HELLO, THIS IS PSN SPEAKING

PSN: Hello! Are you leaving today?

 

Visitor 1 (V 1): Yeah, just returned the keys. A week is good enough!

 

PSN: Taking a flight from Bengaluru?

 

Visitor 2 (V 2): Yes. But all of us are not going to the same place.

 

PSN: I can make out. This gentleman is from the US, you are probably from Iran, and our third friend from Delhi or Mumbai. Am I right?

 

(They looked at each other in astonishment)

V 3: But how did you…?

 

PSN: Oh, that is not difficult at all! The first gentleman spoke like an American, the second gentleman spoke with a mid-eastern accent, and…how can I miss an Indian!

 

                (They all laughed loud)

 

          Well, you have spent a week here, isn’t it? I hope you had a great time.

 

V 1: I am a tourist; I go to many places. From here I am going to Sri Lanka - one week there.

 

V 2: A couple of my friends came here last year. They advised me to come here.

 

PSN: You regret you accepted their advice?

 

V 2: Not exactly. But maybe I would think twice to come here again.

 

PSN: Oh sure. You need not risk your comforts in this out of the way place.

 

V 2: No offence, please. No meat and no drinks for a whole week is exasperating!

 

PSN: I thought people don’t drink in Iran.

 

V 2: I am a Parsi from Teheran, and we drink more wine than water.

 

PSN: And our Indian friend didn’t like it too?

 

Visitor 3 (V 3): In Delhi, we hardly spend time at home. We have to leave home quite early in the morning to commute to the workplace. After work - club, and dinner out, back home late at night, fall into bed dead tired. Here a whole week with no activity at all. Sitting in that huge hall, hours on end, some songs two times a day, eat unfamiliar food, and to top it all, all this pushing around by everyone here! Couldn’t even smoke in the room! Oh, not quite a pleasant week.

 

PSN: All of you stayed in one room?

 

V 1: We all met at the Beng.. Bangalore airport, and discovered we were all going to the same place. So we shared a cab. In the cab, we laughed and joked, got to know more about each other, and decided we can carry on this bonhomie if we shared a room.

 

PSN: Would you have travelled with a stranger, and shared a room in New York?

 

V 1: Nope, unless forced by circumstances.

 

PSN: And our Iranian friend, would you, in Teheran?

 

V 2: I guess, never.

 

PSN: I need not ask our Indian friend, he would never like to share his private space.

 

V 3: Sometimes I travel with a cousin. But we always take different rooms.

 

PSN: Then why did you stay together here?

 

V 2: Now that you are asking, I think it was rather unusual. What do you say, John? And you Kamal?”

 

Both: That was rather unusual, wasn’t it?

 

PSN: (chuckling) Was that the only unusual thing?

 

V 1: Well, for me, sitting on the floor for hours was. I would never do that in New York.

 

V 2: And not drinking for a whole week! At Teheran that would be a sacrilege! Ha..ha..ha

 

V 3: The way the scarfed men sometimes pushed me here and there, God, I would give them double in Delhi. No one would touch me like that and getaway.

 

PSN: What about sitting in the darshan hall?

 

V 1: Oh yes! Even now I don’t understand why they forced men and women to sit in separate parts of the hall. A woman can sue him who does that in the US.

 

V 2: You might even have some strange reasons not to allow men and women sitting together in the darshan hall, but to have separate eating places for men and women - that is insane!

 

V 3: And those scarfed polite-monsters stalking the corridors day and night asking us to lower our voices…! You cannot sing, dance, drink… Oh surely, I don’t deserve it!

 

PSN: But one of them took you to the hospital when you kicked your toenail off near the ice cream parlour, didn’t he?

 

V 3: Oh yes, he was such a kind man! He must be from Delhi or Haryana; we are all kind to each other.

 

PSN: We ought to, though two weeks ago when you were shopping in Connaught Place, and an old man asked you to help him carry his heavy bag to his car outside, you looked daggers at him and the poor thing had to drag his bag along the road to his car. You must be awfully busy.

 

V 3: Well Mr…

 

PSN: ‘PSN.’

 

V 3: Yes PSN, you know, life out there is generally very stressful, and…

 

PSN: And our friend from Iran?

 

V 2: No, I think the scarfed men are generally nice people. On the first day when I had cramps in my leg sitting on the floor for darshan, one of them helped me get up and took me to the stone bench at the edge of the hall and asked me to sit there. I wouldn’t have time to think of other people’s comforts back in Teheran.

 

V 1: That may be; but you see, to stop me coming into the hall with my iPhone was outrageous! I am a busy man and could make some international calls sitting in the hall. Wasn’t it a sheer waste of time to sit there for hours and do nothing?

