See for the online version: http://sai_baba_2001.tripod.com/Howard_Murphet/index.html
and also:
"Sathyam Sivam Sundaram" by Vahini.org
- "The Lights of Home"
by
Howard Murphet.[1907/28-9-2004 (birthday of Shirdi Sai Baba)].
This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to Lord Siva, without whose timely reminder that another book was due,
that my work on earth was not complete, this book would never have been written.
In dedicating it to Lord Siva, the book is also automatically dedicated to our beloved Sai Baba, through whose lips Lord Siva speaks,
generally, but not exclusively, to the world today.
- CONTENTS:
Part I: Memoirs of Early Years:
Foreword.
Some memories of my mother.
My father.
Schooldays.
Student, teacher and pastures new.Part II: Stories, Sai Teachings and Reflections:
The young Avatar.
The Sai cure for stage fright.
The yoga of love.
War and peace.
Memories of a Chinese lady.
Portrait of a karma yogin.
Two Sai stars.
Signs, strange and significant.
The mystery of Vibhuti.
The twain are meeting.
The esoteric Christmas.
What is Truth?
Wensley gains more than a cure.
Easter and the dharmic life.
Sai Avatar and mysticism.
Sai miracle children.
Epilogue.
Acknowledgements.
If we have many lifetimes on earth, and I feel sure we have hundreds, when does our conscious homeward journey begin? When do we realise for certain that we are homeward bound?
I think that for many, many lifetimes we are like the prodigal son in the parable, so engrossed in earthly pleasures, so seduced by the fleshpots of the world, that we forget altogether who we are and where we came from and hear no call from our heavenly home. The poet Wordsworth talks about heaven lying about us in our infancy, but he was writing about his own experience and I think he was on his last or his near last incarnation. Yet, inevitably, after centuries no doubt of the tough life on earth, every human soul begins to have dim memories, vague intimations, of that faraway, happy, Beulah Land where it had its beginnings before it became, for some mysterious reason, enmeshed in the long earthly adventure.
Something brings back to consciousness but very sweet memories of where we came from and where we really belong. As the memories grow stronger, perhaps after many more lifetimes, as prodigal son, we turn our faces and our footsteps towards our true home. We feel that the true joys are there, there is no suffering, and in that home is our own loving Father. In this homeward journey there are many obstacles, many diversions that may turn our feet in other directions and we may become lost again in the temptations of the world's fleshpots and we may fail to reach our home in that lifetime. Even great Yogis who are very near home, sometimes fall into temptations and are born again on the earth like the beautiful "vibhuti baby" that I saw one year at Prashanti Nilayam. Swami told us that this baby, who was oozing vibhuti from his skin, was, in fact, a fallen Yogi, but he was born near to the ashram of the Avatar and I understand that such advanced souls, who fall from grace in the last lap of their journey home, are always born into fortunate circumstances. (I tell the story of the "vibhuti baby" in one of my earlier books about Sai Baba.)
One sign that I believe shows that you are consciously homeward bound is when in your life no temptations can assail you and divert you because they all have a hollow ring; there is really one desire, one pull, and that is the glory that awaits you in the heavenly home. Some great teachers say that even when you reach the gates of your heavenly home, it is only by the grace of God that you, the returning prodigal, can enter its sacred portals. Perhaps this is indicated by the fact that in the fable the loving father goes out to meet and welcome his long-lost son, embracing him and leading him to the doorway of the home. Perhaps the truth, the need in grace at journey's end is also shown symbolically in Homer's Odyssey where the goddess Athena appears to Odysseus on the shores of his island home and affords him the great help without which he could never have entered his palace.
Only the great love and compassion of the divine Father can help us complete the journey. But, even though no temptation, no Calypso, no Circe has the power to divert us from our goal, there is always the chance that Poseidon may raise a great storm that will drive our homeward bound ship right off its course. The only thing we can do then is to keep a firm grip on the tiller and a clear eye on the compass and so guide the ship back on course where we will see again the Lights of Home shining over our bows and know we are heading for the home port. Remain steadfast and faithful and leave the rest to the grace of God.
It seems to me that in the lifetime that will lead to that homeward bound stretch, where we see the home port ahead, we can, in review, recognise the pattern of events that lead to the journey home. From childhood through to old age we can trace the rainbow through the rain of life, so to speak. That is why I start this book with some memoirs of early years.
Some memories of my mother.
Paradise lies beneath the feet of your mother - Mahomet.
My mother was, from my earliest memories of her, a beautiful woman with a high forehead and large soft grey eyes set wide apart, which I learned later is a phrenological sign of magnanimity. A small straight nose led down to a mobile mouth above a cleft chin. She must have been about five feet five or five feet four in height and in my earliest memory she is wearing an Edwardian skirt tight at the waist and flaring out widely to about ankle level. Apart from her gentleness, one of the most memorable features about her was a great sweetness. In fact, it reminds me of the charming sweetness of another woman, the Duchess of York, now the Queen Mother. I was still a youth when I first saw the Duchess standing on a platform in a park in Tasmania beside her husband, then the Duke of York and later George VI. I was so affected by the sweetness of her smile that after passing her, I ran through a small gate in the fence of the park and joined the tail end of the crowd that was walking past her. By the time I passed her again, I was one of the stragglers and she seemed to give me a smile of unutterable sweetness.
Strangely, though very gentle and sweet, my mother was a very firm disciplinarian. She even used corporal punishment when she felt it was necessary. Oddly, though, she never used it with my sister Rita, who was about seventeen months older than I was. She did not use it very often on me but I have several memories of her striking the bare skin at the back of my knees or sometimes my posterior. I felt anger and resentment at the time but the great love that flowed from her, even when she was wielding the rod of punishment, made me forgive her quickly and easily. By the time evening had come and I was kneeling beside my bed saying the prayers she had taught me, I had forgiven her completely. Sometimes when both my sister Rita and I received some stern punishment, we would run away, hide among some hanging clothes, perhaps in a cupboard, and call "I'll tell Dad when he comes home!" Whenever we did tell him, he would simply say, "Well, you must have deserved it." He was wisely always on our mother's side in such matters.
My mother was so beautiful to my childhood eyes that I could not understand why she had not been made queen of some country. But my mother was not only physically beautiful, she also had shining spirituality about her. From long before we were old enough to go to school, she told us many beautiful stories from the Bible that she knew so well. I learned later that the source of her copious knowledge of the Bible and her faith and love for that book came from her father, John Presnell of Ross, Tasmania, where my mother was born and brought up. John Presnell was a faithful, sincere follower of John Wesley, who, with his brother brought a spiritual revival to England in the nineteenth century. The Church founded in his name is sometimes called Wesleyan, sometimes Methodist. The one in Ross bore the latter name and there my grandfather spent his Sundays, sometimes as a lay preacher, always as a leader of the choir. He carried his religion into his week days also, holding daily family prayers and teaching his many children the strict, in some ways puritanical, rules of living for God as taught by John Wesley.
My mother, Caroline Mary, must have been one of his most apt pupils. The religion we learnt at her knee while we were still of pre-school age would be called fundamentalist today. In the simple language she used, the main features of the religious teachings she gave were as follows: there is a Father God dwelling in Heaven above the sky, in whose likeness the first man, Adam, was made. (This, of course, gave me a picture of God as an old man, a wise old man, perhaps with a long white beard. He must, of course, be very ancient because he had been there so long.) Our mother told us that, though God the Father was so far away in Heaven, he sees and hears everything we do or say. Furthermore, he records it all in a Book of Life, so if we do something wrong, such as telling a lie, or stealing, that is written down in the great book. But also our good deeds are recorded there. In Heaven, too, is the Son of God whose name was Jesus. Once a very long time ago, when the world was becoming very wicked and evil, this Son had come to earth as a man. He was born of the Virgin Mary in Palestine and for some years walked throughout that country healing the sick and, usually to open air gatherings, teaching the truth about life and death and the right way for man to live to please the loving Father and so go to Heaven when he died. If anyone failed to please God, if he had many misdeeds or sins recorded unrepented in the Father God's Book of Life, he would go to a terrible place called Hell where he would suffer eternal punishment. When I was a little older, I reflected that this seemed rather a harsh punishment for perhaps one misdeed, but at the time I accepted the teaching.
