HOW DO MASTERS REDEEM DEVOTEES?
STEADY UPLIFT ENDING IN FREEDOM FROM CYCLE OF BIRTHS
(How do Saints or Samarthas help humanity? This interesting question is answered in the following statement prepared jointly by HH Pujyasri B V Narasimha Swamiji and Bharatananda.)
The Supreme Being id thought of as having five aspects of functions with names appropriate to each:
Creation: Brahma in conjunction with Saraswathi.
Maintenance: Vishnu or Narayana in conjunction with Laxmi.
Destruction: Rudra in conduction with Kali.
Protection or Ruling: Ishwar in conjunction with Maheshwari.
Redemption: Sadashiv in conjunction with Kripa.
There are avatars combining often several of these elements. The life work of a Samartha Sadguru leads one to identify him with the Redemption aspect of the Supreme Being.
Jivas, like us, are going on from birth to birth. They are the Supreme Being, but shot out of Him by an initial act of Maya. Then the initial ignorance developed by a series of their Karmas, whirls them at a terrific velocity in the circle of Samsara. The Jivas feel powerless to get out of it. They are moved by desire (Vaasana) to acts (Karma), which in turn strengthen desire. So the vicious circle of Karma and Vaasana catches the Jivas in its powerful grip; and unaided they feel they cannot wriggle out. If they try to do so, they only get more and more entangled – more and more involved in Samsara. How are these Jivas then to be helped out of this involution in evolution, so that they may evolve themselves back into the state of the Supreme Being?
AVATARS TO HELP:
At special times Avatars of the Supreme Being come down to raise humanity in masses. The Avatars do not as a rule set to themselves the task of caring for particular Jivas, spiritual advance. So the work of the Avatars finds its supplement and fulfillment in the work of the Samartha Sadgurus. These with the vast powers, knowledge and bliss of the Supreme proceed to deal with individual Jivas and help them out of their involution to evolve into the Supreme Being. Samarthas like Sri Sai Baba are called Samartha because of their vast – nay unlimited power, wisdom and bliss and they are called Sadgurus, because they appear on order to act as the Guru for individual Jivas to lead them into the Sat or Supreme.
The powers of Samarthas may, to a superficial view appear like the feats of a thought-reader, magician or necromancer. But there are unmistakable differences between these two sets of powers in respect of their origin, their nature or limits, the manner of exercise and the purpose or motive of such exercise. The magician and others of his like acquire their power and exercise it with great effort; and its exercise is within definite limits of time, space, etc., and the purpose of the exercise may be either sordid or at any rate clearly personal. The Samartha, on the other hand, has not to work for the powers; the powers come as part of his realization and perfection; and exercise of his powers is not the result of effort. These powers are not limited to any particular sort or class, as even Ashta Siddhis are limited in comparison with the Samarthas. The purpose of the Samarthas, exercise is pure mercy for the Jiva, whose spiritual advance is distinctly furthered thereby.
HOW THEY WORK: We may proceed to examine the main feature of the work of the Samartha Sadguru.
The point at which a Jiva’s involution or Samsara life turns to evolution or the Path of Redemption is the appearance of the Sadguru to that Jiva. How did the Jiva start his Jivahood? By forgetting its original, its real, nature as Brahman and thus disturbing the harmony of the Gunas that prevailed in Brahman till the forgetting. At that moment, a disturbance in the Gunas took place and the Jiva started its samsara career. The original Brahmic state was the clear unruffled waters of the ocean. The disturbance caused in it a small whirl. This whirl is the Jiva; and it fancied itself (and this is the primary ignorance) different from the waters of the ocean, by reason of its being a whirl. The Sadguru comes and restores the harmony that prevailed before the Jiva started this whirling. The Sadguru shows the whirl that it is water after all; the Jiva realizing that truth sinks into peace as part of the ocean; and thus the Sadguru restores primal harmony. This is the essence of Sad guru’s work. But the general lines of his work we shall next consider.
INITIAL HELP:
First the Jiva is under a heavy load of past Karma, which weighs him down and pins him to Samsara. He has to reap the pains and pleasures he has sown. If he tries to remove one item of load he does two more acts and thereby increases the load. This is because of his weakness, and went of clear vision, and of ability to know and direct himself all right. He requires, therefore, the help of one who knows the situation exactly and what will meet it in the individuals’ special circumstances. Such a guide and director is the Sadguru. So the Jiva has to go to a Sadguru. But unfortunately even the desire to approach a Sadguru and the idea of how to approach him properly are foreign to the Karma-bound Jiva. So taking advantage of a little Punya (merit) acquired by the Jiva by means of previous contact (however remote) with the Sadguru or any other holy person, the Sadguru mercifully makes the approach easier for the Jiva. By his vast powers, the Sadguru helps the poor. Jiva, even temporally – in a way under such marvelous circumstances that the Jiva is pulled out of his vicious circle, and roused to a sense of admiration, gratitude and reverence to the Samartha, noting especially how divine the Sadguru is contrasted with the earthly Jiva.