 

PSN: Our Delhi friend, Kamal, wanted to put on his shorts and move around in the Ashram, but he was stopped and requested to go out in a ‘decent’ dress. That was unfortunate, isn’t that so Kamal?

 

V 3: Sure, it was. We go about everywhere in Delhi except the office in shorts, and no one ever thinks that is not decent! I am tired of this constant surveillance here.

 

V 2: But Kamal, don’t you think people here are much less aggressive than out there?

 

V 3: There is nothing to be aggressive about here. It’s a sleepy place, life hardly moves anywhere here. It looks like a printed circuit!

 

V 1: We are beginning to understand in the US that aggression does not take us anywhere. Our schools sadly have become a hotbed of gun culture. Many schools are hiring meditation teachers.

 

PSN: Did you meet people from other cultures here?

 

V 1: Oh yes! I met a Russian lady staying here for more than three weeks, and though she doesn’t know anything but Russian, she seems perfectly at home.

 

V 2: I made friends with a group from Finland, a couple from Mexico; some teachers and students from Africa arrived yesterday for 2 weeks stay. Even two or three persons, Muslims, came from Turkey for two days. I wonder how this place absorbs people from diverse cultures so easily! No one fights, gets mad at anyone, no one jumps lines, no one honks on the campus…amazing!

 

 

 

PSN: And our Delhi friend?

 

V 3: In spite of all my reservations, I must admit the most unusual and sometimes irritating thing for me has been the darshan hall. Thousands squat there in absolute silence waiting for a small strangely clad handsome man walking past with almost feminine grace and an infectious smile on his face. This quietness comes to them rather naturally there. How?

 

V 2: Yes, Kamal is correct. Though I am a talkative man, I don’t feel like talking in the hall.

 

V 1: We Americans can make friends easily, and break that easily too! But here no one seems interested in making friends. I had heard Indians are very friendly people. People here would come out to help you but won’t care about establishing a relationship!

 

V 3: No room has a television, AC, Wi-Fi or even a telephone – the basic necessities of modern living. Doesn’t it strike you as quite out of sync, Rustom?

 

V 2: Well it does Kamal, but I felt hardly a need for it from the second day. In my Teheran home, we have a television in every room. Now I wonder why we should need one in every room!

 

PSN: None of you has said anything about Baba, the soul of this place!

 

V 1: (Scratching his chin) In fact we wanted to ask you about Him. I have never met a person like Him. He is mysterious, yet appears friendly; He speaks very little but appears He knows solutions to all problems; He is a short, slim, delicate person, but appears to wield great authority. I am bewildered.

 

V 2: He always appears strangely joyful! Once He passed by me, I forgot myself and felt very happy. The whole day I did not have a care in the world! How does He do that? Kamal?

 

V 3: I am scared of Him! He once looked at me, I almost died! He made me feel so insignificant! From that day I always preferred sitting far away from Him.”

 

V 2: You know Kamal and John, I have a crowd phobia. I avoid going out into public places because I feel insecure in public. But here even among a thousand unknown people, I felt perfectly at home! Isn’t that funny? One day I had a strange idea, that all these people aren’t strangers really; I wanted to hug them all. That day I didn’t go to the darshan hall for fear of doing something crazy!

 

V 1: You know Rustom, I hate black people. Two days ago, in the western canteen, a black man came and sat across me at the same table. He looked at me and smiled. I also smiled at him. After lunch, we sat in the garden and talked a few minutes. When I returned to the room, I pulled out my travel mirror to check if it was still me! I would never do that in the US. How did I do that?

 

 

V 3: And I noticed another strange practice here. Those songs students sing morning and evening - what do you call them? Bhajans, ok? Why do they add Sai to almost every bhajan? First, I am thoroughly confused about the innumerable godheads people worship, to that is added another, Sai!

V 2: Not just that; it seems that here they celebrate even Christmas, Chinese new year, Buddha’s  Birthday; people from all corners of the world sing, dance and beat their exotic drums before Sai Baba, and I heard He enjoys them thoroughly! God! How on earth can a man do that! “

 

PSN: So I see you have a lot of issues to sort out. We shall take them one by one.

Your first problem is men and women sitting separately. In our culture, we always respect the privacy of women. Baba wants to give back to women their legitimate position of honour and respect. Hence this arrangement. This might help both men and women to rearrange their relationships. At least when you are trying to understand a different dimension of life, it does. Any objection?

 

V 1: But in our country, we respect them by treating them as our equals in every field.

 

PSN: Equality is not sameness. All the fingers of your hand do not do the same work and allowing the differences you don’t destroy their equality. We believe that when women play their specific roles, society can pursue excellence easily.

