Help thou, Mine Unbelief !

‘Heaven lies about us in our infancy’, said Wordsworth. One sort of heaven is when you are able to have complete trust in someone/ something.. The infant trusts its mother blindly , unquestioningly , fully. The same trust it is able to transfer to the concept of God for a few more years. Lucky and blessed are those who can retain this blissful, childlike state throughout their lives. Well, I don’t think I am one of them. I have been oscillating between belief and unbelief all my adult life. I do need belief to carry on with life even on a day to day level. I do pray , beg for this and that. My petitionary prayers spring not out of a love of God but out of a love of myself. And when my prayers are answered I thank the Lord like anyone else does .


But faith of the kind that moved the millions who wept at the passing away of Sathya Sai Baba is alien to me. I have seen Baba once . I forget the exact year. It was a balcony appearance in the palace near Govt. Victoria College, Palakkad. I wasn’t too moved, to be honest . I didn’t know much about him , then. Baba was young , in his forties , may be. And I was a lot younger, an adolescent very much under the influence of rationalistic writings like those of Bertrand Russell. In those days of utter ignorance and vainglory, I enjoyed sporting an atheistic/ skeptical façade.

Do I know better now ? Not too sure . But certainly , I have stopped being cynical and dismissive about the spiritually evolved souls like Baba. Magicians assert that the miracles that Sai Baba performed can be replicated by them. They could be right, too. Quite likely , the residual rationalist in me whispers , that he was an adept illusionist , who could , reportedly, produce gold chains and vibhuti from the air. But Puttaparthi is no illusion and no magician can replicate that miracle. That ultra modern township which he crafted out of a humble village in the back of beyond is the monument to the Satya or the Truth of Satya Sai Baba.

In fact, all the institutions and projects that have been functioning under his inspiration bear witness to that Satya. The Dharmakshetra in Mumbai is one such centre . Baba’s devotees conduct various programmes for students there. I was privileged to accompany a few of my students to this centre , along with my colleague , Prof. Rajasree who is a Sai Bhakta. The experience was memorable on two counts. One was, of course , the spiritual high that was ensured by the music and the talk. The other was the taste of the food - breakfast & lunch- all home cooked and brought to the venue by the women devotees. I mention this in all solemnity.

To the hungry, God comes in the form of food. It was a cardinal rule with Baba, explained my friend, that his disciples should see to it that all those who come to his programmes anywhere should return with their stomachs’ need met satisfactorily. The way to the heart is through the stomach ! The practical saints know this. Satya Sai Baba was a practical saint who empathized with the hunger and thirst of ordinary mortals. After tasting that manna at Dharmakshetra , I must have become half a devotee. Otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this.

Total devotion which would mean total surrender , as I had confessed at the outset , is, alas, beyond me. It is one of the beautiful ironies of the religious life that total surrender to God or the god-like Guru is liberation. The liberation from doubts that Arjuna attained in Kurukshetra when he witnessed the Cosmic Form , the Viswa roopa , of Krishna. The liberation that St. Thomas , the Doubting Thomas , experienced when he could see and touch Jesus after the Resurrection couldn’t have been different. I am still waiting for that ‘ Lord, my God!’moment.


Published in the City Journal ( title changed to the somewhat tame Make Me Believe ) on 4th May ,2011.