Another of her fundamentalist teachings, which I think is still taught in some Christian denominations, was that at death we remain in a sleep in the grave until the day of God's great Judgment. On that day we would be raised in a body similar to that that had decayed in the grave for years or possibly centuries and stand with crowds of others before God's great Judgment seat. Then we would find ourselves either with the virtuous ones going to Heaven or with the wicked, unrepentant ones on the road to Hell. This was not a very appealing scene to my childhood mind yet, even worse, was the prospect of lying in the cold grave perhaps for hundreds of years waiting the terrible Day of Judgment. Through the years of my higher education, I discarded the whole idea and tried to persuade my mother that it was wrong. She, being quite psychic, had had a number of strange experiences about death, such as a vision of her mother being carried up to Heaven with a fleet of angels at her death, which had taken place some twenty miles away from where my mother was living. She also sometimes would see the figure of one of her family who had died standing at the foot of her bed. Also she frequently heard a knock at the window of her bedroom at the time some relation or close friend had died some distance away. Such experiences, I argued, proved that people did not sleep in their graves but moved on somewhere if they were able to contact her in this way. She was somewhat stubborn about the idea of giving up the Methodist beliefs her father had taught her. I was glad that before she died she discarded the gruesome idea of waiting in the grave for Judgment Day.
There was another feature of John Presnell's teachings that came to me through the lips of my mother. That was the puritanical Victorian age repression of sexual urges. Sex could be indulged in between married couples only. Any temptation to indulge the sexual desires before marriage or without marriage at any age was certainly a sin going against the commandments of the Father God. This she taught as we grew older though it was before we knew where babies came from. This delicate matter we learnt from other sources. Perhaps it was through my mother's influence in this regard that I did manage to remain virginal until beyond the age of twenty-one, though this was achieved with great difficulty and, like many of the youth of that time, I indulged in a hidden, guilt-ridden sex life in the years before my first marriage when I was thirty. Through my student years at University, I met with young men who found different ways of appeasing this strong, almost unbearable sex urge, including regular masturbation and visiting brothels. The young generation, somewhere about the middle of the twentieth century, threw the Victorian morality to the winds and indulged in free love with the aid of a contraceptive pill, but this God-given powerful sex instinct is still causing much suffering and even tragedy among the youth of the world. What is the answer? John Presnell did not have it because two of his younger daughters scandalized their mother after their father's early death by each having an illegitimate son.
Now, returning to my dear mother, I must mention another way in which she fulfilled Sathya Sai Baba's statement that a child's mother should be his first guru. Even though much of her Methodist, fundamentalist teachings had to be revised and broadened through the course of my life, it was, I believe, better than the atheistic way in which many, even most children today, are brought up. At least it makes one aware of the vital spiritual ingredient of life. Mother, though a farmer's wife and therefore a very busy housewife, found the time to teach Rita and me to read and write and do simple arithmetic before we set foot in school but she also gave us in childhood an unseen friend, who had died on the cross for our sake and still helped us in our day to day lives with problems of what to do and what not to do. He, it was, we believed, who spoke to us in the voice of conscience. We loved him very dearly. His name was Jesus.
I want to finish this chapter with a few interesting, and I believe, significant contacts I had with my mother after her death in 1957. When she died, I was ninety nine per cent certain that there was life after death and I eventually contacted her some months after her funeral through a clairvoyant woman from Brisbane named Anne Novak. Happily, I discovered that the love I had shown in my psychic search for her had helped her a great deal and that she was now in a good place and in good conditions which seemed to be somewhere in the higher subdivisions of the astral plane. I have a good hope that I will see her again when I myself pass from this earth.
After the death of Iris, my second wife, in 1994, I had further psychic contact with my mother through Iris. How fortunate I was in knowing the Sai devotee and great clairvoyant, Joan Moylan, during the time of great loss and sadness for me when Iris left me for the spiritual adventure beyond. I have told in other places how she used to come to my studio in the garden of my house in the Blue Mountains and there, Iris, who seemed to know what was happening on this side of the veil, always appeared within a few minutes of our taking our seats in the studio. She would always stay the whole morning and on one occasion the whole day while we talked of memories and about her life on the other side. At some of these meetings, among the people who came were my sister Rita and the younger one Leone, who was, Swami had told me, my twin soul. Iris had told me that she had visited my mother and found her very happy in her astral abode. On one occasion I said to Iris, that my sisters and several old friends have come back but not my mother. Immediately she replied, "Would you like her to come. If so I will get her." She stood up from her chair and vanished but within less than five minutes she was back with my mother.
I have learned in my studies of psychic science, particularly when I was a member of the Society for Psychical Research in London that on the astral plane, where vibrations are higher and therefore matter is lighter and more easily moulded by thought, people are able to iron out any defects in the body which is a replica of their last body on earth and to assume the appearance of any age they choose. Though some, like Sri Yukteswar, the guru of Yogananda, choose to remain at the age at which they passed away, many return to the appearance of their earlier life. So my mother came in, looking about the same age as Iris, that is around the early twenties. Of course the clairvoyant Joan had never seen my mother in life, nor had she seen a photograph, so how could she be sure that the spirit or astral body of the one who had just appeared, was indeed my mother? She seemed to know immediately and described her to me. One interesting thing she said, "Your mother has such a sweetness about her. She reminds me of the Queen Mother." I, of course, identified her immediately by the things she said to me. When she first came in, she seemed to forget herself for a moment and called me "Baby", as if the memory of me as a baby on her knee was very strong. I noted with some surprise that she was carrying her favourite book under her arm, the Holy Bible. At every psychic meeting we had after that, my mother always appeared very soon after Iris and carried the Bible in her hand or under her arm and Iris would respectfully vacate the chair we had placed in position for her and give it to my mother. The latter always gave me a text from the Bible naming the Book, Chapter and Verse which she wanted me to read and meditate on.
During the winter of 1998 when I spent a couple of months at a house in Oyster Cove, north of the Gold Coast, there were several meetings with clairvoyant Joan who was living in that area. At one of the meetings a strange thing happened. It should not, of course, have been strange, because in the well-known book Narada Bhakti Sutras I had read something to the effect that when one makes sufficient progress on the spiritual path it becomes a blessing to one's ancestors for two or three generations and also to one's descendants for several generations. Well, I had a proof of this at one of the meetings. My mother was there sitting in the chair given to her by Iris. Standing near the chair with his back to the wall was Swami in his subtle body. At the end of the meeting, Iris stood up from where she was sitting on the foot of a bed near to Joan and me, went around behind us to where Swami was standing and knelt to touch his feet. Joan had mentioned earlier that there was a line of people along one wall whom she could not individually identify but knew they were my ancestors. Joan was not surprised to see my mother stand up from her chair and kneel at Swami's feet but she was very surprised to see the ancestors forming a queue and one by one kneeling to make the same gesture which all Sai devotees know as padanamaskar, or respectfully saluting the feet. Narada, the great ancient sage, had as ever spoken truth and I felt great joy at being the means of helping my ancestors.
Yet, for me, an even happier event took place at the last psychic meeting I had through Joan with my late wife and mother. It was near the end of the meeting and my mother was talking to me about the last biblical text she had given me at a former meeting. She then said, "But I will not be bringing the Bible any more because I feel now that it is not right to keep to one spiritual book. Even though I think the Bible is the best guide, I think I should broaden my outlook and am now going to start reading books that you and some of the people who come here are talking about." Of course, I knew she meant the books on the Sai teachings. As I thought about it afterwards, I felt a very deep joy in the knowledge that my beloved mother seemed about to make good spiritual progress which would lead her to higher levels of joy and bliss in the huge astral realm leading to the Devichan and Causal planes.
In the next chapter I will tell about my psychic search for my father.
My father.
If the red slayer thinks he slays,
And if the slain thinks he is slain,
They know not well the subtle ways
I keep and pass and turn again.
"Brahma" by EmersonWhen I was a young boy of eight or nine years, one of my joys was to sit in the barn with my father, door open wide so that we could watch the gently falling rain while he told me stories. Some of these were about the Trojan heroes, such as Achilles and Hector or the clever Ulysses - my very enjoyable introduction to the Greek mythology. Sometimes he told me stories about his own boyhood, his schooldays and the fisticuff fights he had with the boys from other schools. He always seemed to win these fights so he became a hero to me, like Hector and Ulysses. Achilles was a little lower down the scale because he seemed less generous, less magnanimous. Sometimes he told me about our family forbears but all I remember of this was that his own grandfather, with several sons, came from England to Tasmania somewhere before the middle of the nineteenth century. Apparently they came from the county of Cambridgeshire. They must have been farmers because they bought land in the rich, fertile districts of northern Tasmania. I remember that one of the sons was named Samuel because that was the name of my own grandfather but I never saw him because he died young when my father was only four or five years old. Grandfather Samuel's farm had been somewhere in the district of Carrick. This village was, I believe, named after a village in Scotland. My father's birth was registered in a church in Carrick. His birth was in November 1872 and his registered name was Edward Joseph Murphet.
