Our Beloved

The full, cosmic, universal being descends into the human form, the Avatar, the scriptures declare. But we need to understand the word in the right perspective. What induces the Most High, the Universal Mind, the Transcendent Will, to come down and engage Itself in limited conditions for the betterment of mankind? What makes Him endure neglect, calumny, doubt, and denial that blindness dare heap on Him? It is His compassion. The Avatar comes prompted by compassion and lives as the embodiment of compassion. It flows in every word and act of the Avatar.

Baba has declared, “When I am alone, I am God.” Keep in mind this declaration while listening to the following incident: Once during [the festival of] Dasara, while the Bal Vikas [Sai spiritual education] children were enacting a play on stage, Baba, seated among the devotees watched the kids sing and dance. Noticing that it was pretty warm in the midst of the crowd that had packed the auditorium, one devotee began fanning Baba rather vigorously with a borrowed fan. Apparently unconcerned, Baba sat through this for a few minutes. Then He suddenly turned round, and with a charming smile He took the fan from the devotee’s hand saying, “I have come to do your seva [service]; why should you do My seva?” Now, how do you react to such a God?

Bhagavan is a compassionate parent, not a distant formidable God almighty. Can we afford to install Him in a temple, anoint Him as the omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent Lord, and keep Him away from our hearts and homes? Do you think He would love to stay in a lordly mansion with candelabras and carpets (for He is God almighty)? Wouldn’t you rather have Him in your own home, though it may be an unimpressive cottage?

He has come to give the drooping eye a little light, the broken heart a little joy, the failing limbs a little more endurance, and the lost spirit a little love. He says, “My son! You complain that I have a hard heart. You say I do not care for your tears. But when you weep, I weep; when you are happy, I am happy. I am fed when you are fed.” Here is a God who is our kith and kin, aware of the joys and grief of imperfect men, understanding our loves and frustrations, dreams and aspirations. He asserts that man can realize his truth by involving him-self in loving service of fellowmen. He admonishes us, “What sort of God are you seeking in temples while on your streets thousands of living gods invite you to worship them with your seva?”

He does not tell an erring man, “You are doomed; you are a sinner.” If a man insists that he is a sinner, He says, “No, My boy. There is nothing like sin. You have only erred. The moment you repent, I pardon you. I shall take your word that you will not repeat the error again.” To the members and office bearers of the Seva organization bearing His name, He says, “Nothing pleases Me, no dhyana [meditation], no tapas [penance], no scriptural studies, nothing…. as service of man. In your impatience if you speak an angry word to someone you cannot tolerate, you say it to Me.”

How often He has said, “I do not want you to cringe before Me, I want that you should demand grace from Me as a child does from its parent.” It is not the elaborateness of the worship that pleases Him; it is the love and sincere friendliness of a pure heart, a Partha’s (another name for Arjuna) love. He does not build caves or monasteries or academies to teach men the way to blessedness; for Him blessedness lies in our feeding a forlorn brother or sister, in our taking the hand of a blind fellow-traveler, in our shedding love into a castaway heart. He does not lead us to dusty debates on scriptural texts; instead He shakes the dust off the scriptures and asks us to recollect that the “proper study of man is mankind.”

All these centuries we worshipped a strange God high up in the heavens or far in the interior of temples, and we banished brother man from our minds and thoughts. Consequently, instead of building up a prosperous, just and happy world, we have thrown the world helter-skelter. We do not see the tender sunlight playing on our doorstep; we imagine the sun far over the distant hills. So the sun has come to persuade us to look down and admire the beautiful strips of warm light that are lying in wait.

Today Baba is the supreme lover of man, the beloved of every one of us. He is the greatest evangel of humanism, for He asserts that the human is not a whit less than the Divine. His pronouncements are not like the distant thunder, which makes us cower in fear. They are like the frag-rant breeze that blows around us, gently inviting us to come out of our petty selves and grow as large as the sky, as warm in generosity as the morning sun, and as lovely as the dewdrop.

Our beloved Lord does not want to blind us by miracles; He wants each of us to shine as a miracle. He does not want to make us small by His Himalayan height; He stands with us on the same ground to lift us to Himalayan heights. He opens our vision to the spectacle of our innumerable brothers and sisters jostling around us for a whiff of divine grace, and He shows us that He is the innermost core of every one of them.

According to Him, the world is not a place to run away from. It is an arena for service and sacrifice, for work and worship. He is the Divine Being born as man for the love of man. He has never slept all these years, never eaten what we would designate as a meal. He is incessantly engaged in correcting, consoling, and counseling man.

He has never spent a quiet hour, never spoken a harsh word, never let a soul down, never reacted to calumny and malice except with a smile, never allowed a minute to go waste without a good deed, thought, or word. He has never allowed a person to leave His presence without the gift of light and love. He is never unsure of His mission, even for a moment. He fills our hearts with the feeling that He is our only beloved. May we be His forever.

~B. B. Misra
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, April 1978