with joy. Then, many years later,
after he had retired and I had returned from my last journey
around the world, Vern obtained my postal address from Cousin
Eliot, son of Uncle Horace of Hagley, and wrote to me. This
began a wonderful correspondence between us. I even sent him a
copy of my recently published book "Sai Baba, Man of Miracles."
I did this with a little reluctance, because I knew that, as
Headmaster of Launceston Church of England Grammar School, he
would have been a member of the Church of England. Yet because
his own father had been born in the two-storey farmhouse at
Meadow Lynn and during the years of teaching at Grammar, he had
bought a farm himself in Westwood, I knew there was a good
mateship and understanding between us. He wrote to me of his
great interest in and appreciation of the book. I felt relieved
and happy about this for the book seemed to mark the beginning
of my life's work for mankind and for God.
I passed the Intermediate Examination after my year in the Fifth
Form and thought that would probably be the end of my secondary
education. Yet, joyfully I found myself there for another year.
Perhaps this might have been because that year we moved out to
the new school buildings on the banks of the Tamar River. This
was a splendidly equipped school, with brand new buildings,
tennis courts, cricket field, football ground and the Tamar
River flowing along one border to provide good facilities for
rowing contests. The Leaving Certificate Examination, which
included Matriculation for University, normally took the student
two years' study after the Intermediate. But, because my father
was not rich and it may have been a strain on his budget to pay
the school fees, I decided to study hard and sit for the
Matriculation Examination at the end of the first year at the
new school. I was now in the Sixth Form of bright boys and keen
students. One of them was, in fact, a genius. I told the
Headmaster what I hoped to do and he said he would give me all
the support he could.
Early in the first term of the year, I also told the Head that I
would like to become a minister of the Anglican Church. I had
thought about it for some time and decided that this was one
way, perhaps a humble way, to devote my life to the good of man.
The Reverend Bethune seemed pleased that I had decided to enter
his own profession and he spent time during the year coaching me
in the doctrines and dogma of the Church. I also went through
several rituals, such as Confirmation, administered by the
Bishop of Tasmania. My mother seemed quite pleased with my
decision and the maternal aunts saw me as the next Bishop of
Tasmania.
And so my last year of secondary education proved to be a very
busy one, what with academic studies, preparations for my life
as a minister of religion and some sport, which was almost a
religion in itself among the boys of the school.
Well, I passed the Matriculation Examination, obtaining the
Leaving Certificate at the end of the year. But my further
explorations into the dogma and doctrines of the Church had led
me to a painful decision. During the last few months of the
year, my mind had been a battleground between the rationality of
a child, a very healthy child of secondary school science and
mathematics, against the dogmas of the Church. Rationality won
the battle. I felt, indeed my conscience told me, that it would
not be right to teach people the dogmas and some of the
doctrines which I did not believe in myself. The Reverend
Bethune was a little disappointed in my decision and so was my
dear mother, to say nothing of my aunts.
So now my well-loved schooldays were over. Another harvest time
had come on the farm and I had to decide on an occupation for my
life. My father would no doubt think that now I would come back
to the land. But privately I knew that this was impossible for
me. As much as I loved the smell of the upturned earth and the
garnered grain, I felt deep within me that destiny had other
far-reaching plans for me.
Student, teacher and pastures new.
At last he rose and twitched his mantle blue
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new - John Milton
Contents
On the sunny harvest field that year at the end of my school
days, I thought a great deal about the problem of my life's
occupation. In my late teens I was still intent upon the idea of
spending my future years in doing good for mankind in some way.
As the Church was not my channel for this, what was? Eventually
the idea dawned that child education should prove a profitable
avenue. Surely the right thing was to work on the plastic,
unformed child's mind. If that could be moulded with the right
ideals and understandings, the rest would follow. The more I
thought about it, the more I was convinced that the best
occupation was teaching the young. What was the road to becoming
a teacher?
I found out, by enquiries in certain directions, that as I had
qualified to go to University, I could also go to Teachers'
Training College. Furthermore, I made the great discovery that
if I signed a document to teach for the Education Department in
Tasmania for a number of years after training, I could not only
have the training and the University tuition free of charge but
would be paid a salary which, though not large, was large enough
to cover my living expenses during the years of this necessary
tertiary education. So henceforth, my good father would not have
to pay a penny towards my further education. This was very
satisfying to me because I felt rather guilty of failing to
fulfil his dream of his only son becoming his partner on the
farm. So after Christmas I began taking steps to initiate my new
plan. I felt really overjoyed at the idea of becoming a
University student and a teacher trainee, but there would be a
year's delay before the student life could begin. I had to do
about a year as a junior teacher, which was a kind of
apprenticeship to the teaching profession. So I spent six months
in the city at the school where I had sat for my Qualifying
Examination as entrance to High school, and six months in a
country school. At the end of that period I was accepted by the
Director of Education, signed the necessary contract and so
began my happy life as a student.
In those long ago years, Teachers' Training College and the
University buildings stood side by side on a hill of the Hobart
Domain. So it was very easy to shunt backwards and forwards
between the two buildings as required. The point I want to
emphasise in this memoir is that, among the many people who
influenced my life at this period, were two outstanding
gentlemen. One was the unforgettable character who was the
Principal of the Teachers' College and known to all the students
with great affection as "Johnno." He not only deepened my love
of English poetry, but I think of him and have thought of him
through the years as a walking poem. Not only that, but he
increased my desire to become a writer by appointing me editor
of the College magazine within a couple of weeks of my arrival
at College. And he enhanced my love of English Literature by our
studies, under his guidance, of Shakespeare, Tennyson and
several others of the great English writers. I remember him, as
I feel sure many student teachers must have done, with great
gratitude and sincere love.
The other gentleman who had a strong effect on my future life
was Professor Taylor, the Professor of English at the
University. For the many essays that we students had to write as
part of our course in English, he always gave me A+, which was
the top award; and in terminal examinations I was always
delighted to find that I had scored top marks, so my assurance
and confidence that my future occupation should be that of
writing, increased steadily. A memory came back to me at this
time. It was the memory of a travelling phrenologist from
America. He had spoken to the students from the platform of the
assembly hall of the High School. I attended all of his lectures
because I myself had been very interested in that subject and
purchased a number of old books about it. I spent five shillings
out of my pocket money to have a reading from him before he
left. He told me, I remember, that I would be a writer, not a
novelist, he said, not fiction. My books would be all factual.
This I thought now seemed to fit in with my ideals to help bring
higher consciousness, spiritual consciousness to mankind. But
how would this fit in with my decision to be a teacher? Writing
could be more effectual than teaching children, I decided after
a good deal of reflection. But having read biographies of a
number of famous writers, I discovered that none of them could
sail straight into becoming a successful author and necessarily
make a living straight after their education. They could not
just say, "I will be a writer," and start on their first book,
whatever it may be. They either had to have a wealthy patron,
wealthy wife or some other rich supporter. Failing such gifts
from God, they had to do a kind of apprenticeship as a
journalist, an advertising copywriter or in some other paid job.
And so I made the plan to begin my adult occupation in the
teaching profession, doing my best to widen and deepen the mind
of humanity through the classrooms of Tasmania. And, during the
school holidays, I would test myself out with short stories and
articles aimed at Australian journals and magazines and
newspapers. Thus, while teaching, I would prepare myself for the
wider field.
There is no doubt whatever that student time as well as being
study time is playtime. One good friend of mine, who had been
with me as a junior teacher and was now doing Science at the
University as well as teacher training at the College, played
too much, failed to do his practical science work and so failed
in his University examinations. I played too and my student days
were happy days but, fortunately, part of my happiness has
always been found in study and in the acquiring of new
knowledge. And so I obtained all the necessary certificates and
diplomas and passed my University examinations for the Arts
degree, leaving two subjects to be done extra-murally. One of
these, if I remember rightly, was Advanced Psychology. I had
done the subject called Logic and Psychology while still at the
University and I found the subject of Psychology so fascinating
that I knew that I would have no trouble in passing it from home
studies. The other subject was Philosophy, presented in the form
of Ethics. Philosophical studies such as this were of absorbing
interest and I felt quite confident about tackling this as an
extra-mural study.
And so it was I was eventually launched on the hard cold world
of classrooms full of children, the majority of whom did not
really want to learn anything. Some, of course, wanted to learn
enough to pass their examinations and so obtain good jobs when
at last the years took them beyond the walls of the school into
the free world. High school children, although more interested
in their studies than those in primary school, still had to keep
their noses to the grindstone of intense study, "swatting" they
called it, if they were going to pass the exams that were
necessary to reach the kind of future occupations they desired.
Certainly they were easier to teach than the primary school kids
but I felt that the latter, being younger, should be easier
material for the mind moulding and forming which was my
ambition. But I soon discovered that the very basic system of
education as prescribed by the Education Department of the State
Government did not allow for any individual ideals and ideas.
Time had to be spent in cramming the prescribed subjects into
the juvenile minds so that they could pass the prescribed
examinations. Otherwise the teacher would be thought by all and
sundry to have failed in his job. Children had to be taught to
make a living, not how to live.
Well, I was making a living as a teacher but not doing what I
had dreamed of doing. During holidays there was a great deal of
preparatory work for a teacher to do, so I was not able to put
my freelance writing into action as much as I would have liked.
But I did some. The short stories I wrote were mainly based on
fact, with some twisting around by the creative imagination to
make fiction. Articles I wrote were pure fact. I managed to sell
both varieties, both short stories and articles, to a number of
journals throughout Australia. Thus I managed to get my toes,
just the tips of them, on the path towards the occupation of
authorship. And so my contracted years of enforced school
teaching ground slowly on.
But there was one thing that happened which I greatly enjoyed
and, as I see in hindsight, was part of my training for the
destined work I was to do for God in later years. In a large
town, where I was teaching, there had been regular classes for
adults under what was called the University Tutorial Classes.
One of the subjects was English Literature. For some reason the
Government were economising and the classes were closed down
while I was there. A committee of former students asked me if I
would carry on these weekly classes in English Literature. This
I was very happy to do because of my own love of the subject and
so it was that for the rest of the year I lectured to a class of
adults on one evening a week. Unlike my good father, who was a
natural public speaker, I had always been unduly shy or
self-conscious when attempting to speak before a group of
adults, however small. This enforced lecturing to adults for a
number of months eased my weakness to some degree. But, as I
shall relate in a later chapter, I still had to go through a
drastic cure for stage-fright when facing a large audience.
As my contracted years of teaching drew to a close, I decided
definitely that this occupation was not for me. Not only was it
failing miserably to be a channel for my ideals but, in
addition, I was beginning to feel trapped in the walls of a
schoolroom. I knew I must make a break into broader pastures
that would, at least, lead to the world travel that may give me
a clue to life's meaning and help me play some part in raising
high the understanding and consciousness of mankind.
Journalism, I felt, was the right path. But how to get into it
was the question. I was too old, I realised, to get onto a big
newspaper as a cub reporter. Perhaps there was some other door
through which I could make the break into the newspaper world.
Looking back now, I feel it must have been some unseen power of
divinity that played the cards for me here. I have described in
my earlier book, "Where the Road Ends," how, while on holiday in
Melbourne, while having lunch in a cheap Greek restaurant, I met
a smooth-faced Englishman, Stan Perry. In subsequent discussion,
he suggested that I become his partner in launching a weekly
suburban newspaper in an area of Melbourne that was not being
served in this way. This seemed like a gift from God, which it
was, so I agreed that after terminating my affairs in Tasmania,
I would be happy to come over and partner him in the suburban
newspaper project. I have told, too, how when I returned to
Melbourne and contacted him, he had gone cold on the idea. So I
decided to go it alone. I will not repeat the details here but
the scheme proved eminently successful for a time and it got me
through the entrance door into journalism. Although Stan Perry
was no help, except in the distribution of the free paper, it
was he who gave me the idea and brought me from Tasmania to the
wider world of Melbourne.
I tell, too, in the earlier book, how the work on the suburban
paper led to getting a job as a sports reporter on an evening
metropolitan paper that had just been launched. This paper was
launched very bravely in competition to "The Herald,"
Melbourne's long-established evening newspaper. However short is
its life, I thought, I will gain some worthwhile experience in
being on the staff of a big metropolitan newspaper. It was
during this time that what I must call divine fate played
another card in my favour. It was by pure accident, it seemed,
that I happened to read a notice announcing the beginning of a
three months' course on advertising copywriting and procedure.
It was being conducted by a leading advertising man of
Melbourne, to wit, the advertising manager of the Victorian
railways. So I joined and spent many enjoyable evenings in this
new study. I must have worked hard and had some talent for the
work because, in the examination at the end of the course, I
obtained top marks in copywriting and was second in advertising
procedure. I was given a certificate to this effect. I had no
idea what this might lead to eventually.
And so I carried on with my reporter life on the evening paper
until the brave paper, unable to meet the long-established
competition, went out of existence. So what now, I asked myself?
There would be a lot of good, experienced newspapermen looking
for jobs in Melbourne.
Something that had been lurking in the
back of my mind as a temptation, came to the front. This was the
memory of my well-loved hero, Vern Jones' stories of his days
"on the track." I longed to gain some experience of that life.
It would, no doubt, provide plenty of material for freelance
journalism. All I needed was the eye for a story. I thought that
I had developed that well enough now and I had saved enough
money from my salary as a journalist and my profits from the
venture into suburban newspaper work.
One thing that had become firmly established now was the Great
Depression and I felt sure there would be a good number of men,
young and middle-aged who had lost their jobs and had gone "on
the track" in the hope of finding occasional jobs here and there
throughout the country. So I made postal contact with the
editors of a number of papers throughout Australia and there
seemed a promise that some of them would accept paragraphs and
short articles on a freelance basis. The most promising of these
was "Smith's Weekly," of Sydney. Incidentally, I was in later
years to meet the editor of this paper, a well-known Australian
poet, Ken Slessor, as a war correspondent in the western desert
of Egypt. The Depression, beginning in the late 1920's actually
created a larger army of wandering nomads than I had expected.
It was, in fact, a rich study in human nature. Much I have
written about in the book "Where the Road Ends," and will not
repeat it here. One thing I find that I did not mention last
time was that, among the bagmen, as they called themselves,
wandering in the byways of the Outback, I met a man I had known
well in my student days. His name was Col. We had both been at
the Teachers' College in Hobart at the same time and were good
friends. He, like me, had grown tired of the frustrations of the
teaching profession and, like me, was now exploring outback
Australia. We had many memories in common and now joined
together in some adventures. He needed to make some money where
he could and I was not loathe to join him in this and thus add
to what I could earn from freelance journalism. For some weeks,
for example, we picked grapes at vineyards along part of the
Murray River and built a raft to float down the river to its
mouth in South Australia. But, with the rough material we had at
hand or could find, we had not built a very efficient raft and
soon abandoned it, then walked together up a lonely, muddy road
in New South Wales where, with darkness came a torrent of
soaking rain. Wet to the skin and sliding about on the road in
the dark, we at last saw one single light shining in the
darkness. We made our way towards it and found, not very far off
the road, a small cottage where one man lived on his own. He
welcomed us with true Outback hospitality and invited us to
spend the night in his cottage, where we could dry our wet
clothing. Next morning he took us to an empty house, not more
than half a mile from his cottage. He said that here we could
rest and dry out our clothes more in the sunshine before we
continued our journey. We found that the empty house, and the
gardens thereof, were full of snakes of a number of varieties,
including the deadly tiger snake. However, they moved out of the
house reluctantly when Col and I arrived. It was a weird
experience to spend the whole of that sunny day surrounded by
snakes in what seemed to be part of the Naga kingdom. It took a
further long walk and a hitchhike of some miles on a country
truck before we located and joined a remnant of the nomad army
of bagmen.
On the whole, the months I spent "on the track" was an
experience with many worthwhile lessons that I would not have
missed, so I am grateful to my old teacher, Vern Jones, for
giving me the idea. I relate too, in the earlier book, how I
eventually went to Sydney and there, by divine grace, moved into
a permanent job as a copywriter in a large advertising agency in
Sydney. During my years there I learned, under the tutelage of
an experienced copywriter arriving from the head office in
London, the art of cutting my well-loved prose to pieces and
building it up again nearer to the heart's desire. In other
words writing condensed prose in the style of that found in the
essays of Francis Bacon and I saw how, working as an advertising
copywriter, is the best training for professional book-writing
on factual subjects.
I relate, too, how my work with the advertising company brought
me into contact with a good many Englishmen on the staff, who
had come from the Head Office in London, and how this spurred me
on to make my first overseas trip earlier than I might otherwise
have done.
I thought at the time that it was very bad luck indeed that the
Second World War began a few months after I set foot on English
soil for it took me away from the shrinking advertising world
into the war itself. But now I see it as very good fortune
because it led me into very much wider fields of travel and
experience. In fact, it led me into some countries that I
probably would not have visited or been able to spend much time
in if the war had not taken me there. Some of these were
Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia. Also, on the European front, it
enabled me to gain an intimate knowledge of countries and
peoples, such as Germany, France and Belgium. It was a great
help to my understanding of mankind and my search for ultimate
meanings. My time in Belsen concentration camp as an army public
relations officer and my months in charge of the British press
section at the Nuremberg trials, enabled me to see the very core
of the dark force we were fighting against in this colossal
Armageddon.
I found it hard to drag myself away from the interesting
post-war life in Europe, but I managed to return to Sydney in
the 1950's in time to be near my mother during the last years of
her life and to meet Iris Godfrey, who was to become my wife and
inspiring partner in my second odyssey, which finally led to the
feet of Avatar Sri Sathya Sai Baba, when the door began to open
from the Unreal to the Real, changing our lives completely. This
was in 1965.
The young Avatar.
Contents
It is interesting and at first sight inexplicable that
footsteps of an Avatar should be dogged from the earliest years
with threats to his life. Swami has stated that it is impossible
to remove him from Earth until his mission is completed. It is
of course a comforting thought to his followers but not so
comforting to his enemies, of which there are always many. I
will give what I consider the reasons for his life-threatening
enemies at the end of the story. Serious threats to the life of
the young Sathya Sai Baba began in his youth in the early
1940's; some 20 years before I had his first darshan in 1965.
The events were related to me by a number of people including
the late Raja of Venkatagiri and his two sons and the late
Nagamani Purniya and other reliable witnesses whose integrity is
beyond question. At the time we knew her, Nagamani was putting
together a collection of her experiences and later had them
printed privately under the title "The Divine Leelas of Bhagavan
Sri Sathya Sai Baba". I believe the little book has been printed
again since her death. It is a mine of information about Swami's
earliest years.
The young Sathya Sai Baba was born into the Kshetria caste; that
is the caste which from earliest times was responsible for the
protection and the governing of the people of India. Unlike the
Brahmins who were their advisors in governing, they are not
vegetarians. From his earliest years, the young Sathya Narayana
Raju could not bear to eat the flesh of our young animal
brothers, so he began going to the house of a Brahmin lady who
lived just a few houses from the home of his parents in the
village. The lady who at this time, seemed to have lived alone
in the Brahmin house was named Subbama and she became very
attached to the young Avatar.
After he had announced his identity as Sai Baba and became known
as Sathya Sai Baba, his followers began to gather around him in
ever-increasing numbers. No doubt the draw card at first was
what he called his visiting cards, that is his miracles. So it
was that the large Brahmin house became the venue for the
meetings of the first Sai groups. Unfortunately, the village of
Puttaparthi, like I suspect most Indian villages, was more than
somewhat caste-conscious.
One Brahmin lady living in the village seems to have put the
purity of her Brahmin caste above all other considerations. I
will not name her, not because of her actions, but because of
what happened as a result of her actions. She strongly resented
young Sathya Sai going himself and taking his followers who were
of mixed castes into the pure Brahmin home of Subbama. She felt
that as Subbama did not object, the meetings would continue in
her home.
The signs were that the crowds would continue to grow in numbers
and the pollution of the Brahmin home would become unbearable.
She could see only one way of preventing this. Obviously, and to
me, incredibly, strong beliefs in caste purity outweighed any
moral and dharmic considerations about the taking of a human
life. In brief, she decided to poison the young Sathya Sai. Her
plan for carrying out this deed, although perhaps not worthy of
Lucrecia Borgia the queen of poisoners, was perhaps adequate for
the removal of someone in the remote primitive village of
Puttaparthi.
She decided to make a batch of vadis (the savoury little cakes
with a hole in the middle like a doughnut). Such tasty morsels
were very popular with the boys and youths of the village, so
she invited a number of the boys and youths including Sathya
Sai. Understandably, the boys arrived very promptly on the day
of the feast and sat in groups in the garden devouring the vadis
at a great pace. The hostess who I shall name Lucrecia Borgia
took little Sathya aside, telling him that she had some
especially good vadis for him. He came readily and she offered
him the two special vadis in a container. She sat and watched to
see that he ate them. Without hesitation, Sathya began to
masticate the two poisoned vadis. As Lucrecia Borgia watched he
ate up every morsel. Perhaps he knew he was eating poison,
perhaps not, but he must have sensed something was wrong because
immediately after finishing his vadis he left and walked back to
Subbama's home. Lucrecia Borgia, very anxious to know what
happened, left the other boys still enjoying the feast and
followed after young Sathya Sai. By the time she reached
Subbama's home, she could hear Sathya vomiting in the garden.
She stood and watched. She was startled and very frightened when
she saw him throw up the two vadis whole, even though she had
seen him masticate them and chew them up very thoroughly. She
began to realise that he was no ordinary youth but somebody
special, a being beyond all castes.
She watched him as he composed himself after the ordeal and sat
down on the garden seat to recover. She went down on her knees
before him and begged for his forgiveness. Sathya Sai fully
forgave her, as through the years he has forgiven others who
tried to do him harm. So it was that his would-be-murderer
became one of his followers. The young Avatar was fully aware
even before this attack on his life, that there were many people
in and around the village who hated him with a great animosity
and violence. His own village was, it seemed a small sample of
what the world was to become as his mission grew to world wide
dimensions some believing, loving and serving him in various
degrees, while unbelievers scorned him and the violent hatred of
a few seemed to be a menace to his very life.
The episode of the poisoning made Sathya realise that some of
these slings and arrows of hatred against himself, might also
strike his good friend and sponsor Subbama, so he decided that
while seeing her often himself, he would find another place for
his meetings with his devotees, but where? The cave where he
often went to meditate was too small for the purpose, so he
decided to build his own sanctuary in the form of a hut. Some
good friends came along to help him and in a very short time, an
adequate hut was constructed. It was a rough and primitive
building, but adequate for his present purposes. So he began
having his meetings in this little, quiet sanctuary on the edge
of the village. This went on peacefully for a time, but his
enemies had not gone to sleep.
A small group of youths among the most violently active members
of his enemies, formed a plan, an evil plan which they felt sure
would achieve the purpose of removing forever, the 'young
upstart', Sathya Narayana and give them a bit of good sport at
the same time. So it was that one evening when they knew for
sure that Sathya was in his hut with a very small number of his
closest devotees from the village, they silently crept up to the
hut, carrying a pail of petrol and a strong prop. Firstly, they
securely propped the door so that it could not be opened from
the inside, then they doused part of the wall with petrol and
set fire to it. When the flames had taken firm hold, they
slipped a short distance away and sat on a rise to watch the
fun. Soon the flames were crackling lustily and noisily up the
front wall of the hut but to the utter amazement of the watching
youths, no shouts, no calls for help came.
Whether or not if they had humbled or frightened their victims
sufficiently, thus proving that Sathya Narayana was an ordinary
mortal, they would have removed the prop and released them, it
is impossible to say. Inside the hut Sathya and his friends soon
realised that the walls were in flame and burning rapidly. One
of them jumped up to open the door but young Sathya who knew the
door was blocked, told him to sit down. "Just wait and have no
fear," he said "all will be well". Then after a gap had already
been burned in the wall and the hut was unpleasantly filling
with smoke, Sathya waved his arm. All had full faith in their
leader and felt that this was a sign to bring rain. It was
within a minute or two, a gigantic clap of thunder was heard
over the hut and over the village. The thunder continued with a
violence which seemed to break open the sky and make the Earth
tremble. In no time at all, a torrent of rain began to fall.
Those inside could hear nothing but the heavenly organ music of
their saving rain. Another sound could be heard very dimly above
the torrent that pelted against the hut and the Earth beyond.
This was the sound of the shouts and curses of the young
delinquents who, wet to the skin, were running towards the
shelter of their homes. The storm ended as suddenly as it had
come and silence reigned, but the heavenly fire-brigade had done
it's work. Within the charred wood over the front wall was a gap
big enough for Sathya and his friends to walk through. The
friends with Sathya were too over-awed to say much. He had saved
their lives with a wave of his hand and their belief in his
power was beyond all doubt, perhaps even some of the young
criminal fire-bugs were beginning to wonder and doubt their own
arrogance and think that the hated youth against whom they
scoffed, might indeed be somebody special.
Friends of the young Avatar helped him repair the hut and it
served his purpose until the number of his followers required
bigger premises. Then together under Swami's leadership, they
built the Mandir now known as 'the old Mandir' that is another
story.
Why is it, one may well ask, do world changing Avatars such as
Rama, Krishna, Jesus and Sathya Sai Baba have so many enemies
and suffer so many attacks on their lives, often right from
their very birth? At first sight it seems incredible that one
who brings light and redemption from the heart of God to all
mankind should have even one enemy. Yet if we think about it
with sufficient depth, we will see that with God's plan of
evolution of consciousness and the development of beings with
divine consciousness, there must of necessity be struggle and
conflict in this training field of Earth. Without struggle,
consciousness would remain static without any development and of
course, struggle requires that there must be both the good and
the bad forces. And so there exists the great divine drama
through which we earthlings learn our lessons. Sometimes the
struggle between good or forward-pulling forces and bad or
backward-pulling forces gets out of hand out of balance. The
Asuric or demonic forces gaining such strength that they
threaten God's plan. At such times God takes direct action where
a God-man comes to Earth with commission to rectify the balance,
by reducing the evil and helping and promoting the good. In this
way he brings an uplift to the consciousness of humanity and
changes the world thereby.
But the entrenched dark forces who hold the power and most of
the worldly wealth, do not want such a change. Any change will
threaten their ignorant, self-centred lifestyle and so they
resist it in every way they can, even to the extent of attacks
against the life of the God-man. But the God-man will only leave
the Earth when his mission is completed. The crucifixion of
Jesus was part of his mission, indeed the greatest part, so it
does not represent the defeat of the God-man but rather his
victory. Incidentally, it may be asked why are there attacks
against the greatest of the spiritual teachers the God-men, and
not against the lesser ones. It must be because only the great
ones are a real threat to the world order; the greater the
sunshine, the stronger the shadow. So by the very light they
bring, the Avatars create their own deadly enemies. "To teach
the truth," said an old sage, "Is like carrying a lighted taper
into a powder magazine". Only One with the absolute power of
almighty God can carry the lighted taper of absolute Truth into
the powder magazine of the dark forces of Earth.
