Sri Sathya Sai: Supreme Avatar

Shri Maharajakrishna Rasgotra, IFS (Retd.), is a career diplomat. He was the Indian Ambassador to Nepal, Netherlands, France, and Indian High Commissioner to the U K. He retired as Foreign Secretary of the Government of India. Thereafter, he has served on the Board of the Sri Sathya Sai International Center at New Delhi. Shri Rasgotra was blessed to be the Chief Guest at the SSSIHL Convocation Ceremony in 1989 and 2004. He has been an ardent Sai devotee for nearly 50 years. In 2002, the Government of India conferred on him the Padma Bhushan, India’s third highest civilian award.

I experienced the grace and exhilaration of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s darshan for the first time in early April 1972 at the house of my friend, the late Sohan Lal in New Delhi. It was a fleeting moment of recognition on my part of a unique personage of irresistible allure, all too apparently a living, moving human figure, mixing around with a small group of people present, talking and joking with them with the bonhomie of an old school pal, and yet someone not quite of this earth. Despite the ease and informality of the occasion, there was an ethereal and unreachable quality to His presence. My feelings were a mix of curiosity, wonder, elation, and a sense of relief and comfort that comes from the end of a search or the realization of a long-cherished dream. These drew me some three months later to the Sathya Sai Ashram at Puttaparthi on 1 July, 1972. [It was] a modest establishment comprising the bare hall of the mandir [temple], a few living quarters occupied by Baba’s devotees, and three or four huts just outside the temple premises inhabited by old residents of the Parthi village. Baba was away at the time at Anantapur, but my journey was rewarded with a meeting with his most ardent devotee and biographer, Kasturi.

On Kasturi’s advice, I motored down to Anantapur the following morning, to be blessed by Baba with my first gift of Vibhuti [sacred ash] materialized by a wave of the down-turned palm of His right hand and an hour-long uninterrupted private meeting in the course of which He spoke to me about the mystery that is death, the meaning and purpose of life, and of human love and human values. Incidentally, he also laid bare my past and in so doing charted a new direction for my future life. Those were moments of self-revelation and a deeply spiritual experience, a second birth for me in a very real sense. On that blessed day, 2 July 1972, the conviction dawned on me that Baba was not just an unusually wise, enlightened, and prescient human being, guru or saint, but an Avatar in the line of the Divine teachers of earlier epochs of the evolution of human civilization, Rama, Krishna, Buddha, and Christ.

Baba’s grace is boundless, and on several occasions since that day I have had glimpses of His divine nature⎯the appearance of a bright halo around His head to remove the shadow of a lingering doubt, an epiphanic manifestation in a dream to provide solace or guidance in a difficult dilemma, a casually announced forecast of a coming event or sudden fulfillment of a long cherished but seemingly unrealizable wish or hope. His healing powers and cures of fatal maladies like cancer are well known. I have personally experienced His unseen but palpable protective intervention in dangerous accidents in which I was involved and in cases of critical illness, my own and of members of my immediate family.

I have experienced and known all this and much more since my first acquaintance with Baba 33 years ago, but I cannot honestly claim that I know Him or the magnitude of His being any better today than I did then. He is vast and mysterious as the universe, predictable only in His unfailing concern for the well-being of His devotees and His ceaseless work for human betterment, and the magnanimity of His love for one and all without distinction of high and low, of caste, creed, or religion.

Precisely because of the mystery He is, in the earlier years of my association with Him my mind was assailed by doubt, and now and then my devotion to Him faltered. But no longer does my mind entertain any doubt about the authenticity and plenitude of Sathya Sai’s avatarhood. All this, I am sure, is a gift of His grace and love. In my personal conduct, I do still occasionally fall victim to anger, wrong-doing, and other human failings only to receive in abundance His corrective forgiveness and a gentle nudge toward greater self-knowledge. My faith and belief in Sathya Sai’s Divinity has deepened and steadied over the years. It is Sai’s most precious gift to an imperfect and erring devotee. He is truly a channel of grace, an unsurpassed guide to erring mortals.

All religions claim revelation of the truth through a messenger, messiah, or Avatar. These manifestations in human form of the great Divine remind us of our original connection with immortality. Avataric manifestations reveal to us glimpses of God’s majesty and mystery, omniscience and omnipotence, and open before us visions of the heights to which man can rise. God’s descent as a man also serves to remind us of our original connection with Him and illumine our consciousness of that reality.

Supreme Avatar

The Creator cannot be indifferent to the fate of man, the pride of His creation, or remain unconcerned with man’s struggle with the flaws and failings of his nature, and his struggle against the forces of evil that destroy human values. God is immanent in His creation and, therefore, constantly involved with its advance toward perfection. The appearance of an Avatar, his life and work on earth, are timed to improve the prevailing world order by leading man on the path of perfection that culminates in knowledge of and eventual merger in the Absolute⎯the final goal of the cycle of births and deaths. This is at the core of Sathya Sai’s teaching.