The eldest of Samuel's family was a boy called George, while between George and young Edward were four or five girls. These became so scattered through the years, after their father's death, that I met only two of them, Aunty Lily and Aunty Ada, both of whom lived in Melbourne when I was a boy. My paternal grandmother, whose name was Susan, must have had many problems on her hands with this large family, now fatherless, on a farm with nobody to run it. Samuel's brother, David, whose farm was a good many miles away, agreed to help her by taking the little boy, Edward, always called Teddy, to join his own family, consisting of two sons and two daughters. They were all some years older than the little Ted, perhaps about the age of our Uncle George who was then presumably in his mid-teens. So my father became part of his Uncle David's family. I remember seeing Great-uncle David once when my father took me to see him in his home of retirement in the small town of Perth in the north of Tasmania. To me he was a very impressive but rather an awe-inspiring figure, sitting in an easy chair, with his back to a high garden wall with a few creepers growing on it. I thought his beard was very long indeed. It was completely white except for a few tobacco stains on it from the pipe he smoked. He sat there talking in a kindly, almost loving manner to my father who had spent the years of his boyhood and youth on Uncle David's large and apparently very rich farm. There, along with his two cousin-brothers, Horace and Arthur, he learned to be a farmer. When I heard an old jockey, who had lived nearby, refer to Uncle David as "a gentleman farmer", I gained the impression that this venerable old man had left most, if not all, of the farm work to his sons and farm labourers.
My father told me once that his uncle had offered to give him further education so that he could go into a bank if he wished, instead of being a farmer. But my father felt that he owed it to the kindly uncle who had taken care of him from childhood to remain on the farm as long as his uncle needed him. And so he became a farmer instead of a bank employee. Yet, I must say, that my father did not have the build and appearance of the average farmer, as I knew them. He had small, light bones, delicate hands with the long fingers of a musician and altogether rather fine features. I thought myself that he was a handsome man, with warm brown eyes, black hair, a shapely nose with nostrils that flared out above a brown, Edwardian moustache that curled to the sides as if it had an inclination to become a handle-bar moustache. He had a good baritone singing voice and loved to stand at the piano singing hymns. When Uncle David retired from the farm, presumably selling it, my father went and joined Horace, his eldest cousin-brother, who had bought Mill Farm near Hagley Village. Rita and I were still children when we first went to Mill Farm, one corner of which reached the Hagley railway station and another corner led through a gate to the village of Hagley. Uncle Horace, as we were supposed to call him, had a big black beard and was more of a rugged farming type than my father. For some reason, Rita called him Uncle Dobby and that was the name we both knew him by until he retired to the biggest house in Hagley, where after a few years he died.
It was on Mill Farm that my father first met my mother, Caroline Mary Presnell. She was staying at the time as companion and helper of a very rich old lady, who occupied a large house near the railway station. The easiest way for Caroline Mary, then a young lady in her early twenties, to reach the village to do any shopping she required, was across the laneways of Mill Farm to the exit gate to the village. It was a pleasant walk along smooth lanes and the hawthorn hedges that fenced off the various paddocks. One day, as she was walking from the railway station along a lane on Mill Farm she saw a young man burning farm rubbish somewhere along the lane. The smoke from the fire was blown by a breeze across the lane. As she drew near, he threw a lot more heavy rubbish on the fire, causing the smoke to thicken. She thought the forward young man had done this purposefully to make her come on his side of the fire, instead of going through the smoke. To avoid him, she walked through the thick, acrid smoke. But she did not manage to avoid him. When she came through the smoke, he was standing by the lane on the other side to give her an apology for the thick smoke he had caused. And so, as he had intended, they had met and very soon afterwards the young man, named Edward Joseph Murphet, called to see her at the mansion by the railway station.
The marriage, which eventually came about, took place in Ross, my mother's native village. Grandfather John Presnell had died some years before but Grandmother Caroline and some of her daughters were present. My handsome father seems to have become very popular with those ladies as he did with most people.
After the marriage, the couple went to live on a farm in the north-west of Tasmania which my father had been sharing for some time with his brother George. I can dimly remember Uncle George's family of boys and a few girls. My memory of Uncle George himself is very dim indeed because he died while I was still quite young, probably between three and four. But he was very popular in the memories of Rita and myself because, being a handyman, he had made us a high-backed chair which I inherited from Rita when I was old enough to sit at table and she could manage with an ordinary chair. I think that the farm must have been sold because we eventually went to live on our farm in the district of Westwood, which lies about seven miles from Hagley and approximately the same from Carrick. The farm was called "Meadow Lynn," which apparently means a meadow with a pond in it. It was in the pond in the meadow that I had a near-death experience, which I relate in the book "Where the Road Ends." In the same book I tell the strange story of my vision of a large window in the sky through which I saw heavenly figures and heard sacred music. At the time it seemed like a testament to my mother's teachings but perhaps I should regard it as a preface to my homeward journey.
We spent many of the innocent childhood years on Meadow Lynn farm with my loving mother and father. My father in many ways was more a companion than a parent. He had no discipline except occasionally to shout but he always supported my mother in any disciplinary measures. I was about two months short of the age of ten when my father took my sister and I into my parents' bedroom to see a wonderful thing. It was a tiny baby girl with black eyes and a mop of black hair. She was lying in bed in my mother's arms. With great excitement, we asked Dad, as we called our father, where the baby had come from. We knew that a nurse had just taken up residence in our home and we thought perhaps that she had brought her. "But no," my father informed us, "I found her this morning under the lilac tree. She was in a hole there." We rushed out to look at the beautifully perfumed lilac tree. It was spring and the lilac was in full bloom. Under the tree was a newly dug hole, rather like a little cradle in the ground. "Who dug the hole?" we asked our father, who had come out to join us. "Why, of course, the angels did," he replied. The thought passed through my mind that the angels had done some very neat spadework. I myself by this time had learnt to use a spade. Anyway, the great thing was that we had a new and wonderful addition to the family. She, too, was called Caroline with a second name of Leone, by which she became known. The year was 1916 when she was born and it was about half a century later when Sathya Sai Baba informed me that my young sister Leone was, in fact, my twin soul. Then I understood the reason why we had been so close, each often knowing what the other was thinking, and why she felt the bump on the head that nearly knocked her downstairs when I, some twenty miles away, fell off my motorbike on my head and knocked myself unconscious on the road.
The first effect on me of my little sister's presence in the world was to make me feel grown-up and able to help my father on any job he was doing on the farm. My mother had noted this with some alarm and apparently once said to my father, "Remember, he has not grown up yet." But I thought that I had and my father seemed to have agreed. In the next five years he taught me to use every farm implement except the reaper-and-binder. For most of these implements, I had to drive a team of three big farm horses. Of course, I learned to ride every horse on the farm and a racehorse on a neighbouring farm. But my favourite was a fat little pony called Taffy. I used to ride him barebacked and had many falls. Sometimes Taffy would wait while I got up and climbed on his back again. On other occasions he would continue his galloping journey home and I had to walk the distance. But I never was hurt through these falls in learning to ride a horse, so I learned to love it and became a good rider. Yet, at the age of about eleven I felt a great desire to ride a pushbike. Having a bike would allow me to go further afield, even to the village of Hagley or Carrick or even ride the fourteen miles to the city of Launceston where long ago in my grandmother's house I had first seen the light of day. My good father could easily have afforded to buy me a bicycle but, for some reason known only to himself, he said that I must earn the money to buy it. "How was I going to earn the money?" I asked him. He thought for a few minutes. "Well," he said, "you could trap the rabbits that leave their tracks under the fence between the thirty acre paddock and the bushland." I said nothing but the thought seemed like a terrible doom laid upon me. For a boy, I had a very soft heart.