The Sai cure for stage fright.
Contents
One bright sunny morning in the year 1966, as I sat at my
desk in Leadbeater Chambers in the Theosophical Society's
Headquarters estate, two Indian gentlemen appeared in my
doorway. As I knew and respected them both as followers of
Sathya Sai Baba, I called to them to come in and jumped up from
my desk to greet them. Their faces and eyes were shining as if
they were bringers of good news. But the news they brought was
more alarming than good from my point of view. One of them, Sri
Venkatamuni, at whose home Swami usually stayed when in Madras
in those days, said to me, "Swami would like you to give a short
talk, one of two talks to precede his discourse tomorrow evening
at Osborne House. We trust you will agree." He smiled. When I
had regained my powers of speech after this startling
announcement, I asked one or two questions. "Where was the
discourse to take place? For how long did Swami want me to
speak? And who was the other person giving a preliminary talk?"
I was thinking that after I had obtained the relevant details I
could perhaps find some way to refuse politely. "It will be at
Osborne House in the city," Venkatamuni answered, and went on,
"He would like you to speak for a quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes. The other speaker will be Dr T M Mahadevan, who is the
Head of the Department of Higher Philosophy at Madras
University." He seemed to expect me to be pleased by this but,
in fact, I was even more alarmed. Further conversation indicated
that the talks would be given in the large grounds of Osborne
House and about twenty thousand people were expected. The men
waited silently to hear a delighted acceptance from me.
But though I had lectured and taught to adults and children for
years in Australia and given talks to Theosophical members at
the Headquarters hall at Adyar, never might I say, without some
nervousness, this request was quite different. If I agreed, I
would find myself speaking before the great Avatar, to say
nothing of the Head of the Department of Higher Philosophy at
Madras University and the audience would be not a few hundred or
a few dozen as of yore but twenty thousand or more. My first
impulse, a very strong one, was to find some way in which I
could say no. But I was to find then, for the first time, that
when Swami makes a request, one can never say no. So I found
myself agreeing to their request. Their faces brightened even
more but I felt that my own face was rather stiff.
My other visitor, who had not spoken yet, was Major Rama
Rayaningar. My wife Iris and I, in the time we had been in
India, had had some pleasant associations with Rama and his wife
Mathara. Now he spoke. "I will send my car and driver to pick
you up, you and your wife, tomorrow evening in good time to take
you to Osborne House." I thanked him very much because I had no
idea where Osborne House was in the great city of Madras. Now
the two ambassadors from Swami took their leave and I was left
alone with a very important task before me.
I put aside the work I had been doing before they came and sat
down at my desk to think of a subject for my speech and to make
some notes. I had about a day and a half to prepare a twenty
minute speech so that part of it should not be difficult. I
thought of a subject. It would be about one of Swami's greatest
miracles, that is how he changes the nature of people. As the
old alchemists strove to change lead into gold, Swami not only
tried, but succeeded in turning the base metal of human nature
into the gold of human divine nature. So I would call the talk
"Lead into Gold." I began to make some notes. Then it occurred
to me that as I would probably be in a state of platform panic,
standing near Swami and facing the huge audience, I should
really write the whole speech out. In my past experience in
giving radio talks, I had cultivated the art of reading a radio
talk just as if I was speaking it without the written text. This
was something I knew now that I could do with confidence. I
wrote out the whole talk, timing it to be no more than twenty
minutes, and felt rather satisfied.
But my self-satisfaction received a blow the next evening when
we drove through the gates of Osborne House and saw the very
large grounds, with a big crowd already sitting on the grass
under trees and under the stars above. It all looked rather gala
with lights in the trees and a well-lit platform near the big
house itself. Some friends conducted me to the platform where
Swami was already sitting with Dr Mahadevan on the other side of
him. Iris was taken to a reserved place in the front row of the
audience. Everyone was treating us as honoured guests but I felt
more like a lamb being led to the slaughter. As I climbed onto
the platform, Swami greeted me with a loving smile of welcome. I
realised afterwards that I should have knelt and touched his
feet but all I did was to put my hands together and give a stiff
bow. He gestured me to a seat on his right. For a few moments I
looked at the faces in front of me. They seemed to stretch onto
eternity. Swami asked the philosopher to speak first. I was both
glad and sorry, glad that I would have about twenty minutes
respite and sorry that I was too busy with my fears and my own
thoughts to listen properly to what the philosopher was saying.
I felt sure it would be of interest but my mind was too agitated
to follow it.
The twenty minutes respite seemed to go by in a few seconds and
the moment came when it was my turn to stand and deliver. Swami
gave me a loving smile, like a kind mother, as he gestured to me
to go forward and give my talk. I know now, as I did not know
then, that he is the witness within us and knew then the turmoil
that was taking place in me. Before I began, he lifted his hand
beside me, palm upward, as if he was raising the petals of my
aura. This had the amazing effect of calming me considerably.
The crowd seemed to merge and I felt as if I was talking to one
and so I began to read my speech with confidence. At intervals I
saw Swami's hand making the same gesture of upliftment which
kept the panic at bay. Still I was very glad when it was over
and I was able to resume my seat. Now Swami stood up and went to
the front of the platform. A deep hush fell over the large
congregation. With joy they waited to hear the words of God.
There was utter silence except when Swami made some joke.
Frequently a ripple of laughter went through the crowd. I felt
very relieved that my own trial was over and I could relax and
listen. Swami spoke in Telegu so I couldn't understand what he
said but it was a joy to sit there near him and hear his golden
voice and study the reactions of the crowd. I hoped I had,
myself, performed to his satisfaction but how would I ever know?
Iris would probably say I had done alright but then she was a
little prejudiced and very kind-hearted.
When I came down from the platform and was walking towards the
house, I met the Rajkamara, or Crown Prince of Venkatagiri. I
had had a few good talks with him on past occasions and I
admired his knowledge of the Sanathana
Dharma and Vedanta. Now he looked at me and said, "That was a
good speech. You should have it printed." I knew he was not
flattering so I felt happy that, in spite of the platform panic,
I had not failed. The speech was some months later printed in an
edition of the "Sanathana Sarathi", Sai Baba's ashram magazine.
Swami's cure for the disease of platform panic, which is with a
sweet smile and gentle hand, to push you in at the deep end of
the swimming pool and if necessary to help you to swim, did not
cure me entirely that night at Osborne House but it went some
distance towards it. Swami, however, persisted. Whenever he
found me near the deep end of the pool, so to speak, he tumbled
me in. On many occasions, when the opportunity presented itself,
he would ask me to speak impromptu to a group of students or
adults. On one evening, for example, he had all his students of
the Whitefield College gathered together in the dining room of
their hostel at Brindavan ashram, he saw me at the back of the
group trying to make myself inconspicuous. He sent one of the
students to call me to him. When I got there he said with a
sweet smile, "Give these students some good advice, will you?
Only about ten minutes." Then he vanished and I was left
standing in front of them. I did not know what to say. Then
suddenly I thought of something Dr Bhagavantam had been talking
to me about that day. So I told them how very fortunate they
were to be at a University college under Swami's guidance and
protection. The abuse of drugs by students had reached India
from the west and other Indian Universities had become affected
by this great peril. I managed to fill in ten minutes talking
about this and the other great advantages they had under the
influence of the Avatar. They were a good audience, as Indians
usually are. I could see their eyes shining with joy. When Swami
returned and took over, he remarked, "That was good advice you
gave them." Then he talked to them for about an hour while their
eager faces remained rapt in joy. Later I asked my friend,
Narender, who was the Principal of the College, what Swami had
talked about. "Oh," he said, "He was mainly scolding several of
them for undisciplined behaviour." "They were listening with
such rapt attention," I protested. He replied, "They listen with
joy to Swami whether he is scolding them or whatever he is
saying."
And so my lessons went on and my old stage fright passed away to
a large extent. Along the way I discovered that I was not the
only one going through this curative treatment for platform
panic. Dr Sam Sandweiss of the USA, a psychiatrist and author of
two good books about Swami, once confided to me that when Swami
took him on a tour of the ashram passing by groups of students
or perhaps adults, he in his own words, "walked in terror"
because he knew that at any time Swami might stop and suddenly
ask him to speak impromptu to a group. He knew from experience
Swami might suddenly say, "Say a few words to these people or
these students, Sandweiss," and it often happened. Like me, he
said he had been born with an inborn fear of speaking to a group
of people in public. The cure seemed to have worked on him when
both he and I had to give talks from the platform in Rome at the
International Sai Conference in 1983. But he confessed to me
that underneath he still had a degree of the old panic. I
suppose that I had a degree of it too, thought nobody seemed to
think so.
Of couse, as the years passed by and I found that part of my
work for the Avatar was platform speaking, for which he had been
training me, of course, and training my friend, Sam Sandweiss,
the old panic had evaporated and all I felt was a kind of
tension when I first went onto the stage. Some of the great
actors, who spent years on the stage, tell me that when they
first go on the stage to play their parts, they always feel this
tension, this initial stage fright, but they consider it a good
thing as it inspires them to put on their best performance. I
was happy to see Dr Sam Sandweiss as guest speaker from America
at a Sai National Conference held in South Australia. He had
much platform work to do there and I said to him, "I doubt if
Disraeli or Gladstone or any other great orator could have held
his audience in such rapt attention, drawing both laughter and
tears from them, as you have done here. You must have thrown off
every scrap of your old stage fright." "Not quite," he replied,
"I still have a little of it every time I go onto the platform
to speak." Perhaps, I thought, even the greatest of orators had
that same thing at the beginning of their great speeches, yet it
no doubt vanished after the first few opening sentences. And
they spoke for maybe hours, bringing pleasure to their audience.
If there is any inspiring speaker who does not feel any initial
tension, it must be Sai Baba himself.
The yoga of love.
Contents
Bhakti yoga, it is said, is the most essential of all the
yogas.
I was first introduced to the philosophy of bhakti yoga by the
late Dr I K Taimni at the "School of the Wisdom" at Adyar in
India. Dr Taimni, himself a scientist, occultist and
theosophist, constantly wore a happy, smiling expression that is
often a sign of a bhakta. It seemed to me that his life was
inspired and governed by some living divine Love.
Taimni's tentative attempt to interest us in bhakti took the
form of discussing some of the aphorisms from the classic,
Narada Bhakti Sutras. But I, along with most of his other
students, I fear was too immersed in the "head" to be interested
in the philosophy of the "heart". I was fascinated by the
theosophy of the Absolute, the emanation of the universes, the
seven principles of man, and so on. The ancient truths of the
East, crystallised in theosophy, seemed to offer all the
answers. The studies brought a mental expansion that threw off
the old fetters of religious dogma, and led by exciting ways
into broader vistas of understanding.
Devotion to a God-with-Form, and the yoga philosophy that goes
with it, seemed like an unnecessary intrusion into my new-found
theosophic world. I decided that bhakti yoga was certainly not
for me.
One of Narada's Sutras states that divine love, "Is like the
experience of joy which a dumb man has when he tastes something
sweet". The man has a strong urge to express what he feels but
is unable to do so. Every man is in fact dumb when it comes to
describing the inner experience of even ordinary, let alone
divine, love, when it bursts the dam of the heart. The ineffable
experience came to me the first time I was alone in the presence
of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
This was the beginning of a complete turn-about that changed my
attitude to many things, including bhakti yoga. Instead of
regarding bhakti, as I had before, as an emotional bath for the
mindless, I began to understand what the sages meant when they
said that it was the most effective yoga for the vast majority
of people in this dark Kali Age.
I learned another lesson too. Philosophising about love and of
devotion to God is really of little avail until the Christ-child
of Divine Love is born in the individual heart. That child is
usually fathered by some Form that spells Divinity. This may be
a Self-realized guru, a great saint, a Godman or Avatar of the
past, some other chosen Form of God, or, above all, a living
Avatar.
There have been great bhaktas of the Christian religion who have
found their inspiration in the image of Jesus Christ. Then
again, the Forms of Krishna, Rama and others, have opened the
hearts of millions in Asia. In practically all religions there
are degrees of bhakti directed to some chosen Form of God. You
don't have to meet a living Avatar to be initiated into the Yoga
of Devotion, but I believe it is a tremendous advantage if you
do. I, myself, probably needed a spiritual bomb to shatter the
thick mental shells around my heart. And so I met a Living
Divine Form to ignite the necessary explosion.
Bhakti yoga deals in the main with the control and purification
of the emotions. The means of purification is devotion to God in
an ever-increasing degree. The aids and steps to strengthening
and increasing the devotion are elucidated by Narada and the
other sages who wrote about the bhakti pathway. Sai Baba
confirms, and applies the ancient teachings, and goes beyond
them.
One of the acknowledged aids to fostering devotion is satsang,
or the meeting together of spiritually-minded people; especially
those following the same Shepherd, or chosen Form of the Divine.
Such meetings should be used, it is taught, to tell and hear
stories about the Beloved One, to talk of his divine attributes
and sing of the glories of God. Even when engaged in the
ordinary activities of life the devotee should, where possible,
sing songs of praise to Divinity.
Followers of Sai Baba in all countries meet regularly to sing
bhajans, which are songs of praise to the glories of God in his
many Forms and under His many Names. For, as Baba says, the One
God fills all Forms and answers to all Names. Sai devotees are
taught that they should have family bhajan singing in their
homes at least once a week, and should meet regularly with other
devotees for group singing.
Bhajans are mainly in Sanskrit, but Baba encourages the
composition of such songs in other languages to suit his
followers, for the Sai Movement is international. Many bhajans
are now sung in English, Chinese and other tongues.
While the company of spiritual people is beneficial, that of
great souls, saints or Godmen is of inestimable value for the
enhancement of bhakti, Narada tells us. It is not easy to find
such elevated Beings in the ordinary walks of life; indeed a
searcher would be fortunate to meet one in a lifetime. And that
is doubtless an important reason why devotees travel from far
countries as often as possible to spend time near Sathya Sai
Baba, and thus have their bhakti batteries recharged.
On the other hand, "Evil company must be shunned by all means,"
writes Narada. "For it leads to the rousing up of desire, anger,
delusion, to loss of memory, to loss of discrimination and to
utter ruin in the end".
A student has to be very well established on the path of
devotion before he is securely insulated against the effects of
bad company. Even an advanced bhakta is in danger of succumbing
to the evil influences of those around him, for the sensory
urges in his subconscious sleep lightly and can easily be
aroused. So it is an important rule that evil company should be
shunned at all times.
Even so, the devotee's greatest enemy is really himself, that is
his lower self or ego. Sai Baba is constantly stressing the need
to transcend this ego, this bundle of sense desires, attachments
and delusions that has been building-up in each individual for a
lifetime. For many lifetimes, Baba says. Self-inquiry and
self-examination are important weapons in the battle of the ego.
The devotee must keep an eye on his own motivation, detecting
any self-interest content, even in thoughts and actions that
appear on the surface to be altruistic. He must seek to lower
that egocentric content, and increase the element of genuine
love and service to God.
When down-pulling emotions, such as anger, pride, possessiveness
and the rest of the brood, make an appearance, they should,
Narada states, be directed towards the Divine Form that is the
object of devotion. It may seem very strange to the novice that
he should be taught to turn the barbs of his most shocking
thoughts and feelings towards his beloved Guru.
But Sai Baba confirms this ancient teaching. I have heard him
say to devotees, "Bring your worst thoughts and emotions and
place them at my feet. I will burn them away in the eternal
fire."
Even advanced devotees will at times lapse into detrimental
attitudes of the mind. When this happens, they should think of
the Divine Name dear to the heart, and offer their errors to
Him. This, done with love and surrender will lead to
purification.
Another important yoga discipline on the path to emotional
purification is given in Narada's Sutra 74 which states, "Do not
enter into controversy about God, or spiritual truths, or about
the comparative merits of different devotees."
It is not difficult to see such controversy can easily lead to
feelings of anger, contempt, superiority or inferiority all of
which stimulate and enhance the ego.
Besides, as Baba points out, mere reason cannot solve the
spiritual mysteries or find the ultimate Truth. There is bound
to be a diversity of views on such matters, and the devotee must
be tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. Friendly
discussion is in order, but not debate and conflict. As to the
comparative merits of devotees, only God Himself can judge such
questions truly.
Although, as stated earlier, most people need the great
inspiration of a Divine Form for the birth of bhakti, it can be
developed and increased by spiritual practices. "Devotion
manifests itself in one whosoever it can be when one has made
oneself fit for such manifestation by constant sadhana
(spiritual disciplines)," says Narada in Sutra 53.
Related to this is the statement by a great Christian bishop who
was queried several times by one of his priests on the subject
of how to develop Divine Love. The bishop repeatedly answered in
the same way: "Love God with all your heart and your neighbour
as yourself." "I know I should do that," replied the priest,
"but please tell me how to do it." The bishop finally gave him
the only help that can be given in this problem. He said: "You
learn to walk by walking, to swim by swimming, to ride by
riding; in the same way you must learn to love by loving.
Practise loving thoughts, speak lovingly, and perform action of
selfless love daily. Through such disciplined actions, love of
God and man will grow in you until you become a veritable master
in the art of loving." Knowledge, will, and action can lead, if
not to the birth, at least to the development of devotion to
God.
Man is not all emotion; he has also a discriminatory intellect
and will power. These should be exercised in the yoga of love.
Narada certainly indicates this teaching in some of his
aphorisms. He states, for instance, that the aspirant should
give constant loving service, should give up fruits of his
actions and through discrimination, pass beyond the pairs of
opposites, such as pleasure and pain. The student must strive to
reach that state of constant inner joy which is part of his true
nature. He should be unaffected by pleasure and pain, praise and
blame, and the other pairs of opposites.
The Sai Bhakti way, while confirming this truth, has a still
greater content of Jnana, Karma and Raja yogas than are found in
the Narada Sutras.
Although man cannot hope to understand God, or even himself,
through his rational mind, he must still try to attain at least
some knowledge of God, of his own relationship with God and with
the world. In other words, Sathya Sai teaches that man must
delve into Sathya or the spiritual truth of Being. Otherwise his
Bhakti yoga, on a purely emotional level, will be unstable and
floating in a void of ignorance will lead to all kinds of
superstitious beliefs and practices.
The basic truth of Being is that man is one with God, but
through a veil of ignorance called maya, he sees himself as
separated. And so he identifies himself with the transient world
of forms that reach him through his distorting senses.
Especially he identifies himself with his body, with his
children, his possessions, his ambitions. From all this he
builds a self-image and ego which is unrelated to his true Self.
The true Self is the Divine Self, and when man identifies
himself with That, he loses the false concept of separation and
returns to at-one-ment with his Creator. This is the aim of all
yogas.
Moreover, man's understanding of the universe about him is
wrong. Even if he accepts that a Divine Artist created the
universe, he does not normally perceive that the Creator is
within his own creation, that in varying degrees the Divine is
in all forms, from the saint to the star to the stone. At times
man does have a glimmering of this, and calls it Beauty or, as
Wordsworth expressed it, "The Light that never was on sea or
land." The yogin by whatever path he travels comes eventually to
see God in all things and realizes that there is only One
eternal Reality.
But before he reaches such a level of realization, a mental
acceptance of the basic spiritual Truth will enlighten his
footsteps, and lend support to the wisdom of Love that leads to
the great Vision of Truth.
As well as the mind reaching outward for the knowledge it
craves, it must, says Sai Baba, reach inward. It must make that
inward journey of discovery that we call meditation. While
devotional meditation is the type most commonly practiced by his
devotees, Baba does teach different varieties to suit individual
requirements. But regular practice is prescribed for almost all.
Love, Selfless Love, is the Sai central tower that is being
built ever upward towards the divine heights. All structures
built around it are support structures, their purpose being to
strengthen and facilitate the work on the central Love Tower.
While one of the support structures is right knowledge another
is right action. As man has a mind that must be satisfied, so he
has hands that must find work to do. The old proverb rightly
states that, "The devil finds work for idle hands to do," so Sai
Bhakti does not leave them idle. It teaches that the hands as
well as the mind and tongue must work for God, and the best way
of doing that is to work for one's fellow men, without thought
of gain. Work must become a form of worship. Says Baba: "Love
for God must be manifested as Love for man, and Love must
express itself as service."
The students in the Sathya Sai schools and colleges, for
instance, are trained through voluntary work to become true
bhaktas in action. Among other things, they help to organise and
run medical camps where the poor are given free treatment and
help for such things as polio and disease of the eye. These
white-clad students also go into the backward villages for big
clean-up operations, clearing the dirt from the streets and
years of filth from the drains. This is the kind of lowly
distasteful work that in India would normally be left to
outcasts. But the student-bhaktas do this, as well as their
mundane daily chores, as a service to God as an expression of
the love felt for the Divine in man. In this way action becomes
joy and brings no karma.
All voluntary and social work anywhere should be done in this
same spirit of selfl
ss dedication; then it is good yoga,
bringing full benefit to both performers and recipients. But if
the actions are tainted by worldly desires and motives, yogic
benefits to the performer vanish and, because love is lacking,
the recipients gain less. This is a Sai teaching.
Bhakti, coming from the Fountain Love in the individual
spiritual heart, flows out through all thought, word and action.
Sathya Sai urges us to remember whenever we look at our watch,
that, as well as it giving the time, its name gives us the
message: "Watch your Words; watch your Action; watch your
Thoughts; watch your Character; watch your Heart." In this way
all life can become a course in yoga, as indeed it should be for
those who are aware that man is on an evolutionary path, and
that he can consciously speed his way along it.
Many sages have declared that in this present Kali Yuga the
easiest way to union with God is along the Path of Devotion to a
Form of God that stirs love in the heart. God is both with form
and without, both manifest and unmanifest. But in this Age,
soaked in body-consciousness, it is difficult for the ordinary
person to take the jnana road directly to the Unmanifested or
Formless God. That way is for the few. "The goal of the
Unmanifested is very hard for the embodied to reach," says
Krishna in the 12th chapter of the Bhagavad Gita.
It is much easier to worship a Beloved Form and reach the goal
that way, as Sri Ramakrishna states - "He in whom Bhakti is
surging with fervour has already come to the threshold of
Divinity. Know it for certain that he will very soon get into
union with God."
Among the followers of Sri Sathya Sai Baba I have met those in
whom bhakti seems to be surging with fervour. "They converse
with one another with choking voice, and tearful eyes," and
describe how "Their bodies thrill and their hair seems to stand
on end." These, according to Narada, are manifestations of
supreme devotion. He goes on to say that when a devotee reaches
the highest levels on this path, and the summit of Bhakti is
attained, such a one sanctifies his family, his land, indeed the
whole world, and "This earth gets a Saviour."
The fulfillment of Divine Love brings the bhakta into oneness
with God. He knows that there is only the Beloved, and that he
and all things are at-one with the Beloved. Such a saint, having
no selfish motives will, through all his thoughts and actions,
help to save mankind from its life of blindness, bondage, and
sorrow.
Bhakti is not only the easiest Way, it is also the joyous Way,
for it is accompanied by a constant underlying joy, however
adverse the outward circumstances.
Those for whom the Sai Bhakti door has opened know with a bright
certainty the goal towards which they are heading. The road
towards it has a radiance and profound contentment of its own.
True, there are some sharp thorns on this narrow Way, and
sometimes dark clouds engulf its radiance. But deep in his heart
the traveller knows for sure, in the words of John Masefield,
that, "Though the darkness close, even the night shall blossom
as the rose."
War and Peace.
Contents
Since time immemorial there have been wars on earth, first
between tribes and then between the nations (which are really
full-grown tribes). Yet the vast majority of people in the world
want peace, not war. This being so, how do wars come about, and
can they be prevented? The past century has proved that they
cannot be prevented by such well-meaning organisations as the
League of Nations and the United Nations. Something more is
needed than the organisation of leaders to prevent war. Hitler's
plan was to create a master race in his human stud farms, using
what he considered the Aryan stock in the German race. This
master race was to become the rulers of the slave people in the
rest of the world. This may have brought about world peace, but
not the kind of peace that mankind would want. It would have
been the peace of slaves. Human beings have been defined as
divine spirits having a human experience. They want individual
freedom as well as peace. The same fault lies in communist
domination because communism in practice, becomes a tyranny in
which the few rule the many and individual democratic freedom
vanishes very quickly. So what is the root of war and can this
root be removed?
Swami tells us that the root of all conflict between the races
or the nations lies in the individual. How do conflicts, armed
or otherwise, begin in the individual breast? Can this be
changed? Can this inner conflict within the heart of humanity be
changed? Can the root of all wars great and small be dug out
from your breast and mine?
Who is the enemy within the one who we must all defeat before
peace in the world can be really established? Swami tells us
that it is our own egos. This is his name for what some teachers
have called our lower selves. That conglomerate of selfish
desires, self-centred ambitions, narrow pride, ignorant
prejudice, lust for power and wealth and the other demons
within, who motivate our lives. This ego fights an eternal inner
war against our higher Self, which is also known as the
conscience and the divine spirit of our being. It is a strange
set-up. This divine centre of our Selves, also known as the
Jivatma, is our true eternal identity, yet it has to fight a
constant war with this horde of demonic enemies which together
make up the evil force that we call the inner devil or the ego.
In simple terms it is a battle between the good and the evil
within us. Poet Laureate Masefield called this, "The long war
beneath the stars." Through many lifetimes we have each been the
battlefield for this war within. So if Swami is right, and I'm
quite sure he is, those wars that have been going on between
groups of people since time immemorial are, in fact, an outward
expression of this long war beneath the stars that has been
going on within ourselves, since humanity began its first
lessons in schoolroom earth.
While the inner war is usually being fought between the higher
Self and the ego, war between God and the devil within man,
between groups of people small and large is often ego versus
ego. Yet the wars that always seem to have come with the advent
of a Godman or Avatar on earth are definitely the Divine or God
forces versus the anti-God forces. Take, for instance, Rama the
first human Avatar of God on earth. While he was the embodiment
of dharma, or right-living, he was essentially a warrior and his
first purpose on earth seems to have been the removal of what
Swami calls a diseased tree within humanity. Mankind could not
live the dharmic life while this diseased tree, this anti-God
force, was active. The leader of the anti-God force was Ravana
and his followers were the rakshasas or demons inhabiting Lanka
at that time. So a long hard war had to be fought to remove this
impurity from the body of mankind. Only then did a just peace on
earth become possible.
