Everyday Yogi

by H. S. Shivaprakash

  When I observed Baba in everyday situations, I could see that he considered his life as a sacred scripture for others. All kinds of people would come to see him and he received them unconditionally, whether they were merchants, coolies, labourers, former members of parliament, members of the legislative assembly or film producers. There was a film-maker who had incurred heavy losses and used to come and talk to Baba about his money problems. I wondered why Baba met such people. Finally, I asked him, ‘Why do you let all kinds of people come to you?’ He explained patiently, ‘Not everybody is qualified and ready for the Guru, but the Guru wants everyone to come to him. He does not discriminate between good and bad people. Even these people—film producers, drunkards, prostitutes and thieves—are the Guru’s children.

  ‘The gurus who entertain only sadhakas are limited, but our gurus are cosmic gurus. They help not only their disciples but everyone who comes to them. They help even liars and thieves to get what they want. And then they win their hearts and slowly bring them to the real path. You come here to earn something very big, something that cannot be measured in terms of worldly treasures.

  ‘That woman who runs an ashram close by once came to me and said, “I am in deep trouble, please bless me.” She wanted blessings in terms of money, and the Guru blessed her. She now has a car and runs a school. She must have a big bank account. Look around and see what there is in your guru’s house. The mat you are sitting on is in tatters; some days we get nothing to eat. But we are always full of joy. There is a saying, “Allah ka aashiq agar mar gaya, kafan ke liye kauri nahin rehni chahiye.” (When Allah’s beloved dies, there should not a single penny to buy his shroud.) Reflect upon this.’

  I had a friend called Bhogappa who was a circle inspector in the police department. Khalil Rahman, another friend and the former principal of the police training school in Magod, had introduced him to me. Bhogappa had psychic powers. Sitting in Magod, he could see and hear what was happening to our friends and enemies in far-off places. At that time, I was still impressed by such cheap powers.

  Bhogappa happened to come to Bangalore, and I took him to Baba. This man was fluent in Urdu as he was from Hyderabad. He did not know that Baba’s Urdu was poor, and he started boasting about his own Urdu. Then he told Baba that he should come out of the cave and help him provide spiritual guidance to people.

  Baba listened to him with a childlike smile on his face. Before Bhogappa left, Baba said, ‘You are the leader of a great revival of faith.’

  Bhogappa felt very flattered. After he left the cave, Baba said, ‘Why did you bring this buffoon here?’

  I said, ‘I thought you would shut him up. Why were you pretending to be ignorant?’

  Baba replied, ‘A stupid child came here for some chocolates; I gave him some and he’s happy now. I suffered him because you had brought him. But tell me, how can the Guru find a place in the body and mind of a person filled with so many big words?’

  Still, I wanted to know more about Bhogappa’s psychic powers. Baba explained, ‘Psychic powers are not worth even a fake coin. Somebody who can predict whether a boy or a girl will be born or whether you will win or lose a lottery is neither a guru nor a yogi. These are just tricks. A real guru is one who has realized himself and leads others to self-realization.’

  Baba had a small transistor and would listen to music sometimes. Once, when he was absorbed in a song, I said to him, ‘My family life is in a shambles. What shall I do?’

  He said, ‘Listen to this song. It is a famous Hindi film song. “Hawa ke saath saath, ghata ke sang sang, O saathi chal…”’ He repeated the lines and then asked me to think about the meaning. After a while, he told me that one also had to be able to still the mind while learning to flow. Otherwise, he explained, ‘You follow the mind wherever it pulls you and you exhaust yourself in the process.’

  There were many other subjects on which I sought Baba’s guidance. I asked him about trust one day. He said, ‘We must, of course, have trust. But we should also find a guru worthy of our trust. However, I can tell you this: so long as you have distrust the size of a mustard, you can’t get the Guru’s grace. Remember what happened to Draupadi in the Mahabharata? When Dushasana started pulling off her sari, she began to call out to Lord Krishna who was playing dice with his wife in Vaikuntha. His wife said, “Please go. Your sister is crying out.” Krishna said, “She is calling out to me without full trust. She is still trying to cover her breasts and vagina with her hands.”

