Sai Baba on Unity

By Terry Reis Kennedy

Some of you know I was born in the United States and came to  India be near my Guru, Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba more than 18 years ago.  In India I had the luxury of being able to reflect on my Mother Land.  I could better understand the confusion of Americans from a distance.  We are brainwashed from birth that money brings happiness and that control over others ensures peace.   Before long, though, I discovered the people of India are also obsessed with money and power.  What to do?

Bhagawan Baba teaches, “Bharat today is in a crisis created by myriad difficult problems.  But not Bharat alone, all other countries are also facing similar crises.  What is the reason?  It is the total failure to remember the spiritual oneness of mankind.  Only the sense of spiritual unity will generate universal love.  That love alone will bind men together in unity.  This love principle should emanate from the heart.  Only then true unity will emerge.”

I imagined that was easy enough to do.  I could visualize unity amongst my fellows. But!  It was not so easy for me to feel it in my day-to-day dealings, especially with charlatans and thieves.  How could I, a mere human, love on such a noble scale? 

Baba, the Ever Gentle Master, says, “In this cosmic university all are students.  Hence everyone should render social service to the extent of one’s capacity and spread Swami’s ideals among all.  There is nothing selfish in Swami’s message.  Hence anyone can spread it selflessly.  Sow the seed of love in your hearts and it will grow in due course into a big tree.  God is one.  Do not entertain any differences of creed or caste.  Carry the message of unity to every home.”

So, this I consciously attempt.  I am better at serving, perhaps, than I am at loving.  Certain people still enrage me.

On the other hand, our Beloved Bhagawan Baba understands.  “There are few today who recognize unity in diversity, though there are any number of intellectuals who are engaged in promoting divisions and differences.  The world today needs righteous men who will promote unity.

“Embodiments of love!  There is only one thing you have to offer to me today.  Pray that people in all countries, nay, the entire humanity, should be happy and at peace.  ‘Lokaa Samasthas Sukhino Bhavanthu.’  (‘Let all the worlds be happy.’)  Then alone there will be real unity.  Do not wish merely for the peace and prosperity of India alone.  Pray for the welfare of all countries.  All are our brothers, whether they are in Pakistan or America or elsewhere.”

Now I have come to regard my Native Land as the whole Earth.  Yes, I may have been born in one part of the Earth but I am part of every culture and every creed.  Living in India has shown me that I belong to only caste that Sai Baba sways we all belong to—the caste of humanity.

SATCHITANADA INDIA: FLOODTIDE OF BLISS

By Terry Reis Kennedy

Glorious, raucous, untamable sub-continent of Asia!  According to my astrological cartographers, India is the worst place I could possibly live.

I laugh at this because coming to India was the best thing I ever did for myself. The self discoveries I have made, living here for over 20 years now, are priceless.  India has made me rich, in the true sense of the word.  Once, married to the beloved father of my children, Lee Matthew Kennedy, I had material wealth, but I was poor in spirit.

It was not my intention to stay in a place so far away from my origins.  In 1990 I only came for what I thought was going to be a short visit. But the Universe had other plans for me. Here in the village of Puttaparthi, in the Anantapur District of Andhra Pradesh, where I live in the proximity of my Guru, the Avatar Sathya Sai Baba, I not only found my life’s purpose, I also experienced transient moments of satchitananda among the cobras and the scorpions.

  

Here I was able to let go identity that had been imposed on me and let the God of my understanding reconstruct me. Transformation is an exciting process.  Through my spiritual practice of studying scriptures of various religions, living alongside people from all over the world from all castes, creeds, and walks of life, I was able to give up desperation and despair, to trade it in for happiness and peace of mind.  As a result, I have learned how to live in the mad, materialistic world, to participate in it, and love it, without becoming part of it.

In many ways I have liberated myself.  I now know that  I am the Creator, the Savior, the Formless Imperishable One,  that I was seeking from earliest childhood—not knowing then that the same ‘I ‘ dwells within all beings and all things known and unknown..

The view—from  my small brick dwelling, which   passersby often say looks like a fairy-tale house—is no longer the vast Atlantic, beyond the dunes of Duxbury, Massachusetts, no longer the Green Mountains, beyond the lawn of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, no longer the vast Mojave desert, beyond the alfalfa fields….  Instead, I look out large windows with fan-shaped tops onto a once-vacant lot that, by my own hand, I transformed into a garden—a garden that can be erased at any moment since I do not own the land.  Builders, eager to capitalize on the influx of tourists to this nationally designated pilgrim center, want to grab this space and construct another 10-storey high-rise.  However, the owners are not ready to sell.  But the very temporary existence of the plants and trees that I have tended on this plot for 18 years now makes me all the more enraptured by their beauty.

No matter what else is going on during my busy days, I never fail to appreciate the garden, to pay reverence to each and every ridge and groove on the bark of the various trees; I bow as I regard each tendril of the blush-colored blossoms of the oleander; and my pulse quickens when I note a new tree seed unfurling a bright green sprout.