There was a parallel situation when the next human Avatar, Lord
Krishna, came to earth. This time the diseased tree in humanity
was a caste that had forsaken its dharma and, instead of
governing and protecting the people, was exploiting them for its
own selfish gains. Krishna tried to bring about the reform of
the caste without the necessity of war while, no doubt, knowing
that this was impossible. On the battlefield just before the
outbreak of the fighting, he gave that immortal teaching to
mankind known as the Bhagavad Gita. It is significant that he
gave it there on the eve of the terrible slaughter that was to
come. It teaches us, I think, what the divine man's attitude
must be to any sacrifice of life. This is not only true of human
or animal sacrifice but also of vegetable. Whether we are
cutting down a tree or killing smaller vegetable life, though we
need not recite the whole Bhagavad Gita, we should offer the
life to God in an appropriate prayer, which may be verbal or
silent.
After the evil caste had been removed and a just and dharmic
peace was possible, Krishna performed his wondrous mission to
mankind and created that Divine Love in the human heart that we
still feel today.
The next Godman who changed the history of the world, placing it
on a higher spiritual level, particularly in the Western world,
was Jesus the Christ. He stated openly that he had not come to
bring peace but a sword. Yet his mission to mankind, delivered
in the main to the Jews in Judea, lasted only three years, a
little less than three years, and though many of his disciples
and other followers hoped he would take the sword and lead them
against the Romans who were occupying the country, he knew that
this was not practicable and was not the way to go. Jesus
foresaw the hopelessness of the challenge to the Roman might.
But a successful challenge to Roman power followed and helped
protect the early Christian religion. The sword Jesus spoke of
came after his crucifixion, after the beginnings of the new
religion named The Way and later called Christianity, had been
thrown out of Palestine and taken root in Britain at the place
known today as Glastonbury in Avalon, in the West of England.
The Roman emperor, Claudius, was fully aware that Glastonbury,
where the leaders of The Way were gathering, was the base from
which the new religion would be given out to the world. And,
knowing that this religion was a threat to the godless power of
the Roman empire, Claudius declared that it must be wiped out.
To do this he sent the best legions of the Roman army with his
best generals to lead them in Britain with the object of
completely wiping out the roots of the new religion. However,
because the coming of the Messiah had been prophesied in their
own scriptures, known as the Triads, the leaders of the Celtic
nations, or Britons, quickly accepted Jesus, or Jesu as he was
called in their scripture and fought valiantly against the
highly trained Roman legions. In a nine year long bitter and
bloody war, the Roman steel never managed to pierce the ranks of
Celtic warrior men and women to reach the holy land of
Glastonbury. So it was that the sword of which Jesus spoke,
saved the child Christianity and it was from Glastonbury that
the Apostles of Christ took the message of love and peace to
many parts of Europe and North Africa. So here again it was the
greedy power-loving dark forces of Rome against the staunch
God-loving, freedom-loving Celtic people.
Well, that great struggle between darkness and light took place
some two millenia ago, but let us come to peace and war in our
own time. Looking back at events of last century, we see the
sprouting of seeds for a tremendous conflict between good and
evil, between light and darkness in this century. On the one
side we see the sudden upsurge of modern science and with it the
emancipation of the human mind that led to a great crest-wave of
the intellect. The asuras of the dark forces directed this wave
towards the shores of materialism and atheism. Eventually men
were saying and even writing, "God is dead". What need is there
of a God when all is explained by the laws of cause and effect
through eons of evolution? On the other hand, against this wave
of darkness, this denial of the spiritual dimension, God himself
came to earth in the form of the Avatar, Sai Baba of Shirdi.
Assisting in the forcefield of Light was Paramahansa
Ramakrishna, Paramahansa Yogananda and the Mahatmas in the Great
White Brotherhood of Adepts. The old forms of religion were
weakening and seeming ready to fade away. The clash of
materialistic interests between nations came to a head in 1914
with the unbelievable horror of trench warfare for four long
years. Both sides claimed that God was on their side but was it
anything more that the god of war glorying in "blood and iron"
to use Bismark's phrase?
Yet a deeper current was underlying this clash of material
interests; the current that goes back to at least the age of
Rama, the underlying struggle between Might and Right, between
the Light and the Dark forces. World War I was really a
forerunner of the next war involving almost the whole of the
world and known as World War II. Here we see more distinctly and
clearly the struggle between the Light and the Dark. The young
Avatar, Sathya Sai Baba, was twenty years old when this war
ended. His spiritual power had no doubt helped in the victory of
the forces of Light. Another great spiritual leader of the time,
Sri Aurobindo, whom Swami had named an Avatar of the Individual,
stated during the war that if the Axis forces of tyranny and
darkness won the war, the divine plan would be set back by a
thousand years. So he himself played a powerful part to ensure
that victory went to the Allied forces of individual, democratic
freedom.
Two diseased trees in the life of a spiritual growth of mankind
were cut down in that war, one being Nazism and the other being
Fascism. Yet even so, one tree remained and so the Cold War
began, showing its teeth in the 1950's and developing into a
living nightmare for freedom-loving people during the 1960's. We
lived on the verge of the outbreak of World War III, facing the
horror of a war with both sides using atomic and nuclear
weapons, leading to the devastation of the planet and the
destruction of a large part, if not all, of the human race. It
was at this time, during the 1960's, that my wife Iris and I
were living in India and seeing a great deal of Sathya Sai Baba.
On one memorable occasion, when the two of us were sitting with
Sai Baba alone in a room at Brindavan ashram, we asked him the
vital question: "Swami, will this threatening terrible World War
III with nuclear weapons really break out?" We held our breath
for the answer. It came quickly and in a very definite tone of
voice: "There will be some small wars in the world but no atomic
Third World War." We felt relieved and sat silent for a few
moments. Then Iris said, "But Swami we know all people want
peace, but what about the governments? They seem to be
manoeuvring for war." "Well," said Sai Baba "the governments
will have to be changed." He spoke in a light, casual manner as
if he were talking about something as easy as the changing of a
building in the ashram. We looked at him in stunned silence. Was
this little man before us in the red robe and the bare feet and
mop of dark hair talking about himself changing the government
of Russia (for that was the government we were talking about)?
For the moment we were thinking of him as a man, a lovable,
well-meaning friend with supernormal powers but to imply that he
could change the government of Russia was something that we
could not, at that moment, accept. We had forgotten that, as he
had often said, he could call in all the powers of the formless
God to do whatever was right. Even when we thought about the
divine omnipotence that he possessed, our poor faith was not
equal to the belief that he could change the government of
Russia. Not long after that, our heavenly six years residence in
India had to come to an end. We said a sad farewell to Swami
and, after lingeringly spending time in England and America, we
returned to our home in Australia.
In the years that followed we made many returns to the feet of
our Sadguru, Sai Baba. One of these returns took place a few
days after Gorbachev had appeared on the stage in Russia and
that country had begun the governmental change that brought an
end to the Cold War. On the day of our arrival, Swami, knowing
no doubt that I had a question to ask him, called me into the
interview room but he called several other men with me. Somehow
I did not feel it was right to ask him this great question in
front of others. So mentally I asked him very definitely if he
had brought about the change of government in Russia. A mental
question is as good as a verbal one to Swami. His eyes gave me
the affirmative answer but all his lips said was, "Gorbachev is
a good man." I knew then that he had played some wonderful,
powerful tune on the akashic strings that had manoeuvred
circumstance and brought about the great change. With the
passage of time, I felt more sure of this stupendous fact and my
heart continually gives thanks to our living God on earth for
the gift of continued life to Mother Earth and the human race.
But what about the future wars using the deadly weapons that
modern science has made possible? I have no doubt that the only
way to prevent them is to end the inner war that has been going
on for so many centuries beneath the stars. But, knowing that
struggle is part of the divine plan for the development and
evolution of mankind's consciousness, I see that that struggle
cannot end until, again in the words of John Masefield, "Until
this case, this clogging mould, is smithied all to kingly gold."
This may not be such a long time in God's eternity but does it
not seem a very long stretch of centuries in man's time? Yet we
need not individually wait that long for bringing inner peace to
ourselves. There is a line in a benediction that I often heard
given in the days when I was a member of the Liberal Catholic
Church. It is this: "There is peace that passeth all
understanding. It abides in the hearts of those who live in the
eternal."
To live in the eternal is to live in the divine Self, our true
nature. Meditation will lead us into this divine centre but, of
course, we cannot actually sit in meditation during all our
waking hours. Swami states in his wonderful book "Sai Gita" that
not only should we meditate when we go into a room to do so but
while we are moving about in our daily lives. That is, while our
hands and feet and lower minds are busy with the business of the
world that involves our daily work, our higher minds should
reach up and merge with the God, the Atman, that is our true
Selves. While we manage to do this, we will certainly find
peace. Furthermore, this practice brings a strong awareness of
the oneness of all life and, consequently, fosters that divine
Love towards all without exception. This brings us to joy and
inner peace which is the father of peace in the world. In the
book just mentioned, Swami makes this connection very clear. He
says, "If you want peace and happiness, you must live in Love.
Only through Love will you find inner peace."
Parts of this article were given in a talk by the author at the
Sai Conference in Canberra during April 1998, the year Swami has
named the Year of Peace.
Portrait of a karma yogin.
Contents
Some men are born with the gift of making money, a pile of
money; is this a blessing or a curse? It can be either. If the
great wealth is used solely for the gratification of one's own
selfish desires it will prove to be a terrible curse, leading
not to joy but to unhappiness, often tragic unhappiness. This
was the theme of Charles Dickens' Novel, "A Christmas Carol".
But if, on the other hand, the wealth is used to bring happiness
and a fuller life with spiritual progress to other people, then
the wealth becomes a true blessing, bringing joy and contentment
to its owner, for then he is a true Karma Yogin and in serving
man he is serving God. Some men discover this great truth during
their lives, as did Scrooge, the hero of "A Christmas Carol" but
some seem to be born with this wisdom.
One of these was John Fitzgerald. John, who now resides in
Queensland, Australia, is, he learned with some joy, a
descendant of the Fitzgerald who made a translation, the most
popular one, of the Rub(iy(t of the old Persian poet and mystic
Omar Khayyam. Perhaps some of his wisdom and his good karma
comes down to him from his famous ancestor, but he met with a
great tragedy when he was a boy of only eight years. His father
whom he loved very much, was killed in a car accident on the
roads of Victoria, where John was born and reared. John's two
elder brothers wept copious tears at the news of their loss, but
John himself, was I think, feeling something too deep for tears.
One can imagine the feelings of the young mother suddenly left
with a family of five children, three boys and two girls. She
was also left with several Menswear shops in the city of
Melbourne to either sell or manage. She decided to manage them
but she wanted to keep the family of five round her, at the same
time. This she managed for two years but then realising that the
task was beyond her, she sent the three boys to a well-known
Roman Catholic boarding school in Melbourne and kept the two
girls at home. To John, who was now ten years of age, this
separation from his mother was a sad trial, yet it was probably
a good thing for developing strength of character. In this world
of boys and men only, he had to face and deal with many kinds of
unexpected situations and he learned some unpleasant facts of
life at an early age. He found, for example that one of the
masters was seducing some of the other boys. This certainly gave
him a great shock, but like most boys when such unpleasant and
unexpected findings cross their path, they brush it aside. This
John did, and found his outlet and compensation by spending more
time in the school sports. His two elder brothers, one two years
older and the other four years older than himself, were, he
says, a good help and guidance to him in some difficult
situations.
When John was sixteen years old he had reached the end of his
secondary education at the Roman Catholic College and had
qualified for University but felt that tertiary education was
not for him. He felt inwardly the call to travel and find his
destiny beyond the city of Melbourne. Specifically, Queensland
seemed to be the state that was beckoning him but he had no
money to get there and did not want to ask his mother for any
financial help, so during the long holiday that followed the end
of his schooldays he told his mother that he planned to
hitch-hike to Queensland. No doubt she felt a great shock at
this news as I remember my own mother did when I made such
announcements to her. So John's mother, like my own, bowed her
head to the storm and wisely gave her loving consent to the
adventure. Just an adventure, she thought it was at the time,
having no idea what it would really lead to.
The God of fair beginnings, called Janus, by the ancient Romans
and Ganesha by the Indians, was smiling on him. Without
difficulty he hitch-hiked all the way from Melbourne in the
south, to Coolangatta just over the border from New South Wales
into Queensland.
The Sunshine Coast lay before the young adventurer with its
shining clean buildings and its beaches of golden sands and
lines of curling surf. It seemed to give John a laughing, happy
welcome. He felt over-joyed and confident this was his country.
The job in the Real Estate office seemed to have been waiting
for him and it was the kind of work for which he had a real
talent. Fortune favoured him in another way too. During the next
few years he met two different business gurus or mentors who
taught him much about the nature of this special world, the Gold
Coast Real Estate business. He learned that there were many
great opportunities here for one who had the confidence, the
right perception and the judgment to sieze and make the most of
the opportunities that offered. After a few, a very few years,
he was in a position to open his own real estate business and by
the time he was twenty five years old he was a millionaire. That
is, in less than ten years after he had set out on that
penniless hitch-hike from Melbourne he was in the 'big money'
and there were greater things to come. I think of him, myself,
as a second Dick Whittington, an historic achiever in more ways
than one.
It was a good many years later, in fact not until 1998 that I
had the pleasure of meeting John Fitzgerald. I met him through
another remarkable man, Dr Ron Farmer, the Clinical Psychologist
and a true devotee of Sathya Sai Baba. Soon after our meeting,
John invited me to lunch at his house on the Nerang river bank.
During my many years of travel, I have seldom met with such a
charming, welcoming, house. As we walked through the beautiful,
landscaped gardens, the house seemed to have a perfectly
proportioned exterior that seemed to lift the spirit. Inside,
the colours and proportions gave me a definite feeling of rest.
As we sat at the dining table, with outside views of the river
and the sunny sky blessing us from above practically the whole
of the dining area was covered by a clear skylight I could not
help asking, "Who was your heavenly architect, John?" "No
architect," he replied, "I designed the house myself." He gave
this matter-of-fact, though remarkable answer without the
slightest show of pride in his voice. When we had explored the
whole of the house after lunch, I could not help remarking to
John who I knew was more than interested in Sai Baba, "If Swami
ever comes to Queensland on a visit, I will nominate this house
as the right place for him to stay." John's face then lit up
with a smile of joy. It was during this visit that I had the
pleasure of meeting his attractive young wife and his two very
young children, a boy and a girl.
A short walk along the bank of the Nerang River from his house
are the offices of his business, and under the same roof Dr Ron
Farmer's clinic. It was not from John himself, but from Ron
Farmer that I heard all about his heart-warming philanthropic
work, but before telling the details of that I would like to say
something about John's first visit to Swami.
This took place in the following year, that is, October 1999
when I was again staying in Queensland at my summer residence at
Oyster Cove, north of the Gold Coast. John called to seem me
about a week before he left for India, and I observed that he
was really in high spirits at the thought of spending about a
week at the ashram of the great Avatar. He must have been giving
a good deal of thought to the project, because on the day before
he left, he said to Ron Farmer, "I have decided to invite Swami
to come to Australia, telling Him how very much Australia needs
Him. I will ask Him to stay at my house when He's in Queensland,
letting Him know that Howard Murpet said it would be a very
suitable house for Him, and any close followers He would like to
take there. I will, of course, offer to pay His fare and also
the fares of up to a hundred of any followers He likes to bring.
He paused and looked at Ron's face to note any reactions there.
In his kindly way, Ron Farmer said, "You must understand, John,
that it is very unlikely you will get to talk with Sai Baba on
this, your first, and rather short meeting. "Well," said John,
"I will write it all in a letter, and get that to Him somehow,
while I am there." When Ron told me of this idea, I said, "Of
course, Swami knows Australia needs Him as does every other
county in the world. It is a very generous-hearted gesture of
John's and I'm sure Swami will appreciate it but I doubt if it
will make any difference to His world travel plans. He travels
the world every day in His subtle body but the only country He
has ever gone to in the physical is Uganda and I would say the
thing that took Him there was that He knew that four years
later, the dictator Edi Ahmin would expel every Indian from his
country. It was a very dangerous time for them and one Indian
friend of mine living there at the time was very fortunate to
escape with his life. The offer of paying the fares of a hundred
of His followers will not change any plans that Swami has for
travel. Swami once, a good many years ago told me that He would
not travel abroad until His own house was in order, by that He
means India, of course. Well, do you thing that's in order? It
was compassion for the thousands of Indians living in Uganda
that took Him there, to give them a warning. Moreover, offering
Swami a free ticket for Himself and a house to stay in, will not
count in Swami's scale of things. I remember once in the early
days, Walter and Elsie Cowan even sent him a ticket, a return
ticket to America and expected Him to come, but instead, He used
the ticket to send my friend, Dr V K Gokak on a visit to the Sai
people in the United States. Even so, I might be wrong in all
this, I hope I am and we must not discourage John in his
generous, happy but over-optimistic gesture."
Well, of course, John did not manage to get any conversation
with Swami but he had a very happy visit. Every day he got a
good position for Darshan and he told me that Swami looked into
his eyes with such a deep and penetrating look that he must have
seen the depth of John's mind and soul. Whatever may have
happened to the letter and the invitation there can be no doubt
that Swami knew everything about it. My own feeling is that
Swami would have heard John giving details of his plan to Ron
the day before he left. I know He has heard things I have said
to Iris, especially if the matter concerned our relationship
with Him. Furthermore, although we like Him to take our letters,
He does not have to read them to know what they contain.
Well, now to come to John Fitzgerald's philanthropic work, his
work for God through his work for mankind. "So as much as you
have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me,"
said Jesus. There are, of course, many ways in which man can
help his fellow men, but John must have felt the greatest
compassion for the suffering children of this age. They seem to
have been born into unfortunate circumstances beyond their
control. Generally, I would think, it is the parenting that has
failed them completely and so they leave home and naturally join
their peers on the street. This almost certainly leads to drug
addiction, to a life of crime and then the road back to a
normal, useful and happy life has become well nigh impossible.
John wanted to find out how he, with his gift of making
millions, could best help in this terrible situation, so he
sought advice as to who might help him and he was directed to
Ron and Swanny Farmer, who were then living in Sydney. Well,
surely it must have been God himself who was guiding John
because I think he could not have found a better pair of
helpers. I will not say very much about them here because I
intend to devote a whole chapter to them later in this book.
Suffice it say then, that as well as being Sai devotees they
were both highly qualified Clinical Psychologists.
It was during a discussion with Ron and Swanny that John said to
Swanny, "Will you be my navigator?" He knew that she was working
for a salary in a Nursing Home and he was offering her a
full-time job to navigate his project by first of all helping
him find the right children and also, to find the best way to
help them. Spontaneously, he had felt great faith in her
judgment and integrity. Husband, Ron, who understood his wife
well and loved her deeply, remained silent, leaving the decision
to her, entirely. Incidentally, Ron himself was fully occupied
with his professional clinic. The sudden question, with all its
implications must have been something of a shock to Swanny but
she did not have to think about it long. Her heart was in the
kind of work that John was suggesting and her intuition told her
that she could trust him entirely, so the answer was "Yes." Ron
was quite as pleased as the other two at her decision because he
meant to help them also in every way he could and so it became a
partnership of three. I understand from Ron that Swanny spent
the whole year finding out about the right children to help and
the manner in which they could best be helped. She decided that
the children should be recruited not from the streets, but after
they had been thrown out of foster homes before they had taken
the fatal step of going on the street. The task of reforming
street kids was almost impossible, "So we will beat the street
by getting in before it," John decided. Then he added, "If you
can find any kids who have been thrown out of at least two
foster homes, give them priority." So this was the plan on which
they began the work.
Although John really wanted them both to move to Queensland to
set up a foster home where he could have more control and play a
bigger part in the work, he finally agreed to them setting up a
foster home in Sydney, where they were living and where Ron's
professional work was well established. So they began the work
in Sydney with a foster home, taking in a number of very
difficult boys who had been thrown out of more than one foster
home. Swanny found a very good Matron or Mother of the home and
with the loving supervision of Ron and Swanny Farmer, along with
John himself who flew down frequently from Queensland, their
home continued to run successfully for a number of years. When
the lease on the building came to an end and they needed to find
new premises, John again tried to persuade them to go to
Queensland where he said he would be able to spend more time on
the work. At first, Ron and Swanny who were well settled in
Sydney, thought they could help him to establish a foster home
somewhere near the Gold Coast in Queensland by flying up there
frequently to help in the work, but John, who very much wanted
them to come to Queensland, said something like this, "If you
come and live up here, we can do wonderful work together, work
you have not yet dreamed of. I see into the future that we will
be able to do magnificent work together." Ron told me that he
spoke to them of their future work together in such a visionary,
enthusiastic way that they were both quite thrilled with the
idea of moving north and helping this enthusiastic young man
with his work for God. They felt that they were a part of it and
so they decided to move north into the philanthropic dream of
John Fitzgerald, the Karma Yogin.
After a search, they found what Ron calls, "A big, old
fashioned, rambling Australian home," with eight rooms, and
there they set up their second foster home in a seaside suburb
of Brisbane. That foster home is still running, but after it had
been going a few years they realised that the children they were
getting had not only been expelled from foster homes but also
from schools and they realised that there was also a need to
provide schools for expelled children before they went on the
street. So they set up their first school on a property
belonging to John at a place called Ormeau. There was a lot of
preparatory work involved, of course, in finding the right, most
suitable teachers. Swanny Farmer is the Director of the school
and Dr Ron Farmer is the Adviser and also the tutor of any pupil
who needs special tutoring, while John foots the bill for this
and the foster home. John also plays an important part in the
training of the boys (it is a boys' school). He takes them for
walks on the weekends and teaches those who wish, to ride his
polo ponies. Furthermore, any boys who want to learn to play
polo receive instructions from John himself. All instruction and
training are given along the lines of Swami's EHV or Education
in Human Values and so Ron says, "It is as much educare as
education, bringing out and developing good character traits
that are already lying deep within the pupils."
There was a time when John optimistically felt that he might
interest other millionaires in such work. At a business meeting
of a group of wealthy men, when John tried to spread an interest
in such philanthropic work, the shrewd businessmen questioned
him about the cost and the results. Then one of the businessmen,
voicing the feelings of all of them, I expect, said to John,
"How can you do it, how can you spend all that money for such
small results? It's a drop in the ocean, it's not commensurate
how can you do it?" So John replied, "Well, I can only answer it
this way. If you were walking along the street and in front of
you a little old lady fell down, how could you help, picking her
up and seeing that she was alright to walk on alone. How could
you not do it? That's my only answer. How can I not help these
unfortunate kids?" This seemed to be typical of the reactions of
the wealthy he tried to interest in the work. He felt that his
own school under the direction of the committee of three was
doing very well. John had named the school "Toogoolawa", an
Aboriginal word meaning something like "A place in the heart" it
certainly has a firm place in the hearts of the trio who guide
it.
John Fitzgerald and Ron Farmer have, in a way, become like
spiritual brothers and one day some time ago John said to Ron
something like this: "I've come to the point where I have to
make a big decision. You see, Ron, I've made enough money for
myself and family, plenty for that, and just to go on making
money for its own sake is pointless. I have no desire to make
more money which becomes superfluous when your own personal and
family needs are well covered. Money becomes just figures on
paper and I have no interest in pursuing it for its own sake. So
I don't really know what to do with my life at the moment. I
must spend some time in thinking about it and making a decision
as to what I should do for the rest of my life." So then John
went away to be on his own in the Australian bush. This was his
way of contemplating and deciding. Three weeks later he came
back and invited Ron and Swanny to his office. He said, in a
positive manner, "I have decided what to do. I will not go on
making money for myself and I will not run away from the world.
Everything I make will be for the Toogoolawa school project and
my company will have to make even more money to enlarge and
extend the project. As there appears to be little or no help
from other businessmen, I realise now that I have to do it
myself." Telling me about it, Ron said, "That was a quickening
and a firming of his intention to make money entirely for the
school project." And so the expansion began.
John already had branches of his company in Sydney and in
Melbourne and also over in Perth. He decided to begin by
establishing a Toogoolawa school in Sydney and another one in
Melbourne. His friends, Ron and Swanny agreed happily to fly to
these two cities and begin the difficult work of finding the
right premises for schools and recruiting the right kinds of
teachers. This was a much more difficult matter than it might
appear on the surface. Often, when they felt sure they had found
the right place, the right location, the right building which
was available to be rented as a school, they found an obstacle
among the people in the neighbourhood of the proposed Toogoolawa
school. These people felt, evidently, that it would be a
definite menace to the neighbourhood to have such recalcitrant
and potentially criminal children in the vicinity. And so the
whole thing would fall through. In fact, it was easier to
recruit the teachers than to acquire the building for them to
operate in. And so it was that Dr and Mrs Farmer needed to make
repeated air journeys to Sydney and Melbourne; and I began to
see why much money was required to launch the extension of this
philanthropic work and how much more it would cost to operate it
when founded.
This preparatory work was a plus for me personally because each
time Ron and Swanny came to Sydney I had the joy of seeing them
and talking to them about the progress of the project and many
other things. But John and his two helpers will not give up, I
know. Eventually success will be achieved and I feel that I am
not optimistic in expecting great things, magnificent things as
John puts it, to be attained out of this work. John has an
inventive mind with a great deal of creative imagination for
this practical kind of welfare development. He has already, I
know, thought of new ways of making the money required and I
predict that all difficulties will be overcome and the
Toogoolawa school project will expand in ways to help and redeem
the lost children of Australia.
Instead of philosophising about Nishkama karma, that is, doing
selfless work without any desire for the fruits of the work in a
personal way, he puts it into action. That is why he stirs the
love in my heart and I namaste to him as a true Karma Yogin.
Memories of a Chinese lady.
Contents
When my wife Iris and I went to India from England in 1964,
we planned to stay for one year spending six months at the
Theosophical School of The Ancient Wisdom and then six months
visiting any interesting Ashrams, thinking we might find
addresses of some such Ashrams, from people at the Theosophical
Headquarters, Adyar near Madras. This we did but we also met
Sathya Sai Baba during that first year with the result that we
stayed for six years. We finally had to tear ourselves away in
the middle of 1970. Then after spending some time in England and
over twelve months in America, mainly with Sai friends in
California, we reached destination Australia about the end of
1971.
