Four chapters from
Birch and Pine Whisper His Name - A Tribute to Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Chapter 49
TRAVELERS THREE
“Go back to your family now” Sai Baba told me during my private interview of 18 January 1978. Then He continued, “But all three of you return within the year.” Paul, Mary and I came to India on 21 December 1978 for Christmas and New Year’s.
We were very much hoping to tie up a few loose ends while drinking in the holy atmosphere unique to Baba’s ashram at that season. True, I had the job that Baba had promised me, and it was a good job with friendly colleagues. I couldn’t ask for better for myself, but a job for me was not a job for my husband. At the time I didn't realize that after the age of 57, employers are reluctant to hire, and often to keep anyone on their payroll. It's a matter of pension contributions. Paul was already 61.
The vexed question of Mary’s schooling was also looming over us. At ten years of age, she was in her last year at the little country schoolhouse at Buis-les-Genets. Where next? She had enjoyed years of country life, but that avenue was now closed. Mary was at Buis-les-Genets on borrowed time.
Uppermost in my mind was accommodation. Baba teaches that in-laws are an excellent school for patience and self-control. My in-laws, who had to live with me, did not have the comfort of Baba’s teachings.
Quite apart from worries about our spending Christmas holidays with one whom they strongly suspected of being a guru, my in-laws were understandably alarmed at the timing of our trip. Not only were we deserting them at the festal table, we were also steering straight for a country in the grip of serious troubles.
No sooner than our tickets were booked, the headlines in the local newspapers began to shout about India, of all places. The current Indian government chose that moment to throw Indira Gandhi, then opposition leader, into prison.
Riots broke out, particularly in the south, where Mrs. Gandhi was very popular. I had serious qualms about defying in-laws and inciting my family to spend Christmas in the midst of potential danger. Paul saw this as a test of our faith in Baba. We went ahead, praying to remember He was protecting us.
We found Bangalore uneasily quiet. Taxi drivers were still reluctant to drive foreigners around, for fear of stones crashing through cab windows. Nothing so dramatic happened to us, despite one or two minor hitches, quickly put behind us. We arrived at Prasanthi Nilayam on 22 December 1978 in time for afternoon darshan.
On entering the temple courtyard I found, to my amusement, that my status with the volunteers was greatly enhanced by having a lovely daughter with me. I couldn’t help basking in the light of smiles welcoming me back. Many of my former “classmates” were also at that first darshan, giving me a feeling of continuity that helped to bridge over the time waiting for Baba to come out.
Every trip to Baba teaches something different. On the previous visit, I was a woman traveling alone, but always finding good companions. I quickly found out how to respect certain Indian traditions, wearing my sari correctly and modestly, so as to be respected in my turn. I felt safer in Bangalore than in Geneva or Toronto.
On this second trip to India I was learning the difference it makes to be with husband and child. Coolies and taxi drivers were downright deferential to my distinguished-looking husband. Hotel clerks as well. Paul has an unconscious air of quiet command, and rapidly discovers who is capable of loyalty, and is thus in line to become a sort of family retainer.
All this in spite of the fact that he is able to understand scarcely a word of Indian English. I acted as interpreter whenever possible, although we could not always be together. After several recent months in south India I was used to the lilt of Indian English, and in unguarded moments could hear myself singing along in similar intonations.
Life at the ashram was not as Paul expected. He had difficulty distinguishing between the words
bhajan and
darshan - their pronunciation and their meaning. I, on the other hand, could not fathom why this man, whom coolies and taxi drivers treated like a lord should feel intimidated by the sight of his wife in a sari.
When I whipped on this length of cloth and rapidly adjusted its folds, this stranger of a husband eyed me oddly, saying in a deprecating voice that I looked impressive. He watched wide-eyed, as I strung up clothesline to hang our clothes and food, out of the reach of nocturnal pests. I had insisted on buying the sturdy Swiss clothesline, over his objections of economy and overloading luggage. “How you lived here all that time I don’t know, Helen,” he burst out one day. “You really have guts.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about. If he was referring to the simplicity of the apartment assigned to us, I thought crossly, he wasn’t making sense. Compared to his own camping arrangements as a youth in the Swiss mountains, our present ones were luxurious.
