SWAMI'S SAI IDOLS

You all will have to bare with me as I just stumbled out of bed after a nice long sleep. It's seven a.m. And I usually write these things when it's still dark out. I haven't even done my prayers yet but this blog has been marching around in my head...actually since The Truth began to hit me while watching American Idol last night. I began feeling these little spurts of joy and a feeling of peace and contentment permeated the mind. It had nothing to do with American Idol...except that I do love these last three guys. Week after week we watch them go through this horrendous process as their peers drop out and they carry on. But still my own procession towards becoming an Idol has very little to do with that except that like them, I am eliminating attributes one after another..

I am not depressed. From time to time I glance around the inner landscape to see if I am and I'm not. My ribs feel as if they might be cracked...like my mind, my Drama Class and my Singing Chorus are drying up because it's summer and all the 'Snowbirds' fly out....but I'm NOT DEPRESSED. I AM HIS HAND MADE WOODEN PUPPET WAITING FOR MY NEXT ASSIGNMENT.

Depression has become 'all the rage' these days. Every time you see a doctor he will ask..are you depressed? The nurses...even the office nurses will get that sympathetic look in their eyes as they murmur...depressed? Are you depressed? So when you've had a whole lifetime of depression naturally you latch on to those sad feelings...'yeah, I guess I am', you admit....but it's A LIE...A DAMN LIE THAT THE EGO IS PUTTING OUT TO ROPE YOU IN.

Ok maybe little Susie is depressed but SHE'S DEAD. SHE WAS ONLY A FIGMENT OF MY IMAGINATION AND DOESN'T EXIST. You know for ages I have felt like...I wasn't a human being anyway. I've said it to a few people and they look startled and..in that same sympathetic voice nurses use...then who are you? I don't know...I always replied...Yeah right...neti neti..it's only neti neti, I don't know who I am, I only know who I'm NOT. I am not this little depressed Susie who is depressed because she's gotta die pretty soon, because her rib is cracked like her head, because the house is messy and she has to clean it, because the cockroaches have had a party in the kitchen last night...but she's NOBODY. SUSIE IS NOBODY.

I HAVE NO ATTRIBUTES ..I was a human being growing up so I know what a human being is. When I hit 40 my best friend died of cancer, I stopped being a social worker...losing that label...gave away the cars, moved out of the house, losing that 'home owner' label or attribute, gave my little dog to my sister, and left for India. Swami gave me refuge, thank God. Another 30 years passed during which I (He) created a different puppet with a different script for a different 'idol' with a whole set of new attributes...spiritual attributes, which I needed to develop...devotion, self control, patience, gratitude, an appreciation for the sacred. I was a different person all together with a different script but...I still felt deep inside, as if I really weren't a human being. Real human beings had husbands, children, grandchildren, houses, money but I had nothing. I was nothing but I pretended that I was a person, a human being. I was Susan Caffery, I WROTE BOOKS, I WAS GIVEN A FLAT IN ROUND HOUSE THREE, I SANG BHAJAN, I WAS MORE INDIAN THAN MOST INDIANS.

Then the Indian government (Swami) said...'sorry, no more long term visas, Miss Susan Caffery, you have to leave the country!' WHO, ME? How can you treat Susan Caffery like this? Don't you know who I am? I wrote all those books! The still small voice inside answered, 'No, do you know who you are?'

Stumbled into my poor old 86 year old asthmatic sister's house with TB and crippling arthritis, and a couple more bacterial diseases picked up on my travels and thought...'well, thank god I still have a family even after I denied having one for 30+ years because I was a sanyasi...But that didn't work out because the human being I thought I was after 30+ years of hard work praying 6-8 hours a day...wasn't welcome. I sort of elbowed my way into my sister's 'safe house' and was made to feel that it wasn't my safe house at all. So I stumbled out again. Very sick with disease and despair I found a small apartment and made it my nest. Didn't have much money, no car, no friends, no family, nothing...except a wonderful feeling that...at last after 75 years I was really independent...I was 'free floating'.

