Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba is no more with us physically. He left his earthly body on 24 April 2011 at 7:40 a.m (10:10 pm Eastern time). “Service to man is service to God. Dedicate all your gifts to service to mankind, to all living beings. Love all, Serve all.” Sai Baba’s devotees called him Swami. I learned at church this morning that Swami had passed and I was at once joyous yet sad. My astral body had its few minutes of tears, even though I know there is no death. I discovered Sai Baba in 1990. A series of synchronicities and “accidents” had me in stop at Pat Thomas’s house in the middle of the day. Judy Kopp, whom I did not know at that time, came by and invited Pat to go to the home of Buddy and Shanti Balwant, devotees who had just returned from India where they’d gotten darshan from Sai Baba. Not knowing who it was, suddenly my mouth was saying, “I want to go.”
We went to a modest home in Palm Bay and were warmly greeted and led to an altar room, a meditation room, and we sat on the floor in front of a large version of the photo of Sai Baba to the left here. There were five of us, Pat, Judy and her son Rhett, me and Buddy, who was humbly telling of his experience meeting Swami in person. I was positioned directly across from the photo and it was 18 x 24, looking at me quite life sized. I was transfixed by the image and tears began shooting out of my eyes and continued the whole time we were there. As we left an hour later, Buddy graciously let us each choose a photo of Sai Baba from the stack he had, and when I selected a very small one, he gave me the 18x 24 poster. I felt so overwhelmed with love at the gesture, and filled with shakti, one of those bathed in bubbly bliss feelings that every cell of your body dances with. That poster today graces my healing bench in the altar room. Each morning during meditation I feel an alignment with him, as one on The Path. I do not feel any less aligned or devoted now that he has left the physical plane.
“There is no thing in the world which is not Manifestation of God. Do not doubt that the entire cosmos is pervaded with God and that everything is contained in Him. There is no single atom in the universe which is not permeated with the Divine.”
I’d set off a bug bomb in the house before I left this morning, knowing that meant I’d come home to wash every surface before I let the cats back in: not just the floor but also all silverware, each pot and pan and plate and glass and cup and saucer and bowl and door handle and well, you get it. I thought what perfect time to do a total cleaning of the entire house and dedicate the job to new beginnings. I will share two stories from my personal journal about my relationship with Sai Baba:
I ask Swami for guidance on Monday 12-6-99: The old law of attraction at work again… what a delight and a blessing. I’ve started to become a little interested in someone and of course then start to question whether I really want to begin the entire relationship process again. As I’m driving home, I glance at Sai Baba sitting on my dash and I ask him for a sign. Am I meant to have a personal relationship, or am I meant to live monastically in solitude? I mean, whichever it is, lemme know and I’ll pursue it with gusto, whatever the choice. It’s a beautiful sunny day and I’m driving along AIA looking at the beach; I turn my radio on. I hear a familiar drum beat and the traffic around me disappears and it’s just me and AIA and Swami on the dash singing to me, “the night we met I knew I – needed you so. And if I had the chance I’d – never let you go. So won’t you say you love me. I’ll make you so proud of me. We’ll make them turn their heads – everywhere we go. So won’t you…. Be my, be my, be my little baby. My one and only, baby my darling, be my baby nowow…oh, oh, oh, oh “ The song goes on forever. I’m looking at Swami and he’s looking right at me, enjoying my amusement. He’s right. His is such an intense love, how can a mere mortal compete? There’s no choice anymore, and that’s fine. I’m glowing all the way home, filled with Swami’s love and it’s radiating back at me from the walls in the van. I’m bombarded the whole way home, even opening my window to let some of it slip past me and go into the street. My face feels like fresh cool laughter is cradling each molecule, caressing and tickling as it goes out the window. I laugh and laugh to myself on the way home.
A story of Swami playing with me: Friday 12-24-99 Christmas Eve I was driving in the van this morning and looking over at Sai Baba on my dash – he’s been there for years now and I look at him every day of my life and spent lots of time driving in the van. Today it seems different, I can see the light shining thru him and it’s not that he’s backlit, it’s that a white hole at the ajna center seems to have opened up and it’s shining a beam of white light right down down the center of his face. I thought, “that’s neat, they designed this photo so in a certain light, it looks like white light is pouring out of his third eye, neat.” So I’m driving around and thinking about that and remembering the earlier phone conversation I had with a friend who just had radial keratotomy done to correct his near-sightedness. I was reflecting on the metaphor I gave him that his surgery merely mirrored his desire for seeing things with a new eye, that he was ready for a higher vision. As I thought that, I reflected that I was doing the same; here I was looking at a photo I’ve looked at for years under all kinds of light and backlight, and yet I never noticed that it did the light beam thing. I reflected that so often we see the things around us, the things we are most familiar with, and yet we aren’t really aware of them in the greater sense.
So I’m driving around and reflecting and looking at the photo, and I’m driving north and then east and then south and then west and the light beam is still there all the time, no matter what direction the sun is coming from. I find that interesting since the light beam seems to have nothing to do with the ambient lighting. It wasn’t until my cell phone rings and I go to answer it that I see the light beam go right up into the opening at the ajna and the opening closed right up. At that moment I realized that it wasn’t an outside lighting occurrence, but a state of consciousness event. I was driving the same direction (west) and the light did not change; it didn’t just go out, as when a shadow passes. It went back up into the opening and the opening slowly closed up, right in front of me. As soon as I was distracted and brought back to earth, it disappeared. Interesting. But I know not to get all caught up in the little magic that happens, just take it as the sign that it is, a kiss of hello and a finger pointing the way, and carry on with the work. It’s simply another test of am I serious about the work or am I still distracted by the showy stuff?
His Lotus Feet
If there is righteousness in the heart,
There will be beauty in the character.
If there is beauty in the character,
There will be harmony in the home.
When there is harmony in the home,
There will be order in the nation.
When there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.
The End of Death As We Know It
Ma Yoga Shakti entered Mahasamadhi February 20, 2015
Finding words to express what it feels to lose someone I’ve never lost