Perhaps, I thought in exasperation, my husband did not enjoy camping on a hot, sandy plain, instead of in the cool, misty mountains. That didn’t make sense either, for he had always soaked up the heat in Buis-les-Genets, while I nearly went mad after two minutes under the sun of Provence. He was lapping up the spicy food that I could not tolerate.
My attempts to see with his eyes were skewed by my own frustration, as guilty feelings grabbed at me. Instead of sharing with him the delights of the Courts of the Lord, here I was putting him through some sort of painful initiation. I couldn’t get through to him.
The more I tried to help him through the hoops, the less he recognized my efforts. In fact, he rebuffed them, then claimed I was not telling him what he needed to know. He, on the other hand, was not telling me what was really bothering him.
Our own family power struggles in the Abode of Perfect Peace reflected the difficulties that my husband was having on the men’s side of the temple courtyard, and elsewhere, surrounded by aggressive younger men who knew the ropes. After one visit to the men’s canteen, Paul put me in charge of our food foraging.
This was a reversal of roles, for normally Paul did our food shopping, claiming that I wasted money. If he could not make money, he could save it, and he took this job seriously. He was also our chief cook, in his mother’s noble French tradition. Intimidated by his superior approach in the kitchen at home, I had surrendered my apron to him. But that was not the way it worked out for us in India.
I enjoyed bringing our meals to our apartment in a tiffin-carrier from the women’s canteen, where there was no pushing and shoving. Had we stayed longer than three weeks I might have bought a little stove to cook on.
Meanwhile Mary was plunged into a polyglot community where English, in various accents was the lingua franca. French, her touchstone, was rare to hear, except in our family group. Soon her long-forgotten English opened one sleepy eye, yawned, stretched and pricked up its ears.
Chapter 50
EYES THAT SEE
“I’ve got to have a cup of coffee,” Paul said in desperation soon after we arrived at Prasanthi Nilayam. “That’s the only thing that will cure this headache.”
The canteen was closed. By the time I could get to Raju’s restaurant outside and bring back a cup of coffee, it would be cold. I knew that headache must be a raging torment to Paul, who tries to keep pain to himself. The fact that he had spoken of it meant it must be pretty severe.
Time for Baba to intervene, I felt, as I left the apartment, not knowing how, but determined to find a cup of hot coffee, and that quickly. Looking up at the brilliant sky, I prayed to the Mother of the Universe to provide what we needed, when we needed it, however She willed us to have it.
Then I thought of Catherine, a permanent resident. Perhaps she could help with practical advice. On the way to her apartment a family out on their verandah hailed me, and I stopped a moment to exchange a smile or two. I knew them as the recipients of two bananas from Swami the previous Christmas, during a group interview when one of the children had begun to whimper.
Finding that I was on my way to see someone who might be able to help me find a cup of coffee to cure my husband’s headache, Véronique said “Wait!” and disappeared into their apartment. She returned moments later with a jar of instant coffee ganules, a little container of sugar and a heatproof glass complete with immersable heater.
My prayer was more than answered as soon as I sent it out, and made a move toward helping myself. When I tried to return all this largesse on the following day, she insisted I keep and use it until our departure.
Years later Swami would remind us of that caffeine withdrawal headache and my prayer to Annapurna, writing in "Sanatha Sarathi" that some people come to the Wish-fulfilling Tree, and all that they ask for is a cup of coffee.
As the roles in our small group were reversed from their usual pattern in Canada and Europe, strong forces were working in a new kind of turmoil. I longed for my husband and daughter to have the experience of seeing Baba’s love in action in the interview room, where we are like a family having a reunion with our divine Mother, Father, Friend. A close Sai encounter would, I knew, sweeten our own lives together and strengthen us for any further tests.
There are times for learning different lessons. On this visit to Baba’s ashram, I needed to learn to stop living the lives of other family members, and let them live their own, while I focused on what I had to do. It took a while for the teaching to penetrate my understanding.
