Most of the people who come to baba will be in one of the category namely (artha,artharti, jignasu, gnani). Lord Krishna himself in Bhagavad Gita told that these four categories of people will worship him.
chaturvidha bhajante mAm, janA: sukrutino (a)rjuna |
Artho jignAsur arthArthi, gnAni cha bharatarshabha ||--- 7/16
The sloka means
“Oh best of Bharatas ! Four types of Men of virtuous deeds worship me. They are the one who is grieved, the one who desires worldly things, the one who seeks knowledge and the man of wisdom.”
Let us analyze what and who these four are.
FOUR BHAKTAS
Artha: - This is the classical grieved person who remembers God in the midst of his difficulty or trouble. Imagine a man, whose son is in the ICU of a hospital and to whom the physician says 'nothing is in his hands'. He now stands there alone, torn by grief. He is clueless now, who can protect his son, because with all faith on doctor he rushed to the hospital for his son's life, and now the doctor is helpless in saving his son's life.He then sees the small temple/any place of worship there and prostrates in front of God begging for his son’s life. He worships God for release from grief. He is the Artha.
Artharthi: This man is the one who always asks God for all his materialistic desires. For example we want our business to flourish, when we want some car to be purchased etc. When someone of us need some worldly possession, we turn to God for this.
Jignasu: A person who has inquistiveness to know about various things and he couldnt get the answer to his questions. And this person turns to none other than God to get cleared of this.
gnani: He is divine wisdom personified. Lord Krishna inserts a conjunction ‘cha’ to denote the speciality of this worshipper. He is a man of God.
You might want to grade these people. The Gnani comes first , followed by Jignasu, Artharthi and finally Artha. But the common thread among these all is that they all worship the Lord . Krishna also says that these are men of good deeds meaning they are devoid of demonic tendencies.
Now the people who used to visit baba, when he was in flesh as well the people who now flock to Shirdi to visit his samadhi mandir will fall into any one of these categories. Now the question is how baba used to handle all these categories of people at the same time. Because the thought levels and the understanding levels of various people will be different. Just like a small kid and a post graduate student. For this reason mostly baba used to talk in parables or appears to talk some irrelevant talk or most of the times remain silent. If we try to understand or correlate this talk. One can understand the way in which baba used to handle the things.
Because baba never used to say anything directly, whatever baba spoke or talk was understood by only that person who visited baba or whoever asked baba for some thing whether it may be materialistic desire or to save some one or to cure someone or to clear his spiritual doubt or it may be anything. If one reads satcharitra carefully, one can carefully observe this behaviour of baba. When we correlate the various instances of the people who visited baba on a particular day, we can correlate why baba behaved in that particular way or spoke in that particular manner or what is the meaning of that particular words. We can get most of the incidents to be correlated by keeping the khaparde diary/ devotees experiences collected by shri narasimha swamiji alongwith sai satcharitra to get a clarity on the behaviour and words of baba.
But keeping the assurance of baba that his tomb speaks, what about the present day situation. Seeing the number of people flocking to Shirdi daily, we can say that more and more people are flocking to shirdi, because baba is answering their needs/answering their calls. Sometimes it appears that baba is silent inspite of our repeated requests. Then how to understand the silence of baba. Think that he has ignored us all of the sudden. The god/guru/guardian/well wisher who had protected all these days and who answered the calls of devotees immediately earlier now seemed to remain silent. Why?
The answer lies in the proper analysis of the behavior of baba. First thing we need to understand that baba is man of practicality and all his life he had taught whoever came to him through actions rather than by words. Mostly baba used to create situations in a way that would answer them whatever the queries they were having. Second thing, all the desires of the people if they were dharmic, baba would immediately bless it. In case if somebody is asking for some non-dharmic desire, baba used to remain silent and never bless their desire.