  I listen intently to the abundant bird talk—able, at last, to distinguish the haunting moans of the mud-colored cuckoo from the manic chatter of the chartreuse parrot.  I can tell the frantic screams of the chickadee, when crows come to rob her nest, from the guttural cries of the finch, when the same fate befalls her.  The buzz of a honey-making bee has a different tone than the buzz of the industrious wasp. When a coconut branch falls in the night, it makes a slow swishing before it lands with a thud.  On the other hand, when branches from the tamarind tree fall, they make a nearly imperceptible sound, like a match being lit.  The very fact that in a split-second all this could be lost, like life itself, quickens my heart as I enter the beauty of the moment.

It is flood tide every day and every night and every second of my life here.  I am fully immersed in the wonder of unfolding life, fully immersed in the energy of creation itself. I am swimming in a Sea of God where I cannot be separate anymore.  The isolated, insular existence of my New England introspection has born fruit here. The past has exploded into cargoes of juicy mangos ripe and ready to be eaten, now. 

Here, I am merged, not just with the few passing clouds of family, friends, lovers…; I am merged with the infinite plentitude of my own Being.

My days begin early—about 4:30 in the morning.  At that time I can hear the singing of the song that “wakes up God,” coming from the ashram Mandir.  I can hear the songs of praise to God, emanating from the mosque nearby.  I can hear my own heart beating.   At first light, I enter the garden and just sit in the silence.  It is not so much meditation as it is entering the state of awareness.  I become hyper vigilant of my surroundings—outer and inner.

In Duxbury, the flood tide came to make exotic the mundane.   Once a year, love burst upon us and washed us clean of our longings.  Here, in the vortex of the flood tide of the world, I am no longer the doer, the seeker, the one who wants.  I am Love itself.

Yes, once I wore the labels of student, wife, mother, patient, poet, investigative journalist, lover, adjunct faculty, seeker… just as I once wore western-style clothes.  Now I dress in regional wraps, saris, dupatas, salwar sets….  But I am naked, a witness.  And I am married only to myself.  I am nobody and everybody at once.  I have entered the Flood Tide Night, Satchitananda India; may it last forever.

I Am Tibetan

(Terry’s Signboard)

I am Tibetan because the blood of the martyrs of Tibet spilled

into my hard heart and made it soft.

I am Tibetan because in our tent in Bodh Gaya,
the prayers of the refugees
to Buddha, to the deities, to the mountains, to the sky,
and to the clouds reached my ears.

I am Tibetan because the tears they cry for their Mother Land
fall out of my eyes. 

God, Science and Mother

By Terry Reis Kennedy

When the first man walked on the moon I was a young mother with three children under four.  News of the landing did not excite me.  I felt that exploring outer space and stabbing a US flag into the heretofore sacred lover’s orb had nothing to do with my life: Constant motherly vigilance, piles of laundry and continuous pleadings to God, the angels and the saints, for guidance during this challenging time.

How was this quantum jump of science going to help me raise my children? How was I going to instill human values in their hearts when even school curricula focused on gaining knowledge for the purpose of getting good grades, a good job, and earning pots of money? 

Suddenly, stars were no longer mysterious twinkling diamonds in the sky to be wished upon.  Now they were simply destinations.

I felt my children needed a direct link with the Almighty to get them through life. I believed that anyone with a brain knew that it was God, not science, which was going to keep us together when everything around us was falling to pieces. Well, I was wrong.  Science, not God, won out.  But why?

For the most part, we spend our lives in the material world.  We are more impressed by bad money than by good Samaritans.  Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba has said, “The discoveries made by the modern scientists are in the realms of matter whereas the sages of ancient India explored the region of the Spirit.

“The scientists are feeding greedily on what was dismissed as trash by our great sages of the past. The narrow-minded scientists do not bring themselves to believe in the great discoveries made by our ancestors.  Whether they believe it or not, the truths discovered by the wise ancestors stand as eternal verities.  It is not science which is anti-God; it is the scientists who are anti-God… 

“It is sheer ignorance on the part of the scientists to be carried away by the proof furnished by the senses.  The scientists should enquire and investigate into their hearts, instead of mechanically probing into machines.”

Of course, I am grateful for the machines I do have.  But when catastrophe crashes into my life, I don’t kneel in front of the refrigerator!  I go to my altar, light the lamp, and unburden my soul.  I feel better believing in a power greater than myself.

Sai Baba assures, “God can be known only by experience and not by experiments.  Sadhana (spiritual practice) is needed for this purpose.  Men who are engaged in exploring space do not make the slightest effort to explore the Divine within them.  Of what use are experiments aimed at exploring space, while there is no genuine cultivation of human qualities and the practice of such basic virtues as showing reverence for the mother, the father and the preceptor.”

Now that I have entered the grandmother years, I find that faith in God is critical.  The world of my grandchildren is even more threatening than the world my children were born into.  Without a strong connection to the Divine, life could be a very disturbing experience.

Sri Sathya Sai emphasizes the importance of communion with God. “The great scientist, Einstein, regretted in his last years that his scientific findings had led to the production of the atom bomb,” Sai Baba said, and “Sir Isaac Newton ended his life in a hospital with a mental affliction.  True knowledge must secure mental peace and enduring joy.  For this, contemplation of God is essential.”