During the first week of our stay, I seemed to be standing by helplessly while my marriage fell apart. It lay around in pieces throughout the second week until I eventually realized that I might as well get on with my own spiritual business and leave Paul and Mary to deal with their own.
The master of the unexpected, had called us to His workshop. We had arrived too late for me to help organize and prepare the Christmas programme. And so I relaxed and enjoyed being in the audience for once instead of directing singers. During the brief lull between Christmas and New Year’s day I had time for a word with Barbara, the choir leader, about the challenge that Baba had thrown her way - conducting a choir for the first time in her life. Not once in all the rehearsals that I attended, or from my place in the audience did I suspect that Barbara had been thrown in at the deep end.
Mary, on the other hand, was recruited for the choir. We both also found time between rehearsals to attend bhajan classes by two delightful graduates of the college at Anantapur.
Our daughter had arrived in India a little like the wild girl - “la Sauvageonne de Buis-les-Genets”, that she called herself. I wasn’t much help, with my nagging. “Sit up straight,” I would hiss at darshan, “And stop picking your nose. Baba’s coming!”
One day Mary and I found ourselves sitting further toward the front than many of the ladies at bhajan around the temple. Baba suddenly came out and walked purposefully toward the west exit of the courtyard in the direction of the rear of the Poornachandra Hall. As He walked, He looked us over very thoroughly, mirroring Mary’s cool gaze at every darshan. We knew He knew we were there, all right.
Just as each trip to Prasanthi Nilayam is different from the others, so is each person’s experience at their first darshan. My first reaction to seeing Sathya Sai Baba in person in September, 1977, had been a seemingly banal and nonchalant, “Oh, there He is.”
Actually I was recognizing a form and presence dearly familar to me. Anything but banal. The inner vision was being confirmed by the outer eye, giving me the comfort of coming home at last.
On the men’s side for his first darshan, Paul was feeling like a new boy at school. Hesitating outside the wall of the courtyard, under a tree, he wasn’t sure where to go, what to do in this strange setting.
Then Baba emerged from the temple. Paul watched shyly, almost as if he were hoping not to be noticed. Immediately Baba’s laser look picked him out, as he tried to melt into the trunk of a neem tree. Like a bolt of lightning it penetrated his whole being “Come inside that wall!” it commanded.
At this pivotal moment my husband knew that Baba knew everything about him. “That laser look went right through me, and I knew there was no escape.”
The next day Paul entered the courtyard and sat down at the back of the crowd, inside the wall. Again, Baba gave him a look that clearly said, “Stop shrinking into the background. Next time, come forward as far as you can.”
Obedience to Baba’s glance placed Paul in the front row several days in succession. One day Baba stood right in front of Paul and spoke in an Indian language to the two men on either side of him. Paul sat transfixed at Baba’s feet, his mind in a whirl, like the incomprehensible conversation eddying above his head. He didn’t dare to touch those feet. Instead, he held his hands just above them, as if warming them at a fireside.
Chapter 51
EARS TO HEAR
You have been listening to Me for many years.
You take down notes and listen to tape records.
Has there been the slightest change in you?
Baba
At about two p.m. on Christmas Eve, we learned that Mary had to be robed in white and garlanded with deep yellow flowers, as an angel in the choir for the Christmas play. Much scurrying around to tailors. She made a rather bored and bewildered angel, chestnut locks gleaming under a halo of marigolds. Was she regretting the Nativity play in Buis, where she would have had the leading role of the Holy Mary?
While waiting for permission to enter the temple for the play, I peeked through the doorway and saw a group of “angels” around Baba, who was lighting a lamp or candle. A delightful picture. I suddenly held my breath. Standing right next to the Lord was Mary, more fascinated by the flame that He was lighting than by Him.
The angelic sounds of harp strings opened our Christmas Eve programme; at last I was hearing Alice Coltrane playing - and playing - and playing. I could have listened all night, but a play was at last ready to be performed. Baba signaled to Alice to wind up her selection, and the play began.
Tenderly I watched Baba in His chair, my child in the choir, and my husband in clear view on the men’s side. I was dewy-eyed with bliss.
