Literature in our scriptures describes human birth as the best among births of all other creatures. ‘Mokhya’-the ultimate freedom from the cycles of births and deaths can be attained easily when a soul is born as a human. Every human is endowed with an intellect, which helps him to have a complete understanding of the truth. But understanding of what truth?

Truth implies the basic quest of a soul as to why he is born. Who is he? Basically the understanding of his own self is known as ‘self-realization’-the ultimate truth.

Alas, there lies the riddle! Understanding your own self is the hardest of all. One can understand the trickiest of Mathematics, Arithmetic, and Alzebra, but knowing thyself is the most perplexing among all. Just hear a true story from me that kept me shocked for many years. A very qualified human being, who worked as an officer in a bank was found to be suffering from cancer. He was so upset that one night he killed his wife, his two beautiful daughters and at length he committed suicide by hanging himself.

I was so perturbed over their deaths that I wrote an article. I explained my own inability to understand that the dead man could easily grasp the chemical composition of any thing. For example he could explain with ease that two Hydrogen particles and one Oxygen particle created one particle of water. But what failed him to understand the very composition of his own sorrow?

Understanding is not so easy. The best qualified among all also suffer from poor understanding of things in their lives.

There importance is laid upon understanding of your self with the help of a ‘guide’, hitherto known as Guru in Indian culture. Such understanding named as self realization comes from the pearls of wisdom from the words of Guru.

India has millions of saints who are eligible preceptors of metaphysics, who can ferry their followers across the ocean of mundane existence with their teachings.

But does a person have to search for a Guru? Well here I disagree.
Nostalgia takes me to the time when I was just seven years old and my eyes fell for the first time on the photo of Shirdi Sai Baba. My grandfather used to hold us spellbound with the narration of incidents from the life of the great saint from Shirdi.

But my grandpa was not a devotee of the great saint in strict sense. Neither did he worship the photo nor the idol of the saint. I do not know till now that what was the source of his natural reverence for him?

Again what inspired him to narrate before us the tales from the great saint’s life? Our land, Orissa is famous for its distinct culture of Lord Jagannath and we have innumerable saints and monasteries here.

The paths in a human birth are predetermined but at the same time impervious. My grandfather’s narration about Baba slowly gave birth in our minds to a kind of ‘fondness’ which could have been there because of innocence of my age.

But as events unfolded it was not. We shifted to a small township in Orissa where my father used to work as a branch manager for a bank. We started constructing a building there and a portion of the same house was let out to a person who worked as a junior engineer of a public enterprise. It was there I saw for the first time big portraits of Shirdi Sai and a same sized portrait of another saint beside him.

“Who is he”-I asked my mother?

“Satya Sai- the present incarnation of Shirdi Sai”-My mother told me.

I could not properly follow the meaning of an incarnation. Nor could I know anything about the significance of ‘self-realization’. But today I realize that my Guru had manifested himself only at that time, when I was very immature and saved me from the perilous pitfalls of my life. Soon we learned singing ‘bhajans’-prayers of both the ‘avatars’ of Sai. In my heart I started surrendering my problems to him from an early age of ten.

The gentleman who used to stay in the portion of our house was extraordinarily devoted to Sai. He used to sit and listen to the songs of devotion of Sai by Lata Mangeskar and I watched his tears roll down on his cheeks.

One unique thing that I have been watching since the early days of my childhood is the manifestation of miracles. It is very difficult to remember all and write them in this article. Sometimes I do think that I will compose a compendium of the miracles and publish it. The first one I saw in my childhood was during the night there was a program to hold a night long prayer-bhajan of the Sai avatars and we did it in the company of the engineer. In the wee hours I was startled to find bibhuti-holy ash oozing out of both the portraits of Sai. Slowly those were covered with layers of holy ash.

My life remained mired in many catastrophes. I ran away from my school and my name was struck off from the register of the students thrice. There came an occasion when there was a possibility that I would stay a drop-out from the school. But the avatars ensured something different in the end. I went to the best College of the place.

One of my old friends asked me that how I have so far survived in the roller-coaster of my life steeped in crisis. I explained that only mantra-holy instruction from my Guru or the avatars is to keep patience, unperturbed by the disturbances of life. The rest is only managed by them. They have kept me in their iron grips just like a pigeon being tied with a string and controlled by its master. They have always seen to my prosperity despite all the pitfalls.

Lastly I should mention the oft-repeated miracles that I have seen many times in this very life. Well those who disbelieve my accounts of miracles and criticize the avatars invariably and inevitably turn into dedicated devotees later.

In the year 2003, I used to work with a jeweler who grimaced his face as he heard about Shirdi Sai.

“He was a Muslim”-He used to express his hatred.

I visited his jewelry showroom in the year 2010.

Alas, I found a beautiful photo of Sai placed on the fringe of showcase. The second thing is without offering flowers to His photo with the recitations of Sanskrit hymns, he has disallowed his staff to begin transactions of a day. His entire staff stand with their hands folded and eyes closed and recite the prayer of avatar and then they lift the shutter of the shop to begin the day as usual.

May the avatars give such wisdom to everybody?

Om Sairam.

Srikanta Mohanty
HIG-1/60, BDA Colony,
Bhubaneswar-751002
Email;srikant_mh@rediffmail.com