Next, our friend from Delhi is bitter about the behaviour of the scarfed men here. They only try to make it comfortable for the people sitting there for hours. You admit, Kamal, that they helped you too, and did ever so politely. If you discovered in them any rudeness, that can be part of Baba’s strategy for your growth.  

V 3: So your Baba planned my insult to help me grow? Huh! If I shout back, that too should be my strategy to help that guy grow. What is this growing, pray?

 

PSN: Spiritual growth happens only when you learn to hold your peace when everyone else has lost theirs.

 

V 2: Ah, I think some English poet said that.

 

V 1: Yes, Rudyard Kipling, in his poem ‘IF’.

 

PSN: You obviously disliked the behaviour of some of the scarfed men, and liked some others. You must realise that when you step into the ashram premises you are initiating your spiritual growth. Baba shows you that, what you dislike in others you should yourself not do, and what you like in them you should try and follow. When you see something nice, appreciate it. When you experience something unpleasant, remember not to create similar unpleasantness in your neighbour’s life. Hasn’t Jesus asked you to treat others as you expect others to treat you? Besides, look at these scarfed men whom you would like to ‘give double’! They come from all over the country from mostly poor or middle-class backgrounds. Many of them don’t have familiar food, proper rest, work in an unfamiliar environment, and do all the hard, unpleasant work for free. Don’t you think they make great sacrifices for the love of Baba? And they can’t even see Him every day. If their patience is sometimes strained, are you any better?

 

V 2: What you say seems reasonable.

 

PSN: The next complaint was about drinking and smoking. But all of you know that drinking and smoking do not promote health. People come here to spend some quality time with themselves, seeking to perceive the deeper levels of life. Drinking, smoking and such habits may help you escape the reality of life, not face it. And Baba doesn’t want the Ashram grounds to be littered with bottles and wrappers. Symbolically He wants to help you learn clean habits, clean feelings, and clean thoughts.

 

V 2: For a day or two I felt a little odd, but soon got over it. When I go home I am going to cut my cellar stock by half. It would save me a lot of money.

 

PSN: Our New York friend is upset that his iPhone was not allowed in the darshan hall. It is a way to tell you that you have lived long in a crowd, now it is time to build an identity for yourself. You very well know, my friends, that shared attention is a shared vision and people who lack concentration lack fulfilment. Baba wants you to forget the crowd for some time and remember yourself, to imbibe the peace and tranquillity pervading the darshan hall.

 

V 1: You speak like a modern psychiatrist, PSN! Once I saw a practising psychiatrist in New York to fix myself. He told me I am too much distracted, which threatens my integrity. He advised me to spend at least half an hour every day without my phone, internet and TV, thinking about myself, what I want to do, to be what I am. “That would rebuild you”, he told me.

 

 

 

 

PSN: Therefore Baba made this rule. Otherwise when you sit in the darshan hall a thousand phones would be buzzing and a thousand voices would fill the air. It would be the loudest, busiest, most distracted place in the world. How then can you connect to God for which you have made the trip? Isn’t that a very poor way of spending your precious dollars?

 

V 1: Indeed, I never judged it from this angle. But how did I make friends with that black person?

 

V 2: And why do you celebrate festivals of all cultures here? Doesn’t anyone object?

 

V 3: How come a Surdas, a Sufi and Dana Gillespie co-exist here? African singers and Beethoven are listened to with equal interest? What does your Baba want to prove?

 

PSN: He does not have to prove anything to anyone, while you have to prove a lot of things to each other. The world is in such a poor state because you have built walls between religions, languages, cultures, conventions, traditions, colours of skin, modes of dress, and a thousand other things while the earth is one. Baba teaches us that the races may be many, but the earth is one, so why break it up instead of building it? You experience fear and emptiness within you, so you switch wives and husbands just as you switch jobs, you run around the world, convert from one religion to another, fight, kill…but does anything help? No, because you have forgotten that there is only one religion, the religion of love; and there is only one caste, the caste of humanity. Baba is trying to establish not only the unity of humanity, but the unity of religions, of cultures, colours, traditions, ideas; you see, mankind is basically one life. Your poets, philosophers have said so, and now the scientists too are arriving at the same truth, aren’t they?

 

V 2: Well PSN, we certainly did not explore this angle, did we, guys? I guess looking at this place like you said… it is rather unique.

 

V 1: Looking back at the week we spent here I can safely say in spite of our many disagreements, the fact that we spent a whole week in the same room most cordially is itself a proof of what PSN says. I don’t remember spending a week at home without fighting with my wife!

 

V 2: What did you say about religion PSN? The religion of love? How can love be a religion?”

 

PSN: Are you married?

 

V 2: Yes, twenty years.