  ‘When Dushasana’s violence increased, Draupadi threw up her hands and screamed, “Krishna!” That very moment Krishna appeared and saved her honour. So long as you hold on to your prestige and image, the Guru will not come; he is deaf to your call. But once you pass the test, the Guru will always be with you. Krishna never left Draupadi alone after that hour of trial.’

  ‘People believe only in what is visible, but that is precisely what maya is. The whole cosmos was born out of the nada, audible only to the inner ear. It cannot be grasped by the senses. My guru had asked me to concentrate on the nada when I did tapasya for eight years in the cremation ground of Munireddi Palya. Once a day, a gurubhai would bring me some food; occasionally, I had to break my meditation to answer nature’s call. The rest of the time I covered my eyes with a piece of black cloth and shut out the world. Pulling my sense of hearing in, I would go on listening to the music within.

  ‘Many of your Hindus pretend to keep vigil on Shivaratri, but what do they really do? They watch TV! Unless you close the eyes of the flesh, you can’t open your spiritual eye. Only with that eye can you listen to the inner music. When your external faculties are stilled, your inner journey begins. Sitting inside this cave, listening to my ektara, I am actually listening to the nada, and this nada takes me everywhere.

  ‘Don’t you know the lines of Narayana Thatha? He says, “Have you not listened to the nada? Have you not heard its ten types?” If you can realize the nada, you don’t need any mantra or guru. All sounds are within this body; learn to listen to it. Nada is guru, God and cosmos. This is what Sarpabhushana Shivayogi described in a song: “I made a pilgrimage to the sacred Shri Giri, the Shri Giri inside the body / Where yogis reach by different paths…”’

  After concluding the song, Baba said, ‘The path of bhogis is not the path of yogis.’

  Though the doors of Baba’s cave were open for everybody, he would decide who could come to him. Many people who wanted to reach him for spiritual wisdom would never make it to the cave; other people would wander over to the cave, peep in and move on. Locals came to him for predictions. However, only a handful knew of Baba’s spiritual powers.

  The Shiva temple near the cave had a Lingayat priest looking after it. He was jealous of Baba’s popularity with the locals and would create problems for Baba on a daily basis. He would growl at me whenever he saw me walking towards the cave because he wanted me to go to him, not to Baba.

  I asked Baba, ‘You say the Guru is all powerful. Why doesn’t he teach this priest a lesson?’

  Baba said, ‘This is the story of the Mahabharata. If there had been only the Pandavas, there would have been no war or the Bhagavadgita. The Pandavas are just five but there are many Kauravas.’

  ‘Why doesn’t his lingam worship purify his heart?’

  ‘That is because he’s not realized his own body. The lingam is the cosmic body. How can a person understand the cosmic body unless he understands his own physical body?’

  While on the subject of the body, I want to share with you something rather intriguing that Baba once said: ‘Not everyone living in the human body is a human being. I’ll tell you a story to illustrate this.

  ‘My guru had a guru who was very old. He had a dirty habit. Whenever he wanted to piss or shit, he would simply pull down his pajamas and do his job then and there, irrespective of where he was. At one point, I was asked to keep him company, round the clock, for a few days. He always chose a place like a bus stand or a market, where there were lots of men and wom
en around, to pull down his pajamas. He would just squat as if the public place was his private toilet. To make things worse, he would continue to squat even after the job was done. People would turn away in disgust. I ran out of patience and shouted at him. “Can’t you choose a place where you don’t need to trouble other people?”

  ‘He was furious. “You’re a blind bastard. You think all these people are really human beings? Look closely.”

  ‘The next moment I saw that all those people had human bodies but the heads of animals. Someone had the head of a dog while another person had the head of a pig; yet another had a cow’s head and so on.

  ‘A few minutes later my normal sight came back to me. He had given me the realization that not all people were actually human beings. Most of them were animals who looked like humans.’