Some years earlier, when I was about five years old, I used to shed tears when I accidentally stepped on and killed a little spider on the floor and, we had at one time had some pet rabbits among our pets, which included guinea pigs and pet lambs when perhaps the mother sheep had died or was unable to care for the lamb herself. Now I was expected to trap and kill and skin little bunnies. "I don't know how to set a trap," I told my father. "I will teach you," he replied. And so he did but I was not a very good pupil and caught very few rabbits in the traps I set along the fence by the bush. The first one I took out of a trap I nearly let run free but, noting that his front legs were broken and badly damaged, I forced myself to kill him. This gave me a feeling of horror, especially when I felt his warm furry body tremble against my leg as I broke his neck. Then my father taught me how to skin the rabbit I had killed and how to peg out the skin so that it would dry and become saleable.
I think that the greatly desired bike would have remained just a dream desire if something special had not taken place. One evening just before the sun set, when I was trying to set traps away at the back of the farm on the edge of the thirty acre paddock, a man rode quietly up on a horse. He greeted me, then jumped off the horse and came to where I was busy with the traps. I knew him. In fact, in a way he had become my hero. His name was Vern Jones. I knew he had been a scholar at the Launceston Church of England Grammar School and had then gone to the University of Tasmania, after which he had travelled in the outback areas of Australia, "on the track," as it was called. Now for some months he had been living at Westwood, with some farmer friends, helping them and other farmers, including my father, especially at harvest time. He was a well-known and very popular character in the district of Westwood. At social functions, such as a dance in the woolshed on some farm, he could easily be persuaded to sing one of his comic songs. Once when Vern was staying in the district during the winter months, he did something that ensured his permanent popularity with the Westwood farmers. They were trying to get a team together to play the Hagley football team. The football, incidentally, played in Tasmania, was the popular Australian Rules football. It was not easy for Westwood to find eighteen good men who knew anything at all about football. So Vern managed to bring about eight of the required eighteen from his old school. They were all from Grammar's First Team, which always seemed to win the Tasmanian interschool matches and were first class footballers. They stayed the night before the match in the district and, to me, with their colourful school caps and football jerseys, they were very glamorous figures and I longed to be one of them. Well, of course, with this kind of expert help, Westwood beat Hagley by a large margin. The Grammar boys, along with Vern himself, had played brilliantly and the farmers, including my father, had had very little to do. There always seemed to be a colourful Grammar boy wherever the ball landed. Well, it was this heroic figure who now began to teach me how to set a rabbit trap. He made quite an art of it, so that in future it became an art to me. But I still hated killing the little rabbits that now were caught in the traps in large numbers.
Eventually I had a good many skins dried and ready for the buyer when he came on his regular rounds, but still not nearly enough money to buy a bicycle. So my father decided to help me. On bright moonlit nights, he took me and his double-barrelled shotgun over the wooded hills on the edge of the district. I enjoyed this wandering in the bush in the moonlight. We seemed to be going out almost to the Western Tiers, the formidable blue wall that seemed to me to form the edge of the Westwood farmlands. Sometime in the early hours on the first night of our possum hunting, when the moon seemed to be getting too low, we decided to make for home. My father handed me his gun to carry, slinging the bag of about half a dozen ring-tailed possums over his shoulder and headed off in what I thought was quite the wrong direction. "Are you sure this is the right way home, Dad?" I asked. He stopped and pointed to the sky filled with glittering stars. "I steer my way by the stars," he said. "See that very bright star towards the horizon over there?" "Yes," I replied. "Well, if we walk towards that, it will bring us to a point in Westwood not far from home." Then he strode off again among the ferns and logs while I followed with the gun on my shoulder.
My Dad is like the mariners of old, I thought, who used to steer ships by the stars before the invention of the compass. This revealed a side of him that I had not known before. Well, we went far afield on a good many nights after that and eventually I had the money to buy the prized bicycle. It was a great thrill to me after I learned to ride and I explored all the roads of the district, eventually riding fourteen miles to the northern city of Launceston.
I have told in the book "Where the Road Ends" about how my father's health failed when he was in his early sixties, how he left the farm and came to Sydney, where I was working, and how he died there at the age of sixty-five. His death was a great sorrow to me as it not only took away the great companion of my boyhood but also made the first break in the family circle that had meant so much to me. As the years passed and my thoughts went back to our good companionship, my love for him grew more and more and I began to look forward to the time when I would see him again on the other side of death. Then came the time when, as I described in the last chapter, through Joan Moylan I began seeing my deceased wife again and she told me about meeting my mother and two deceased sisters in the realms beyond death. I began wondering about my father. She had not mentioned him. When I asked her if she had seen him, she said, "No, I think he must have reincarnated." Then my deceased sister Caroline Leone walked across the lawn into the garden studio and stood close to me, I said to her, "What have you done with our Daddy?" She told me that he had, some years before, reincarnated into the very small mountainous country in Europe called Lichtenstein. "Whatever is an Australian farmer, who never in his life went out of Australia, doing in that tiny mountainous country?" She replied, "He said there was a family living there who could help him with one of his main problems and that he knew he could help them too. That's why he went to that part of the world." Leone told me his present name and approximate age. How strange it would be, I thought, if I went there and told that young man that he was my father. But I was too old for such an adventure and had to content myself with the thought that I would locate him again in some form in the vast forever that lies beyond earthly existence.
Schooldays.
The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts - R.L.S.I crossed the red gravel road from the far corner of Meadow Lynn farm to a weatherboard cottage with walls unpainted. I heard that it had been brought to this central spot in the district to act as a schoolhouse. I spent most of my primary school years in this little cottage school known as the Westwood State School. It was not until the last year of my primary school life that a brand new schoolhouse appeared in the same playground. On the first day there, when our mother thought we were old enough to attend school, she walked with Rita and me across the paddocks and along the road to the schoolhouse where she handed us over to the teacher. As was the case in the majority of small country schools, there was only one teacher for all the seven classes from preparatory to sixth class and the brave young teacher, who welcomed us to the Westwood school, was a bright, smiling figure by the name of Olive Doak. She was perhaps in her mid-twenties and was known respectfully by parents and children alike as "Miss Doak." Among the fifteen or sixteen children who sat at the long desks were several wild young farm labourers' boys. They regarded Miss Doak as the enemy but Rita and I thought of her as a sweet, kind friend. While she set some of the other classes to work, I looked around the schoolroom. It was quite a large room, making up the whole of the front of the cottage and, being pine-lined, it seemed to have a subtle, pleasant odour. Behind us, as we sat in our desks, about six children to each desk, were the cottage windows that looked out on the road which led to a junction of roads just beyond the school. In the middle of the wall in front of us was a door which led, I found later, to two back rooms, which, as I was to discover, had various uses. One of these was the administration of corporal punishment but Miss Doak was a very mild disciplinarian so there was not much corporal punishment.
On that first day, as she set all the other children to work, scattered as they were among the four long desks, she came back to us, sitting with two other children in what was called the preparatory class. I remember she took a chart and began to teach the alphabet, which we had already learned from our mother, in a new way. Instead of calling the letters a, b, c etc they acquired new names which were, in fact, the sounds the letters made when pronounced in a word. I found this very interesting and very easy and I saw it would help spelling a great deal. "M", for example, was something like the noise a cow makes when she is speaking gently. We made it with our lips closed. The rest of the school subjects were just as easy and interesting to me, especially after the good grounding we had had from our mother guru. Sometimes, hardly more than once a day, we would hear the clop-clop of horses' hooves on the road outside. Miss Doak would come from her high desk and look through the windows, while the children all jumped up from their forms, turned around and watched the passing vehicle with its driver and passengers. Or, sometimes, it would be just one rider on a horse. This was in the days before cars. When Miss Doak had satisfied her curiosity, she would call to us severely, "Sit down, children! Sit down!"
Instead of going home for lunch, as we only had an hour, we found it more pleasant to bring sandwich lunches and eat them with the other kids, many of us on the branches of the oak tree while we ate or, if the weather was bad, in one of the back rooms where there were forms for us to sit on. Another use for the oak tree and the back rooms was for reading classes. Miss Doak would choose the extrovert of the class as monitor, then send the class under the oak tree on bright, sunny days and into a back room on rainy days. Topsy Pontiac was always the extrovert she chose for the responsible position of monitor. Topsy would make us read in turn diligently for a while and then, when we all grew bored, we would stop reading and just talk. When Miss Doak appeared in the distance, we would go back to reading and so the teacher never knew how little reading practice we had. Our little blond monitor was also a tomboy. Often she used to swing above us from branch to branch like a monkey or, if we were in the back room, she would swing from beam to beam. It did not seem to worry her, or maybe it pleased her, that her colourful underwear was always on display during these feats. Miraculously, she was never caught but was always back on ground level seriously monitoring the reader when Miss Doak appeared. Somewhere during the years of my primary school education, this lively, daredevil young blond became my secret sweetheart. I don't think I ever told anybody, not even my sister Rita about this secret and I don't think that Topsy herself ever guessed it.