Now we need to analyse ourselves whether our desire is a dharmic one or not. For example, let us properly understand a case, so that we can understand this. Let us think that I am having a desire to have a child. This is a very dharmic desire and if I approach baba and pray baba to bless with me child. Then how should baba react. Do he need to bless with me a child immeediately. or should check what is that which is stopping me from having a child, estimate the time frame so that the blocking thing can be removed so that I can be blessed with a child. Now all this a layman may not be able to understand. So thats the reason baba said to have faith in baba and have patience till things get materialised. Once we approach, it is by the nature of baba that he will always bless us with whatever is good for us. Some times giving will be good for us and sometimes stopping will be good for us. We dont know what is good for us and what is bad for us. So, our duty is just to have faith in baba and wait till he blesses. If we are in a hurry and make our own conclusions that baba is not listening to me or not taking care of me or has not blessed with whatever I have asked, I am only the loser.
Baba's ways are different. Sometimes he blesses through dreams, sometimes he answers through messages which we listen on radio, TV, etc, some times he answers through others, sometimes he answers through some stories which we are reading, sometimes he answers from our inner heart etc. How he answers we cant expect. The only thing we need to remember is once we ask baba something, definetly he is going to give answer for it. Only we need to tune our heart and mind to receive the answer from baba. And as always, the person who is approaching baba may be in any of the four categories discussed above, will be raised to higher categories. Say a person is in the category of artha, he will be slowly uplifted to artharthi, then to jignasu, then to gnani. The only thing one needs to firmly remember is that baba is like a lovable mother who is looking after her kids. We are all like the kids of the lovable mother baba, and mother never shows partiality towards any one child and has equal love and concern towards all the children. It is the same thing with baba. From the perception of baba, every one is equal in front of baba, and he is ready to answer all our calls. But it depends on us, to which category we belong and what we are asking baba. Do we have faith in the word and action of baba, do we have the patience till blesses us with what we asked for.
It is like this a child who is having pnuemonia asking for ice-cream. What should the mother do, should the mother deny giving the ice-cream to the child, because if the child eats the ice-cream, it will suffer and also may lead to other health complications or should it be given to the child because she loves the child and the child had asked for it. What should be the right act keeping in view of the child. If the mother really loves the child, she will never give it to the child. Here from the perspective of the child, the mother had not listened to his request and denied giving ice-cream. From the perspective of mother, she knows, what will be the consequences if the ice-cream is given to the child. If the child had faith in his mother and thought that whatever she done is for his good only, then the child will be happy, else if the child thinks that his mother is ignorant and not hearing to his request, then he will be agonised and feel troubled in his mind and if starts thinking negative about his mother and abuses her, and leaves her,who is the loser?. Inspite of all these the mother out of her sheer love towards the child will listen to his abuses and bear his angry and never give the ice-cream.
Similarly baba who is the lovable mother knows all about us. When we ask for something and if baba had not listened to our call/request. Intelligent thing is to realise that he knows better about us than what we know about us. Not to leave him. Have faith in his words and actions, that whatever he does is for our good only. Else we are losing a person who is our well-wisher, who knows everything about us and what is good for us.
This post is for all those category of people (like the youngest kids in a family or considering them as artha category) who come into the fold of baba very quickly and get angry on baba very quickly for not answering their call. Usually, Baba immediately answers them for various reasons, its just like this, if a youngest son/daughter asks for something, the parents will always show some extra preference to them for various reasons. Similarly baba rushes immediately to answer the calls of this category of people. But that doesnt mean that they can ask for anything and baba have to oblige them. If one really understands Baba, and see all the people who approached Baba, one can see that those who have asked something were only blessed with what they asked for, and the ones who didnt asked for anything were blessed with thousand folds more than what they could have asked for or imagined to ask for. When we leave the decision to Baba, we need to remember the simple fact that it is for our benefit only whether we realise that fact immediately or not. Only time can give us the answer when we turn back and check our past that the decision took by Baba was very much beneficial to us in all aspects.
Simply dont leave baba, because he had not answered your call. You are unaware what you are losing. If you stick to baba with faith and patience, you are unaware what you are gaining. It is beyond the imagination of human mind what we are blessed with. Only the one who had experienced that can only say. Praying Baba to bless all those who are reading this post for such state.
By the grace of baba, whoever is reading this article understand this and be blessed by baba.
Loka samastha sukhinobavanthu
Sarve Jana Sukhinobavanathu
Om santi santi santi