  Baba, in the meanwhile, was pure not just in spirit but had a magnificent appearance as well. He was lean and tall. Though his face bore the brunt of thirty years of intense sadhana, there was magic in his smile. I longed to take his photograph but he always resisted, saying, ‘This body is maya. What is real in it is the mantra body inside. God showed his pictures to your Hindus but not to our Muslims. Since my gurus followed the path of the formless, the yogis of our tradition cannot be captured with the camera.

  ‘Two years ago there was a visitor from Iran. He insisted on taking my photograph even though I explained to him why it was not possible. When I came out of my bathroom and was rubbing my face with a towel, he took a photograph of me. Look at the result.’

  Baba took out an old photograph from one of his books. It showed the inside of the cave with Mahmood, Ammaji’s son, sitting in one corner. The place where Baba had been standing was blank.

  After this, I gave up the idea of taking his photograph.

  Baba always wore a lungi and a kurta and kept his head covered with a green turban. He was a stickler for hygiene. For instance, he would carry a brick every time he went out to urinate as Muslims are expected to clean themselves with a brick after urination.

  On one occasion, my poet friend Veechi came to see me from Tumkur, and I took him to Baba’s cave. Baba was running a very high temperature but insisted on having a bath. I wanted to stop him from exerting. He said, ‘Since I came onto this path, not a day has passed without a bath. My body has become Brahmapinda, divine body, through the constant remembrance of the Guru. It has to be clean.’ What Baba meant was that the remembrance of the guru and the chanting of the guru’s mantra transforms the mamsapinda, the physical body, into the mantrapinda or Brahmapinda.

  Concerned about the fever, I went down to the market to get Baba some medicines. By the time I returned, he had finished his bath and applied his attar. Attar was a channel of grace in his tradition. Each time I took leave of him, he would apply attar to my clothes.

  As I have mentioned before, Baba rarely asked for money. One night, he said, ‘Shivaprakash, I went to the Sultan Palya burial ground yesterday to meet my guru. I found that his tomb had completely given way. Nothing stands except for some stones. I’ve decided to rebuild the tomb. Please donate as much as you can.’

  I collected about five hundred rupees and went back to him three days later. I put the notes near his seat and sat down.

  Baba said, ‘Take it back. No more tomb business.’

  I looked surprised. He said, ‘I had asked five other close disciples to donate. Everyone said yes. But last night, my guru showed me a movie in the dream. What a scene! The earth, oceans, skies, sun, moon and stars were rolling about like dry leaves in the cosmic tempest. Huge towers and skyscrapers were being blown away. Just as you hear the commentator’s voice in the news on TV, I could hear my guru’s voice. “You scum! When the whole world is going to be blown away like this at the time of qayamat, you want to build another home for my dead body?”

  ‘I was horrified by the movie. I had made the mistake of seeing my guru as part of this impermanent world rather than seeing this impermanent world as part of his eternal being. Tears in my eyes, I asked for his forgiveness.

  ‘Shivaprakash, I could have built an institution for my guru, but such things are only for the gurus of this world. Cosmic gurus have no institutions. They turn their body into a temple, a monastery. Whatever we build in this world is like iron, which always rusts. But have you seen fire rusting? What we build comes and goes like fire. True gurus also keep out of public view. They are like the fruit hidden in the foliage, while the gurus who build big ashrams and go round in cars and aeroplanes are just drama gurus.

  ‘I have been living in this cave for the last thirty years. People think that I’m enjoying myself eating peanuts all the time. The reality is that I am eating and digesting iron nuts, not peanuts. The Guru has put me on this duty day in and day out. At night, I have to travel out of the body to various places. Sometimes, I visit tombs of great saints in places like Ajmer, Benares and Baghdad. I also visit Allahabad and Rameshwaram. Lots of work to do everywhere. If I tell this to people, who will believe me?’

  I did wonder what was going on with Baba when he was in namaz. I used to watch him sometimes, and would notice various expressions flit across his face every now and then. Sometimes, it seemed as if he was talking to someone; occasionally, he looked as though he was giving comfort. He went on. ‘There are times, when great mahatmas die, that a lot of obstacles crop up, preventing their smooth passage to the other world. I have to go to such places to remove the obstacles. This happened when Vinoba Bhave died and when Jayaprakash Narayan died. They are not from my faith or from the tradition of my guru, but I had to go because my guru asked me to go and clear the path.’