These happy-go-lucky schooldays, that were largely play days, came to an end suddenly when Miss Doak married a farmer in the district. I was hoping that this might mean no school for a time and therefore more free and happy days on the farm with my father. But it was not very long before a new teacher came. Her name was Flora Macarthur and she was very different from the dreaming Olive Doak, not only in appearance. Her grey eyes told us how very serious she was and the sound of her voice, though kindly with a loving tone, was firmness itself. She proved on the very first day that firm discipline had come to the school. In the days of Miss Doak, we pupils all did a good deal of whispering to each other. On the first day of Miss Macarthur's reign, one of the boys whispered a few words loud enough for her to hear. Immediately she called him out in front and gave him one cut of the cane across the palm of the hand. Hushed silence fell on the school and nobody ever whispered audibly again.
Over a year must have passed before I myself had a taste of her corporal punishment. She thought I was breaking one of her very firm rules, that we must not write on the desks. I was sitting, holding a pencil in my fingers, as if I was writing on the desk, whereas in fact I was away in deep thought. She called me into the back room, gave me four severe cuts across the palms. It stung very much and for a time I hated her but, before the school day ended, my love for her had returned. I think all the children loved her because we knew there was love behind her discipline that, because of her love, she very seriously wanted to educate us all to the best of her ability. So, like my mother before her, she demonstrated what I heard Swami say almost a lifetime later, "Children should have firm discipline and, if it is wrapped in love, they will not resent it."
I remember one happy day when Flora Macarthur took me a step forward towards my life's goal. One day I was sitting at my place at the desk, working silently on some lesson the teacher had left me to do, when I heard her voice. It sounded like music and I realised she was reading poetry to a girl, the one pupil in another class. The poem turned out to be Matthew Arnold's "The Forsaken Merman." I had never heard it before and now, through the rhythm of the words as she pronounced them, I could hear the rhythm of the waves and the sad sigh of the sea. I stopped my private study and sat listening as the rhythm of the words brought the roll of the sea into my heart. I had always loved the sea. Now began my great love of poetry. No longer was it just words put in an awkward way, trying to say something that could have been said better in prose. After that day, the love of good English poetry stayed in my blood.
It was through this woman of the serious grey eyes and soothing voice, that I began to love all school work. It began to appeal to me even as much as farming. These were happy, quiet, well-ordered school days with a touch of beauty showing itself from time to time. But suddenly a blow fell that shattered them. Flora Macarthur fell badly ill and was taken to hospital. Perhaps the Education Department thought that she would soon be back so they did not send another teacher. Weeks went by with Westwood school closed. I certainly had freedom. I spent the days in the open air on the farmlands with my father. In a way, this was what I had always wanted but now, somehow, I missed the school. Had I taken a step, or just perhaps half a step, in what my father and the whole Murphet clan would have considered a wrong direction? My mother would, of course, have approved of the half turn I had taken.
Eventually, any hope of Flora Macarthur's recovery within any reasonable time was abandoned and the Department sent another teacher. This was a widow, named Mrs Dunstan. She had had more years of experience than either of the other two and, I think, was a born teacher. She was firm but did not require to exert much discipline. Her strong personality and air of assurance were sufficient. It was almost as if my destiny had brought her to the school to put my feet on the first step towards my far-off divine goal for this incarnation. One afternoon she asked me to remain behind for a while after the other children had left. I had no idea what she had in mind and was stunned into speechlessness when she said, "How would you like to sit for the Qualifying Examination this year? I know you have missed many months at school but I think, if you will work hard now, that you will pass. What do you say?" Many thoughts and emotions were going around like a hurdy-gurdy in my mind. Surprise and pride that she had suggested this, fear that I would fail her and, deep down, some inarticulate feeling that here was a great opening to something wonderful. But all I could say was, "Well, I will have to ask my parents. If they agree, I will try my best." "I hope they will agree," said the teacher. "Tell them that you would have to come at least one hour before school starts in the mornings. I will come earlier than that and have on the blackboard notes and summaries of the subjects in which you are far behind because of the months you missed."
My mother agreed enthusiastically, my father slowly and dubiously. And so the plan began. The news soon spread around the whole district because nobody before had attempted this examination despite the fact that the state high school in the northern city of Launceston had been there a few years. But how could young country kids from a one teacher school be expected to pass the difficult qualifying examination for entry? The housewives' tongues wagged a good deal to the general effect that I didn't have a chance and it was foolish to try. Their husbands, like my own father, seemed rather stunned and said very little. What they did say, or mumbled, was the question, "Why should a boy, destined to be a farmer, waste his time on high school education?"
Well, in the five months of cramming, before school, during school, and also in the evenings, with Mrs Dunstan's enthusiasm and full belief in my success, I really enjoyed this extra study. When the time for the great examination came, I felt somewhat nervous because the examination was held in a big city school and I felt rather like a country bumpkin among the crowd of quick-witted city kids who were sitting for the exam. I had stayed the night before at my Aunt Harriet's place in the city. She was one of my mother's sisters and my favourite aunt. My mother had instructed me to get a good night's rest but a friend of my aunt's, who was also staying with her, took me to the cinema where there was a horror film which she wanted to see. It had the effect of giving me a sleepless night, with the result that I was not in the best frame of mind to sit for this tough examination. Well, I did my best under the circumstances and, when it was over, I was inclined to think unhappily that I had not passed.
The following day, when my good mother drove in from Westwood to pick me up, I resolved to tell her the truth, even though it might make her unhappy. As we sat together in the forward-facing seat of the rubber-tired phaeton, a recent acquisition, my mother held the reins of the one horse. "How do you think you got on?" she asked in a serious, gentle voice. "I doubt really if I passed, Mum," I replied. She was quiet for a few minutes and I had the feeling that she was praying. Presently she asked, "When will you know?" I told her that the results would be published in "The Examiner" on a date about three weeks hence. "The Examiner" was a daily newspaper that circulated throughout northern Tasmania. We got it regularly so that my father could read it under the lamplight in the evenings.
On the important day when the results of the Qualifying Examination were to be published, I could not wait for it to be delivered. I rode my bike up hill to where it was delivered in bulk and I could pick up our copy as soon as it arrived. Leaning against my bicycle, I opened the paper with anxious fingers, fumbled through and found the page where the names of those who had passed were printed. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I saw my name there. It was the first time I had ever seen it in print but there it was, no mistake. I had passed!
I rode rapidly down the hill to convey the news to my mother and father. My mother's face glowed with the good news. Even my father looked pleased and rather proud of me. All he said was, "Congratulations! You did well, lad."
Harvest time was beginning on the farm and I worked extra hard to save him the wages for at least one labourer because he had agreed, probably through my mother's persuasion, that I could go to high school for just one year. That was really all I wanted. Then I would return to my destined life on the farm. I loved the harvesting but my regret that year was that my hero, Vern Jones, had not made his appearance on the harvest fields. This was a mystery to me and nobody seemed sure what had happened to him. One of his friends, a Westwood farmer named Roy Wise, mumbled as if he did not believe it himself, "I think he's gone back to school." This did not make sense. If he meant back to University, that would be closed, having even longer summer holidays than the schools. So the mystery remained.
A parent was expected to escort a new pupil to the high school on opening day. So my stalwart mother, who was shy at meeting new people, especially scholarly men, took me into the headmaster's office. He proved to be a smiling, affable man with curly greying hair, topping a large forehead and kindly eyes; so my mother was put at her ease. From the book-room near the Head's office, my mother bought me the textbooks I would require that year. There seemed to be an awful lot of them but I was proud to carry them under my arm and I remember to this day the pleasant smell of new paper. But when my mother left me to drive back home, the Westwood farm seemed to me not only fourteen miles but half the world away. It had been arranged for me to board with my Great-aunt Mary, the sister of my maternal grandmother. She was a homely person living in a homely house just a short walk from the school. My parents would drive into Launceston to pick me up for the first weekend at home. After that, arrangements would be made for me to ride my bike to Hagley, leave it at Mill Farm, go to the city by train, return by train on the Friday following and then ride my bike from Mill Farm to my home in Westwood.