A couple of years or so later, some time in the early seventies,
we were planning to re-visit Sai Baba in India and spend about
six months there. We hoped to go as far as Singapore on the
Greek Ship the Patris on which we had had the memorable voyage
in 1960 at the beginning of our spiritual search, me for my
prophesied 'Star in the East' and Iris for a teacher who would
lead her to God. The Patris at the time was taking Australian
passengers as far as Singapore from where they went on by plane
to England. We would go by plane to India.
We managed to book passages on the Patris but just before we
sailed, a friend who had spent some time in Singapore told us
that if we wanted to do any shopping there, we should go to a
certain shop in Northbridge Road where the Manageress was fond
of Australians and always gave them a good deal. He could not
remember her name but as she was the Manageress we should have
no trouble. Of course we wanted to do some shopping in India, as
who didn't, in those years. It was our first visit to that City
and we had heard that passengers on the Patris were given
accommodation for a number of days at a good hotel in Singapore,
so we would have plenty of time to visit shops and other places
before catching our plane to Madras in India.
It was a wonderful trip of about three weeks on the Patris of
happy memories. The Captain, Ichiadis, who had been the First
Officer aboard on our earlier voyage gave us special treatment
and we had meals at the Captain's table several times. I shall
never forget the first time. Iris was sitting on the Captain's
right and I was somewhere along the table, when after soup, the
fish course came, what were Iris and I to do? We had been
vegetarians since 1964. I decided to eat the fish but Iris was a
very strict vegetarian and she told the Captain that, being a
vegetarian she had to miss the fish. His unexpected reply was,
"Well, I don't like the look of it so I won't have it either"
and he kept her company as a vegetarian for the rest of the meal
and for other meals that she had sitting at his right. He was a
thorough gentleman, as all well-educated Greeks that we have
met, are.
We were sorry when the Patris sailed back to Australia while we
stayed in Singapore but we spent a very pleasant week there on
some sight-seeing tours and doing our shopping. For the latter,
we made straight for the shop in Northbridge Road recommended by
our Australian friend and sought the Manageress. Her name proved
to be Janny Tay and we did not have to do the usual bargaining
which was customary in Singapore in those days because Janny
gave us good price reductions without asking; even on items she
did not have in the shop and had to send out for, she gave us
reduced prices. At the end of our shopping Janny looked at a
ring on my finger and said, "That is a beautiful ring may I ask
where you got it?" I told her how it had been miraculously
manifested for me by Sathya Sai Baba in India some seven or
eight years earlier. I gave her the ring to examine it was made
of Panchaloha, the untarnishable alloy used for making idols in
India. There was some interesting carving on the Panchaloha and
a beautiful embossed gold figure of Shirdi Sai Baba on the crown
of the ring. As Janny Tay's interest did not wane, we both told
her more about Sai Baba and his spiritual teachings. At the end
of the talk she said with a sigh, as if regretfully, "Ah, well,
I'm a Buddhist of course," but she added, "Come to see me
whenever you are in Singapore." We decided that we would
certainly do that although there seemed little hope of her
becoming a Sai devotee.
Towards the end of our planned six months' stay in India, which
proved to be well over six months, we managed to make brief
contact with my young sister Leone, who had made a brief stay in
India during her trip around the world. She was planning to call
for a few days in Singapore and then go on to China the country
in which she had always been very interested. We told her if she
was buying anything in Singapore to go to the shop in
Northbridge Road managed by our friend Janny Tay. She said she
would do so but later by letter she let us know that Janny Tay
had left the shop and, as her stay in Singapore was brief, she
did not try to locate the lady. This news surprised us greatly
and we thought that maybe my sister had gone into the wrong
shop. We hoped we would find Janny Tay still managing the shop
where we first located her. So, on our return journey to
Australia, although we were only staying in Singapore for one
day and had no shopping to do, our first call was at the shop in
Northbridge Road but Janny was not there. We asked some of the
assistants in the shop if they could tell us her whereabouts but
they did not know, or if they knew, they did not want to tell.
On several subsequent transits through Singapore we visited the
shop hoping that she may have returned but she was never there,
so eventually we decided that we had lost a promising friend,
and never expected to see her again.
A few years later when we were spending a longer than usual time
in Singapore, a totally unexpected thing happened. It came about
this way. We were staying in a pleasant apartment some distance
out from the centre of Singapore, in the green and leafy grounds
of a settlement belonging to a religious organisation. We had
some connections with this organisation and were able to obtain
the apartment for a couple of weeks.
One day we had a surprising visit from a prominent Sai devotee
with whom we had had a slight acquaintance. It was Dr Kanda
Pillay, a leading Orthopaedic Surgeon with a practice in
Singapore. How and why he had traced us to this remote spot, we
had no idea, but were very glad to see him. After a pleasant
talk, mainly about Sai activities and Sai people, he asked why
we were staying this time so long in Singapore. "Well," we
explained, "We are trying to catch up on the interesting places
we have not had time to visit before," and we told him our plans
for that day. "You can use my car and driver to go there," he
said, "I will not need it myself today." Despite our protests he
insisted in his kind gesture. After a very enjoyable journey we
sent the car back to Kanda Pillay's home in Singapore. The next
day he paid us another visit at the flat, this time with an
invitation. He had arranged, he said, a special luncheon party
at a good restaurant in Singapore and he would like us to come
to it if we would. The people at the luncheon, he said, would be
mainly followers of Sathya Sai Baba and it would be a good
opportunity for us to meet some of his Sai friends. He would
send his car to pick us up at our apartment and take us to the
restaurant - how could we refuse!
Next day Kanda Pillay did not sent his car but came in it
himself to take us to the luncheon. At the restaurant he led us
to a private room where we found about twenty people, men and
women, sitting around a large oval table. Before leading us to
our places he took us around the table introducing each person
to us. The guests were a mixture of Indian and Chinese. When we
came to two Chinese ladies sitting together he introduced one of
them saying "This is my friend Janny Tay." I caught my breath
and I heard Iris give a gasp. Neither of us had recognised the
Janny Tay we had met some years before. "Not the Janny Tay of
Northbridge Road?" I queried. She looked surprised and then
replied, "Well, I used to be at Northbridge Road." It was,
beyond any doubt, our Janny Tay the lost had been found and
furthermore, found as one of a party of Sai Baba followers. This
added a big bonus to our pleasure.
After a delightful luncheon period she took us and a few others
to her home, where in the evening, her husband Dr Henry Tay was
planning to show a short movie, a videotape I think, on Sai
Baba. So we had the rest of the afternoon and tea-time to talk
and there was much to say. We did not ask her how she came,
after all, to be a follower of Sai Baba but there is little
doubt that her interest began with the talk about my ring and
Swami's teachings at her father-in-law's shop on Northbridge
Road some years before. Whatever had happened since then seemed
to have made her a firm devotee of Lord Sai. Henry was, she
said, a follower too in his own way. During the long talk we
learned something of Janny's background. Both she and Henry had
obtained medical degrees at a Melbourne University, in fact I
think that was where they met but Janny had herself never
practiced medicine. She had gone straight into business as
manager of her father-in-law's shop. We met her two small
children when they came home from school. The girl, Audrey was
the eldest and the boy Michael, a very likeable little fellow.
During her missing years, that is, missing to Iris and me, Janny
had not been idle, she had not only become a Sai Baba devotee
and visited Swami in India, but had also launched the first
stages of a string of shops that would spread over Singapore
with some in other countries. They specialised in selling
watches and were known as the Hour-glass shops. As the years
passed, other things were added, such as a watch factory in
Switzerland and eventually Henry was persuaded to give up his
medical practice and join Janny in the expanding business. Other
commercial ramifications were added and eventually the business
became so large that it was made into a company. Janny, who
remained the leading light of the company became quite famous in
the business circles of Asia when her investment and other
activities spread to Australia. Her name became well known
there, particularly in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.
Our own friendship with this warm-hearted Chinese lady ripened
through the years, in fact we always made contact with her while
passing through Singapore, either going to India or coming back.
If our time was short we had lunch with her and she always
loaned us her car and driver, whose name was Mr Wong, for
transportation to the restaurant where we were meeting. If we
were staying for a night or more, Janny invited us to stay at
her mansion-like house which had been built in the prosperous
years after our first or second meeting. If she was away
overseas on business we often stayed with her sister Anne, a
very beautiful lady living in a very beautiful house. Anne's
husband was also part of the medical profession being an Ear,
Nose and Throat Specialist. Furthermore, he became during our
many visits, Chairman of the Singapore Sai Centre, a large and
very active group which we visited several times when
opportunity offered.
On one occasion when Janny had asked us to stay at her place,
and had suddenly been called away overseas, we found our host
was Henry and our hostess, the third child, Sabrina. Henry kept
a close eye on her but she proved to be a perfect little
hostess. Audrey and Michael were now absent, being in England to
complete their education. One of the many pleasant memories of
our visit to Janny were luncheon parties she organised, sitting
by the side of her luxurious swimming pool. There we met her
friends and also some associates from her business connections;
they were all cultured and interesting people. One afternoon,
when all visitors had departed and we were sitting having a
pleasant chat with Janny, she made an unexpected request.
Unexpected, because she was a person who gave favours rather
than asking them. We were leaving next day for India and of
course, Sai Baba. "I know you always have an interview with
Swami while you are there," she began "So I will be very
grateful if you will do me a favour."
An opportunity to do her a
favour was something we were always looking for and we told her
so. "Well," she said, "I have purchased a large tract of land in
Australia, in fact in Queensland, in the northern part of the
Gold Coast. I would like to develop it into a kind of Health
Farm and Holistic Healing Centre, but it would be a very big
project and I would not like to attempt it without Swami's
agreement, so would you please ask him if I should go ahead or
not. If he says, "No" I will sell the land and if he says, "Yes,
I should go ahead" I will do so. Would you mind doing that for
me? If I wait 'til I go myself it may be too long. I may not
even have the favour of an interview from him." She paused,
looking at us questioningly. We both quickly agreed we would do
as she asked if Swami gave us the opportunity, as we felt sure
that he would, while we were there, "But," said Iris, "It would
be a good idea if you gave us a photograph of yourself. We know
you have met Baba personally but it would help him to quickly
bring you to mind if we showed him a photograph." Iris was very
astute in such matters. Janny quickly found a suitable
photograph of herself and gave it to Iris. Both she and I were
happy to have a mission to perform for our dear friend.
Well, the moment came when we were sitting alone with Swami in
the private interview room where he takes individuals, after
seeing everybody first in the main interview room. It was the
opportunity to put Janny's question to Swami as to whether she
should develop the Holistic Health Resort or simply sell the
land. Iris handed Janny's photograph to Swami and we told him
the place where she had purchased the land was at Oyster Cove in
the northern regions of the Gold Coast of Queensland. Swami
silently looked at Janny's photograph and then seemed to go off
into deep thought. I have seen him do this before I think it is
more than thought in the ordinary sense. He has the power of
course, to go into both the past and the future at such times.
We anxiously awaited his reply. Suddenly his eyes which had been
far away came back to the present and he smiled, we held our
breath; "Yes," he began, "Tell her to go ahead and develop the
Health Centre but tell her not to develop a place for the
under-privileged only, it will be a spiritual place and the rich
need spiritual guidance as much or even more than do the poor,
so she should cater for them too. She will understand what I
mean." So we wrote a letter telling Janny of Swami's reply and
on our return journey going through Singapore about six weeks
later, we discussed it with her giving her all the details. She
was certainly very pleased. "Yes, we will make it a spiritual
place," she said, and went on "and plan to make it attractive to
the rich as well as the poor. When the time is right we will
start a Sai Centre there and if you will come there and be my
Chairman, Howard, it will become a great Sai Centre in every way
with a healing atmosphere." I replied that if it was possible I
would certainly be her Chairman, thinking that she meant of the
Sai Centre only. "Thank you," she said "I will build a house for
you at Oyster Cove."
I thought she was speaking somehow
metaphorically, and did not take her statement literally.
Well, years passed, a good many years when we did not see Janny.
We sometimes stopped over at Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia instead of
Singapore on our Sai-ward journeys, which had become less
frequent anyway. When we went through Singapore, Janny seemed to
be away always on business somewhere in the world. We heard that
she was developing a centre at St Kilda in Melbourne, from talk,
it seemed to be a kind of super Roman Bath with warm sea water
for swimming, massage centres and the rest, but on occasions
when we spoke with Janny's sister Anne, in transit through
Singapore, we were told that Janny was certainly going ahead as
rapidly as possible with the big project at Oyster Cove. Our
informant said that a golf course was going to be part of the
centre at Oyster Cove and also a polo ground. It sounded as if
Janny was carrying out her instruction to cater for the
well-to-do. Perhaps we might be lucky enough to visit it
ourselves one day when Janny was there herself, we hoped so. But
before that happened, Iris had departed to the vast and happy
Forever, leaving me alone to cope with the lights and shadows of
earth.
Though I saw nothing of my friend Janny for several years, I
heard of her. The news was that she was selling off some of her
Australian possessions, such as a luxury apartment at Surfers'
Paradise and an expensive home in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. The
grapevine reported also that she had sold some of her chain of
shops, that is, the Hour-glass shops. This was all apparently a
result of the serious currency troubles in Asian economies. I
wondered if the Oyster Cove project would also have to be sold,
or even abandoned. It must have been about in late November or
early December of the year 1997 that I had a phone call with the
well-known voice of Janny Tay at the other end. After brief
greetings, she said, "Your house is ready, Howard, can you come
up for Christmas?" Dumbfounded, I asked her what house, what did
she mean, what house and where? "The house I promised to build
you Howard, at Oyster Cove of course, it's all ready, when can
you come?" The dim memory came back to me that she had said she
would build me a house, but I had not taken that seriously. Now
there was a house ready and I was being invited to take it over
immediately. As well as expressing my gratitude to her I had to
let her know that I could not come at Christmas as I had made
other arrangements. Remembering that Iris and I had found it too
hot in Queensland in summer time, I said to Janny that I would
try to come down in June the next year, that is, 1998. I did so
and found a colony of about a hundred attractive houses on the
shores of a lake which was, I was informed, mainly a man-made
lake. A few grand two-storey houses were built close to the edge
of the lake. One of these was a part-time residence for Henry
and Janny Tay. The short street leading directly to it had been
called Tay Court. From this, one could reach two other palatial
residences on the lake shore, both of them having been erected
by wealthy Singapore friends of Janny. The only other street in
Oyster Cove at this time, in which 'my house' was located was
named Wisemans Court. Next door to my very attractive house was
another similar one occupied by Janny's half-sister named Helen
Richie Robbins. She was a widow of an Australian army man of
that name. Originally from Malaysia, Helen now regarded herself
as a permanent resident of Oyster Cove, her job being to look
after Janny's interests while the latter was absent in Singapore
or elsewhere on her business matters. Our two houses were
connected by a paved courtyard and she proved to be a very good
friend, always bubbling with happiness, despite the
not-far-distant sorrow of her Australian husband's death.
I learned that the progress of the big plan to build a luxury
hotel, establish a golf course, build a very fine building to
house the Holistic Centre had been slow somewhat. I was not told
why but assumed that it was financial difficulties brought about
through the currency crisis in Asia; but Helen gave me the
impression that there were no problems about capital for
developing Oyster Cove. Although the beautiful street Wisemans
Court, and the other even shorter street, Tay Court, seemed as
blessedly free of motor traffic as the roads of Tasmania had
been in the first years of the motor car, the two official
offices were very busy indeed. One of them was for selling real
estate and the other busy currently on other development and
plans. After I had been in my new delightful residence for a few
weeks, Janny herself arrived from Singapore.
Soon after her arrival she came and we had a good talk in a
lounge of my delightful residence. She asked first if I was
comfortable I assured her that I was and again expressed my
thanks for this most unexpected development. She replied that I
should not have been surprised, because she had promised to
build me a house long before. Then I remembered something too. I
said "That was a long time ago, some time in the 1970's and I
dimly remember saying I would be your Chairman of something what
was that?" She seemed delighted. "You promised," she said, "you
would be Chairman of my Holistic Healing Centre," and she
immediately called Helen in and told her that she had made me
Chairman of the Centre that she hoped to open at the end of the
year. Helen expressed pleasure at my appointment and said she
would have to get the Architect in to make a change to his plans
to include an office for me, there. She seemed a little
surprised about Janny saying that it would be opened at the end
of the year. The real estate manager was not only surprised, but
100% sceptical.
Janny who was always busy as well as optimistic, did not stay
long. She had to go down to Melbourne to inspect the progress of
her bathing project at St Kilda and to see Sabrina who was still
at school in Melbourne. Oyster Cove proved a delightful place to
spend the worst winter months, always seeming to have sunny
skies and warm weather. Although the Sai Centre at Oyster Cove
would be something for the future, there were already several
ones not far away to which I was able to go at least once a
week, while I was there.
My health began to show the signs of my advancing years towards
the middle of the next year, that is, 1999 and I was not able to
travel to Oyster Cove until about the middle of July. However, I
stayed for a longer period although there were further signs of
deteriorating health. It was sometime during the month of
September that Joan Moylan, who was living at Paradise Point,
not far from Oyster Cove, came to my house to give me a session
with my wife, Iris. It was not only very enjoyable, but a very
instructive sance. Iris came and sat, facing us, in the chair
that we had provided for her against the wall, about two and a
half metres from where we were sitting. Then my mother walked in
with her Bible under her arm. Iris immediately got up and
offered her the chair, coming and sitting nearer to us on the
foot of a bed. Other people began to appear, including my two
deceased sisters and Iris' deceased mother, Eve. Then Swami was
suddenly there standing beside the chair, now occupied by my
mother. It seemed a good chance to ask him a very important
question, because, as there seemed no prospect of the Holistic
Centre being opened that year, I was beginning to doubt if I
would be able to do the job offered by Janny. So I asked Swami
if I would be well enough to take the position of Chairman when
the Holistic Centre opened. His reply came in three words, "In
name only." Soon after that he disappeared from the room but we
had a very interesting session with unexpected visitors. I
believe that was the time when a line of my ancestors appeared
along one wall and Joan said she knew they were ancestors of
several generations but was not able to identify them by name.
At the close of the session they all formed a queue to touch the
feet of Sai Baba, who had reappeared. I felt very pleased that
my deceased ancestors of several generations were on the journey
home to God.
I felt that I must let Janny know what Swami had said about my
position of Chairman so that she could think about getting
somebody else to fill the position. I knew that Helen was
expecting her in Oyster Cove during the next week. I must find
an opportunity to talk to her and explain the position; she
would, I knew, be very busy talking to those who were already
working on the Oyster Cove project, turning 'negative energy
into positive energy,' as she called it. On her second day in
Oyster Cove I went for lunch with her and a number of her
friends at a 1st-class restaurant at Sanctuary Cove, a short
drive away from Oyster Cove. I managed to tell her there that I
needed to talk to her and she understood that I could not do so
there among all the other people, so when we drove along Tay
Court to her big house and everybody else had dispersed, she
took me by the arm and led me to the double swing overlooking
the lake. I did not waste any time because I knew her days were
always busy solving problems and smoothing the way to the
progress of the Oyster Cove development. So I told her just what
Swami had said, that I would be able to fill the position of
Chairman in name only. She realised as I did, that there were
problems holding up the building of the Holistic Centre and
neither of us were sure how many years would pass before it
could be built, because now a new road had to be put in before
she could get official permission to begin the earth-moving and
to lay the foundations for the building that would be the heart
and very purpose of the Oyster Cove Health Centre.
Janny sat silent for a while looking out over the Lake as we
swung gently backwards and forwards. Suddenly she turned, looked
into my eyes and said "Howard, if you can be Chairman in name
only and in spirit, that will be all I need, after all, if
sometime in the future I need a more active businessman as a
Chairman, I can always appoint a Deputy," she patted me on the
arm in a friendly manner and concluded, "So you are still
Chairman of the Holistic Centre as well as of the Oyster Cove
Sai Centre when the time comes to form it." I was surprised and
very gratified that this wonderful Chinese lady whom I had loved
like a sister for so many years still wanted to have me
officially connected with the Holistic Centre for which Swami
had given his blessing. 'Holistic' is a New-Age word that seems
to embrace 'whole' and 'holy', a healing that makes people whole
and holy, a work that is both spiritual and practical and I
felt, she might eventually find somebody more qualified to lead
such a work for God.
So I will end this chapter with the happy memory of sitting and
swinging gently over the edge of the shining lake, beside the
wonderful lady I had met so many years ago, over a counter in a
shop, in Northbridge Road, Singapore.
Two Sai stars.
There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we
will -
Shakespeare
Contents
I agree with the Bard on this and moreover feel that there is
a time when the shaping divine force strikes the note that
starts something of importance.
I had met Dr Ron Farmer and his wife Swanny some ten years
earlier but the time was not right for our special spiritual
brotherhood to begin. Now, in June 1998 the time was right. We
were the only three guests for dinner at a friend's place in
Queensland and so had the opportunity for a long talk together.
At the end of the talk I felt that I must see them again and
hopefully see them often. They must have felt somewhat the same
because it was not long before they paid me a visit at my house
in Oyster Cove.
Ron and Swanny invited me to spend the following weekend with
them at their home about half an hour's car drive away at a
place called Willow Vale. It was to be the first of many
delightful weekends spent in the fresh invigorating air and
spiritual peace of their residence. We approached it through
rolling green hills and found their long one-storey beautiful
house on the top of one such grassy hill. There seemed to be no
other house nearby, just the open countryside with, in one
direction, a view of a mountain range that was part of The Great
Dividing Range. It reminded me of my country upbringing in
Tasmania where neighbours' houses were out of sight behind trees
on distant farms, with, in one direction, the glorious blue wall
of the Western Tiers. Yet I very soon found that the aloneness
spelt by my first view of the Farmer residence was certainly not
loneliness, in fact, two unseen houses were not very far away.
One was on the other side of a high white lattice wall with tall
palm trees supporting it while the other hidden house was down
the hill hiding behind an edge of the hill and hedges helped by
clumps of trees. The house beyond the lattice wall was occupied
by two ladies and two other four-legged beings, generally known
as a dog and a cat.
We did not see much of the two ladies but quite a lot of the
four-legged entities, especially the one known as a dog. He was
a glossy, completely black labrador named Yang. It was an
appropriate name as he seemed the personification of all things
gently male. I felt that he showed good taste too, in choosing
Ron as his master and friend. I think he went home only for
meals and spent the rest of the day with Ron. Their day together
would begin early, with Ron finding him waiting on the mat by
his front door. Then their mutual demonstration of affection
would begin, with pats, strokes and tail wags interspersed with
conversation in which both would join, Yang talking in his own
version of human language which he fondly hoped his beloved
master would understand. Ron told me that if he and Swanny got
in the car to drive away, Yang would turn his back on them and
look the other way as if he could not bear to see this terrible
event. For most of the day where you saw Ron you would also see
Yang. I too, loved this near-human animal from the moment I gave
my first pat to his shining black side.
I once happened to go to the house beyond the lattice when the
lady Diana was feeding her treasured Yang. To me she made the
remark "Yang is a soul-dog you know." I agreed whole-heartedly
but thought to myself, "But surely all domesticated dogs have
souls," and so, too, do many cats including the one I first saw
sitting aloofly on the grass of Ron's lawn.
My heart gave a jump when I caught sight of her, she was that
'Thing of beauty that is a joy forever,' as poet Keats remarked.
I spoke to her from a distance, she turned her head and gave me
one disdainful glance from her shining blue eyes then turned her
head away. Suddenly I remembered the cat-enticing technique that
my wife Iris, a great cat-lover, had taught me long ago. I tried
it on Yin and within about five minutes of this cat-magic, she
walked slowly across the grass towards me and sat at my feet. I
was able to stroke her beautifully marked head and her plush
back of an indescribable off-white colour. Before my weekend at
Willow Vale came to an end, Yin was rolling over on her back
inviting me to scratch her tummy. She was no longer aloof with
Ron and Swanny and at a later time would sometimes follow Ron
around like Yang and another labrador dog that joined the
family.
Unlike the glossy black Yang this one was rusty in colour and so
had earned the name Rusty. He lived in the other hidden house at
the foot of Ron's grassy hill. His owner was another Sai devotee
called Kevin Dillon. Kevin Dillon, however, was frequently away
on his property further north in Queensland and so Rusty began
to attach himself for much of the time with Ron. The latter told
me that Rusty was uniquely useful in one way. He had a keen eye
for the venomous reptiles that were often found in the long
grass among some trees at the lower end of Ron's property. When
Ron began to mow his grass, Rusty would come through a gap in
the hedge and keep a close watch on the mowing operation. He
would sight a snake hiding in the grass just before Ron, pushing
his mower came to the spot where he was in danger of being
bitten by the snake. Rusty would seize it in his teeth at a spot
where it could not bite him and shake it to and fro until it was
dead. I have seen the kookaburras fly to the branch of a tree
with a snake in the beak and shake it vigorously in the same
manner, killing it before they made a meal of it. Rusty's only
purpose in killing a snake however, seemed to be the protection
of his friend, Ron.
Some weeks later when I came for another heavenly weekend at
Willow Vale, something tragic had happened to our beloved
friend, Rusty. Somebody driving a car on the Dillon property,
fortunately not too fast, had failed to see Rusty and with a
front wheel had hit the dog's hindquarters. The result was that
Rusty walked with a bad limp and sometimes would collapse and
sink to the ground. Ron took me down to the foot of the hill to
see the injured dog. We called his name and he came limping
through a gap in the hedge wagging his tail and seeming to smile
welcome with his eyes. I suddenly felt a great sympathy for this
suffering friend and had the idea of putting my hand on the
injured back near towards the tail, Ron did the same, both of us
hoping that we had enough healing in our hands to help his
injury get better. The dog seemed to enjoy it and stood quite
still. After this period of healing, his limp seemed to be
better and his hindquarters did not suddenly collapse on the
ground as he tried to limp along. For the rest of the weekend,
Rusty came out towards us for his healing session whenever we
came near to the Dillon house and there was a definite
improvement in his injury, by the time my weekend was up. Ron
told me later that he continued the healing practice on his own
and eventually Rusty had no limp at all. After that he spent
much more of his time with Ron and Swanny, even accompanying
them on walks. Yang, who had previously seemed to enjoy Rusty's
company, showed signs of jealousy. Ron played the part of the
spiritual father to him and gave him a 'human values' lecture
against the negative emotion of jealousy. Yang seemed as if he
understood or perhaps it was just the tone in Ron's voice, in
any case, he would hang his head in shame.
