“It’s Always Too Big or Too Little.”

Saints of all ages have gone through it and it will happen in future as well. This is our society, this is our playground and it is our rules. Who these saints are? and what they think! We are happy in our comfort zones, in a prison of our own though, happy with the same repetitive suffering, singing the same painful song again and again. We don’t want to come out of it. And, if saints try to show us a way out, which looks enchanting at first glance but is not easy to follow and for which we don’t have the courage, we have weapons with which to eradicate them from society.

You know, we don’t always need crucifixion to eradicate them. We have some other ways to kill a personality too. It’s called character assassination. We love to keep a dead saint’s picture on our altar but we don’t have the guts to walk with a live saint.

According to my own knowledge and experience, saints are the channel that we user to commune with Existence. They represent a lifetime opportunity to have a look at the other side. Sorry, I am not going to talk about karma or things of this nature, they are boring and I don’t even know whether they are true or just some made-up stories. But, what I have felt in the physical presence of a saint or one that we call connected, I cannot ignore.

I have been on the roller-coaster ride, of course the mental one, of trying to understand saints and their way of working and I always came to a conclusion which was contradictory to my general belief. Yes, I definitely realised the subtle impact behind that later and wondered why I couldn’t catch those things in the first place. What I understood was that if I have to conclude something, I need past event’s recollection in my mind with which to compare. If I don’t have one, I cannot come to any conclusion and then I start making stories, which are again the same old past event’s reflection with negative emotions. That means there could be some event in the upcoming present about which I could be clueless (no past data to match), then what would I do? If I accept my own inability to understand that event, it is shame on ME (yes, the memory bundle of myself). This means I don’t want to accept my defeat, intellectual defeat which is really painful for my Ego and personality , on the other hand , these saints don’t even have some extraordinary things about them, like being a human with wings, or a human with horns. They look like normal people. Why should I listen or get defeated by them?

But I realised that, although saints do not have wings, they can take you to heights which we cannot imagine. They don’ have horns and their protection is invisible but it is surer (If you understand what I mean). I know this is really emotional but I cannot explain how I landed on this. It is like no data of has been found to match in kind. Surrender.

I have been reading life stories of saints. These stories are really fascinating, no doubt about it. But in all these stories I felt one repeating occurrence: the heavy abuse of these saints by the society at the time. Society tried to assassinate them either physically or by abusing their character. Hadiakhan Baba was taken to court, wherein he had to prove that he was the incarnation of the earlier Hadiakhan Baba, he did so and this has been documented. Sathya Sai Baba was accused of trickery and when that was not enough, there was an attempt to implicate him in some sexual scandal. Shirdi Sai Baba was threatened with court and rumoured to have impregnated Radha-Krishna Mayi. Socrates was poisoned. Jesus met with the same fate terrestrially.

The impact of the work done by the higher consciousness would not be visible immediately, but it is the one thing which we could have seen and felt, especially when looking at the lifespan of the saints who are not in body at this moment. We know that saints have manifested the conventional from unconventional act and this is whole reason we bow to them. Shirdi Sai Baba transformed the village of Shirdi completely. Sathya Sai started so many schools, so many colleges and so many hospitals, not to mention the many other social services of which we are not aware. What did they get out of it?

One of the incidents I would like to narrate is from Bhagawan Nithyananda’s life: This is from the early stages of his life. In this story, he sees a woman walking on the street; he jumps towards her and touches her breast. People on the street seeing the young sannyasi’s hideous act started running behind him and while running Bhagawan Nithyananda says: “This one will live”. People couldn’t catch him and when they gathered around the woman, she disclosed the meaning the sannyasi’s act: She had already lost a few kids in labour. By touching her breast Bhagawan removed something, after which she could give birth to a healthy kid which would live well. The whole purpose of sharing this story is to demonstrate that this woman was a stranger to Bhagawan Nithyananda and the action he performed to bless her was totally unconventional and unacceptable. If we could imagine ourselves on the street that very day when Bhagawan did this act we could see ourselves running behind him in rage for doing this act. I am not blaming ourselves completely, trust me, I am blaming the clarity in the execution of work of the saints which we could never understand.

When we talk about the glories of saints, such as how they removed peoples’ diseases through totally controversial treatment: the treatment which could have enraged the disease; Removing asthma by letting the patient smoke chillum pipe, diarrhoea by ground nut and many more. Actually, it is very common that saints give some uncommon treatment to critical diseases. We all gladly accept these acts of the saints and always admire it. Why? Because these acts don’t alter our basic concepts much and it is acceptable by society and by us because it’s in our immediate favour. But, when the same saints try to shake other basic roots of concepts which are tabooed, then we start to criticise them.

Like I said in the first line, this has happened, is happening and will continue to happen. Masters on our path always say not to marry the guru, marry his consciousness. But we always ignore that line and try to marry the guru’s personality. Definitely when there is personality, there will be expectation and then unfulfilled expectation leads to all this drama. Lord Krishna, one of the biggest personalities to ever walk this earth. We worshiped him and we always refer to him as the God of Gods. The society in his time didn’t even spare. 16008 queens? LOL. Practically impossible. If possible, then that person is definitely not an ordinary human being and we cannot make comparisons or lay blame. Subtlety takes time to reveal itself to gross. Sometimes generations.

I won’t talk spiritual trash at all, but I want to say one thing: Whenever one wants to form an opinion about anyone, be it a saint or anyone else, please, see how much other people have contributed their own opinion and thought into yours. Presumption and assumption lead a person nowhere, both spiritually and practically. Before blaming someone, look into yourself and ask yourself whether you are worthy of laying blame on someone or whether you have enough understanding to see the whole picture.

Sandeep Mishra , MSc Aeronautical Engineering ,University of Glamorgan, UK