By four o’clock on the following afternoon, 25 December 1978, the temple at Prasanthi Nilayam was already overflowing with pilgrims from far and near , come to celebrate Christmas with the One who, many believe, sent our Lord Jesus Christ to humankind. We were privileged to hear notable speakers from Australia, Europe and America, including Alvin Drucker, John Hislop and Howard Murphet, author of Sai Baba, Man of Miracles.
The Lord Sathya Sai Baba’s discourse gave the words of those before Him a brighter patina of meaning, so that they sparkled like crystals on a river bed. His message of love was aimed at our very souls; whether it reached its mark depended largely on each one of us.
While most of the privileged audience contented ourselves with listening, others were also recording. On video film, tape or paper we diligently stored away treasures of wisdom to be tapped in years to come. As for me, my tape had run out sooner than expected. I had grabbed a notebook and pen, without missing a beat. Squished in between an American lady and a girl from Singapore, I tried to make myself as small as I could without cramping too many muscles, and scribbled on.
Baba was telling us that in the days of Jesus many poor people made a living of catching small birds to sell to other poor people as offerings in the temples. The wealthy bought larger animals and birds as sacrifices, but the poor could afford only sparrows and wrens. Middlemen profited from this traffic, setting up tables in and by the temple.
Jesus upset the system by giving the bird-sellers money so that they would not need to trap birds for a living. To the buyers He preached sermons of compassion, saying you must sacrifice animal feelings, not defenceless creatures.
As Baba told the story, I could easily imagine Jesus striding into a temple and overturning money-changers’ tables, then opening the doors of cages to release bird after bird. I could see the air full of wheeling wings.
The melodious voice of Baba rose to cover the twittering of our own temple birds. Gradually I became aware that above the temple doorways the air was full of wings and the ledges were alive with chatter.
After every sundown colonies of sparrows, swallows, wrens return to their nests on the ledges high overhead to roost for the night. On this particular evening they didn’t seem to be able to settle down as usual.
So agitated were the birds that I wondered if they were also tuning in to Baba’s vivid word picture of the fate of small birds in temples at the time of Jesus. This would not be surprising in view of Baba’s closeness to all creatures. I could almost hear the older winged ones telling the younger: “Wasn’t it terrible? Our ancestors were used for sacrifices in temples. Aren’t we lucky to be here and safe?”
My pen lay forgotten in my lap as I became less and less the dutiful student determined to pass an unspecified exam. Like a child hearing a bedtime story, I let my spirit rove back two thousand years.
As my senses extended beyond the physical, and shifted back in time I began to pick up subtle impressions. The figure of Swami receded into the background, as if He were behind a gossamer-thin curtain. Spellbound, I watched while a scene from the time of Jesus unfolded before my inner vision:
A rocky incline sloped upward under a cloudy sky. From the summit of a high hill Jesus was addressing us. “Us?” Somehow I identified myself with an individual in this crowd that covered the hillside.
When I looked down into the lap of the person that I seemed to be, I saw filthy rags, tied every which way around an unwashed body. Listening with me were many other people of my kind.
The word “listening” is inadequate, though. We were drinking in the words of Jesus as if they were the purest water we had ever tasted, from a fountain that we had been looking for all our lives. For once, our stomachs did not trouble us; we must have been fed earthly food already that day. Now we were drinking in divine Truth.
Where I was huddled, we were the lowest of the low, not able to buy even the beak of a bird in the temple, and so all the more “beyond redemption”. Beneath our unwashed apearance beat many a pure heart, thirsty for the divine, and grateful that such a great Teacher would speak to the likes of us. As no one ever had before, He understood our innermost longings. Now, thanks to Him, ancient knowledge was restored to us and new insights revealed.
“And so you think you once lived at the same time as Jesus and heard Him speak in person! ...” cut in a skeptical inner voice - my twentieth-century mind interfering. I ignored it before it could spoil the clear, translucent scene before my visionary eye. Never mind the pros and cons of reincarnation. In a willing suspension of disbelief I was being treated to a glimpse of how it might have been when Jesus walked the earth and people could listen without literacy or tape recorders to get in their way.