Lord Krishna says in the Gita [Song of the Lord] that whenever there is decline of righteousness (or virtuous living) and unrighteousness is on the rise, He incarnates Himself to protect the good and destroy the wicked and to re-establish righteousness. This implies that righteousness or virtuous life is man’s divine inheritance at birth. What is virtue? And why does the purity we inherit become sullied, tarnished, or destroyed in the course of living? Plato, the Greek philosopher defines virtue as the composite of wisdom (which includes knowledge and discrimination), temperance, holiness, justice, moderation, and courage. He says that all these attributes are in the soul, but man falls prey to evil because he has been mastered by a desire for pleasure. He was echoing the perennial teaching of the Gita. In His discourses, Sathya Sai Baba also constantly reminds us of man’s divine origin and his divine destiny, which he has to discover for himself through righteous living, through love for and service of fellow beings. Desires are a natural growth of the human heart, but for a life of virtue desires must be just and related to basic human needs. Sai advises devotees not to root out desire altogether but to put a ceiling of bare need, moderation, and discrimination on it.

God’s entry into human history need not necessarily be for annihilation; His principal purpose is to redeem humanity and to give it life in fuller measure than before. Each Avatar defines his mission and the means to achieve the goal in the context of his time and the prevailing circumstances. The Avatar’s role in Lord Buddha’s words, is “to make a higher life known in all its purity and all its perfection”, which he does by his personal example and through his revelatory teaching. In the epochs of Rama and Krishna destruction of demons and evil rulers was necessary. The Avatar’s mission and method in today’s world have to be different. As Sathya Sai explains, “Previous Avatars like Rama and Krishna had to destroy a few individuals who could be identified as enemies of the godly way of life and thus restore the dharmic [righteous] path. Today, however, wickedness has haunted so many that humanity itself stands under the threat of destruction. Therefore, in My present Avatar, I have come armed with the fullness of the power of formless God to correct mankind, raise human consciousness, and put people back on the right path to divinity⎯the path of Truth, Righteousness, Peace, and Love.”

Sai’s love is without cause. It is His nature; nay, He is love. This is the power that attracts millions of men and women from all parts of the world to the ashrams at Prashanthi Nilayam and Brindavan for a mere glimpse of Him from afar, or for a glance, a word, or smile of recognition and sometimes the enriching experience of an unsought interview. Sai brings erring humanity in close intimacy to Him by His overpowering love so that men may learn from His perfect example as a human being and imbibe in their own daily conduct something of the sweetness of His manner and speech; His motherly sympathy and concern for our shortcomings and wants; His readiness to take on Himself the sufferings, disabilities, and ailments of those who love and adore Him; His compassion and calm resolve; His easy indifference to praise or blame; and His all-encompassing love. Sai is the messiah of the religion of love. He says that essentially there is only one religion, the religion of love, for “love flows as a stream through all the religions.” And by sowing the seeds of love in all hearts, He is uniting all mankind as one family. From love in the heart springs the desire for service of fellow beings⎯one reinforces the other.

Sathya Sai is Divine, but He is also human. Without this latter attribute we would not be able to communicate with Him nor understand His purpose, feel close to Him, and serve as intelligent instruments for the fulfillment of His vision. His humanity is the channel that enables us ordinary mortals to approach, appreciate, and have a glimpse of His reality. Sathya Sai has said that only those who have recognized His love and experienced that love can assert they have glimpsed His reality⎯for “The path of love is the royal road that leads mankind to Me!”

If love is Sai’s panacea for the world’s ills, service is the mantra [formula] for humanity’s redemption and rejuvenation. He says., “Love in action is service.” These two words⎯love and service⎯sum up Sathya Sai’s teaching of yogic action. Service inculcates the virtue of humility, curbs the ego, and is an antidote to selfishness. The Gita extols the virtue of service of the Lord. Krishna says, “He who serves me with unfailing devotion transcends the three modes (gunas) and attains fitness for becoming Brahman.” Sai extols service of humanity (manav seva) as higher than the devotional service of God (Madhav seva). He says, “Hands that serve are holier than lips that pray.”

His Gram Seva program, village water supply projects, free medicare in Super Specialty Hospitals, and model facilities of free school and university education have brought much needed sustenance, comfort, and care and the hope of a dignified life to millions of our forgotten people. These activities, vibrant living demonstration of Sai’s teaching about “Love in Action”, are noble examples that need to be followed by our governments in the states and at the Centre and by India’s burgeoning corporate sector for the uplift of our left-behind village folk.

Often, as I think of my Divine Master and His teachings and His works, three different images float into my vision and slowly merge into one single orange-robed figure: the images of the ascetic Shiva, of the radiant Prince Gautama, and the holy redeemer of humanity, Jesus Christ. Like Shiva, who drank the poisons of the oceans to secure nectar and immortality for the gods, Sathya Sai Baba is draining humanity of its poisons of self-conceit, intolerance, hatred, and strife, and in return, in true godlike fashion, giving it the ambrosial feed of love. He is the living embodiment of Buddha’s compassion and calm resolve, and Christ’s impassioned love for suffering humanity and of truth. Sathya Sai’s teaching encompasses the teaching of these and other incarnations of the past. He is the Supreme Teacher of all time.

Source: Sai Sparshan 2005 (80th Birthday Offering)

~Devotional india