In memory, my first year at the high school was a time of joy. I think I enjoyed every minute of it. The new subjects, such as Geometry, Algebra, Physics and Chemistry and even Latin, seemed to be pushing away barriers that allowed my mind to expand and my reasoning powers to open up, bringing a wider world into existence. I met Shakespeare through his play "Julius Caesar," of which I learned long passages and used to quote from them whenever opportunity offered. We had a wonderful staff of teachers, all of them wearing their black academic graduation robes over their clothing. We had a different teacher for almost every subject. I considered them all to be a brilliant band of mind-openers. I think my favourite was our form master, Eric Scott, who had just returned from Oxford University, England, where he had gone on scholarship and obtained a degree. He took us for English Literature and Chemistry. I think the latter was my favourite subject at that time, but English Literature ran a very good second. Eric Scott was editor of the school magazine that year and he encouraged me to write an article for it. It took the form of a satirical piece about our French teacher, who had caused a great deal of emotion in the class by expecting us to stand up and recite fairly long passages of French prose, which we had been forced to learn in addition to our other mountain of homework every evening. One of the girls in the class broke down and wept because she could not remember it properly and I played the truant one afternoon because I had not had time to learn my long passage of French prose. Afterwards the French teacher changed her teaching practice but I was not very popular with her. I was rather proud of this, my first article in print. It brought me some fame among my fellow students but now, in retrospect, I feel more shame than fame.
Of the sports, I felt myself enjoying cricket more than anything else. This was a sport my father taught me in the orchard at home. He himself was very keen on the game.
After a successful and happy year at the High, I was back on the harvest field for the Christmas holidays. Then I was permitted by my father, probably at my mother's urging, to return to High for another year. But during the first two or three weeks, I met with an accident. Perhaps it was through some bad karma surrounding the bicycle. Anyway on a Monday morning, riding from the farm towards Hagley station and perhaps thinking I was late for the train, I was riding too fast down a fairly steep hill about a mile and a half from home. The front wheel bumped into an unexpected pothole and twisted. I went over the handlebars and landed face first on the road. When I managed to get to my feet, my face was swollen so badly that I could not see to ride, so I walked, pushing the bicycle back home. At the sight of my swollen, bloodstained face, my alarmed mother put me straight to bed and sent for a doctor. The result was that I had to spend a few weeks in bed and after that was not permitted to return to school until near the end of the first term. I remember that less than a week after my return, the terminal examinations began. During my time at home, I had studied the textbooks, particularly the one on Chemistry, which was still my favourite subject. I remember I startled my second year Chemistry teacher by coming top in the class for Chemistry. He was pleased, of course, but also I felt he was a little put out as this seemed to make him rather superfluous; but, of course, he was not. Well, the year continued at High without any other major events. It continued to be stimulating and mind-expanding. But I did not care much for a new subject introduced in Maths. This was Trigonometry, and there was too much memorizing of formulae for my taste.
Harvest time on the farm again came after the academic year. My friend Vern Jones was still missing. Why was he not there, I wondered, sunbathing his bare arms and chest among the sheaves? But the mystery remained. Then came a very pleasant surprise. After Christmas, before the academic year began, my father told me that he was sending me this year to Launceston Church of England Grammar School. My heart nearly jumped out of my chest. I would be among the boys with the colourful caps and blazers.
As before, it was my valiant mother who took me to meet the Head at the old Grammar School in Elizabeth Street, the building it had occupied since its foundation in 1842. The Headmaster was a shy man, almost as shy as my mother. His name was the Reverend Bethune. He was an ordained minister of the Anglican Church.
This year I was to board with my Aunt Harriet, whose residence was in the same street as one entrance to the school. It was a shorter walk for me than it would have been from Great-aunt Mary's. My father paid Aunt Harriet my board, as he had done to Great-aunt Mary. Now I realised he had to pay school fees as well. I found out, during the first week at school, one reason why he had transferred me from High to Grammar. I was in the Fifth Form as the grades were called here. The classroom was almost full of boys, some of them quite noisy when no teacher was present. We had finished one lesson and were waiting for the master to come to give us the next lesson, which was, I think, in Australian History. I heard his footsteps come through the door and proceed towards his high desk in front. At the sight of this new master, who was also new to the school, a silence fell over the classroom. I saw him walk to his desk in front, then put a book on the desk and turn around. To my great astonishment, it was my friend and hero, Vern Jones. Seeing me, he left his high desk and came down to where I was sitting. He stood there for about five minutes talking to me while the rest of the class looked on, silently, perhaps in some surprise. Anyway he did a great deal for my prestige. Years later Vern told me that it had been a help to him, too, to see someone he knew so well sitting at a desk in front of him. I understood now why he had been absent from the farmlands of Westwood. He had been studying, mainly at the University, to complete a degree to gain a position as teacher at his own old well-loved school.
He proved to be a very good teacher indeed and, some years after I had left the school and begun my travels abroad, I heard from an ex-student of Grammar that Vern had become the Headmaster of that school. I heard this news with joy. Then, many years later, after he had retired and I had returned from my last journey around the world, Vern obtained my postal address from Cousin Eliot, son of Uncle Horace of Hagley, and wrote to me. This began a wonderful correspondence between us. I even sent him a copy of my recently published book "Sai Baba, Man of Miracles." I did this with a little reluctance, because I knew that, as Headmaster of Launceston Church of England Grammar School, he would have been a member of the Church of England. Yet because his own father had been born in the two-storey farmhouse at Meadow Lynn and during the years of teaching at Grammar, he had bought a farm himself in Westwood, I knew there was a good mateship and understanding between us. He wrote to me of his great interest in and appreciation of the book. I felt relieved and happy about this for the book seemed to mark the beginning of my life's work for mankind and for God.
I passed the Intermediate Examination after my year in the Fifth Form and thought that would probably be the end of my secondary education. Yet, joyfully I found myself there for another year. Perhaps this might have been because that year we moved out to the new school buildings on the banks of the Tamar River. This was a splendidly equipped school, with brand new buildings, tennis courts, cricket field, football ground and the Tamar River flowing along one border to provide good facilities for rowing contests. The Leaving Certificate Examination, which included Matriculation for University, normally took the student two years' study after the Intermediate. But, because my father was not rich and it may have been a strain on his budget to pay the school fees, I decided to study hard and sit for the Matriculation Examination at the end of the first year at the new school. I was now in the Sixth Form of bright boys and keen students. One of them was, in fact, a genius. I told the Headmaster what I hoped to do and he said he would give me all the support he could.
Early in the first term of the year, I also told the Head that I would like to become a minister of the Anglican Church. I had thought about it for some time and decided that this was one way, perhaps a humble way, to devote my life to the good of man. The Reverend Bethune seemed pleased that I had decided to enter his own profession and he spent time during the year coaching me in the doctrines and dogma of the Church. I also went through several rituals, such as Confirmation, administered by the Bishop of Tasmania. My mother seemed quite pleased with my decision and the maternal aunts saw me as the next Bishop of Tasmania.
And so my last year of secondary education proved to be a very busy one, what with academic studies, preparations for my life as a minister of religion and some sport, which was almost a religion in itself among the boys of the school.
Well, I passed the Matriculation Examination, obtaining the Leaving Certificate at the end of the year. But my further explorations into the dogma and doctrines of the Church had led me to a painful decision. During the last few months of the year, my mind had been a battleground between the rationality of a child, a very healthy child of secondary school science and mathematics, against the dogmas of the Church. Rationality won the battle. I felt, indeed my conscience told me, that it would not be right to teach people the dogmas and some of the doctrines which I did not believe in myself. The Reverend Bethune was a little disappointed in my decision and so was my dear mother, to say nothing of my aunts.
So now my well-loved schooldays were over. Another harvest time had come on the farm and I had to decide on an occupation for my life. My father would no doubt think that now I would come back to the land. But privately I knew that this was impossible for me. As much as I loved the smell of the upturned earth and the garnered grain, I felt deep within me that destiny had other far-reaching plans for me.
Student, teacher and pastures new.