After my return to the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, I
received by phone, regular bulletins about the adventures of the
four-legged Farmer family, Yang and Yin and Rusty. Things seemed
to be going harmoniously among them and I feel that through the
love and understanding of Ron and Swanny Farmer, some, if not
all of the three, will be elevated to a human incarnation at the
next birth or soon after. I am tempted to go on writing about
these beloved entities but feel I have said enough to show the
part they play in the lives of my two star friends, so I will
now tell something of the background of each of them and show
how they became involved in John Fitzgerald's work for God.
First then, some interesting biographical facts about Dr Ron
Farmer. He was born in the state of Queensland and remained at
school there until the age of sixteen. Then he travelled to
Melbourne and joined the Royal Air Force. This was about in the
year 1954 and his main ambition in joining the Air Force was to
learn all he could about radio electronics. After about three
years of this he found it no longer of interest so left the Air
Force and worked for a number of different companies that served
the Air Force. One of these was the Aeronautical Research
Laboratory at Fisherman's Bend in Melbourne. Here he found
himself serving with the War Games Department where part of his
duties was to interview helicopter pilots. This work took him to
Sydney where he was asked to study psychology to help in his
interviewing of helicopter pilots. This study of psychology at
the New South Wales University was the break in his life that
might be termed 'lucky' but I prefer to call it 'the finger of
God' placing him where he was meant to be. He loved psychology
so much that after two years, sponsored by the War Games
Department, he felt a strong urge to continue and did so at the
University of Queensland, where for a time he was given some
financial help but eventually won a scholarship which carried
him through to his Ph.D in Psychology.
Not long afterwards he was back at the University of NSW as a
lecturer to graduates in Psychology on the subject which he
calls Behavioural Therapy. This had previously been considered a
very complicated branch of Clinical Psychology but Dr Farmer had
the gift of making it seem quite simple and interesting. The
result was that he found himself giving talks on the radio and
being interviewed by the press on this fascinating subject. His
name thus became well-known to the public and he found people
coming to him for help in their mental and psychological
problems. In this way he found himself building up a clinic and
dealing with patients from the members of the public, in
addition to his university work. He thus found himself going
through a period of very high pressure work which led eventually
to a nervous breakdown. Employing some of the therapy that he
had used for his patients for his own treatment, he turned the
nervous breakdown into what he called a 'nervous breakthrough'.
When he had fully recovered, he wrote a good lecture on this
method of treating a nervous breakdown, which I have heard on an
audio cassette. It is probably available to anyone who needs it.
A very important part of Ron's breakthrough was his spiritual
awakening. Although he went on lecturing at the university for a
time, he found this work and the other limitations in the
academic life a handicap to his now fascinating development of
the spiritual dimension which was showing its face more and more
in the world around him. So that, after six years altogether of
university lecturing, he resigned and started his own clinic in
Sydney. Yet he did not feel this work altogether satisfying and
after about a year as a professional Clinical Psychologist, he
felt the compulsive urge to go exploring. Perhaps it was, in
reality, the urge to become somehow more involved in what has
been called the New Age. And so he went to live in a commune at
a place called Nimbin, in the north of New South Wales.
While reading many books born of the New Age, he built himself a
house in Nimbin and opened a clinic in which to treat patients
professionally by his clinical psychology. Moreover, with the
aid of two friends, he opened what must have been the first New
Age Bookshop in New South Wales. His shop, like his clinic, was
situated in Lismore. In order to stock it, he ordered books from
all over the world and so he had the pleasure of reading his
growing stock of books, which included the work of leading
spiritual writers from all countries. He spent about eight years
soaking up this world wide literature of the developing New Age.
Inevitably, he ploughed his way through to books on Sai Baba.
This was in the year 1984, a most important milestone in his
life. The finger of God seems to have been active here too,
because soon after the arrival of the books, he found himself at
a friend's place watching a video about Sai Baba. During the
film there was a close-up of Sai Baba looking straight into the
camera and so he seemed to Ron to be looking deep into his own
eyes. "At that point I nearly fell off my chair," said Ron.
Asking him why he reacted in this way, he replied, "When he
looked straight into my eyes, I felt sure he knew all about me
and all about everybody. In fact he knew everything. I knew that
this was the man I had to follow, there was no-one else like
him." Now he read avidly all the Sai Baba books in his
possession and felt that Nimbin, Lismore and neighbourhood were
not the right place for him. He had to be where there were more
Sai people and Sai activities and so it was that he returned to
Sydney and re-opened his clinic there. And of course, he
attended any Sai meetings and other activities available in his
area.
It was while he was visiting a Sai Baba meeting in Homebush, a
suburb of Sydney, that he met Dr Devi, the wife of the
well-known Dr Sara Pavan, the Anaesthetist. Dr Devi one evening
announced to the meeting at Homebush that she was going next day
to a Nursing Home where the patients were all seriously
handicapped mentally. Anyone who wished to come with her, she
said, were very welcome. One person went and that was Dr Ron
Farmer. He was quite unaware of the fact that one of the most
important things in the whole of his life was to happen to him
at this Nursing Home. Towards the end of his visit on that first
day, the Matron of the Nursing Home said she would like to
introduce him to the Clinical Psychologist who was working
regularly at the Nursing Home. Ron had no desire to meet this
Psychologist. All of that profession that he had met in recent
years had no interest whatsoever in any aspect of God or the
spiritual life of man. So he gave some reason to the Matron and
excused himself from the meeting; but he was very interested in
the Nursing Home itself and before long he was there again. This
time the Matron said, "I have told my Psychologist about you and
she is very anxious to meet you." This time Ron made no excuse
but submissively went upstairs with the Matron. She conducted
him into the clinic and introduced him to the dark-eyed, smiling
Swanny. He had immediately, he told me, a deep feeling that
something important, something inexplicable was going to happen.
He had never had this feeling before at the point of first
meeting someone. The inexplicable feeling had, he said, an
overture of deep peace, he wanted to see her again. Asked what
she felt at the first meeting, Swanny said, "His face looked so
very sad and I felt a strong urge to make him happy." So they
began seeing each other frequently, usually at lunch-times. One
of the most important things they had in common was the fact
that they both used spiritual principles wherever possible in
treating their patients, but it was not long before their
feeling for each other deepened into something more important
than their academic interests. This was love, the kind that,
while including romantic love, goes far beyond. It is the true
love of union and includes sharing and caring.
After they were married, Swanny began having dreams about Swami
which brought her onto the Sai path with Ron. They had been
married about three years, both happily working in their
profession of Clinical Psychology when the bell rang heralding a
new chapter to their lives. The bell, in this case, was the
telephone bell in their home; it rang about ten o'clock one
evening. Ron went to answer it. On the other end of the line, a
young man's voice said "You don't know me but my name is John
Fitzgerald, I have a lot of money and I want to help street kids
but I don't know where to start." There was silence for a few
moments then the voice went on, "A friend of mine, in fact, my
Architect, took his son to one of your meetings. It was a
meeting on Human Values and he told me that you and your wife
were the best two people in Australia to help me with my
project." John Fitzgerald went on to request them to visit him
at his office on the Gold Coast as soon as they could, if they
were interested in helping him. Ron replied that he and Swanny
were going up to the Gold Coast in the following week and they
would be happy to call and talk to him. When he returned to
Swanny, Ron said, "I have been talking to a young man in
Queensland who is either mad, or he is a very wise man." He told
her the gist of the 'phone conversation and they both decided to
call and see him on the following week when they were going up
to the Gold Coast on some other business. And so, in due course,
they were sitting in John Fitzgerald's office listening to his
philanthropic dream. One thing that impressed them both was
hearing John say, "My gift of making millions is something God
has given me, so I must use it in doing God's work." The
interview lasted for three hours and at the end of it they were
his partners in the Karma Yogic work he was planning to launch.
Swanny had such faith in this new found friend that at his
request she agreed to give up her work and spend all her time
helping John. Dr Ron Farmer agreed whole-heartedly with this
move, he too, felt full faith in John Fitzgerald. Thus, the
divine association had its beginnings.
Now I would like to give some background information about
Swanny Farmer, who is, I must say, one of those rare people
whose pure inner beauty shines through, thus endowing her with a
special outer beauty. I feel it was someone like her to whom
Shakespeare addressed the words, "Do noble deeds, not dream them
all day long and so make life, death and the vast forever, one
grand sweet song."
Swanny was born in Indonesia in the year 1952. Her father, a
businessman in Djakarta, found his fortunes greatly improving
after this third daughter was born and so he was able to send
her two older sisters to complete their education at Hanover
University in Germany. When Swanny was seventeen years old, that
is in 1969, she was also sent there to join them and complete
her tertiary education. She specialised in psychology because it
seemed that this was the kind of training she needed to help
people in their lives. She obtained a Master of Arts degree at
Hanover and worked for a time in Germany. She was invited to
become a German Citizen, but decided instead, to go to England
and obtain another degree in psychology. Thus, she attended the
University of Manchester and after about two years there,
obtained a degree of Master of Science in Psychology. With these
two degrees she was certainly qualified to work in her
professional field in many parts of the world. Her heart called
her back to her home in Indonesia where she worked in the
psychological field for about two years. However, Swanny felt
that she was not making full use of her potential in Indonesia
and as one of her sisters was practicing as a Medical Doctor in
Australia, she decided to move to that country where, indeed,
she had no difficulty finding professional work and eventually
finished up working up at the Nursing Home for mentally
disadvantaged children in Liverpool near Sydney, where
eventually she met Ron Farmer.
As already told, Swanny Farmer changed her job again at that
fateful three hour interview with John Fitzgerald when he
invited her to be what he called his navigator, in finding the
right children to launch his Toogoolawa scheme of providing
schools, as well as some accommodation hostels for the
unfortunate children who, often through bad parenting, were
homeless, school-less and on the point of becoming street-kids.
Ron, who whole-heartedly supports the project and gives it much
voluntary help, carries on other work for Swami too. One of
these is conducting a small publishing business in conjunction
with his wife Swanny and a Sai friend by the name of Ross
Woodward. They have already published a very good book designed
to help people anywhere in the world to conduct study circles on
the literature of the New Age, particularly the teachings of Sai
Baba. The quality of the book holds out good promise of other
treasures to come.
Dr Farmer of course, continues his main professional work
regularly seeing patients at his clinic which is in the same
building as John's company offices on the banks of the Nerang
River. In this therapeutic work he frequently makes use of the
Sai and other spiritual teachings. He told me about several of
these as we walked together on the grassy lands round his home
at Willow Vale. At my request he put several on an audio tape
for me. Here briefly, is the gist of one such treatment.
A Minister of the Uniting Church asked Dr Farmer if he would
treat the Minister's twelve year old daughter. Dr Ron Farmer
agreed and in due course the twelve year old girl was sitting in
his clinic. Her main problem was that in the school classroom,
when as a pupil she was asked to stand up, perhaps to read
something, to recite something or answer a question, just the
fact of standing there in the classroom of sitting pupils would
bring on such a powerful agonising form of stage fright that she
would break out in a cold sweat and be unable to speak a word
and so would have to take her seat. As neither teachers nor
pupils have any understanding or sympathy in such situations,
the twelve year old girl would suffer a great deal.
Eventually after asking her several questions, in an endeavour
to find a door that he might open for her, Ron asked
intuitively, "Do you have any recurring nightmares?" The answer
was that she did, a terrible dream that recurred every week or
every fortnight. In the dream she was walking along the edge of
a cliff when she fell over the precipice and in terror went down
towards the bottom. She always awakened before she hit bottom
but it was an experience of great terror. Ron felt that if he
could cure this nightmare terror it would also cure her
classroom terror.
Ron remembered one of Swami's teaching to the effect that it
does not matter in the least what form and name of God you
worship but you must remember He is with you always and you must
trust in His love and His help. This girl was the daughter of a
Minister of a Christian Church and would probably look to Jesus
as her divine guide and saviour. So Ron asked her, "Do you
believe in Jesus?" "Oh, yes I do," she answered. Then Ron asked,
"Do you love Jesus?" "Yes," she replied enthusiastically, "I
love Him with all my heart, He is my life." Then Ron explained
to her the principle taught by Swami, that is, if we hold onto
the name and form of God, bringing it into everything we do,
life will become harmonious and any problems will be solved.
Moreover, Swami says, unlike what is taught in modern
psychiatry, that the unconscious is benevolent. So Ron proceeded
to relax his patient and asked her to close her eyes. Then he
took her in imagination, through the details of her recurring
nightmare. She was walking along the cliff edge picturing the
scene and then her foot slipped and she began to fall, but now
she was holding onto the hand of Jesus as she fell. He kept
repeating to her, "You're holding onto the hand of Jesus, you're
falling, but you're holding onto the hand of Jesus," this he
repeated for about ten minutes. Watching her face as he made her
picture that she was holding onto the hand of Jesus, the
expression of fear changed quickly into a beautiful expression
of peace and happiness. So eventually, he asked her to open her
eyes and asked her, "What was that like?" She replied that she
forgot she was falling and felt happy in the protection of
Jesus. Asked what she felt in her body, she replied that she
felt relaxed, deeply relaxed. Then Ron asked her to imagine she
was in the classroom situation and that the teacher had asked
her to stand up and read something, but while she was standing
up she pictured the scene where she was falling, holding onto
the hand of Jesus, so she felt relaxed and not at all worried
with this situation because she was holding the hand of Jesus
and felt the joy of his protection. After this guided
imagination, he said to her to open her eyes again. Then he
said, "Do you feel now that you will be alright in the classroom
when you have to stand to your feet and speak?" She smiled
happily and replied, "Yes, I feel sure I will because I will
have Jesus close to me holding my hand." "Well," Ron replied,
"If ever you have the slightest return of that problem, contact
me and I will bring you some more help." She agreed that she
would do so, but she never contacted Ron and he felt that his
spiritual therapy had worked. He has found that this use of the
name and form of the God one adores has a very powerful effect.
It releases the stupendous power of divine love which always
conquers fear.
Signs, strange and significant.
Contents
In the Blue Mountains just west of Sydney, Australia, I have
a number of friends, most of them followers of Sai Baba. I would
not have called Peter a Sai devotee at the time of this episode,
but he was certainly interested in Sai Baba and perhaps it was
to encourage this interest that Rocky Bugmann, an active member
of the Sai centre in the mid mountains, gave Peter a very
attractive, good-sized photograph of Sathya Sai Baba. Without
framing it, Peter stuck the photograph on the wall of his
bedroom in a position that allowed him to see it easily while he
was lying in bed. Incidentally, Peter is a bachelor of middle
age and lives alone except for his four legged friend, a dog
named Adam. Perhaps Adam acquired that name because of his
hatred of snakes. Adam of the Garden of Eden had no reason to
love the reptile, for it was because of a snake that he was
thrown out of paradise into the wide and terrible world.
Although Peter has a large house, he usually allows Adam to
spend the night on the floor of his bedroom. It may have been no
more than one or two nights after he had hung the picture that
the strange phenomena began. While Peter was lying comfortably
in bed with the light on, gazing intently at the photo of Swami,
it suddenly became three dimensional, that is, it stood out an
inch or so from the wall. At the same time, the image of Swami
changed to a man who appeared to be an historical character.
Judging, Peter said, from his clothes, style of hair and beard,
he belonged to history but Peter could not identify him. After a
while the photograph went flat against the wall again and Swami
was there. For the next five or six nights, the photo of Swami
played the same strange tricks, the only difference being that
it was not the same person who appeared in place of Swami. Each
night there was a different one, always appearing to be someone
from an earlier period of history and never identifiable by
Peter. Peter was quite fascinated but puzzled. It must be some
sign to him from Swami but he could not figure out what it was
meant to tell him. And who could help him? The only other person
in the room to see this pantomime was Adam the dog, and he
seemed quite unaffected by the strange antics of the picture.
Then came the night when, instead of another human being
appearing in the three dimensional photograph, in the place of
Swami came a large cobra. It was raised and its hood was spread
as if about to strike its victim. Peter was horrified. This, he
thought, is a symbol of evil and he immediately turned out the
bedroom light but it was a long time before he could go to
sleep. He, like many followers of the Christian faith, perhaps
through the myth of the Garden of Eden, regards snakes as an
animal cursed by God and therefore evil. At last he fell asleep.
No dreams came to help him with his problem and as soon as he
woke in the early hours before full daylight came, he got out of
bed with the intention of removing the picture. But it was not
on the wall anymore. Knowing that he had not stuck it to the
wall very securely, he looked on the floor below where the photo
had been hanging. It was not far away but ripped into many small
pieces. This must have been the work of Adam the dog who was
lying near the heap, as if to protect his master from any evil
that may remain in the torn-up picture. Peter gathered the
pieces and burned them.
It was not many days after this that Peter informed Rocky and
myself about the episode, about what had happened to the
photograph. Both of us assured him separately that to Swami, who
is an incarnation of Lord Siva and his consort Parvati or
Shakti, snakes are certainly not evil, just the reverse really.
Illustrations of Lord ..Siva often show him with a necklace of
snakes around his neck. They are one of his symbols and he has,
indeed, appeared as a cobra to a number of people at his
ashrams, including myself. The one that appeared to me was a
beautiful white cobra in the garden at Brindavan. It had behaved
more like a friend than an enemy of man. Peter understood
readily and happily. He was very pleased when Rocky gave him
another photograph. But he had had his ration of signs and
wonders and the second photograph behaved as photos are expected
to.
I think that Peter would now call himself a Sai devotee. There
are, of course, many different brands and types of devotees and
they meander to the feet of our Lord by many strange but
interesting routes.
* * *
The Sai signs that came to the married couple, Syd and Karen
Paterson were also strange and certainly significant. The
Patersons live near me in the Blue Mountains and I regard them
as earnest devotees who are making good progress on the Sai path
that leads back to God. Strangely, they too witnessed some Sai
photograph leelas but, unlike Peter, it was after they were
already Sai devotees. It was in this case a framed photograph
hanging on the wall of their sitting room. One day when they
were sitting discussing Swami's teachings while looking at the
photograph on the wall, it began to play some strange antics. It
would, for example, move along the wall to left or right and
sometimes seemed to come away from the wall towards them. At
other times bright lights would appear around the photo, bright
pink or green or just white light. Of course, they told each
other what they were seeing after it had happened but to test
that it was just not a fault in eyesight, they decided to tell
one another at the time of the happening. For example, Syd might
say, "The colour has turned to silver," or, "The photograph is
moving along the wall to the right," and Karen would confirm
that she was seeing the same thing. Then Karen might say what
was happening and Syd would agree that he was seeing the same
thing. So they decided that what they saw was actually happening
and believed it to be a sign of God's presence in their lives.
Other signs also came to them separately. For example, Syd who
is a painter by trade, one day - and all day - during his work
saw the face of Swami appear on whatever surface he was
painting, perhaps a door or a wall or a cupboard. This gave him
great joy and he had a wonderful day.
Another sign that he spoke to me about was that one day he
suddenly experienced adwaitha or non-duality - everything was
one. This brought him a great feeling of bliss, an uplift of
consciousness. Unfortunately, he said, this did not last all day
but just for a short period. Nevertheless he has remembered it
always and knows that the truth of Being, lies beyond what we
see with our eyes and is in truth, oneness of all life.
Later on, about the middle of the year 1990, Syd had his first
dream of Swami and it was to him a very important prophetic
dream. It remained very vivid in his memory. He told me that it
seemed to begin with him standing talking to a neighbour who had
lived next door to him in a Sydney suburb. Suddenly they saw the
form of Sai Baba on the opposite side of the street standing on
the pavement. Swami had a white robe on, said Syd, but I don't
know whether he was aware at the time that white is the colour
of mourning in India. Whether or not he understood the
significance of the colour white, Syd knew instinctively that
the old overcoat that Swami had swung across his shoulder,
represented the body of his own father. Swami gave them a smile
and a wave and moved off down the street. Syd was so full of his
strong feelings that he omitted to return the wave but the
neighbour did so, remarking something about Swami being the head
of some weird cult in India. Syd did not answer but remembered
thinking, "If only you knew the truth!" At the first
intersection, Swami turned as if to go along the cross street
but instead he faced up towards Syd and his friend and gave
another wave. This time, both men returned the wave and Swami
vanished.
It was a sad dream for Syd because he felt sure that Swami was
giving him a sign that his father, who was very sick in a
nursing home hospital, would not last very long. Thinking about
this, Syd prayed earnestly to Swami to be granted four boons.
The first was that the hospital would warn him of the
approaching death in sufficient time for him to let his old
mother know, so that she, who was living in the same nursing
home would get there in time for his father's passing. The
second was that he, himself, would manage to be present in the
bedroom of his father at the actual time of his passing. The
third was that his father would have a peaceful end with no pain
and the fourth was that Syd would be aware of the actual moment
his father left his body. Perhaps this was asking a lot, he
thought, but felt sure that somehow Swami would grant his
wishes.
It was not long after this that the call came from the hospital
telling him that his father's condition had deteriorated so
rapidly they were sure he did not have long to live. So Syd had
time not only to warn his mother but also his brother. That
morning they were all sitting in Father's ward. Brother had
brought along his wife too, but Syd had not brought Karen
because at this time they were just at the very beginning of
their friendship and Karen did not know his parents. The patient
did not seem to be aware of their presence. He was sleeping
peacefully with no apparent pain and so the hours dragged by,
with a nurse coming in about every half hour or so to check the
patient's condition, which seemed to indicate to Syd that the
end was not far away.
After a few hours of watching, mainly in silence, Syd felt that
his mother, who was unwell herself, was looking as if she needed
a rest. So he advised her to go to her room and lie down for
half an hour then he would call her. She went and the brother,
who had some urgent business to attend to, left too with his
wife. Syd was left alone with his thoughts. His good father, for
whom he felt great love, was still alive, breathing quietly.
Then, after about ten minutes, something strange happened. A
shaft of what seemed like dark blue energy about a yard in
length and perhaps six inches in width began to emanate from his
father's throat chakra at an angle of about forty five degrees
to the body. Then it vanished and the sound of the breathing
stopped. At a later time, Syd learned from someone who had had a
great deal of experience with death and dying and the hereafter,
that this was his father's astral body leaving the physical. But
Syd must have known this himself intuitively because of what
happened later.
The next event happened almost immediately. Swami came into the
room, not the usual Swami but one about half the size of his
small self, a dwarf Swami and he was dressed in green, which is
not a colour he ever wears. Syd took this as a symbol that his
father had had a peaceful passing because to Syd the green
colour meant peace, like the peace one feels in a green meadow.
To emphasise the point further, the diminutive Swami floated
onto the bed and sat cross-legged on the chest of the dead body.
Having emphasised the point to Syd of his father's peaceful
passing, Swami vanished. Soon after that two nurses came into
the room. One of them went and stood behind Syd with her hands
on his shoulders while the other went to the other side of the
bed to examine his father's body. The one behind asked gently,
"Where is your mother?" Syd replied "She's gone and so has my
father." "Oh, no," she replied, "I think your father is still
alive." But the nurse on the other side confirmed that he had
passed away. Syd sat for a while in quiet remembrance of his
beloved father and mentally gave his thanks to Swami for
granting him the four boons he had requested and indeed for
being present and blessing the transition of his father who had
not even been a Sai Baba follower.
Karen, who is very studious and gentle, has had her own
experiences of God's hand in her life. While her husband Syd has
felt the unity of all life, she has gone beyond the maya in a
different way. For example, she says one day at work, when
everything seemed to be going at a mad rate it was as if worldly
affairs in her life, that is the maya, was going around at an
ever increasing rate and seemed impossible to handle, her mind
went beyond it all. She saw it as it was, an unreal, crazy
illusion. She wanted to laugh at the crazy antics of people,
including herself. It was unreal and she stepped back from it
all into the quiet peace of reality. She found that on future
occasions when the worldly merry-go-round seemed to be getting
out of hand, just to focus on the memory of this occasion was
helpful in trying to re-establish that peace.
Earlier in the same year that Syd's father had died, Karen too,
had witnessed the compassionate hand of Swami at her own
father's death. "Neither of my parents were followers of Sai
Baba and they only ever heard his name when I was at home with
them and could not help talking about him sometimes." Her father
was sent to hospital through his emphysema and the work of some
other mysterious, tropical virus. She felt somehow that this
illness was terminal but the hospital staff was not very
co-operative about informing her and the rest of the family of
his state of health. So either Karen's mother, sister, herself
or another member of the family spent a lot of time in the ward
to check on his recovery or otherwise. One day when she was in
the ward alone with her father, he suddenly asked to her great
surprise, "You know that fellow you went to see in India I've
forgotten his name what was it?" Karen told him. "Yes, that's
right," he said. "I had a dream of him the other night." Karen
felt great surprise and delight to hear that Sai Baba actually
visited in a dream, her non-Sai father. She questioned him about
the nature of the dream. "Oh," said her father, "He just walked
up to me and shook my hand." The pleasure Karen felt had a tinge
of sadness. She felt sure that this handshake meant that her
father would leave his body very soon. Then she asked her
father, "How did that make you feel, Dad, when he shook your
hand? Was it a good feeling?" "Oh, my word!" her father said.
There was such enthusiasm in the old man's voice that Karen felt
assured and humble, with a rush of gratitude to the Lord that he
seemed to be taking care of her father at this time of his great
need.
A few days after this pleasing but worrying conversation,
Karen's father did, in fact, pass away. Only her mother was
present and she told Karen that it was an easy, peaceful
passing. He just seemed to stop breathing, she said. Karen knew
with an inner knowing that Swami had been present unseen and had
given her dear dad a peaceful and blessed passing. She was very
grateful and somewhat surprised that Swami would in this way,
help one who had never taken the slightest interest in him.
To me, the fact that Swami gave loving help and compassion to
the two fathers is a sign that Syd and Karen have their feel
firmly on and are making good progress along the spiritual path.
The ancient sage Narada in his Bhakti Sutras states that anyone
well advanced on the path of devotion will bring divine help to
several generations of ancestors and descendants. So I feel that
Swami's blessing to one generation ahead, that is to the two
fathers, is a result of Syd and Karen's own devotional work and
progress. Swami is interested in and brings blessings to the
members of the Sai devotees' families.
Narada's Sutra 71: His ancestors rejoice, the gods dance in joy
and the earth gets a Lord and Saviour. Such a devotee who is
full of God-realisation gives salvation to seven generations of
ancestors and descendants in the family. The gods rejoice to see
a man of God-realisation as he is one with God. The Earth gets
in him a saviour who can bless all mankind.
The mystery of Vibhuti.
Contents
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust." With these words of the
funeral service, the human body is committed to its final
formless form. In some denominations of the Christian church,
ash is blessed by the priesthood, becomes known as Holy Ash and
is used as a symbol of penitence, reminding man that his time on
earth is short and that he should use his time to seek the true
eternal values. Back in the timeless mythology of the Hindu
religion, ash was used by Lord Siva as a symbol or flag of
victory. After his victorious battle with the god Kama, the god
of desire, Siva reduced his enemy's body to ashes and smeared
his own body with those ashes, so then it was a victory over
desire. But, as we all know, Kama, like Phoenix, rose from his
own ashes and is very much alive and active within each one of
us, where he is known as the kama rupa, or body of desire.
