Highest good comes only when face difficulties

Efficacy of Sai Grace Scriptures say that of all the debts the most irredeemable is the debt we owe to parents.

My father, Shri K. Sathyanarayana Murthy, born in 1911 or so, spent his young days in abject penury without even two square meals a day.

Last of the children, he were the only one to have a pretense to education. So much were his indigent circumstances that he had to study many times under street lamps of flickering tapers of those days.

His efforts, though full of enthusiasm, ended with IX Class because of poverty.

Later when he was married, his in-laws helped him to complete his Matriculation and provide him with a job in the ex-Nizams Railways.

He was a very ordinary man with common weaknesses .in facing the problems of life.

One divine quality he faced was his utter devotion for his children’s welfare- 6 sons and 2 daughters.

Before them he was a man of complete self-denial rarely found in others.

The legacy of his defeated efforts at education in his young days perhaps spurred him to provide his children with the highest of education despite his ridiculously low salary.

In doing so, he stretched his efforts beyond human limitations to the extreme point of snapping.

He chose to work in leave vacancies of Station Masters, hopping from station to station, just to earn some money to supplement the growing family needs.

In the process, he literally went hungry everyday for lack of cooking bane’s at way-side stations.

His family could not accompany him for short duration at each place and these small places had no hotels in those days.

His health therefore failed miserably and at the young age of 30 he acquired diabetes even though he had no such lineage among his forefathers.

I am giving this detailed background with a view to enable the readers to appreciate how the grace of Shri Sai Baba works differently with different devotees.

My father had no pretence to any regular form of worship nor did he have any big idea about the spiritual side of life.

Nevertheless he had the normal devotional bent of mind towards all Hindu Gods.

Somehow he came to know about the greatness of Shri Sai Baba in his pearly career and anchored all his hopes on Him.

He started making trips to Shirdi along, with his family members whenever he could afford it.

Thus a good number of times we all visited Shirdi not knowing the full impact of Shri Sai Baba’s greatness .

However, all his efforts in life came as an anti-climax in a series of failures.

His mild manners were taken advantage and exploited by many.

He had to face crisis after crisis ill running the family because of long hospital!

Sat ion of family members, thefts of valuables, education of children at distances etc.

The relentless Lord Sai was severe on him giving him no scope to see any silver lining on the horizon.

He faced rebuffs in his service too. Once, the Pointsman in a drunken state took away keys without my father’s knowledge and gave signals to receive two opposite goods trail simultaneously one night.

My father noticed it at the last moment and he immediately lifted back one of the signals and frantically ran and stopped the train beyond the home signal.

Still he was technically held responsible and had to face punishment and humiliation.

The purple patch of luck was like an elusive pimpernel in his life. Shri Sai, the beacon light for all others, was a mere spectator before my father’s macabre drama of life.

Any other man in his boots would have cringed back and committed suicide.

But not nay father. He was a man, dedicated for a purpose.

He took all calamities in his stride. The worse was, however, still in the coming suffering from diabetes for two decades with daily pokes of insulin and a strict, austere diet, he developed gangrene of the foot in most pathetic circumstances.

He was admitted into hospital but despite the best of care it grew worse and spread to the entire area below the knee.

Much against his wishes, the affected portion was amputated. This was a fatal decision which precipitated his end.

The puss reappeared after a few days and all types of complications like thrombi-phlebitis, Uremia, Septicemia started.

His last days were a miserable sight, with blood transfusions, intravenous feeding of glucose and saline bottles, and insertion of catheter tubes for-emptying urine and hourly pokes of injections, all done simultaneously.

He went into a coma for 13 days. During his last days lasting four months in hospitals, he was constantly remembering Shri Sai Baba.

My mother, Smt. K. Sunandanamma, herself a staunch devotee, wept bitter tears night and day before Baba’s photo, pleading for His mercy and did several austerities.

They were of no avail. Just before the final moments my brother, Shri K. Bhakthavatsala Rao while attending on my father in the night felt drowsy.

When he opened his eyes a little later he saw an old man, the exact likeness of Shri Sai Baba, serenely sitting on a stool and looking intently at my father’s face.

My brother, a maverick by attitude, was pleasantly surprised at the sight; but he does not know when he sank into drowsiness again. When he re-opened his eyes he saw my father going into severe convulsions.

Minutes later his end came when a quantity of phlegm coming into his mouth could not be vomited out.

Our urgent efforts failed as it went back and closed his respiratory system. It was 12.30 midnight of 8/9 April 1963 Chaitra Purnima and Hanuman Jayanthi day–a divine tribute to a man who celebrated Hanuman Jayanthi every year.

He went in the company of saints as his death closely followed that of Swami Ramdas of Anand Ashram and Swami Shivananda Saraswati of Rishikesh. Looking back, I feel that Shri Sai Baba did not desert my father at any time.

Though he faced a cruel fate all through life, Shri Sai Baba in His wisdom reserved His devotee the greatest gift of Moksha.

An example can be had from the sacred chapters of Shri Sai Satcharita itself Mhalasapati, His earliest and most close devotee, was not helped material despite his extreme poverty, Shri Sai Baba actually forbade his from accepting gifts of money.

Obviously He reserved the highest gift for him. Similarly, Lord Krishna physically work against the mundane interests of Kama of Mahabharata through his life but helped him with deliverance when he die manfully on the battlefield against all cruel odds.

Every person has a carry over of self-imposed Karma injunctions from previous births in varying degrees.

It is closed back to the mortal eye.Only the Kundalini inside man and a God-realised Soul, a ‘Sarvaantaryami, who can see it and prescribe what is best to each man. Spiritual austeritie done with the right attitude of sincerity, alone are the infallible antidote for the exacting processes of Karmic actions. Else has to undergo sufferings till the account is closed.

The ardent devotees, if they face sufferings and disappointments, should not blame Shri Sai Baba. Highest good comes only when face difficulties.

My father literally walked on the proverbial razor karmic edge all through his life; but nevertheless he realised one big ambition though posthumously and today we are all happy positions as Surgeons, Physicians, Engineers and Lecturers.

The tragedy of his life, however, was all the more poking because he did not enjoy anything out of our bands.

He went without a debt of Karma to anybody. By his supreme sacrifice my father consecrated himself to get the ultimate gift of life from the everbenevolent Shri Sai who Himself graced to come down to receive my father personally and to take him by the Celestial Chariot to give him a royal welcome at the portals His heavenly abode.

It is an inexorable axiom which Shri devotees should know is that His Grace is always available abundance but it is only our holy which is not big enough receive it.

One should always try to enlarge it!

K. Navin Chand Hyderabad

(Source Shri Sai Leela June 1982)

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