We are born in this world only to learn lessons.
From the book Prema Sai Part II - Beyond the Vedas
Beauty
Worship
14 December 2005 Evening meditation
Vasantha :
Swami! Please tell something about beauty.
Swami : You beheld the
beauty of God everywhere and worshipped it. It is for this reason that all
beauty has come to you. You wanted God to experience you and so I now yearn to
experience you. God likes you. If God is yearning for you then you ought to
possess the beauty that God seeks in you. You are an example for the world. How
you are now and how you will be when you come again is a beauty that has come
through your own effort, a beauty of your own making. You are proving that our future
life is in our own hands.
Vasantha : Now I understand Swami. I shall now write.
In
‘Gita Govindam Pt. 3’, I have written a vidya
called ‘Beauty Worship’. At first, I beheld the beauty of God and loved Him. I
showered my love on Sri Krishna. After Krishna revealed to me that He had come
again in the form of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, I showered my love on Sai
Krishna. Through one-pointed sadhana, I attained Him. As I was unable to bear
the force of Prema that surged from me, Swami directed me send it to the people
of the world. Feeling their agony and pain, I wanted that my Prema enter them.
This became Vasanthamayam.
Throughout my life, I have
learned lessons from the tiny worm to lord Brahma Himself. When Swami asked me
to write on Yoga Sutra, I did not know what to write. Contemplating on my life,
I realized that I had connected all that I saw with the Lord. I wrote this
sutra as, ‘Cutting and Connecting’. First, I linked everything with God, and
then I beheld the beauty of God in every part of His Creation. Instead of
experiencing the beauty, I told that it must be worshipped instead. This I
wrote as, ‘Beauty Worship Vidya’.
I had said that God’s beauty
should be seen in every aspect of Creation and worshipped. Every thing is
suffused with the beauty of God. If we try and experience these, it leads to
sorrow. Instead, we should offer worship and attain bliss and happiness.
All want to experience this
world: husband, wife, children, parents, friends, relatives, wealth, position
and so on. As a result, you are repeatedly caught in the cycle of birth and
death. I worshipped the beauty of the Lord in His Creation and made it as an
offering to Him. As a result, I am taking birth again and will live with my
Lord.
Through the many bonds that we
create with husband, wife, children, parents, relatives, we are born again and
again in this world and suffer. We experience a world of duality; pleasure and
pain, happiness and sorrow, honor and dishonor. Living in this world of
opposites, our nature and actions are ever changing, impressions form and this
pushes us into the whirlpool rebirth. We become attracted by the beauty of
money, position, praise, popularity and in the process of experiencing them we
lose peace of mind. Instead of experiencing them, they should be worshipped.
How to worship?
We should act as trustees; we
are the caretakers of the Lord’s Creation. We do not own anything. We should
perform all duties as acts of worship and not seek the fruits of action. Action
becomes a form of worship when it is done perfectly and efficiently, seeking no
reward. If one does action without expectation of result, then peace and
happiness will ensue.
Swami said, “If one desires to
experience beauty and becomes deluded by it, then this power of delusion will
push him into an abyss. However if one worships beauty, maya takes the form of
Mahamaya and raises him to spiritual heights.”
My whole life has been one of
surrender. I surrendered everything to God. Swami told that my whole body is
that of total surrender, I did fierce penance for Sharira Nivedhan. I performed
penance so that I would become the whole universe. I said that every aspect of
this Creation should become Vasantha and worship Him. I saw the Omnipresence of
the Lord throughout His Creation, worshipped it and offered all to God. This
has been my life.
I delighted in the beauty of
Creation and offered worship. I did not experience. This is why Swami said the
beauty of Creation has come to me.
Now, I want that God should
experience me. A Bhaktha can experience God through the nine paths of devotion;
so far, no one has asked the Lord to experience them. A jeeva attains the state
of jeevan muktha, finally merges into God, giving up the physical body. I on
the other hand, asked Swami to experience me. For God to experience me, to
yearn for me, make Him mad for me, I must possess the beauty that God desires
in me. That is why the photograph of Prema is enchanting to all. In
order to experience me in His next incarnation, I have purified, sanctified,
made myself complete, youthful, empty and surrendered all to Him. This is the
second reason added by Swami.
The third reason given by Swami
is that I alone have revealed this beauty,
“Through sadhana you have created your own
form.”
In the same way, we see how our
next birth is in our own hands. Each feeling becomes the chisel that carves our
form. It is we who create our own form. Every thought and feeling we have
becomes the form in our next life.
Swami asks how I acquired this
beauty. It is because I wanted to become an offering to the Lord. I was
cautious, watching every moment the feelings that arose in me. I made every
part of mine sacred, a worthy offering for Swami. I performed penance to remove
all blemishes and become complete. I did sadhana so that I would become a
youthful and beautiful offering to the Lord. I have done sadhana to give me
beauty in my next life, beauty that is worthy to be offered to the Lord.
This body is to be offered to
the Lord so I am cautious every moment. Just as the sculptor carefully chisels
an idol of God, every feeling is carving out my future form. This body belongs
to God; it has to be offered to Him. It should be free from blemish. When you
prepare prasad, how much care you take to make sure that all is perfectly
proportioned. I am going to offer this body to God as prasad. He is going to
eat me as prasad. How careful I should be to make myself perfect?
I should become an offering for
my dear Lord. My whole life, body, feelings, mind, intellect, consciousness,
senses, ego, all should become offerings to Him. This thought has occupied my
mind the whole of my life. It became an all-consuming penance for me. This is
the reason why I am able to come as Prema, the wife of the Avatar.