Little Susie stared a singing career, she started this blog, she began Drama classes, she became a 'singing star' at the senior center, she began a huge facebook for what she called 'Sai Graduates' for ladies, like herself sort of stuck between the East and the West who loved Swami and were trying to practice His teachings. But she still was depressed.

Why was she depressed? She was depressed because SHE CONTINUED TO FALSLY BELIEVE SHE WAS A HUMAN BEING TRYING TO GRATIFY THIS DAMNED EGO, TO BE A SUCESS, TO BE A SOMEBODY. AND I'M HERE TO TELL YOU THAT IT DOESN'T WORK BECAUSE IT'S A LIE, IT'S ALL A LIE, IT ISN'T TRUE. IT'S IMAGINATION!~

We talk bout Vedanta, about the absolute. We know the truth intellectually, we know in our heads that we aren't this person we've thought we were all these years. I have heard Swami say, so many times..'this is not my real form'...well of course HE wasn't only that form in the golden dress. HE IS OMNIPRESENT, OMIPOTANT, OMNISCIENT. HE IS GLORIOUS, HE is the GLAXIES, HE IS THE BEGINNING, THE END AND ALL BETWEEN AND YET WE SEEM DETERMINED TO KEEP HIM IN THAT LITTLE BOX. OH WE ALLOWED OUR OMNIPRESENT SAI TO SPRINKLE A LITTLE VIBHUTI ON PICTUES SOMETIMES AND TO MAKE SOMEONE WALK OR HEAL A CANCER BUT NOT MUCH MORE THAN THAT. We applauded His super human projects like the super hospitals and schools and water projects but mostly we loved Him because He was OUR SWAMI. I know I did. Well, He finally gave up, I think alittle disgusted, at our reluctance to see the glorious Kali Yuga Avatar as He really is....HE IS EVERYTHING! And now, we think He's going to come rushing back from His marble box and hold our hands again. He's going to say, 'There there, bangaru, I'll still be your mummy and daddy, you're not alone.'

That small form was not His form and this is not our true form either. Everything seen and seenless, is His form... He also use to say so often...'Sai Baba is not my name. All names are my names.' Well then, connecting the dots, my name isn't Susan Caffery either is it? And what about His attributes. He has only one attribute. He is the Divine almighty God, the creator of the three worlds, the light of all lights, love itself, the giver of life. I may not see these as my own attributes today but...maybe He's bringing me to that realization. In the meanwhile depressed Susie is dead and I face the present unafraid as I AM NOTHING AT ALL.

Do we still need a 'mummy and daddy?' Aren't we the divine absolute too? He said that every single day we should say...I AM GOD, I AM NOT DIFFERENT FROM GOD. I AM THE OMNIPRSENT GOD. THE SUPREME ABSOLUTE. I AM SATCHITANANDA, I AM KNOWLEDGE AWARENESS AND BLISS, GRIEF AND ANXIETY (and depression) CAN NEVER COME NEAR ME. I AM EVER CONTENT, FEAR CANNOT COME INTO ME.

If He told us to say these very words every single day..who's saying them? I know a group in Miami who can manage to say...We are God etc etc, but not I am God. Sort of takes the pressure off to really BE god maybe. Long ago I gave a song to Al Drucker with these words and he liked it and added another verse about being Truth and joy and all that too...but even though Swami said we must say these words every day or sing them...who is? And even if they are reciting these words, who is believing what they're saying. Maybe more than we know, maybe a whole bunch of Sai Devotees are marching along letting false attributes fall to the ground, burning scripts behind them on their way to becoming Swami's Sai Idols. I see myself now at this point as a little hand made wooden puppet without costume, with out features, with no script , with no name, ready to be thrown into the fire of consciousness. But Swami, that's just this morning, isn't it. I guess I'd better have my oatmeal and do my prayers anyway now while I wait for further instructions.