At last he rose and twitched his mantle blue
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new - John MiltonOn the sunny harvest field that year at the end of my school days, I thought a great deal about the problem of my life's occupation. In my late teens I was still intent upon the idea of spending my future years in doing good for mankind in some way. As the Church was not my channel for this, what was? Eventually the idea dawned that child education should prove a profitable avenue. Surely the right thing was to work on the plastic, unformed child's mind. If that could be moulded with the right ideals and understandings, the rest would follow. The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that the best occupation was teaching the young. What was the road to becoming a teacher?
I found out, by enquiries in certain directions, that as I had qualified to go to University, I could also go to Teachers' Training College. Furthermore, I made the great discovery that if I signed a document to teach for the Education Department in Tasmania for a number of years after training, I could not only have the training and the University tuition free of charge but would be paid a salary which, though not large, was large enough to cover my living expenses during the years of this necessary tertiary education. So henceforth, my good father would not have to pay a penny towards my further education. This was very satisfying to me because I felt rather guilty of failing to fulfil his dream of his only son becoming his partner on the farm. So after Christmas I began taking steps to initiate my new plan. I felt really overjoyed at the idea of becoming a University student and a teacher trainee, but there would be a year's delay before the student life could begin. I had to do about a year as a junior teacher, which was a kind of apprenticeship to the teaching profession. So I spent six months in the city at the school where I had sat for my Qualifying Examination as entrance to High school, and six months in a country school. At the end of that period I was accepted by the Director of Education, signed the necessary contract and so began my happy life as a student.
In those long ago years, Teachers' Training College and the University buildings stood side by side on a hill of the Hobart Domain. So it was very easy to shunt backwards and forwards between the two buildings as required. The point I want to emphasise in this memoir is that, among the many people who influenced my life at this period, were two outstanding gentlemen. One was the unforgettable character who was the Principal of the Teachers' College and known to all the students with great affection as "Johnno." He not only deepened my love of English poetry, but I think of him and have thought of him through the years as a walking poem. Not only that, but he increased my desire to become a writer by appointing me editor of the College magazine within a couple of weeks of my arrival at College. And he enhanced my love of English Literature by our studies, under his guidance, of Shakespeare, Tennyson and several others of the great English writers. I remember him, as I feel sure many student teachers must have done, with great gratitude and sincere love.
The other gentleman who had a strong effect on my future life was Professor Taylor, the Professor of English at the University. For the many essays that we students had to write as part of our course in English, he always gave me A+, which was the top award; and in terminal examinations I was always delighted to find that I had scored top marks, so my assurance and confidence that my future occupation should be that of writing, increased steadily. A memory came back to me at this time. It was the memory of a travelling phrenologist from America. He had spoken to the students from the platform of the assembly hall of the High School. I attended all of his lectures because I myself had been very interested in that subject and purchased a number of old books about it. I spent five shillings out of my pocket money to have a reading from him before he left. He told me, I remember, that I would be a writer, not a novelist, he said, not fiction. My books would be all factual. This I thought now seemed to fit in with my ideals to help bring higher consciousness, spiritual consciousness to mankind. But how would this fit in with my decision to be a teacher? Writing could be more effectual than teaching children, I decided after a good deal of reflection. But having read biographies of a number of famous writers, I discovered that none of them could sail straight into becoming a successful author and necessarily make a living straight after their education. They could not just say, "I will be a writer," and start on their first book, whatever it may be. They either had to have a wealthy patron, wealthy wife or some other rich supporter. Failing such gifts from God, they had to do a kind of apprenticeship as a journalist, an advertising copywriter or in some other paid job. And so I made the plan to begin my adult occupation in the teaching profession, doing my best to widen and deepen the mind of humanity through the classrooms of Tasmania. And, during the school holidays, I would test myself out with short stories and articles aimed at Australian journals and magazines and newspapers. Thus, while teaching, I would prepare myself for the wider field.
There is no doubt whatever that student time as well as being study time is playtime. One good friend of mine, who had been with me as a junior teacher and was now doing Science at the University as well as teacher training at the College, played too much, failed to do his practical science work and so failed in his University examinations. I played too and my student days were happy days but, fortunately, part of my happiness has always been found in study and in the acquiring of new knowledge. And so I obtained all the necessary certificates and diplomas and passed my University examinations for the Arts degree, leaving two subjects to be done extra-murally. One of these, if I remember rightly, was Advanced Psychology. I had done the subject called Logic and Psychology while still at the University and I found the subject of Psychology so fascinating that I knew that I would have no trouble in passing it from home studies. The other subject was Philosophy, presented in the form of Ethics. Philosophical studies such as this were of absorbing interest and I felt quite confident about tackling this as an extra-mural study.
And so it was I was eventually launched on the hard cold world of classrooms full of children, the majority of whom did not really want to learn anything. Some, of course, wanted to learn enough to pass their examinations and so obtain good jobs when at last the years took them beyond the walls of the school into the free world. High school children, although more interested in their studies than those in primary school, still had to keep their noses to the grindstone of intense study, "swatting" they called it, if they were going to pass the exams that were necessary to reach the kind of future occupations they desired. Certainly they were easier to teach than the primary school kids but I felt that the latter, being younger, should be easier material for the mind moulding and forming which was my ambition. But I soon discovered that the very basic system of education as prescribed by the Education Department of the State Government did not allow for any individual ideals and ideas. Time had to be spent in cramming the prescribed subjects into the juvenile minds so that they could pass the prescribed examinations. Otherwise the teacher would be thought by all and sundry to have failed in his job. Children had to be taught to make a living, not how to live.
Well, I was making a living as a teacher but not doing what I had dreamed of doing. During holidays there was a great deal of preparatory work for a teacher to do, so I was not able to put my freelance writing into action as much as I would have liked. But I did some. The short stories I wrote were mainly based on fact, with some twisting around by the creative imagination to make fiction. Articles I wrote were pure fact. I managed to sell both varieties, both short stories and articles, to a number of journals throughout Australia. Thus I managed to get my toes, just the tips of them, on the path towards the occupation of authorship. And so my contracted years of enforced school teaching ground slowly on.
But there was one thing that happened which I greatly enjoyed and, as I see in hindsight, was part of my training for the destined work I was to do for God in later years. In a large town, where I was teaching, there had been regular classes for adults under what was called the University Tutorial Classes. One of the subjects was English Literature. For some reason the Government were economising and the classes were closed down while I was there. A committee of former students asked me if I would carry on these weekly classes in English Literature. This I was very happy to do because of my own love of the subject and so it was that for the rest of the year I lectured to a class of adults on one evening a week. Unlike my good father, who was a natural public speaker, I had always been unduly shy or self-conscious when attempting to speak before a group of adults, however small. This enforced lecturing to adults for a number of months eased my weakness to some degree. But, as I shall relate in a later chapter, I still had to go through a drastic cure for stage-fright when facing a large audience.
As my contracted years of teaching drew to a close, I decided definitely that this occupation was not for me. Not only was it failing miserably to be a channel for my ideals but, in addition, I was beginning to feel trapped in the walls of a schoolroom. I knew I must make a break into broader pastures that would, at least, lead to the world travel that may give me a clue to life's meaning and help me play some part in raising high the understanding and consciousness of mankind.
Journalism, I felt, was the right path. But how to get into it was the question. I was too old, I realised, to get onto a big newspaper as a cub reporter. Perhaps there was some other door through which I could make the break into the newspaper world. Looking back now, I feel it must have been some unseen power of divinity that played the cards for me here. I have described in my earlier book, "Where the Road Ends," how, while on holiday in Melbourne, while having lunch in a cheap Greek restaurant, I met a smooth-faced Englishman, Stan Perry. In subsequent discussion, he suggested that I become his partner in launching a weekly suburban newspaper in an area of Melbourne that was not being served in this way. This seemed like a gift from God, which it was, so I agreed that after terminating my affairs in Tasmania, I would be happy to come over and partner him in the suburban newspaper project. I have told, too, how when I returned to Melbourne and contacted him, he had gone cold on the idea. So I decided to go it alone. I will not repeat the details here but the scheme proved eminently successful for a time and it got me through the entrance door into journalism. Although Stan Perry was no help, except in the distribution of the free paper, it was he who gave me the idea and brought me from Tasmania to the wider world of Melbourne.
