Swami's Vision of the Sixteen-Year-Old Sai

Shri P V N M Sharma asked: Swami! You often tell us Your experience when You prayed to Lord Rāma and Shri Satya Sai appeared before You asking You to propagate spiritual knowledge. Why did Lord Rāma or any other divine form not appear before You?

Swami replied: O Learned and Devoted Servants of God! I often get divine visions, in which mainly God Datta appears to Me in energetic form and He speaks with Me; sometimes even for several hours! Of course, other divine forms of God Datta also appear now and then and they include Energetic Incarnations and the energetic forms of past Human Incarnations. In all these visions, the divine form seen is only an energetic form and not a materialized human form. For the first time in My entire life so far, and only on that one occasion, the divine form of Shri Satya Sai that appeared before Me was a materialized human form. The silver throne on which He was sitting was also a materialized form! Actually, I had expected that, as usual, the energetic form of God Rāma would appear before Me since I had prayed to God Rāma by singing a spontaneously-composed song in Sanskrit (Yāce Śrī Rāmaṃ, tavāsmīti). I had composed this song on God Rāma seeking His help in a materialistic matter. Rāma had said that if anybody surrenders to Him saying that he belongs to Rāma, Rāma would certainly protect the devotee (Tavāsmīti ca yācate—Rāmayaṇam). But, instead of Rāma, Shri Satya Sai appeared in materialized human form before Me, sitting on a materialized silver throne!

There is always a deep spiritual message in the actions of God, which is understood by us, in due course of time, through sharp analysis. The main question is, why did Shri Satya Sai appear when I had prayed to Rāma? The answer lies in the fact that the most important concept in the spiritual knowledge to be propagated by this Datta Swami is the concept of the contemporary Human Incarnation of God. On that day when I prayed, Shri Satya Sai was still alive and was in Puttaparti. He was the contemporary Human Incarnation of God Datta for Me. Rāma was also a Human Incarnation, but He was not My contemporary. It is the contemporary Human Incarnation who clears all the spiritual doubts of the devotee and greatly strengthens the devotee’s understanding of the spiritual knowledge. That strong understanding of spiritual knowledge produces powerful devotion. No such facility of doubt clarification and strengthening of knowledge is possible in the case of the statues and images of Energetic Incarnations and past Human Incarnations of God. This is the reason why no Energetic Incarnation like Viṣṇu, Śiva, Brahmā etc., or no past Human Incarnation like Rāma, Krishna, Shirdi Sai etc., appeared in energetic form before Me that day. The form of Satya Sai that appeared was not an energetic form, but a human form because contemporary Human Incarnation is always a human form and not an energetic form. The very first statement of Satya Sai was that I had been selected by Him for the propagation of spiritual knowledge.

Another important point is that Satya Sai appeared before Me as a 16-year-old boy, whereas, at the same time, Satya Sai was also present in Puttaparti and He was about 75 years of age! He could have appeared before Me in His usual form, aged 75 years. What is the background of this? Shri Satya Sai was an Incarnation of God Datta, who is always said to appear 16 years of age, as indicated by one of His holy names (Nityaṣoḍaśa varṣīyase namaḥ). Angels, on the other hand, always appear 30 years of age (tridaśāḥ). The reason God Datta appears young is that you have to love God Datta as your son and not as your father. The love for one’s children is always real and the highest. Even if children are ungrateful to their parents, the parents still love them blindly. The devotion of parents for their children is completely real because, in addition to theoretical love, parents also show practical love for their children, without aspiring for any fruit in return. Theoretical love means the mental feeling of love, which is the result of the knowledge that the child is one’s own. Practical love means serving the child and giving up one’s entire wealth to one’s child. Serving the child or working for the child is the sacrifice of work. Giving one’s wealth to the child means sacrificing the fruit of one’s work to the child since the fruit of one’s work is wealth. The sacrifice of work is called karma saṃnyāsa and the sacrifice of the fruit of work is called karma phala tyāga. Both together constitute practical love. They are the proof of the theoretical love that exists in the mind. Parents’ love for their children is completely real because the theoretical love is proved in practice. It is also free of aspiration since it does not reduce even if the children behave badly with the parents. This is exactly the kind of love that God expects from us. The theoretical love for God should be the product of our recognition of Him through spiritual knowledge. But apart from having theoretical devotion for Him, we should also prove our devotion in practice, through the sacrifice of work (karma saṃnyāsa) and the sacrifice of the fruit of work (karma phala tyāga). Even if He does not fulfill our desires, our devotion to Him should not change even a bit. In other words, our devotion to God must be aspiration-free. All this is extremely difficult. Thus, treating God to be our son is highly inconvenient to us!

Hence, we prefer to treat God as our father, so that, even though we behave ungratefully with Him, He will not care about it and He will continue to show real theoretical and practical love for us! In order to reverse this selfish concept in our minds, He always appears as a 16-year-old boy, who can only be our son and not our father! If God Datta comes in the form of an angel, appearing to be 30 years of age, there is a chance that we may consider Him to be our father. But by appearing to be a 16-year-old boy, there is no chance for us to consider Him as our father. We are forced to consider Him to be our son!

| Shri Dattaswami | Rama Yaache shriiraamam tavaasmiiti Tavaasmiticha yaachate Nityashodasha varshiiyase namah tridashaah samnyasa samnyaasa tyaaga

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