Indeed, as I have heard my late friend Dr V K Gokak say, "He
lives our lives for us." Only one who has reached the state of
enlightened self-realisation could, as Siva did, adorn himself
with holy ash as a sign of victory over desire. So why do we
smear our foreheads or swallow quantities of this symbol of
victory and purity which Swami has named vibhuti? And why does
He call it vibhuti?
This is part of the great, the important, mystery on which I
would like to invite your consideration.
Looking into the Sanskrit dictionaries for the meaning of the
word 'vibhuti', one finds such definitions as 'manifestations of
divine power' or 'opulence by which God controls the whole
universe.' Other words used to define the meaning of vibhuti are
divine glory and splendour and magnificence. In some
translations of the Bhagavad Gita, we find the title of Chapter
Ten is, "The Yoga of Vibhuti" while in others it is called
"Manifestations of the Power and Glory of God". And we so learn
that the union with the divine which we seek is aided or perhaps
accomplished by the power, glory, splendour and munificence of
God and this is called vibhuti.
Nowhere in the great Scriptures of the nations have I personally
read of or heard of a Godman or saint who produced holy ash from
unseen dimension by the wave of his hand or by any other means.
Interestingly, during the near-half century that Sai Baba spent
at Shirdi, He used ash, from the fire He kept burning, to help
people with their health and other problems. This ash He called
'udi' which must bear some relationship to the word vibhuti. So
why did Sri Sathya Sai Baba name the ash that He manifests many
times a day by circling His hand by the title vibhuti? Surely He
must mean us to understand that this wonderful material which
comes in various shades of colour, perfume and taste, carries
with it the divine power, glory and splendour that lie in the
meaning of the word itself. And surely this is something of
which we should be fully aware when we use vibhuti either
externally or internally.
We should not be like I was when He said to me on the first day
of our meeting in a room in Madras, "Would you like some
vibhuti?" I said "Yes," because I wanted to see Him manifest it
out of nowhere. I had no idea what to do with it, nor of its
power. But I discovered its power of healing on the following
day when He manifested vibhuti for my wife and cured her of
hepatitis on the spot. It is strange that Swami, not always, but
frequently, manifests His divine power and compassion through
material things, such as the leaves and flowers of plants,
water, lingams and nectar but certainly most often through holy
ash.
I have heard people say that the power of vibhuti lies in its
placebo effect, its effect on the mind of the patient, thus
creating greater faith and expectation. But I know of cases in
which the recipient of vibhuti had no expectation at all, no
expectation of a cure, that is. My wife, Iris, was one of these
in the case just related, but the most striking in my experience
was the cure of the parachute jumper, Squadron Leader A.
Chakravarthy and his absent wife, which I describe in detail in
my book "Sai Baba, Invitation to Glory", I will repeat the main
facts here.
Chakravarthy, along with two scientists with whom he had arrived
at the ashram, was called for an interview during his first
evening there. Swami manifested several things for two of his
friends and then told Chakravarthy to join his two palms
together in the form of a bowl. Then Swami waved His down-turned
hand in small circles above the bowl thus formed. Vibhuti poured
from His hand until Chakravarthy's two joined palms were full.
Then He told the parachute jumper to eat the vibhuti. The
Squadron Leader, who was also head of the parachute jumping
school in the Indian Air Force, had no idea why he should eat
the vibhuti but he came from a spiritual family and had the
feeling that he was in the presence of a Godman, so he did as he
was ordered. He consumed every morsel of this double handful of
vibhuti. "The flavour was quite pleasant and I thought I was
getting some spiritual benefit from it," he told me.
He had an interview on the following morning and the same thing
happened. Again the Squadron leader did as ordered and ate all
the vibhuti, having no idea what the specific benefit might be.
He and his friends returned to Bangalore after spending the one
night at the ashram. He was amazed and of course, overjoyed to
discover in the next few days that he had been completely cured
of a disease that the medical doctors had told him was
incurable. He was even more astounded to find that his wife was
cured of the same incurable disease. They had both been told by
several doctors that the disease they shared was not only
incurable but would prevent them having children. Now, as if to
confirm the cure, Swami told them that they would have a son to
be born on Swami's own birthday that year. This duly took place.
No placebo effect could have played any part in this unexpected
healing of two people by two double handfuls of vibhuti given to
one of them.
Several friends have told me how they have cured diseases in
animals, mainly pet dogs and cats, by the application of vibhuti
and this seems to indicate that the healing power exists in the
vibhuti without any help from mental expectation or even faith.
The quantity of vibhuti required and time taken for healing are
also part of the divine mystery. In Chakravarthy's case, two
double handfuls of vibhuti healed two people almost immediately.
In the case of Mayan Waynberg, (given in my book "Sai Baba,
Invitation to Glory") another example of vibhuti healing an
incurable disease (that is, incurable by ordinary medical
means), the patient was instructed by Swami to take a pinch of
vibhuti in water daily, but it took nearly two years for the
complete cure. Different diseases, different methods and only
the Divine Healer Himself knows the reason. All we can know is
that this sacred substance that we have learned to call vibhuti
is imbued with the divine power, glory and opulence to work
great miracles.
Then there is the amazing worldwide phenomenon of the appearance
of vibhuti on articles, mainly on holy pictures, under the glass
when they are mounted in frames with a glass front. Such things
are happening to Sai followers from Russia to Malaysia and
Australia. Why and how is this done, may be asked.
Well, I would say, it certainly builds faith and even takes
people to Sai Baba. My famous friend, Jegathesan, of Malaysia
told me that when he heard people talking about Sathya Sai Baba,
his reaction was negative but when vibhuti began to appear on
the pictures of Swami and other holy figures in the home of one
of his relatives in Malaysia, faith was born in his heart and he
immediately went to see "The Living God in India." Well, we all
know the fine work that Jegathesan has carried out in the Sai
mission to the world.
As to the 'how' of the operation, I have heard more than one
person say that the job is done by other beings and not by
Swami. But psychic science has proved beyond question that, in
general, discarnate spirits do not possess the psychokinetic
power to move even a featherweight physical object.
An exception to this rule is the stone-throwing poltergeist and
it's not the nature of the poltergeist to smear holy ash on holy
objects in order to increase man's faith in God.
We know that Swami Himself can travel in a flash to any spot on
the globe and, when there, use His divine psychokinetic power to
carry out any physical work He likes. We know, too, that He has
helpers, multitudes of helpers, on the subtle planes as well as
on the earth plane. He could endow any of these helpers, be they
discarnate, angelic or devic, with the power to spread vibhuti
on the glass or under the glass of holy pictures, inside books,
on the cover of books when they are lying underneath other
volumes, on the hands of saintly dying people (as once happened
to a dying Sai devotee in Melbourne, Australia). So, whether He
does the work Himself or delegates it to some of His numberless
subtle helping hands, it is not possible to know, and I do not
feel that it matters, since all the divine work is done by God.
Remember the story of the man who, sitting on the roof of his
house during a rising flood, refused all help from men in boats
and helicopters who tried to rescue him, saying, "Don't bother,
I have prayed to God to save me." When in due course, he was
drowned, and his soul stood in the presence of God, he said to
the Almighty, "I prayed to You to save me, but You did not." God
replied "I sent rescuing boats and a helicopter to take you off
your roof and save your life but you had forgotten that all
helping hands are My hands."
Another mystery is why does vibhuti appear in some homes and not
in others? By what criteria does God select the homes? Are the
people blessed by vibhuti, more spiritual than those who are
not? From my observations, I do not think so.
I have noted that the ash recipients in India seem to be more
humble, more egoless than usual. I first saw the phenomenon, for
example, in a Brahmin home in Coimbatore. It seemed to have
covered practically everything in the shrine room and while I
sat watching, it was pouring from a small statue of Shirdi Sai
Baba.
Many years ago on my arrival at Prashanti Nilayam, I met a young
man in the village outside the wall. He told me the story of his
aunt who lived in a humble dwelling within the village. He told
me that while Swami was away on tour, vibhuti and amrit began
appearing on the pictures in his aunt's home. It was not long
before crowds of people filled her courtyard to see the
phenomenon and receive gifts of vibhuti and amrit, there being
plenty for everybody. Attending to the growing crowds became too
much for the poor lady who was a widow. She became overwrought
and unable to carry on.
Then suddenly Swami, who was still on tour bodily, appeared to
her in His subtle form and said "I am stopping this now. Lock
your gates and let nobody in." From that moment no more vibhuti
or amrit appeared. My first book on Swami had been published and
the young man knew my name, so very kindly he took me round to
meet his aunt. All was quiet there. Though her pictures were no
longer producing ash or amrit, she had stocks of it kept in jars
and kindly gave me some. She belonged to the class of the meek,
the humble, the surrendered to God, the lovers of the good.
Swami had both blessed her and protected her.
But in other countries of the world and also in other parts of
India, I have found vibhuti appearing in the homes of people
whom I could not class as humble and surrendered. In fact, they
seemed to have as much ego as the average searcher in the
domain. So the mystery remains and I feel that only God Himself
knows the answer.
The twain are meeting.
Contents
'East is East and West is West and Never The Twain Shall
Meet' says the well-known line of Rudyard Kipling, but he does
go on to prophesy a time when they will meet and that will be at
the feet of God. Today the twain are meeting, in truth, at the
feet of God, not only East and West but races of all the world
are coming to the feet of the Living Avatar of God. This must
surely signify the approach of a great change in the
consciousness of mankind. But before considering this, let us
talk about what we understand by the term 'Avatar' and what it
has always signified in the history of man.
It was during my first visit to Prasanthi Nilayam Ashram in 1966
when I first heard Swami being called an Avatar. I was sitting
with a small group of young Indian men on the ladies side of the
Mandir, when Swami suddenly appeared and started walking across
the large square of sand that has now become a green park. He
was walking barefooted and red-robed towards one of the terraced
houses that then stood in line with their backs to the road, and
their doors and front windows facing the square of golden sand.
We watched the progress of Swami in silence for a time, then the
young man sitting beside me with whom I had a great deal of
discussion, said in a quiet voice, "Many of us regard Him as an
Avatar." This gave me something of a shock did he mean that this
little figure, with the mop of fuzzy black hair above his soft
luminous eyes was God? I looked at the speaker again. It was the
serious face of the Crown Prince of Venkatagiri. From our
previous discussion, I had learned to respect the knowledge and
insight of this young man. Now he spoke in all seriousness about
one that I had considered to be a great yogi with miraculous
powers and understanding, being an Avatar of God. I remained
silent, but mentally decided that when I got back to the
Theosophical Headquarters, I would get any books I could find
from the library, and try to learn what I needed to know about
the term 'Avatar'.
However, I did not, in fact, learn very much from the books
available. Lord Krishna, who lived some five thousand years ago,
seemed to have been the last of the Avatars. He brought great
changes to the people of the earth at that time as did, indeed,
the former Avatar Rama. Did such Beings, when they came to the
earth, always shake and move and change the world? Later on, I
remember hearing Swami say that Jesus Christ was a partial
Avatar Jesus did in fact change the Western half of the world
from the pagan, power seeking, egotistical values of the Roman
Empire to the compassionate Christendom. If a partial Avatar
could do so much, what might a full Avatar do for the whole
world? But first, I must get clear in my mind, what was meant by
an Avatar, and find out if this small red-robed figure, whom I
had begun to respect and love deeply, was really one. While I
pondered this question, I continued to be with Sai Baba as much
as I possible could, which was most of the time.
'God as Man on earth!' this seemed to be a far-fetched and
incomprehensible idea certainly in my early years. Christian
theology had taught me that God had come to earth once, but only
once, in the form of Jesus Christ and that He would never come
again, except at the end of the world. Certainly, my own
thinking and Theosophy had knocked this idea out of my mind. It
was not now a part of my belief system. I knew that Theosophy
did accept the truth of the earlier Avatars, Krishna and Rama -
but this was all so long ago.
The idea of God Himself coming to the earth in the form of a man
in this modern world was a concept that seemed impossible for me
to accept. And if Almighty God did in fact decide on such an
unlikely move, why should He choose to be born in a remote,
primitive village, hidden away in Southern India, where the mass
of mankind was unlikely to hear of Him for a very long time, if
ever?
Then suddenly, the whole idea became acceptable to my
understanding and to my belief. It happened this way. One day, I
was strolling quietly in a small garden that fronted the doorway
of Swami's interview room in the two-storey house that stood
where the white, lotus-shaped Mandir now stands at Brindavan,
Bangalore. We were all expecting Swami to emerge from the
doorway at any moment. Appearing suddenly, Swami walked into the
garden among us. He stopped not far from where I was standing. A
young Indian, probably in his early twenties, stepped boldly in
front of Sai Baba, and even more boldly asked the question, "Are
you God?" the hush that fell over the group of men seemed
expectant, and yet somehow fearful. But Swami was his calm,
normal self. He pointed his finger at the young man and replied,
"You are God!"
Then, standing among us in that small, quiet garden, He gave a
simple revealing talk that taught me so very much about the
nature of man and God. The gist of it was that God incarnates in
every man and woman born on earth but we are not aware of this
wonderful truth, although perhaps sometimes dimly aware. Our
very purpose in being born as a human being, He told us, it to
work towards the realisation of the great truth of our Divinity.
We are, in fact, when born Avatars, without the knowledge of
this stupendous truth! The ones who are called Avatars are those
who are born with the knowledge of this great truth of their
identity with God. And so He said, "The only difference between
you and Me is that while you are Avatars and you do not know it,
I knew it from the time of My childhood. When I tell you as I
do, that you are God, that God is within you all, you may or may
not believe it, but you have to do more than believe it, you
must by the life you live, and through your Sadhana reach the
point where you experience your own Godhood. Then you will not
only believe, but realise that you are God. That is the one step
that you must realise in your mind and experience in your whole
consciousness, that you and I are one."
I knew at that moment that Sai Baba was an Avatar. And then as
the weeks, the months, the years passed, in close proximity to
Him, the conviction that He was the Avatar of this age who came
for a certain wonderful purpose became firmly rooted in my
belief system. Now after more that thirty years of His Presence,
physical or subtle, the understanding and belief that Sai Baba
is God on earth, has become firmer, broader and more
understandable.
Now let me try to give you in a few words an overall view of the
day-to-day work of an Avatar in this modern age, and the special
work for the world, the way in which He will change the world
before leaving His body as Sathya Sai Baba. When I speak of His
day-to-day work, please remember that it is a seven-day week for
fifty-two weeks of every year, for He never takes a holiday.
This day-to-day work of God is about the transformation of
individuals. His aim is to place the feet of every individual,
who is ready, on what He calls, 'the ancient road back to God'.
There never has been any other road than this, although within
it there are many laneways. He leads the feet of the individual
along whatever laneway or Yoga path that is most suitable to his
temperament. For the majority of people in this age, the most
suitable Yoga pathway is that of devotion.
This may be called the Yoga of Love. For this, Swami opens the
Heart Centre of each individual who is ready and lets the love
flow out towards him as God and towards every individual in the
world at whose centre, God exists. I know this because this was
my own initiation on my first visit to the Ashram in 1966. Love
is the super glue that binds us all together to God. Karma Yoga
or yoga of service to mankind is a very important part of his
devotional path. So, Bhakti Yoga or Yoga of Love, combined with
Karma Yoga is the main devotional path for the majority of
people in this age.
As part of His work at the level of the individual, there is the
establishment of the Super Speciality Hospital at Prasanthi
Nilayam with another one near Whitefield. There is also His
remarkable work in the educational field. As all the devotees
may know, His educational institutions range from kindergartens
to colleges, and to the Institute of Higher Learning, which has
all the powers and authority of a university. To academic
excellence is added the spiritual guidance and authority of the
Avatar. Years ago, when the university was first established I
heard one of the very old and learned devotees say that a boy
who has spent only one year at a high school should become a
Chancellor of a university is one of Sai Baba's greatest
miracles. But to me, there are some that seem even greater, and
establish Him beyond question as Almighty God in human form.
Such, for example, is His suspension of His own Laws of Nature,
by making apples and pears and other fruits grow on the branches
of wild bush trees.
This divine work, among so many individuals over the face of the
earth, has already brought Rudyard Kipling's prophesy true.
'East is East, West is West and Never the Twain Shall Meet, Till
Earth and Sky Stand Presently, at God's Great Judgment Seat.'
The twain are meeting East and West are gathering at the feet of
God. But, does this mean the end of the world as the poet seems
to suggest? It certainly does not mean the end of the planet,
but I believe that it does mean the end of the old world and the
beginning of an entirely new one. In early days, when there were
not so many of us gathering at His feet, I have heard Him say,
"The Golden Age will begin before I leave this body." He has
said it since and He has said several times that the new world
will be ushered in before He leaves His present body. He has
said it in a quiet casual voice, as if it was nothing at all.
But it is in this manner that He makes all world-shattering
announcements. He did not say what year that this great change
of the world would take place only that it would be in the first
two decades of this 21st century the beginning of the new
millennium.
There are many, many workers on what the late Sir George
Trevelyan used to call 'The Forcefield of Light' helping the
great living Avatar in His work of changing the old world into
the new. Among these many first grade assistants to Almighty God
are two of those called Ascended Masters. These two are Ascended
Master Kuthumi and Ascended Master El Morya. In the book
entitled "The Light Shall Set You Free", they have made two
statements of interest that I give you here. One is 'Avatar Sai
Baba is carrying the Christ Consciousness in the world today.'
The Christ Consciousness means of course the same as the Krishna
Consciousness or the Divine Consciousness in man. The other
statement they make is that 'The Golden Age would begin in 2011
or 2012'. It is explained in other parts of this same book and
in other spiritual books that by the year 2011, due to the work
of Sai Baba and His Helpers in the Light, a sufficient number of
human beings will have raised their consciousness to create what
they call 'the critical mass' that will bring about a quantum
leap in the consciousness of all mankind to bring us into the
fifth dimension from the third dimension in which we are now.
And as man's consciousness creates the world in which he lives,
the Golden Age or the new Sathya Yuga will begin. Any stragglers
will be brought up to the fifth dimensional level by Prema Sai
(Sai Baba's next incarnation). And, so it may seem, in the new
century the members of the human race, who have suffered hell
itself in the last century, will find themselves back in the
metaphorical Garden of Eden talking and walking with God.
First published in "Sanathana Sarathi", November 2000
What is Truth?
Contents
When at his trial before Pontius Pilate, Jesus stated that he
had come to earth to teach the truth, Pilate replied, "What is
truth?" and walked away. Apparently he did not think that this
tall gentle Jew, whom the temple priest had sent to be tried for
his life as a trouble maker to the Roman rule, would have the
answer to this big question. It was really laughable to think
that he would have the answer to a question the Greek
Philosophers from Socrates onward had failed to answer
satisfactorily. Well, what is the truth? Do we know it yet, 2000
years after that mocking question was asked in Jerusalem? Did
Jesus teach the truth that he claimed he had come to teach? I
believe that he did for those with ears to hear. Perhaps he did
not emphasise the meaning sufficiently, but he certainly
emphasised the importance of knowing and living the truth, for
he said, "If you know the truth, the truth will set you free."
Most men and women long to know the truth about their own being
who they really are and what the purpose of their lives on earth
is. Does all this struggle and endeavour end in nothing or does
some important, happy destination lie at the end of this long
road, this seemingly meaningless journey of pain and pleasure?
Is there some formula for living that will lead them with
mathematical certainty to a goal that will bring them permanent
satisfaction and happiness.
Many men and women have searched through the world for a wise
Teacher who will give them the answers to such questions and who
will reveal the truth of being and provide the recipe for living
that will bring them the freedom and joy they seek. Well, as one
of those world wandering Sadhakas, I eventually found the One,
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba. I knew I had found my teacher but
I did not immediately recognise him as a Godman or Avatar.
Very soon however, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba gave me the
answers to most of my main questions; the mysteries that remain
are probably beyond the level of my conscious understanding. He
told me that there was just one purpose in my life, that it was
to develop and expand my consciousness until it had become one
with the Divine Consciousness of God and thus to become one with
the Divine Being that goes under many names. There is only one
Being, He told me One without a second. In the darkness of our
ignorance, we think that we are separate beings and that there
are billions of others, but in truth there is only one Being.
Such an illogical statement was hard to accept against the
evidence of my senses. Through the years that I spent in the
environs of His physical presence, I began to realise the truth
of this astounding paradoxical statement. Though you and I see
many, touch many, hear many, communicate with many, there is in
truth, only One. If this be true, then surely we must be part of
the One.
I remember one day some years ago at the ashram, I was sitting
on the verandah of the Mandir, as Swami was calling into His
presence a number of boys who had just joined his elementary
school. He was standing perhaps three metres away from where I
was sitting. I remember He asked each boy two things his name
and where he was from. Each of them stated his name and address
in India. Each one seemed overjoyed to be in the presence of
Swami, while one little fellow, though smaller than the rest,
had the brightest smile. He gave his name readily and when Swami
said, "Where are you from?" he replied, "From You, Swami." Then
the Lord Sai smiled too. "Look," he said happily, "Here is one
who knows he is from God."
This boy could not have been much more than six and here was I,
in my sixties and still trying to understand and realise that I
was from God that indeed we all are. So we come from God, yet we
are still an integral part of Him the One Being; and
furthermore, in our present state of human consciousness, we are
not aware of having any connection with Him; we are, in a sense,
like the prince in the story who was taken from his royal home
by a band of robbers. He grew up with the robbers and believed
that he was one of them; indeed he had no idea of his royal
identity not until many years later, when a turn of
circumstances brought him back to his home, did he realise his
true identity.
Must we go back to our spiritual home before we realise who we
are? On the contrary, I think we must realise our identity
before we can go back. Well, if we have come from God as the
little boy stated, and with which Swami agreed, how did this
happen or seem to happen?
There are three main explanations propounded by some of the
great Rishis of the past who gave commentaries on the Vedanta.
The word 'Vedanta', by the way, means the end of the Vedas,
because this philosophy comes from the Upanishads which are
found at the end of each Veda. The word 'Upanishad' means that
these teachings are for those who sit close to the feet of the
Master. They are, it is implied, beyond the understanding of the
ordinary man or woman. The great sages strive to understand them
but do they always succeed? Now, briefly, here are the three
explanations on how there seems to be such a diversity of life,
whereas in truth there can be only oneness or unity.
The first explanation briefly is that God through his shakti,
created a maya or illusion in which we see ourselves as
separate, whereas in reality we are only one. This is sometimes
called 'the mortal dream'. Our everyday consciousness in its
waking state is really a dream state and only when we wake from
this dream will we see the truth of oneness; this is called the
Adwaitha Vedanta or in English, non-duality.
The second great theory as given in Vedanta is that we were
always throughout eternity, separate souls, though part of the
one God. The best analogy I can think of for this is the fruit
of the pomegranate with its many separate seeds within the same
skin, all being part of the one fruit. We are still part of the
one fruit or the one Being without a second, whom we call God.
We, the separate seeds, are not aware or have somehow forgotten
who we are.
The third of the great theories is this: The one and only God
created or emanated the myriad of separate souls from within
himself, they are part of his very breath, part of his essence,
as the Old Testament of the Hebrews state; and for all eternity
they will remain separate from their creator, that is, separate
in form while being one with God in their spirit or essence.
This particular understanding of Vedanta seems to lie at the
base of some of the world's great religions. For some reason,
known only to God Himself, separate souls in this world are born
into the great illusion believing that they are separate or
asunder from God. This mistaken belief of being asunder from the
One is the original sin, or error from which all other errors
emanate. When, through the discipline of spiritual training, we
come to understand and realise that though apparently separate
in form, we are, in essence and in truth, one with God and with
each other, then we come into the Kingdom of Heaven which is
simply the state of Divine Love, or the feeling of oneness with
all. Sathya Sai Baba, whose teachings are in line with the main
teachings of Vedanta, together with the love he stirs in each
spiritual heart, has not said, to my knowledge, which of these
three explanations is correct. Since they all teach the one God
and our eternal oneness with Him, perhaps the theories of
creation are not important.
Though a great deal of joy-giving light has been thrown by the
Sai teachings on such fundamental questions as where we come
from, who we really are and the purpose of our long journey
through this schoolroom of earth, it seems to me that one big
question remains. That is, why did we have to come to earth in
complete forgetfulness of our unity with the Divine One, or to
look at the matter in the evolutionary way, why did we have to
begin the journey in the mineral kingdom with only a modicum of
consciousness?
Why did we have to develop that consciousness through life in
the plant and animal kingdoms before reaching the human stage,
and then struggle on further up the evolutionary ladder until we
reach divine consciousness? As God is Chit or Absolute
Consciousness and it is taught that we, each one of us, is
wholly God, why the necessity of the long climb through aeons of
time from the modicum of consciousness in the mineral to the
full consciousness of the God-realised man? In brief, why was
it, what the Masters call 'the journey of necessity', really
necessary?
Perhaps this is one of the questions which, in Paramahansa
Yogananda's terms 'will be left for eternity', or perhaps when
we have reached that adulthood of consciousness as God-realised
individuals, we will know the answer.
The esoteric Christmas.
Contents
Undoubtedly the many millions of Christians throughout the
world know that the 25th of December is the traditional date for
celebrating the birth of Jesus. Very few, perhaps, know that
this has not always been so. In fact, it did not become the
accepted date for the Christmas festival until nearly the middle
of the fourth century A.D. In her book entitled "Esoteric
Christianity", Dr Annie Besant, who was President of the
International Theosophical Society for more than a quarter of a
century, ending about 1934, quotes Williamson Gibbons, author of
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" and a number of
others on this interesting subject. From these I gained the
following facts, which should be of interest to all who join in
the Christmas festival. Indeed, other spiritual people who
regard Christmas as belonging only to the Christians may feel
inclined to celebrate the 25th of December themselves when they
know its true meaning and implications.
Not knowing and finding it impossible to determine the actual
date of the birth of Jesus, Christians of the earliest centuries
chose any date for the celebration. It is said that over a
hundred different dates were chosen by sects of the Christian
church. Dates in September or August, February, March, June and
July were chosen by groups of Christians in different countries.