LATER DEVELOPMENT:
Thus the Jiva gets prepared to and does attach himself by love to the Samartha Sadguru and the latter increases his faith by showing him more and more of his vast knowledge, vast power, vast kindness and love – all exercised on behalf of the devotees out of pure mercy. As a part of this same mercy, the Guru directs the devotee to do some acts, which will increase the Punya or good Karma and reduce the papa or bad Karma of the devotee. The more good Karma is done, the more is the doer reducing his heavy load of past bad Karma, without committing fresh bad Karma. Results of the previous Karmas are even advanced and regulated by the Samartha’s omniscience and omnipotence to help his dependent reap his harvest more quickly. But in the process the Jiva is apt to get attached to the doing of Punya or meritorious work. Though they enable him to get over Rajas and Tamas, they still bind him through Satva, as they will carry him to repeated births in nice words i.e., of the Gods. Even this Satwic bondage must be rent as under.
So the Guru next weans the devotee even from good works. For the purpose, the devotee must have an attachment higher and stronger than good works. That is the attachment to, and love for the Guru, ending in surrender to the Guru. Attachment to the Guru is useful no doubt. But its early stages leave in the mind of the devotee the idea that he is still the person directing his affection to the Guru, and doing the appropriate service therefor and that he is doing something worthy and meritorious. It nearly approaches detachment by reason of absence of personal motive but is still tainted with Egoism, i.e., with the sense of the devotee being an agent, a voluntary performer of action. This sense also must be knocked on the head or banished. Its absence is surrender to or identification with the Guru. Identification and surrender are almost the same, with a slight difference. In surrender, the process is marked by humility and a desire to end the self, which need not be distinctly present in identification with the Guru. Identification may be the result of surrender but is seldom its cause. The fruit of identification is the destruction of the primal Maya or nescience under which the Jiva started its separate existence. Surrender restores the balance (or harmony) of gunas that was upset when the separate existence of the Jiva commenced.
TOWARDS SURRENDER:
This surrender is brought about when the feeling of the devotee towards his Guru gets intensified. Such intensification is comparable to a huge worldwide dynamo attracting an electrified atom. The devotee, the atom, may however still be feeling or fancying that it is moving of its own accord to the huge dynamo, the Guru and then the devotee may even raise the question how this surrender is to be effected and accelerated.
In this connection, we may consider another line on which the devotee Jiva’s progress is proceeding. The devotee starts with devotion to his Guru or God, who is felt to be entirely outside him, i.e., outside the devotee’s body. The devotee is then under the influence of Rajas and Tamas and identifies himself almost entirely with the body. But increasing contact with the Sad-Guru and increasing faith in him, with good works, especially selfless, meritorious works reduce the Rajasic and Tamasic elements of the devotee and wear off his Dehatmabuddhi, i.e., the idea that he is body.
His ideas of God get broader and finer; and more emphasis is laid on God’s and Guru’s spiritual nature, which bursts the shackles of finite space limits. The Guru God is not confined to the small human body but extends far beyond – covering the entire universe on one side, and, on the other, is very subtle and therefore enters as Sarva Antaryami into all hearts. The devotee begins to feel that that the Guru-God is his own Antaryami, i.e., he sees him within himself. The Samartha’s vast powers enable the devotee to obtain the finer sight actually to see the Guru within his own heart. The inner presence of God-Guru can never be inactive. His real living presence within asserts itself and more and more and swallows up the Jivahood of the Jiva. This is self-surrender of the Jiva when viewed from the latter’s stand – point. With this swallowing up or surrender, all old Karmas, good and bad, are swallowed up.
THE FINAL SNAP:
The Vaasanas or tendencies to do fresh Karma have also to be destroyed in the Jiva’s progress. Vaasanas are desires or desire tendencies directed to lower objects (whether earthly or otherworldly objects). These have to be swallowed up only by a stronger and purer desire or affection, by something more exacting than earthly love. As stated already, such stronger passion is the devotee’s love for the Guru, and it is that blossoms into complete self-surrender. This surrender alone totally extinguishes Vaasanas. Once Vaasanas are destroyed, there is no more ego, no more of vicious circle of Samsara, and the Evolution of the Jiva into the Supreme is complete. Then the Jiva sees that the Samartha Sadguru has all along been with him, inside and outside, and that the Jiva the Sadguru and the Supreme Being are and always have been one and the same Real.
(Courtesy: HH Pujyasri B V Narasimha Swamiji)
http://vasukimahal.blogspot.com