For a few moments I was able to alternate between two time frames. Holding onto the picture from the past, I took a comparing look around the Prasanthi Nilayam temple on Christmas Eve, 1978: Here before me was a Holy Being, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, telling the same eternal Truth as Jesus to people crowded together. Unlike the ragged, dust-crusted listeners on the stony hill, we were well-washed, swathed in lovely saris, like a flower garden of colours. We were sheltered in a jewel of a temple. The birds nesting above the altars were free to fly in and out as the spirit moved.
I shifted my focus for one long, last look at the rocky hillside under cloudy skies, and the quiet listeners. Real listeners. Hungry for love, like us in 1978, but also thirsty for Truth in a way that I in the latter days of the twentieth century seemed to have forgotten. I thought of a verse from a hymn by the Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier:
In simple trust like theirs who heard
beside the Syrian sea
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word,
rise up and follow Thee.
The vision of Jesus on the Mount faded into the background. I looked down at my lap again, and saw a crisp white sari with a gold border, a notebook and pen. All around me were ladies in elegant saris, hair and teeth shining, freshly bathed, no doubt. Not an illiterate in the lot. Most of us were equipped with passport, return air ticket. Many had come complete with tape recorder, notebook, pen and university degree. Although grateful for all my advantages and material comforts, I questioned how to keep them from being a barrier between me and our own Embodiment of Love. I wished I had the gift of listening to the Avatar of our time with whole heart and soul.
As my spirit returned from a vision of the past to my own time and place, I realized that Swami was answering a question that had been troubling me. I had been wondering about the true meaning of Holy Communion, the taking of bread and wine to represent flesh and blood. Was this a carry-over from pre-Christian practises, even human sacrifice or cannibalism?
“We are all one,” Swami was explaining. He said the original name of Jesus was Issa, meaning the Lord of all living beings. Turn “Issa” around, and you have “Sa-ee”. “Issa - Sa-ee. Sai and I are one.” Then our teacher - master - rabbi - guru - swami - for all these expressions mean the same - went on to tell us what Jesus said at his last supper with the disciples:
The bread represented His flesh and the wine His blood, meaning that all beings were to be treated as Himself, and no distinction made between friend and foe, we or they. Everybody is His body, and the blood flowing in all of us is His; all are divine. Then Swami added - and I take this from the transcription of His discourse in Sanatana Sarathi, since my notes did not cover this:
“Birds and beasts need no Divine Incarnation as bird or beast to guide them, for they have no inclination to stray from their Dharma. Man alone forgets or ignores the goal of life.”
Since that evening when the sparrows in the temple distracted me from scribbling, I seldom take notes of Swami’s discourses. I cannot always understand the translations because of acoustics or accents, but it does not matter. I am more than happy to let the golden voice flow all around and through me, and feel the love emanating from Sai.
Chapter 52
TWO SWANS
It is not right that man,
who is endowed with immense potential,
should be content with what is seen by the physical eyes.
Baba
About halfway through our three-week stay Mary’s English began to flow freely again, as she made friends of all ages from all over the world. A charming Californian blonde took over the styling of her hair, braiding it in two long, thick plaits, and leaving a few rebellious curls to stray over her brow, or smoothing it into two tresses, fastened just so.
In the final days of our third, and last, week in India, the pieces of our family relationships came back together better than ever, without any apparent effort on our part. I could only watch the strands of our lives loosen, smooth themselves out and weave themselves back together like Mary’s hair.
We celebrated New Year’s Day, 1979, by walking to the dairy farm with its Krishna shrine. As we were about to leave, Swami arrived. “Come, Geeta!” He called. His elephant came trumpeting up to Him. While she touched His feet with her trunk He patted her lovingly.
A family from Sweden and South America were called into an interview. Swami said that their little girl would be much better within a week, and would continue to improve. They should go and live in Sweden. By the time they left, the child had a new light in her eyes that amazed all who had been concerned with her condition.
Little blond Sathya and three-year-old Celadine were two beautiful children who were at the ashram during my earlier visit. Both had interviews with their mothers. Celadine didn’t wait for her mother to speak to Baba at darshan, but piped out: “Temple, Swami?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
No one but Swami knew, however, how little time was left on earth for young Sathya’s mother. Within a year or so, while they were still at the ashram, this lovely young woman suddenly fell ill. Then, very quickly, she was gone.