Perhaps this did not matter so much but it was certainly better
that all should celebrate on the same date. So in the year 337
A.D. the head of the Christian church, Pope Julius (, residing
in Rome, decided on the 25th of December as the date for all
Christians to celebrate the birth of their Saviour and leader
Jesus Christ. At this time, about half of the people of Asia
Minor, Europe and North Africa had become Christians, while
others retained their old religions, mainly that of ancient
Greece. At about this time, or a little earlier, Christianity
had become the official religion of the Roman Empire. So it paid
those in power, or seeking power, to adopt this new religion.
Now what was the reason for the choice of this date, the 25th of
December, above all other possible dates? There must surely have
been a good reason and, in fact, there was. The reason goes back
through many centuries to time immemorial. It goes back, in
truth, to the worship of the sun god or the sun hero who
reincarnated every year on that date. This was, of course,
connected with the rebirth of the sun in the northern
hemisphere. The wise men of ancient times, as do those of
esoteric understanding, believed in the maxim, "As above so
below and as below so above". They understood that what happens
below on earth is, in a sense, a shadow of more important
happenings above. As you and I, having three-dimensional bodies,
cast a two-dimensional shadow, so events in the higher spiritual
world of many dimensions cast three-dimensional shadows here on
earth. We are concerned here with the rebirth of the physical
sun on the 25th of December and the parallel rebirth of the sun
hero, the one bringing earthly light and the other bringing
spiritual Light.
At midnight on the 24th of December, known as the winter
solstice in the northern hemisphere, where our culture had its
roots , the sun, which had been declining for six months and
seemed likely to leave the earth forever, was suddenly reborn.
The reincarnating sun rose above the eastern horizon, proceeding
through the constellation of Virgo just above the horizon. So it
was that on the early morning of the 25th of December the sun
was reborn through a virgin. This was the great and wonderful
event to the earth below. But, in the world above, there was a
parallel, a yet even greater event. To the wise men of the
ancients and likewise to the modern esotericists, a life-giving
saviour sun is the body of the spirit known as the Logos. The
dictionary gives two meanings to this word Logos, one is the Son
of God and the other the Word of God. It is the Son of God,
whether he be considered a messenger or an Avatar, who brings to
man the wisdom of God in words. The new-born physical sun is at
first a weak infant. He seems to struggle against the dark,
which is predominant while the nights are longer than the days,
and this valiant struggle of the youthful sun continues until he
reaches the line of the spring equinox. And when he crosses
that, he is said to be crucified and rises triumphantly to ripen
the corn and fruits, thus bringing warmth and sustenance to the
creatures on earth. His life-giving ascension into the heavens
continues until the summer solstice in June, then he begins his
six-monthly decline until the next winter solstice in December.
The Logos or Godman, who descends to earth to bring the divine
Light and thus save mankind from spiritual death, has many
parallels in his birth and life with his symbol, the physical
sun. For one thing, he is always and inevitably born of a virgin
as the sun is born through the cosmic virgin. The mother of the
Godman may not be a virgin in the physiological sense but she is
always so in the spiritual sense. Let us think of the few whom
we know, Isis of ancient Egypt was the virgin mother of Horus,
one of the Godmen light-bringers. Devaki, the mother of Krishna
was of a spiritually pure virginal nature and in some accounts
of Krishna's birth his mother, Devaki, was a physiological
virgin. The Chinese account of the birth of Buddha claims that
his mother, Mayadevi, was a pure virgin. Mary, the mother of
Jesus, was a virgin according to the biblical account, while all
accounts show her to be a spiritually pure woman. Those of us
who are fortunate to have known Eswaramma, the physical mother
of our Avatar, Sathya Sai Baba, know that she was pure and
virginal of heart. It would seem that none of the saintly
mothers of the Godmen had any bad karma to adversely affect the
bodies of those Godmen who came to earth through their wombs.
Knowing something of the lives of the great Avatars of history,
we can see more easily through them, the continuing parallel of
their lives with that of the new-born sun. They too suffered in
the early part of their lives from the threats of the spiritual
darkness around them. The Avatars are not, of course, born every
year like the physical sun, but they reincarnate at the end of a
cosmic year when the spiritual light is fading and the power of
darkness comes near to eliminating the last shreds of
spirituality in the hearts of men. Then in the boyhood of the
young Avatar the parallel with the sun continues. His life is
still threatened by the power of darkness. We know the threat to
the baby Krishna by his wicked uncle Kamsa was there from the
very beginning of his life and continued through his childhood.
We know how, when he heard of the birth of the baby Jesus, the
prince of darkness King Herod, who had heard in a prophecy that
this child would be a threat to his throne, had all the male
children born about the same time in Israel slaughtered to make
sure that he had eliminated the threat to his power. But an
angelic messenger had warned the baby's parents and they took
the young Jesus into Egypt where he lived until the threat to
his life was over. We know, too, how the dark forces worked
through certain ignorant and misguided villagers to kill the
young Sathya Sai through poison and fire.
But is this interesting, strange parallel with the life of the
sun seen also in the many sun heroes who have come to help
mankind through past ages? Annie Besant states that this is so
and that the similarity in the pattern of their lives is too
great to be accounted for by a mere coincidence. Today we do
not, of course, think of a sun hero, a saviour, as he was
called, being born every year at the winter solstice, as perhaps
some of the ancient peoples did. Oddly, however, in a
metaphorical way we do think of him being born each Christmas.
As Rudolph Steiner points out, in some of the Christmas carols
we sing 'Christ is born on earth today', 'Today the angels are
rejoicing and singing on earth as well as in the heavens'.
Perhaps in past ages many of the ancient peoples celebrated the
25th of December not because a new sun hero was born but to
rejoice in the birth of one born in past years. The Celtic
peoples, for example, used to light fires on the hills of
Scotland and other countries on the 25th of December, and the
bells would ring in rejoicing and thanksgiving to Bael, one of
the ancient Light-bringers. When they became Christians, the
Celts continued lighting the bonfires in honour of the new
saviour and redeemer, Jesus Christ. How appropriate it was that
the Christian leaders in Rome in the year 337 A.D. chose this
date to celebrate the birth of Jesus! Whenever he was actually
born, was he not the great and recent bringer of the spiritual
Light and therefore the Saviour and redeemer of mankind?
Another of the ancient light-bringers, or sun heroes, was
Dionysius of ancient Greece, renamed Bacchus by the Romans. In
Rome itself, it seemed very useful and appropriate that on this
day any ritual celebration by the Christians would hardly be
noticed and attacked by the non-Christian Romans who were busy
noisily celebrating the birth of Bacchus who, as well as being a
sun god, was also the god of the grapevine. A good deal of noisy
celebration and drinking seemed called for. Also sports and
games were part of the Roman celebrations of the birthday of
Bacchus. Altogether it was safe for the Christians to hold their
quiet spiritual rejoicings on this day. Christians were not
altogether safe from violence even at that period in the first
half of the fourth century A.D.
So the Christmas rejoicings and celebrations go back into the
dawn of time. We can hear the bells ringing out through the many
centuries, giving it a greater dimension. As well as this
greater dimension in length, the concept of Christmas gains also
a greater width. It embraces not only the birth of Jesus but of
all other bringers of spiritual Light. We can include all of
them, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, Sai Baba in both of his births and
others we know and appreciate, in our prayers of thanksgiving
and our songs of joy on that special day of the year, the 25th
of December, honoured and sanctified through so many generations
of our forefathers and perhaps by ourselves in former
incarnations. We do not need to belong to a Christian church. We
do not even need to think of ourselves as Christians in order to
open our hearts and minds in unity with all our brothers and
sisters on the earth and of all time and feel our oneness with
the one and only God, who has periodically paid his special
compassionate appearances on earth in the many forms and under
the many names we know and of so many more that we do not know.
Sai Baba teaches us this by holding Christmas celebrations at
Prashanti Nilayam each year. And though I have spent Christmas
in many lands among many peoples, those held at Prashanti
Nilayam are the most spiritual and meaningful that I have ever
experienced. Thinking of Christmas in this esoteric way helps us
to feel in our spiritual hearts the unity, the love in all
religions, as Swami teaches us to understand and accept.
Wensley gains more than a cure.
Contents
Wensley Roth lives in New South Wales near the Queensland
border with her husband and children. It was while I was in that
area in the early 1990's that she told me an interesting story.
That is nearly a decade ago now but I have not told her story in
an earlier book because something seemed to stop me. The reader
will realise by the end of the chapter the reason why I had an
inner prompting to wait. She not only told me her story verbally
but wrote it for me in all details.
It was in October of the year 1990 that she noticed a swelling
on the right side of her neck. This she was told was an enlarged
lymph node. In the following month a number of lymph nodes were
removed from her right armpit and from the shoulder. Her medical
specialist informed her that she was suffering from a disease
known as non-Hodgkins lymphoma. This disease, he told her, was
treatable but could not be cured - it always comes back. Wensley
remarked, "I would like to be the exception to that rule."
During the early months of the next year, that is 1991, she
heard about Ian Gawler's clinic for people suffering from cancer
and in March that year she paid two five day visits to his
centre. I would like to introduce Ian Gawler here because I knew
him personally some years before. He was suffering from a
serious bone cancer and had several months' treatment from a
number of psychic healers in the Philippines. Then he was
advised to go to India to Sathya Sai Baba to complete the cure.
He did so and Swami assured him that he was cured. Ian felt
complete faith in this and, after gaining some strength,
returned to his practice as a Veterinary Surgeon in Victoria.
Then he had the idea to open a clinic in which he could help
patients suffering from cancer. So it was interesting for me to
learn how Wensley fared in Ian Gawler's clinic. Briefly she told
me that it had been well worthwhile and she gained a number of
benefits from her time there. For one thing she was taught some
very useful techniques in meditation and visualisation. A woman
she met at the clinic showed her a photograph of Sathya Sai Baba
and gave her some of the vibhuti he had manifested. Furthermore,
it seems to have been through this woman that she obtained a
copy of Dr Sam Sandweiss's book The Holy Man and the
Psychiatrist. One day while she was resting with her eyes closed
she became aware of a man standing before her with a great deal
of compassion in his eyes. He had a peculiar headgear which
seemed to be a cloth tied over his head. When she opened her
eyes the vision faded away. She told her friend about the vision
who wondered if it could have been Sai Baba. Later when she saw
a photograph of Shirdi Sai Baba she recognised the man in her
vision. She began to feel a longing to go personally to Sai
Baba, whom she somehow felt was her Sadguru in this life, yet he
seemed so remote, so far away in India that she felt reluctant
to go to him at this time.
The benefits she gained at this time at the Gawler Institute are
too numerous to mention here. One, however, is that Ian Gawler
taught her a number of affirmations which she used and felt were
very helpful in fighting the disease. One was, 'At last I can be
my true self' and another, 'I have much to achieve in this
incarnation' and a third, 'My spiritual evolvement is number one
priority in my life.' On returning home towards the end of April
in that same year, she found that the tumour or swelling on her
neck was only half the size it had been eight weeks earlier when
she went to Ian Gawler's clinic. Her oncologist was pleased and
told her to keep it up, whatever it was that she was doing. So
she kept to a strictly vegetarian diet with fruit juices and
mineral and vitamin supplements. She also continued the
meditation and visualisation that she had learned at the Gawler
Institute. She did this twice daily for a period of half an hour
to one hour each session. Often her meditation would be the
white light meditation that Ian Gawler had taught her. "I would
visualise the light as coming from Baba," she said, and
sometimes his form as Sathya Sai would appear to her while she
was meditating on the light. And sometimes, surprisingly to her,
she would hear the word Jesus pronounced strongly and clearly by
an inner voice when the form of Swami appeared. "I did not
understand this at first," she said, "But later wondered if
Jesus was the one who sent Swami or did it mean that Swami was
the Father who sent Jesus?"
Wensley continues her story: "While at the Gawler Institute I
learned that disease comes about when the divine energy that is
constantly flowing through the body is blocked at some point and
for some reason. Then at the point of the blockage of the
sustaining energy, probably the one called prana, a lump is
formed. So I tried to visualise the divine energy again flowing
through my body, propelled by Sai Baba or by Jesus, so that the
lump would be removed.
A few weeks later, tests showed that the lump in my neck had
been reduced to the size of a pea and my Oncologist remarked
that this size was normal in many people. A week later I could
not feel anything at all where the lump had been. And this was
only about six months after the original diagnosis.
About a week after this very encouraging development, I was
driving my car along a road when I saw a notice above the
entrance to a ground, saying "Sathya Sai Camp." Although I was
not familiar with the name Sathya, the word Sai arrested my
attention. There were some people under the sign at the
entrance, so I made some enquiries. The two I spoke to were
Arthur and Poppy Hillcoat, who became my friends later. They
confirmed that it was a Sathya Sai Baba camp and kindly invited
me to join the camp. I felt very happy about their invitation
and told them that I would attend the next day. This was a
wonderful day for me being among a crowd of Sai devotees,
hearing bhajans sung for the first time and enjoying a talk by
Arthur Hillcoat. Arthur and Poppy kindly gave me a beautiful
photo of Sathya Sai Baba sitting in a cross-legged position.
They also gave me two of your books, Howard, Sai Baba Man of
Miracles and Sai Baba Avatar. It was by a photo in one of them
that I was able to confirm that the one who came in my vision
while I was at the Gawler Institute, was Shirdi Sai Baba.
It was in October of that same year that I had my first dream of
Sathya Sai Baba. He was looking straight at me and was
surrounded by an aura of pink light. Then he extended his aura
to envelop me. (Later Wensley, no doubt, would have learned that
the pink colour is the aura of love.) It was in December of that
same year that my oncologist could not find any trace of my
recent disease. So I thought with joy that I was cured. He
remarked that he wished all of his patients would manage their
diseases like I did. My joy at being cured was deflated when I
heard my oncologist telling my general practitioner that I was
in remission. I recalled that he told me earlier that this was a
disease that could not be cured but would go into remission and
then come back.
I continued reading regularly the books about Sai Baba and
enjoyed many dreams and visions of him. Consequently my love for
him grew more and more and I felt certain that he was the
Sadguru I had hoped to find. So I decided that my search was
over and I must as soon as possible visit him in India.
In the early months of the following year, which was 1992, I
intensified my meditation both on Sai Baba's teachings and on
his present form. While I was doing this I was surprised to hear
the name Jesus pronounced several times and I felt certain there
must be some connection between Sathya Sai Baba and Jesus. I
longed to know what the connection was. Was it, I wondered, that
Sai Baba was a reincarnation of Jesus or did it mean that Sai
Baba was the Father God who sent Jesus? Then I was given a
vision. In this Jesus was standing before me, dressed in a long
white gown. He held his arms before him to make the sign of the
cross. Next I saw Sathya Sai Baba in the cross-legged position
in which I saw him in the photograph, floating towards the
figure of Jesus. Then the words came to my ears or inner ear,
"Sai Baba crucified." The words sent a shot of sadness and
compassion through my heart at the thought that Sai Baba too had
suffered the pains of the crucifixion. But how could this
happen? It must mean, surely, that the two were one, one in the
Christ consciousness and the cosmic consciousness.
There was another thing in that vision. When Swami was quite
close to Jesus, I heard the latter say, "Sai Baba is the Lord."
When I thought about these words, I decided that it meant that
Sai Baba was the Avatar carrying the divine consciousness in the
world today.
One day during the Easter of 1992, I was feeling rather low in
spirits so I put an extra large pinch of vibhuti into a glass of
water, drank it and lay down to rest. Later as I was waking from
a sleep, I heard a voice saying, "Divine intervention." Then a
few minutes later, as I was looking into the glass from which I
had taken the vibhuti water, I saw two images, one of Swami and
one of Jesus.
The fruit of my many visions and dreams was my first visit to
Sathya Sai Baba at his ashram in India, that is, his main ashram
known as Prashanti Nilayam. This took place in November, 1992.
On the day after my arrival I was granted an interview. I shall
never forget the exultation and gratitude I felt when I heard
Swami say to me, "Your cancer has been cured." So I felt this
was not just a remission but, by His Grace, a cure.
Sometime later I had a dream, a very vivid dream, in which a
lady who was Indian but dressed in western clothes, appeared and
said to me with a smile, "The object of your disease was to
bring you to Sai Baba." How blessed I am that He whom Jesus
called the Lord has revealed His divinity to me in so many ways
and in His mercy, turned the remission into a cure. I am humbled
to be the recipient of so much of His Grace. Now when I wake up
each morning to the glory of the sunrise, I feel happy to be in
a new day in which I can love God. My latest dream message was
that just as the Mother-Father-Siva-Shakti God loves me, so I
must strive to mirror that love to Him and to all mankind on
planet Earth. This will be an expression of the Divine One
within me. Thank you beloved Swami."
Note by author: It is almost a decade now since Wensley gave me
her story and while I was writing this chapter in October, 2000,
I tried to make contact with her through friends in Queensland,
but nobody seemed able to trace her. So, sadly I began to think
that perhaps, after all, the killing disease had returned and
carried her off as the same non-Hodgkins lymphoma did to my
wife. Then, joy of joys, I had a phone call from 'the pink
twins' in Brisbane, telling me that Wensley had walked into a
Sai Baba function carrying a bunch of beautiful flowers and
smiling like a picture of radiant health. They told her that I
would like to hear from her and she phoned me the next day. Now
I can happily conclude this chapter by saying that Wensley's
hope to be the exception to the rule came true. The so-called
remission was a cure, as Swami told her, on her first visit to
him.
Easter and the dharmic life.
Contents
One day, a little over half a century ago, I was sitting in a
coffee house in the wonderful city of Old Jerusalem. The table
where I sat looked through the open front onto a cobbled street.
This was the street I had come to see and to walk along. Its
name was the Via Dolorosa, which means the Way of Sorrow. This
is the street along which Jesus of Nazareth walked carrying his
heavy cross on that first Good Friday some two Millennia ago.
His back was covered with blood from the metal tipped whips with
which he had been scourged and there was blood on his face from
the crown of thorns that had been forced into his scalp. Though
a man of strong build, he had been greatly weakened from the
torture he had suffered at the hands of the Roman soldiers and
his cross was heavy. Story tells that he fell over at least once
during his journey up the hill to the place called Calvary or
Golgotha. Having reached that summit, he was nailed to the cross
he had carried and remained there suffering until the sun set on
that first Good Friday. Then, as bodies were not permitted to
remain on a cross on the Jewish Sabbath, which was the Saturday,
Jesus the Christ was killed by a spearthrust by the Roman
legionnaire named Longinus. The corpse was taken down and Jesus
was carried by his great uncle Joseph of Arimathea and his
friend, another devotee of Jesus, named Nicodemus. They put the
corpse in the private tomb in the garden of Joseph's house in
Jerusalem. Then a large stone was rolled in front of the tomb,
closing it off. Finally a squad of soldiers from the Temple
troops was placed on guard at the entrance of the tomb.
All was quiet throughout the Saturday, the Sabbath, but early
Sunday morning brought the beginnings of the final act of this
world drama, out of which a great religion was born. Somehow the
stone had been rolled back and the tomb was empty. Nobody was
there. A little later in the day, Jesus walked through a closed
door into a room where some of his disciples had gathered. His
physical body had been transmuted into a subtle body which some
have called a spiritual body, a body of glory and a body of
light. This is a phenomenon that Swami has demonstrated many
times. That is, he travels through walls or closed doors in his
subtle body and when necessary lowers its vibration to create a
solid body that can be felt by human hands and can be seen by
normal human eyesight. Some days later, after communicating with
his disciples and others, this body of Glory, this body of
Light, ascended to the highest spiritual realm as Lord Rama and
others have done.
What, if anything is the significance of this Easter story to
you and to me? "Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected to
save all mankind," write the Christian theologians. "But,"
preach the Christian evangelists, "To be saved you must believe
in Him, in Jesus." I want to take you, if you have not gone
there already, a step deeper into this great, important
question. In fact, Swami has already shown us that step if we
can take it. He teaches us that we are all one and I feel that
most of us accept that, even though we may not have experienced
it. But if we ordinary humans are all one beneath the surface,
then surely Godmen are also all one and they are aware of it.
Swami has shown himself in the forms of Rama and Krishna and
Dattatreya and Jesus. All physical forms are but the clothing of
one Godman, one Avatar of God. Swami has indicated, not only by
taking the form, but in other ways, that he and Jesus are one.
Once on the Christmas day platform at Prashanti Nilayam, I said
a few words about the several different names Jesus had been
known by when he was on earth and afterwards. One of these was
Isa, which he was called in India and the Middle East. Swami
opened his own discourse by saying the true name of Jesus was
Isa the letters of that name also make the word Sai. Isa and Sai
are one. So the Godman who can save us from our iniquities and
lead to the goal does not have to be named Jesus or Isa. Today
his name is Sai and by his loving grace, his infinite mercy, he
is leading us on to our spiritual home. But why, you may ask,
did the all-loving Godman in the body named Jesus or Isa have to
suffer the Via Dolorosa and the Crucifixion?
Long before the time of Jesus, in the temples of ancient Egypt,
men went through the ritual of crucifixion as an initiation to
the highest. But why did one have to go through it in agonising
actuality on the human stage? Was it simply that a great
spiritual Light should come into the dark world of the west
under the Roman Empire? It was that and more than that.
Spiritual masters such as Rudolf Steiner have given interesting
esoteric reasons why the Crucifixion of Jesus is for the benefit
of all humanity, but here I would like to give only the
explanation given by our own great Master, who, as I said
earlier, went through it all himself in an earlier body. And why
do I say that you and I are today treading the Via Dolorosa,
treading it voluntarily as the Godman did two thousand years
ago? We have come through a certain doorway in consciousness
from the ordinary self-consciousness of mankind to a level where
we have become aware of the purpose of our lives and where we
are going. We know that our destination is union with God. We
know that we are treading the path to our spiritual home. We
have discovered, too, beyond all doubt that we are two people.
Each of us is at least two people, one the obvious
self-assertive one who makes a great deal of noise on the stage
of life, what Swami calls the personal ego. We have inherited
this from a long way back when we were parts of the animal
consciousness. This was necessary for that phase of life but
now, with our feet on the spiritual path, we realise that this
ego who dominates our lives is really an anachronism. He is an
anachronism and an impostor who belongs to a past time. He has
no place in eternity. But the other Self does belong to
eternity. He has been buried away in the dungeons of falsehood
and maya, in the darkness of our ignorance for so long that we
seldom hear his voice. And when we do, we call it 'conscience'.
It is, in truth, the voice of God and is therefore the root of
all consciousness. We now know that the ego self has to be
eliminated in order that the God Self can take command and guide
us into that spiritual harbour which is our destination. But it
is not an easy struggle while our feet are on this slippery and
narrow path. Some have named it the razor's edge. Jesus himself
said that it was a way that was strait and narrow. I am calling
it the Via Dolorosa.
Swami has said that pleasure is just an interval between two
sorrows and here we know the purpose and meaning of sorrow,
hardship and adversity. We know their meaning and their value in
helping our faltering footsteps up the slippery, rough, cobbled
road to Calvary. We know that we must strive here to live the
dharmic or sacred life that will take us in the shortest
possible time to the cross on the hill and what lies beyond it.
Swami makes a cross with his two forefingers and states that the
cross stands for the final death of the personal ego. When this
false ego is finally annihilated from the body, which is its
tomb, there will arise that glorious eternal spiritual Being
which is our true Self. And this, as the Godman Jesus
illustrated, will be able to communicate with and inspire his
brother men who are still on the human path, to arise and become
part of the one God.
So this great drama of Easter is important to every one of us
because it illustrates what every human being must go through
before he comes to his glory. It is our model. It seems to me
that we must strive with all the divine will that is in each of
us to live the life of dharma, the special sacred life, as we
strive with brave hearts and divine understanding towards the
cross of final victory that stands on the hill. We all know and
we are all striving to practice those five divinely human
values, those five bright beacons that our Lord has given us to
keep our feet on the slippery way. I just want to say here that
it behoves us to delve as deeply as possible into their meaning.
Take, for example, the first one, Sathya or Truth. It was Jesus
who said, "Know the truth and the truth will set you free." What
is this truth that will set us free from our bondage? For me it
is the fundamental truth of oneness. If we can reach within the
glittering lights of diversity and take hold of this truth of
oneness and strive to live it, then we are well on the way to
freedom.
The last of the five beacons is Ahimsa or Non-violence. That
seems fairly straightforward, but is it? One of our greatest
Godman leaders, Lord Krishna, encouraged the violent destruction
of a large part of the Kshetria caste in order to rid the world
of a group that had grown evil beyond redemption. He was cutting
down the diseased tree, as Swami says. But Krishna encouraged
the right understanding and the right attitude when necessary
violence must be carried out. We know that life must be
destroyed in order for man to eat and to live. When our hands
are doing violent acts, from the chopping up of spinach, through
the cutting down of a tree, to the slaying of men in battle, we
must do it with love and reverence, without any violent feeling
towards the form of life that we needs must destroy for a
greater good. For all forms of life from a blade of grass to the
greatest sage are a part of God. I feel it would be true to say
that the more we can follow the life of dharma, the more we can
weaken our false ego as we try to tread the narrow path, less
painful will be the final crucifixion of the ego.
Here we have the key to true Shanti. While our feet and hands
are playing their part in the tug of war between good and evil,
let our minds be in the eternal, the infinite. A line from an
old prayer says, "There is a power that maketh all things new.
It lives and moves in those who know the Self as one."
May that power grow in us all as we struggle up the Via Dolorosa
with the great vision of oneness before us.
(This is a slightly condensed version of the talk the writer
gave at the Australian Sai Conference held in Mittagong, NSW in
1997)
Sai Avatar and mysticism.
Contents
I would like here to draw an interesting comparison between
the teachings and missions of Sai Baba Avatar, who walks the
earth today and those of Mysticism. Mysticism began as a
powerful spiritual movement about one millennium ago affecting
all the monotheistic religions. Whatever the founders of these
religions may have taught, the ordinary members of Church,
Synagogue, Mosque and Temple worship a God 'out there'
somewhere, somewhere beyond the bright blue sky. The Mystics
however, arising from the membership of the various religions
found a God within themselves, deep within, seeming closer to
them than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.
It may be that the fathers of the Mystic movement in each
religion had an intuitive sense of the inward divinity; or it
may be that the movement was born with those who had meditated
deeply and discovered the inner presence. In any case, the
movement grew in some religions rapidly, in some slowly. In most
of the religions it was not welcomed, in some it was condemned
as blasphemy to bring the austere, judgmental God from his pure
throne far beyond the earth, into the intimacy of one's personal
body, into the body of sin, as thought many. This was not
acceptable to a large number of the orthodox religionists, yet
in spite of this opposition, the Mystical movement grew apace
and eventually had a good influence on each of the monotheistic
religions.