 

PSN: Do you always fight with your wife like our US friend?

 

V 2: No never, our marriage is very stable.

 

PSN: Because both believe in the same religion?

 

V 2: Not necessarily. My wife is a Catholic, and I am Parsi. But that has never stood in the way of our marriage.

 

PSN: So, love has kept you united, not religion. Religion is what religion does, well?

 

V 2: Hmm, now I understand. It is insanity to fight in the name of religions, and what you said, love is the one religion that can keep humanity united, is very true. You are saying very interesting things PSN!

 

PSN: I only repeat what Baba has been saying for ages. People who come here to be with Baba for some time, come with their prejudices, and return with new prejudices! Do you know why? They are scared to alter their programming and think.

 

V 2: How is that?

 

PSN: You have grown up with wrong inputs from society, and you are scared to challenge them.

 

V 1: How can whole humanity be one caste?

 

PSN: I said a slightly different thing. To say that there is only one caste, the caste of humanity, is not to acknowledge caste and creed as differentiating factors. God created all men and women with the same needs and the same possibilities and called them His children. How would you divide them and call them lower or higher?

 

V 3: Even our constitution approves castes. So, differences are constitutional.

 

PSN: When the governance of a country is determined by the artificial barriers between people, can it be anything but misgovernance? Don’t you see how the whole of humanity is yearning for its inevitable oneness? You must remember my friends, oneness is not established by intellectual deductions, or conferences; it has to be recognized on the level of intellect and emotion. Therefore, they add Sai to all bhajans as an integrating factor of this experience. It is as good as saying, God is Rama, God is Krishna, God is Buddha, God is Allah etc. The Sai form embodies all that God stands for, so it becomes easy to eliminate differences between forms if you believe they are inherent in Sai.

 

V 1: Oh, that is a clever strategy to glorify your guru! Isn’t it a wild hypothesis that all the different forms of the Divine are inherent in one man?

 

PSN: No. People have actually seen all the different forms including Jesus in our Baba. Do you know why people from all religious traditions come to meet Baba? Because Baba leads them on their own paths better than anyone else.

Kamal was complaining about dress code here. You have a dress code for your workplaces, from shoelace to the necktie. Then why should you object to a dress code in a place where the whole world comes for self-research? And no doubt you look quite handsome when you are well-clad.

 

V 3: In a civilized society a man and a woman must have freedom to wear whatever they want.

 

PSN: Whatever, whenever and wherever? My friend, body is a dress of the soul; so the dress of the body should reflect the dignity of the soul. You have come here to explore more about yourself; therefore, to know what you seek to know, you need to put on hold indulging what you think you already know.

 

V 3: If your baba is so keen about creating a new world free of indulgence why did he allow here three types of canteen catering to different tastes, and a well stuffed sales centre? An ice cream parlour too! Aren’t they encouraging the indulgence you want to restrict?

 

PSN: You didn’t like the ice cream sold here? People who want to eat well, dress well, and have money to buy stuff they really need are not excommunicated from God’s benevolence. Then you would not find yourself here! He gives them what they want, so that someday they would ask for Baba’s best gift.

 

V 1: What do you mean?                        

 

PSN: Eating well, or buying things are not evil in themselves, your obsession with them is. You need a boat to cross the river, but if there is a hole in the boat you will sink. Your obsession is the hole in your life. Shutting off temptation is not growth; rising above them is. Do you know the story of four temptations (Mathew 4:1:11) Jesus faced in the desert? It is an example in place.

 

V 2: My wife once told me the story. But I forgot. I will verify with her when I go home. Tell me PSN, why is this place called Prasanthi Nilayam?

 

PSN: It means a place of peace. Baba says you will have peace when you learn to harmonise the many pieces of your life. Prasanthi Nilayam helps you learn it.

 

V 1: How do you learn it?

 

PSN: When you step out of the obsessions and stresses of your life even for a few days, and live quietly in search of your true identity, you enter Prasanthi Nilayam. Baba therefore says you are not what others think you are, nor what you think you are. What you really are is the divine essence. When people hail Baba as God, He is not pleased; He says that is just half the truth. The full truth is you too are God. The only objective of human life is to experience that. Prasanthi Nilayam helps you in this adventure in many ways. My friends, Prasanthi Nilayam is not only a place, it is an awareness, awareness of your divine inheritance.

 

V 2: “But PSN, how do you know so many things? Who are you? Do you live in this place?

 

PSN: “I live in this place, and I am this place.

 

V 3: What do you mean?

 

PSN: I am Prasanthi Nilayam, PSN…

         
All three of them shout: “WHAT!!!” They look at each other in bewilderment, but when they look back at PSN, he was no longer standing there…