  As I have shared earlier, Baba used to say that the ultimate scripture is the inner scripture. He told me a story to illustrate this. ‘The white men who ruled India were very contemptuous of our holy books. One day, they took copies of the Vedas and the Koran, made a huge pile of the books and set them on fire. Right in front of a huge crowd of people. A British officer announced, “What are your scriptures compared to our Bible? Look, I’ve reduced all of them to ashes.” ‘Sri Ramakrishna was standing in that crowd. He laughed loudly at the white man’s boast.

  The irritated British officer asked, “Who laughed?”

  “I did.”

  “How dare you laugh so loudly in front of me?’’

  “I am laughing because you think that you have destroyed all the scriptures. Actually, you have not destroyed even a single letter.’’

  “Then show me where your scriptures are!’’

  “Just wait and see.’’ Sri Ramakrishna asked someone in the crowd to bring a mute six-year old girl from the village. When she came, he told her to recite the scriptures. The girl recited all the Vedic verses.

  Sri Ramakrishna said, “Look, white man, all our scriptures are stored in the heart of this mute girl. None of your fires can burn them.” The white man was humiliated.’

  Baba didn’t look down upon the knowledge one found in books. He recognized it as one of the rungs of the ladder you have to climb on your way up to liberation. Still, he knew that such knowledge was someone else’s experience. ‘Reading can only give you a second-hand experience. You keep telling me that this person drove so many miles, that one drove so many more miles. But when will you start driving your own car?’

  At this time, Baba was in his late sixties and his body was giving way. He had kept vigil every night for thirty years. Through these years, he had smoked endless beedis and consumed a great deal of ganja. Each night, before sitting for namaz, he would also drink a glass of arrack.

  One evening, I noticed that his eyes were troubling him. I offered to buy him glasses since I knew he could not afford them. The day he went with me to the doctor was the first time in many years that he had left his cave.

  On our way to the optician, I saw a young man grovelling on the ground; he was drunk. I remarked, ‘Look, how drink ruins people.’

  Baba said, ‘It’s not drink but the drunkard who is to blame. Dr
ink is sudha, the gift of gods. What he is drinking is sura, the drink of mortality. Sura becomes sudha only when consecrated by a guru. Most humans drink sura, the drink of death.’ Baba had prohibited me from drinking. ‘You haven’t got the orders from above,’ he said.

  I took Baba to a famous optician near my house in Rajaji Nagar. His clinic was full of pictures of many popular saints. Before testing Baba’s eyes, the doctor gave a long lecture about his spiritual quest. He said, ‘What is this material life? I am fed up with money and wealth. I get peace of mind only when I go to Puttaparthi to meet Sai Baba. That is the greatest pleasure for me…’

  When he gave me the bill, he didn’t give a concession of a single paisa. If he hadn’t given that long lecture, his large belly wobbling as he spoke, I may not have bothered to look at the amount.

  I told Baba I was very angry with the optician.

  Baba said, ‘No need. Unless there are fake notes, how can you recognize the real notes? It is such people who think that following the guru is like eating peanuts, but you know that is like eating iron nuts. If such people try to eat those iron nuts, their teeth will break.’

  I was sitting in the cave one evening, watching Baba as he performed his namaz. As he finished, he opened his eyes and said, ‘This clock, this pen, the calendar over there—all of them have life.’

  I was silent.

  He continued, ‘Never doubt this even for a moment. This whole cosmos is the Guru’s ornament. All these objects are engaged in the Guru’s worship at their own levels; for this reason, eating meat is forbidden on the guru’s path. Our Muslims and your Hindus do not see this. They don’t realize that animals have a lot more life than plants. Whether Hindu or Muslim, whoever eats meat will drown in the ocean of birth. For a great guru, all life forms are like his disciples. That is why great yogis have tigers, lions and cobras as their friends.’