For some reason, it grew most strongly and rapidly in the Muslim
religion and a good proportion of the followers of Allah became
Mystics or Sufis as they were called. In the Jewish religion
also, Mysticism was, and is, a strong movement; it is known as
the Cabala. It had no particular name in the Christian religion
but those individuals who followed the mystical path of close
inner union with God were often called Saints. Some who
responded to the divine voice within themselves, such as Joan of
Arc, were martyred and then later canonised as Saints.
There was, moreover, a vast difference between the God of the
ordinary religionist as taught in the religious institutions and
the inner God of Mysticism. The former was a judgmental God
giving the heavenly rewards to those who kept his Commandments;
and terrible punishments, often everlasting, to those who
disobeyed his laws; whereas the inner God of the Mystics seems
to have been a close and loving friend, leading his human
children along the pathways of love and deep understanding back
to their spiritual home. It seems strange that a greater
proportion of people is not attracted to the intimate God of the
Mystics away from the judgmental tyrant resident in the remote
skies. Perhaps it is because it is not easy for most people to
find the inner divinity, maybe many more would, if they were
given leadership.
When, in my student days, I was researching all the churches of
every denomination to find the one that appealed to me most, I
heard no mention from the pulpit of the God who resides within
the heart of man. Indeed, I had to live through many decades and
travel through many countries before I met the One who revealed
to me the great secret, which is the secret of life itself and
is so simple that it should be made known to every child.
The time was the mid sixties of last century. The place was a
small garden at Brindavan, near Whitefield. I was strolling in
that garden with a few men of varying ages; we were waiting for
Sri Sathya Sai Baba to appear through a doorway. When he did
appear, one who must have been the youngest among us, accosted
him with the pointed and important question, "Are you God?" It
was then that we received from the divine lips of Swami, the
great revelation. Perhaps it was the matter-of-fact tone of the
stupendous statements that made me accept them immediately
without question. He told us that we were all Gods, we were,
indeed, Avatars of God, having brought God to earth within us,
each one of us, when we were born, but we had forgotten this
great truth long, long ago. The purpose of our lifetimes on
earth, he said, was in order to remember the great truth of our
own divinity. It took many lifetimes to re-discover and
experience this one great truth of our identity. To help mankind
in this task, Avatars with full memory of their divine identity
come to earth from time to time. He, himself was one of those;
he had known it from his early childhood in the remote village
of Puttaparthi. "God is everywhere," he said, "But the easiest
place to find Him is within yourself."
At later times through the years I spent with him, he frequently
reminded me in many different ways of that God within, who is
our true identity. Once he said, "My job as your Guru is to lead
you to your inner Guru." Then many years later he said, "I have
brought you to your inner Guru or God and there is no spiritual
reason why you have to come to me again." Then he added as an
afterthought, "But in a human way I always like to see you, of
course." So here was Sathya Sai Baba revealing to me, very soon
after I had come to him, the reality of the inner God discovered
by the Mystics through inner search, but never mentioned in
Sunday School or Church. Surely every child should be told this
magnificent truth about themselves.
So it is that I see Sai Avatar as a super Mystic and I ask
myself what is the difference between an Avatar and a Mystic are
their teachings different or the same? Is their mission on earth
different or the same? Considering their earthly mission first,
I see that of the Avatar today, as of all former Avatars, to be
vaster, more expansive than that of a Mystic. Sai Baba, Sai
Avatar, has the charisma necessary to attract huge crowds from
all parts of the world and the teachings to change the
consciousness of millions. He has said that he is the Avatar of
the masses, whereas one such as Aurobindo is the Avatar of
individuals. Unlike Aurobindo, Sai Baba's teachings are put in
simple language that does not require a philosophical bent of
mind to appreciate and understand.
To all people of deep spiritual perception, the signs in the
world today are not those of doom and destruction as might
appear on the surface, but of a great change. A change that
could be described as the death of the old world, or of the old
world order and the birth of something that is entirely new,
stupendous, wonderful, in fact what has been termed the Golden
Age. The present Avatar has said, and I have often heard him say
it, that the Golden Age will be born before he leaves his
present body in the year 2021. In support of this, two of the
leading ascended Masters have predicted that this new age will
begin in a little over a decade from now, from this time of
writing; it is now early in the year 2001. Other great workers
in what Sir George Trevelyan called the 'Force field of Light'
are working for this new age and know that it is not far
distant.
No Mystic, be he Christian, Sufi, or Jewish, ever came to the
world with such a mighty mission as this. The Mystic's aim, in
whatever century he was born, was to teach as many people and
change the lives of as many people as he could in his lifetime.
But he thinks in terms of individuals, or perhaps hundreds, and
eventually maybe thousands of individuals, but his mission is
not to raise in a few decades, the level of the consciousness of
the whole of mankind.
One of them whom I feel to be among the greatest, that is, Rumi
of the Sufi order of Mysticism must have brought many to the
light through the Dervish Dancing he started in Turkey, through
his poetic teaching and his great influence on the world of art,
but his ambitions fell far short of bringing a quantum leap
upward to the world consciousness. So, while the Avataric
mission and that of the Mystics is different, their teachings in
general are much the same. The differences are few, mostly a
matter of degree and can be related to their missions.
While I have through the years read something of the writings of
the Mystics, particularly of the Sufis, and some of the
Christian Saints, the one I have studied more thoroughly is a
modern Christian Mystic named Joel Goldsmith. Although he would
be classed as a Christian Mystic because the Master he followed
was Jesus the Christ, he was Jewish by birth and lived in our
modern age from approximately 1890 to 1964. To what might appear
to be a coincidence, though I believe when on the spiritual
path, there is no such thing as a coincidence, most of his books
and a large quantity of his audio teaching tapes, suddenly
became available to Sai friends of mine. Together we studied his
books and his tapes. The most remarkable thing about them is the
way they fit into the Avataric teachings. Put in different words
and language, style, they make an excellent supplement to what
Swami has taught about the relationship of man and God and,
while giving a different reason for the great illusion of
separateness, teach the truths of Adwaitha or the essential
oneness of all mankind beneath the veil of illusion. The only
difference in the teachings of the Mystic and the Avatar that I
have noted, is in the matter of prayer or man's verbal
communications with God.
The Mystic, Goldsmith, follows closely his understanding of the
teachings of Jesus in the New Testament which says such things
as, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and
all the rest will be added unto you." His Master, Jesus, also
says in other places that the Kingdom of God is within you and
that God himself is within you and in prayer we should ask, he
says, for further understanding and enlightenment and for help
in living the Spiritual life of compassion, forgiveness and so
on. If we do that, Joel Goldsmith points out, there is no need
to ask God for any material advantages, such as a better job, a
higher salary or anything else of a worldly nature, because God
has said through Jesus, that all such things will be given to
you if you concentrate on using prayer for the advancement of
your spiritual evolution. Sai Baba, on the other hand,
encourages his devotees to ask for whatever they want, whether
it is material or spiritual. He says that he will give people
what they want if it will not bring them any harm, in order that
they will, in time, ask for the things he wants to give them.
Those things are of course the spiritual treasures. So Sai
devotees happily petition God for material things that will help
them in their daily living. Many even ask for simple things like
a parking place for the car and believe that Swami helps them.
Perhaps this wider latitude granted by Sai Baba is that he calls
people to him at an earlier stage in their spiritual
development, earlier in their spiritual journey homeward, than
those who would be attracted to the Goldsmith teachings. People
have to be ready, Swami says, before he calls them unto him, but
they are ready at an earlier stage than they would be for the
Mystic's teachings. And so, they have analogically, the easier
kindergarten or primary school privileges. Furthermore, by
giving them the material trinkets they love, he establishes more
firmly, their love for the living Avatar, placing their feet
more firmly on the spiritual path. Interestingly I discovered,
when much later he told me that he was now in my heart and
visits to him physically were no longer necessary, that the
material things such as rings and watches and the many other
trinkets, do work as a kind of talisman in helping to bring the
student to his inner God.
In speaking about the Vedic chant, the Gayathri, I have heard
Swami praise it because it contains only one petitional prayer
and that is the request for spiritual Light. As our footsteps
advance along the pathway home, our petitions to God will
automatically become spiritual requests and not those of a
worldly nature.
The other types of communication between man and God, those we
generally call meditation or contemplation, Joel Goldsmith
teaches that they should be carried out at least twice a day for
a period of a quarter of an hour or more each time, and then
throughout the day whenever possible, if it be only for a minute
or more. This, in a sense, is like the 'receiving' practice in
Subud, by the Master, Pak Subuh, who said that we should
endeavour to receive the spirit and grace of God while we are
occupied in our daily task, particularly when cooking or
preparing food. Such divine blessings, he said, would be tasted
by those eating the food.
Joel, like Swami, gave specific instructions in different forms
of meditation and said that each student would, in time,
discover the best form and the most fruitful technique suitable
to himself. These teachings are really no different in essence
from those of Sai Avatar, except that the latter perhaps adapts
the instructions for the type, manner and periods of meditation
to the needs of the individual, but he does encourage all of his
devotees to interweave in their daily lives, communications with
God such as repetition of the divine name, quiet moments of
meditation and sweet loving interchanges with the divinity.
Whatever can be fitted into the necessary worldly tasks of one's
life, helps to increase the strength of one's divine life along
the pathway home.
It is interesting to note that the modern American Mystic gives
as much emphasis to love or prema in the development of the
divine life as does Sai Avatar. Joel is sterner than Swami in
condemnation of human love as being too tainted with selfishness
or the element of self-interest, to equal the selfless purity of
divine love. Man must be satisfied with nothing less than the
attainment of this pure, selfless love. Swami, while saying the
same thing in principle, is a little more tolerant and
understanding towards certain kinds of human love. Mother love,
or more correctly, parental love, is closest to the pure love of
God and in some cases where a parent is prepared to give his own
life to save that of the child, love reaches its highest level.
As Swami said when he was on earth as Jesus the Christ, "No
greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for
his friend." And there have been examples among world explorers,
among warriors on the battlefields, and among members of
families, of those whose love has been so great that they have
willingly given their lives to save that of others. Here, the
greatest of all human values reaches its zenith in the pure
Divine Prema.
It is, indeed, heartwarming to know through study and experience
that the stupendous mission of the world Avatar is being
supported, if in a humbler and relatively modest way, by the
Mystics of the world both present and past.
I would like to conclude this chapter by stating that I
personally have found great joy in the realisation that
Mysticism is giving its unqualified support to the work of Sai
Avatar, as we workers on the divinely human path must strive to
do.
Sai miracle children.
Contents
A completely new and fascinating phase of Swami's work for
mankind has been launched. He is bringing to birth in different
parts of the world, what I have termed 'Sai miracle children'.
He is reported to have told a Sai devotee who has spent a long
period with Swami at the ashram in India that there will be
thirteen of these children and I understand that there are five
of them in incarnation already. One of the five is in Holland,
another in India, two of them in countries that I am not certain
of and a fifth one in Australia. Of the latter, I am quite
certain, as I have spoken to his mother and had reports from
several of my close friends who have been to visit him and I
have a photograph of the little boy himself.
The story of his birth, which was related to me by his mother
and the account of his subsequent miraculous manifestations are
of such an outstanding nature that they would perhaps sound
incredible to any but Sai devotees of long-experience and deep
understanding, yet there are many unimpeachable witnesses to
them. First then, the birth. When she was six and a half months
pregnant, and certainly not expecting the birth of the child,
she was having a meal one day in a well-known restaurant with
her husband and possibly some friends. She told me that during
the meal, she suddenly had a vision of a group of monkeys
standing in front of her making excited noises, while the one
who appeared to be leader came close and was talking to her in
some language that she did not understand. She could make
nothing of this vision of excited monkeys. Although a Sai
devotee, I expect she had not read about Lord Rama and his army
of monkeys led by the great devotee, Hanuman but to me it seems
that the child in the mother's womb has some close connection
with Lord Rama. At any rate, on the following day, the mother
was rushed to the hospital as the birth of the child was
imminent. She told me that while she was getting undressed to go
to bed in the hospital, she saw Vibhuti oozing from her body,
particularly around the stomach area. Immediately she felt it
must have a connection with the child she was carrying. She did
not feel that she, herself, was worthy of such a manifestation,
so the child within her must be very holy indeed. She felt some
worry however, that he was arriving so prematurely. He arrived
that day and was very small indeed, weighing only a kilo and a
half. He was put into a crib and at this particular hospital it
was customary to write the religion of the child just born, on a
label to be put on the crib, in order that ministers of religion
visiting the newborn babies could give their blessings to any
child born into their religious flock. This mother and her
husband were close followers of Sai Baba, so on the label for
religion, she wrote 'Sai Baba'. She was somewhat surprised and
very pleased that all the religious leaders who visited the
hospital that day, including a Buddhist priest and several from
Christian denominations, as well as giving their blessings to
the newborn children of their own religious denominations, all
came and blessed the little boy under the label 'Sai Baba'. On
this first day of his life, something else surprised her when,
going to look at him lying in the crib, she saw a gold cross
lying on his forehead. It had just appeared there as he lay
asleep so she took it off and hung it around his neck.
Although so tiny at birth, the little boy was perfectly healthy
and grew quickly to normal size. East and west met in the two
parents. The beautiful and spiritually advanced mother was
Singhalese, from Sri Lanka, while the tall, handsome father came
from Greece. They named their Sai miracle son, Alexander Saisha.
He is generally called Alex. I know, as I have a photograph of
Alex, taken when he was between two and three years old that he
is a very handsome little boy indeed.
The account of the miracles that flow from him was given to me
partly by his mother and completed by my close friends who have
visited him. I think the Vibhuti must have been manifesting on
his skin while he was still a baby-in-arms. I know the Vibhuti
appearing on his face and head could not have been such a
nuisance to him as it was to the little Vibhuti baby-in-arms
that the Indian parents brought to Swami over twenty years ago.
I saw it appearing immediately after the mother had wiped it off
him, she, and the baby's father had brought him to Prashanti
Nilayam to beg Swami to make the manifestation of Vibhuti less
frequent. I write about it in my book entitled Sai Baba Avatar.
I would say that little Alex of Australia is not a fallen Yogi
reborn, as Swami said the little Indian child was. Alexander
Saisha is one of the group being sponsored into incarnation by
Sai Baba for a particular purpose of which I will say something
later on.
Sometime after the manifestation of Vibhuti on his skin, Amrita
began to flow at about the third eye area. This is sometimes
called 'the nectar of the Gods'. Then a healing oil bearing a
wonderful perfume, started to flow from the crown of his head.
This oil, of which I have been given a little myself, is
reported to have cured cases of cancer. Of course, neither the
Amrita nor the oil are flowing constantly, which would be too
much for the child to bear. They flow intermittently, sufficient
for quantities of each to be kept in bowls by the parents, for
gifts to some of the lucky visitors. I, myself, have also
received a little of the Vibhuti and can say that it's taste is
not like any other Vibhuti I have ever had. It is sweet with
some indefinable pleasant flavour.
Another outstanding phenomenon manifested by this little
Australian boy who is not yet quite three years old, is the
production of Shiva lingams. They do not come up from within his
interior or by the wave of his hand, as do those of Sai Baba,
but simply appear in the palm of his little hand as he lies
asleep in his bed. He may be either asleep or awake when they
appear but they are of remarkable size, some larger than a duck
egg, his mother tells me and they are all made of beautiful
crystal of glorious colours. Swami, himself, who is frequently
in the house tells the mother to whom these sacred symbols of
Lord Shiva should be given. It is really a great honour to
receive one.
Another remarkable production recently begun by the little
miracle boy is items of jewellery. Although a few of these have
been medallions, the great majority have been rings golden
rings. Between thirty and forty of these have come from Alex up
to this time of writing which is May, 2001. Some of the rings
have borne precious stones, and all appear of first class
quality, "The kind you would find in the best jeweller's shops,"
remarked an observer friend of mine. The rings may appear in his
little hand partly buried in Vibhuti, or they may be lying
beside the sleeping child. Rose petals are often found, strewn
by some unseen power, on each side of the little sacred form.
Sometimes, the shining gold rings are found among the rose
petals. Who receives these beautiful and valuable rings? Once or
twice the little boy himself has handed a ring to some lady
among the daily visitors, but generally I understand, the oft
present Lord Sai in subtle form tells the mother for whom each
of these rings is intended. Some of the ladies who receive the
jewellery, are overwhelmed at the receipt of such a precious
gift. The reader may well guess that this little Australian
member of Swami's miracle team receives plenty of visitors. The
fact is, that although no publicity, bar that of word of mouth,
has ever been given, people from all over Australia and many
from abroad come daily to see him. The house where he lives is a
small one and only thirty people at a time can sit comfortably
there. The generous hard-working mother books people who apply
by phone, allowing for thirty each day, six days of the week.
Sunday is a rest day. Applications have been on such a scale
that she is always booked out for some nine months ahead. They
certainly cannot cope with more than this number and that is why
the parents have asked me not to give any indication of the
location of the little boy and his unnamed parents in this
chapter.
These young parents are not rich, just the reverse in fact, yet
they give food as Prasad to all the daily visitors. My Carer,
Sita Iyer, along with two good friends of mine, had the blessing
and the great joy of visiting the home recently on a day when
mainly friends of the family were present. They described the
food served as, "More like a banquet". In the main, the mother
cooks the meal herself with some help from a member of her
family. One of my friends heard the mother say, "I cook for
Swami, and he is often here while I'm cooking to direct me. Then
I serve it as Prasad to my little son's visitors." I know
personally, from long experience that only the best quality food
is served in Swami's presence and that when visiting friends to
have a meal He usually goes to the kitchen first and either
helps cook Himself, or gives advice to the cook. So I understand
that when he supervises the cooking for the visitors of His
miracle child and perhaps He stays there some of the time when
it is served, the little mother considers that nothing but the
best is good enough. But, the question is, how does a young
couple on a small income provide such expensive food for so many
people six days in the week? I know that some of my friends
think of the 'loaves and fishes' when Jesus fed the multitude. I
feel myself that something like this must be the answer. I have
known cases in India where Swami has multiplied the food and I
think of Jack Hislop's remarkable and story about how when he
was on a visit with Swami and the hostess was overcome with
embarrassment because she did not have the food to serve them
dinner, Swami said to Hislop, "Go and get the food in the car,
Hislop." Jack knew full well that there was no food in the car
but he went anyway. He found, standing near Swami's car, two
Angels holding a tray of food between them. A big tray it was,
but Jack managed to carry it inside, his face still stamped with
a look of amazement, at which Swami said, "You can shut your
mouth Hislop, They are always there but you just don't see
Them."
The parents of little Alex do not say how this miracle is
achieved. It, like so many other things of which they do not
speak, are private matters between them and Swami. And so, for
their comfort and indeed for the little boy, I can only say that
their location is somewhere in the vast continent of Australia.
Furthermore, I know nothing of the other four miracle children
except that they exist. As they are all Sai-sponsored children I
presume their miraculous powers must be the same as, or similar
to, those of little Alexander Saisha. Anyone may hear by
word-of-mouth, of the location of any one of the team of Sai
miracle children, but if it is the Australian one, please
remember that the parents who are true Sai Baba devotees will
not accept a donation in the form of food, money or in any other
way.
Now, let us consider briefly, what Swami may have in mind in
initiating this new and unexpected phase in his mission. Swami
has not told anybody to my knowledge about any special reason he
may have so I can only give my own opinion here. I have stated
in a number of places in my writings that Swami has said, in
fact he said it as early as the 1960's, that the Golden Age will
begin before he leaves this body, which will be in 2021. So, I
expect that every well-informed Sai Devotee is aware that this
is the culminating point of his mission to mankind. It is a
greater mission than any Avatar has attempted before, but as I
heard Sir George Trevelyan state from a Sai platform in Rome,
"Avatars do not fail, it is not in the nature of an Avatar to
fail in his mission," or words to that effect. We know if we
read the sacred writings with a little insight that the Avatars
who have gone before have not failed in their main mission to
mankind on earth. And so, I have great confidence that this
living Avatar will not fail in his mission.
No doubt many of my readers have heard about the big propaganda
campaign against Sai Baba that was launched in recent times. The
dark or backward-pulling forces were undoubtedly aiming to ruin
the Avatar's mission once and for all. But, did they ruin it?
The strong wind that blew away the chaff leaving only the grain
behind may have helped rather than hindered his mission. Perhaps
he intended for this wind to blow for what was the chaff but
those of little faith and less understanding. In the words of
the old hymn, those, "Who never loved him well, and those who
had lost the love they had." Of what value is such windblown
chaff in the building of the critical mass that Sai Baba must
create in the very short span of years that he has at his
disposal. If the Golden Age is, as he has stated, to have it's
initiation in the few years between now and 2021, what is the
function of the critical mass, as it is called in science. A
good homely analogy is the small amount of leaven or yeast
required to raise the flat loaf of unleavened bread to the level
of the baker's loaf. In the same way, the present level of the
consciousness of mankind can be lifted by a quantum leap to the
level required for the Golden Age by the power of the critical
mass. What must this critical mass consist of in numbers and in
quality? We do not know the numbers required but no doubt God
does. We may, perhaps, have some thoughts about its quality,
about its content; surely it must be the true grain without any
admixture of chaff. It must be those devotees of God who have
deep understanding, firm faith, those who are striving with all
their willpower to live according to the highest values of truth
and the Divine Love. In short, those devotees who are firmly on
the journey home.
So it may well be, I think, that this team of thirteen miracle
children are meant as a strong weapon in the building of the
critical mass and thus help to bring about on time, the greatest
miracle ever. That is, raising the mighty loaf of human
consciousness and thereby bring about that new world of peace,
contentment and joy for which we are all longing. At least, that
is my opinion and my great hope.
Epilogue.
Contents
This is the last of a series of books I have written about
the living Poorna Avatar, Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Oddly, the series
began with the book Sai Baba Man of Miracles and ends with the
chapter on the Sai Miracle Children. I did not plan it this way
but as, on the spiritual path there are no coincidences, it must
have some significance. The only one that I can see is that
Swami has stated that miracles are his visiting card, or the
card that states his identity, that is, his identity as an
Avatar.
I learnt just before I met Swami, from a lecture given by N Sri
Ram, at that time, the International President of the
Theosophical Society, that although advanced Yogins may have the
siddhis, to manifest certain supernormal phenomena on occasions,
if they demonstrate this power too often and for too long a
period they will lose the supernormal power. The only beings who
can manifest this power frequently and for long periods, in
fact, for the whole of their lives, are the Avatars of God.
Well, Sri N Sri Ram was undoubtedly not only a very wise man but
one very well versed in the Sanathana Dharma of India and, I
accept that Sai Baba's constant and frequent demonstration of
His miraculous powers from childhood to the present day is
certainly His visiting card to all who have the eyes to see and
the spiritual understanding to welcome the Divine visitor to the
earth. His changing the atomic structure of hard granite to that
of sugar candy, was to me, intellectually, His complete
demonstration that He used, smilingly and happily, the power of
Divine or Absolute Consciousness which none but an Avatar can
do. Yet His most heartwarming miracle for me, was when, as an
answer to my prayer, He came in a flash from Prashanti Nilayam
in India to a room in the Adelaide Hills in South Australia,
just at the right time for me to see Him with my fleeting ration
of clairvoyance while waking. He showed me that He was standing
there beside my couch waving His healing hand above me and I
found that I had been brought back to perfect health. The only
two antibiotics ever known to cure this terrible disease had
failed to do so.
I always felt great elation when people visiting the Ashram from
many different countries told me that one of my books, often Sai
Baba Man of Miracles, had brought them to Swami. Perhaps the
pinnacle of my elation and satisfaction came when an Indian man
who lived in New York noticed me among a crowd in front of the
mandir at the ashram and said in a loud voice for all to hear,
"There are two Australians whom I respect and honour; one is Don
Bradman because he beat the English at their own game and the
other is Howard Murphet because he wrote the book that brought
me to Swami." It was the first and only time I had ever been
bracketed with the great Australian hero, Sir Donald Bradman. Of
course I should not have been surprised at the verbal thanks and
praise I always received when visiting the ashram. Long ago,
when Iris and I were talking with Baba one day, the subject
turned to our futures, and when I asked Him about my future, his
words were, "You have an illustrious future, you will bring many
people to the light." I had never heard Him use the word
'illustrious' before, and that He should apply it to me was
quite overwhelming. They were the only words of praise that He
ever gave to me for my work, but they were enough. Swami is very
sparing with words of praise, probably because He knows they
tend to inflate the ego.
While the writing of this series of six Sai books, of which this
will be the last, although being of benefit to mankind and
therefore proving to be my true work in this incarnation, it was
also of very great benefit to myself. It was my best spiritual
exercise that which took me, as deeply as my mind and heart are
capable of delving, into the meaning and scope of this Avatar's
work for mankind.
Finally, I would like to say a word of thanks to the writers of
the many letters I have received. A few I was able to answer,
but sadly for the many which came in the years after my eyesight
had failed me, I was generally not able to give an answer. The
secretarial help I had, although very compassionate and kind
beyond measure, was, of necessity, limited in time and was not
able to include answers to my letters of appreciation from
readers in many countries.
So now, my final word of this Epilogue is to give thanks from
the bottom of my heart for all the joy-bringing appreciative
letters received from many parts of the world and to say, "God
bless you."
Acknowledgements.
Contents
This book, like the former two, Where the Road Ends and Sai
Inner Views, is, of necessity a spoken book, that is, I spoke it
onto audio cassettes, which left a gap that I could not have
bridged without the help of someone.
The two ladies who bridged the gap for me, putting the book into
typed script, were Karen Paterson who lives in the Blue
Mountains and Fran Pearce, the Horticulturist of South
Australia, who also gave me a great deal of help in my last two
books. My deep thanks go to both of these willing helpers in the
Sai service. Karen also helped in the final editing by reading
the typed chapters aloud so that I could make any corrections or
alterations.
There were others, too, who helped me in many ways to fulfill
happily this order from the highest, that is, Lord Siva himself.
Outstanding among the many was Pru Remme who helped in a number
of ways, including some editing.
I want to record here my eternal gratitude to all.
By the same author:
Yoga for Busy People
Yankee Beacon of Buddhist Light
(first published as Hammer on the Mountain)
Sai Baba Man of Miracles
Sai Baba Avatar
When Daylight Comes
Sai Baba Invitation to Glory
(also published in USA as Walking the Path with Sai Baba)
The Undiscovered Country
Where The Road Ends
Sai Inner Views and Insights
[DEDICATION]
See for the online version:
http://sai_baba_2001.tripod.com/Howard_Murphet/index.htm
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