On January 6, Swami left Puttaparthi for Brindavan, near Bangalore. We got our subscription to Sanathana Sarathi and ordered our taxi. It came quite late in the evening, and so Paul decided that we and the driver needed our sleep. In any case no one is encouraged to travel after dark.
At 5:30 on the following morning we left for Bangalore in time for darshan at Whitefield. It was an all-day bhajan, being Sunday. Baba said, “Very happy!” many times.
Three action-packed days in Bangalore followed, with many beautiful darshans at Brindavan, but no interview. When I managed to have a disinterested darshan, everything seemed to come to me, and I felt at peace with myself, in harmony with all around.
One day, while waiting for Swami to come out, I wrote in my diary a long prayer, asking Him to help me use time better, to centre inwardly more, have more compassion, “to purify heart and mind so that You appear before me in all Your effulgence, so that I radiate your truth and love.”
That same week Baba asked an American lady called Wendy to address the women from abroad. She said that when Baba looks at us, He does not look so much at the body as at the subtler aspects of our being.
I was to remember this homily ten years later, in 1989, when He would give me a glimpse of what He sees: the darkness that we may absorb, and the light that can banish that darkness through love. On that rare occasion He invited me to see light within and around people as never before. The groundwork for that unforeseeable and unforgettable experience was being laid in 1979.
A photograph taken at Brindavan during the last few days of our stay shows Mary with Julie, an American girl of her age, posing in front of the statue of Saraswathi. The goddess of wisdom and music is playing the vina. The mother taking the wishful photograph sees the future in a rosy light.
Certainly, Mary blossomed beautifully in the ambiance of Baba and the people congregating around Him - and not forgetting the clean little puppy that she was free to fondle. (Unlike the stray dogs prowling Baba’s ashram this puppy’s mother was a house pet.) We hoped she could attend one of His schools, but this was not to be. We were all in for a very bumpy ride over a rocky road for years to come.
Time was running out when Paul called out to Baba during darshan, “We’re leaving tomorrow, Swami!”
The reply that he heard was, “It’s all right!” And Paul felt it really was. Everything. All his worries were banished by a wave of Baba’s hand.
Shortly before leaving I told Parvati, with some hesitation, about the vision of Christ on the Mount that I had on Christmas day. She said matter-of-factly, “You are lucky to be developing the ability to communicate directly with Swami. A time will come when it will be difficult to get close to that body that He has chosen. There will be so many people around. Those who do not depend on His physical presence will be very blessed. You will not have to travel to India to be in touch with Him. Don’t be afraid of your visions. Everything comes from Him.”
My first Innerview with Baba happened in, of all places, the taxi on way from Whitefield to Bangalore airport. I saw in my inner eye myself with Swami in an interview room, and felt His love and blessings. Then he seemed to give me a taste of merging with Him. Afterward I saw briefly His effulgence - as much of His cosmic form as I can stand at present. Finally, I seemed to go on a trip in space with Him in a “boat” with swans picked out in sparkling lights forming each side of it. Had the feeling there were others there too, but invisible to me, so that Swami could give each of us a close experience unperturbed by third parties.
This was also my first experience of having an inner vision confirmed outwardly. The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung had already found a word for this convergence of symbols, meanings, ideas and events: “synchronicity”.
First there was the vision in my mind’s eye, momentarily set aside while we checked in at the airport and waited slapping mosquitos, for our ongoing flight. We passed through customs, settled ourselves in our seats and relaxed. After lunch, I sleepily opened my new copy of Summer Showers in Brindavan, but soon sat up straight as Baba’s words leaped out at me.
"The state of our mind is compared to a lake which contains two swans represented by the aspects of soham. This sound of soham proclaims, “I am that” and demonstrates the oneness of all creation.
"The swan always symbolizes purity in our tradition, and when we compare this aspect to that of soham, we wish to bring out the purity in all creation. This implies that in the mind of man, which is like a lake, the identity between man and God should be promoted."