I tell, too, in the earlier book, how the work on the suburban paper led to getting a job as a sports reporter on an evening metropolitan paper that had just been launched. This paper was launched very bravely in competition to "The Herald," Melbourne's long-established evening newspaper. However short is its life, I thought, I will gain some worthwhile experience in being on the staff of a big metropolitan newspaper. It was during this time that what I must call divine fate played another card in my favour. It was by pure accident, it seemed, that I happened to read a notice announcing the beginning of a three months' course on advertising copywriting and procedure. It was being conducted by a leading advertising man of Melbourne, to wit, the advertising manager of the Victorian railways. So I joined and spent many enjoyable evenings in this new study. I must have worked hard and had some talent for the work because, in the examination at the end of the course, I obtained top marks in copywriting and was second in advertising procedure. I was given a certificate to this effect. I had no idea what this might lead to eventually.
And so I carried on with my reporter life on the evening paper until the brave paper, unable to meet the long-established competition, went out of existence. So what now, I asked myself? There would be a lot of good, experienced newspapermen looking for jobs in Melbourne. Something that had been lurking in the back of my mind as a temptation, came to the front. This was the memory of my well-loved hero, Vern Jones' stories of his days "on the track." I longed to gain some experience of that life. It would, no doubt, provide plenty of material for freelance journalism. All I needed was the eye for a story. I thought that I had developed that well enough now and I had saved enough money from my salary as a journalist and my profits from the venture into suburban newspaper work.
One thing that had become firmly established now was the Great Depression and I felt sure there would be a good number of men, young and middle-aged who had lost their jobs and had gone "on the track" in the hope of finding occasional jobs here and there throughout the country. So I made postal contact with the editors of a number of papers throughout Australia and there seemed a promise that some of them would accept paragraphs and short articles on a freelance basis. The most promising of these was "Smith's Weekly," of Sydney. Incidentally, I was in later years to meet the editor of this paper, a well-known Australian poet, Ken Slessor, as a war correspondent in the western desert of Egypt. The Depression, beginning in the late 1920's actually created a larger army of wandering nomads than I had expected. It was, in fact, a rich study in human nature. Much I have written about in the book "Where the Road Ends," and will not repeat it here. One thing I find that I did not mention last time was that, among the bagmen, as they called themselves, wandering in the byways of the Outback, I met a man I had known well in my student days. His name was Col. We had both been at the Teachers' College in Hobart at the same time and were good friends. He, like me, had grown tired of the frustrations of the teaching profession and, like me, was now exploring outback Australia. We had many memories in common and now joined together in some adventures. He needed to make some money where he could and I was not loathe to join him in this and thus add to what I could earn from freelance journalism. For some weeks, for example, we picked grapes at vineyards along part of the Murray River and built a raft to float down the river to its mouth in South Australia. But, with the rough material we had at hand or could find, we had not built a very efficient raft and soon abandoned it, then walked together up a lonely, muddy road in New South Wales where, with darkness came a torrent of soaking rain. Wet to the skin and sliding about on the road in the dark, we at last saw one single light shining in the darkness. We made our way towards it and found, not very far off the road, a small cottage where one man lived on his own. He welcomed us with true Outback hospitality and invited us to spend the night in his cottage, where we could dry our wet clothing. Next morning he took us to an empty house, not more than half a mile from his cottage. He said that here we could rest and dry out our clothes more in the sunshine before we continued our journey. We found that the empty house, and the gardens thereof, were full of snakes of a number of varieties, including the deadly tiger snake. However, they moved out of the house reluctantly when Col and I arrived. It was a weird experience to spend the whole of that sunny day surrounded by snakes in what seemed to be part of the Naga kingdom. It took a further long walk and a hitchhike of some miles on a country truck before we located and joined a remnant of the nomad army of bagmen.
On the whole, the months I spent "on the track" was an experience with many worthwhile lessons that I would not have missed, so I am grateful to my old teacher, Vern Jones, for giving me the idea. I relate too, in the earlier book, how I eventually went to Sydney and there, by divine grace, moved into a permanent job as a copywriter in a large advertising agency in Sydney. During my years there I learned, under the tutelage of an experienced copywriter arriving from the head office in London, the art of cutting my well-loved prose to pieces and building it up again nearer to the heart's desire. In other words writing condensed prose in the style of that found in the essays of Francis Bacon and I saw how, working as an advertising copywriter, is the best training for professional book-writing on factual subjects.
I relate, too, how my work with the advertising company brought me into contact with a good many Englishmen on the staff, who had come from the Head Office in London, and how this spurred me on to make my first overseas trip earlier than I might otherwise have done.
I thought at the time that it was very bad luck indeed that the Second World War began a few months after I set foot on English soil for it took me away from the shrinking advertising world into the war itself. But now I see it as very good fortune because it led me into very much wider fields of travel and experience. In fact, it led me into some countries that I probably would not have visited or been able to spend much time in if the war had not taken me there. Some of these were Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia. Also, on the European front, it enabled me to gain an intimate knowledge of countries and peoples, such as Germany, France and Belgium. It was a great help to my understanding of mankind and my search for ultimate meanings. My time in Belsen concentration camp as an army public relations officer and my months in charge of the British press section at the Nuremberg trials, enabled me to see the very core of the dark force we were fighting against in this colossal Armageddon.
I found it hard to drag myself away from the interesting post-war life in Europe, but I managed to return to Sydney in the 1950's in time to be near my mother during the last years of her life and to meet Iris Godfrey, who was to become my wife and inspiring partner in my second odyssey, which finally led to the feet of Avatar Sri Sathya Sai Baba, when the door began to open from the Unreal to the Real, changing our lives completely. This was in 1965.
The young Avatar.It is interesting and at first sight inexplicable that footsteps of an Avatar should be dogged from the earliest years with threats to his life. Swami has stated that it is impossible to remove him from Earth until his mission is completed. It is of course a comforting thought to his followers but not so comforting to his enemies, of which there are always many. I will give what I consider the reasons for his life-threatening enemies at the end of the story. Serious threats to the life of the young Sathya Sai Baba began in his youth in the early 1940's; some 20 years before I had his first darshan in 1965. The events were related to me by a number of people including the late Raja of Venkatagiri and his two sons and the late Nagamani Purniya and other reliable witnesses whose integrity is beyond question. At the time we knew her, Nagamani was putting together a collection of her experiences and later had them printed privately under the title "The Divine Leelas of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba". I believe the little book has been printed again since her death. It is a mine of information about Swami's earliest years.
The young Sathya Sai Baba was born into the Kshetria caste; that is the caste which from earliest times was responsible for the protection and the governing of the people of India. Unlike the Brahmins who were their advisors in governing, they are not vegetarians. From his earliest years, the young Sathya Narayana Raju could not bear to eat the flesh of our young animal brothers, so he began going to the house of a Brahmin lady who lived just a few houses from the home of his parents in the village. The lady who at this time, seemed to have lived alone in the Brahmin house was named Subbama and she became very attached to the young Avatar.
After he had announced his identity as Sai Baba and became known as Sathya Sai Baba, his followers began to gather around him in ever-increasing numbers. No doubt the draw card at first was what he called his visiting cards, that is his miracles. So it was that the large Brahmin house became the venue for the meetings of the first Sai groups. Unfortunately, the village of Puttaparthi, like I suspect most Indian villages, was more than somewhat caste-conscious.
One Brahmin lady living in the village seems to have put the purity of her Brahmin caste above all other considerations. I will not name her, not because of her actions, but because of what happened as a result of her actions. She strongly resented young Sathya Sai going himself and taking his followers who were of mixed castes into the pure Brahmin home of Subbama. She felt that as Subbama did not object, the meetings would continue in her home.
The signs were that the crowds would continue to grow in numbers and the pollution of the Brahmin home would become unbearable. She could see only one way of preventing this. Obviously, and to me, incredibly, strong beliefs in caste purity outweighed any moral and dharmic considerations about the taking of a human life. In brief, she decided to poison the young Sathya Sai. Her plan for carrying out this deed, although perhaps not worthy of Lucrecia Borgia the queen of poisoners, was perhaps adequate for the removal of someone in the remote primitive village of Puttaparthi.
She decided to make a batch of vadis (the savoury little cakes with a hole in the middle like a doughnut). Such tasty morsels were very popular with the boys and youths of the village, so she invited a number of the boys and youths including Sathya Sai. Understandably, the boys arrived very promptly on the day of the feast and sat in groups in the garden devouring the vadis at a great pace. The hostess who I shall name Lucrecia Borgia took little Sathya aside, telling him that she had some especially good vadis for him. He came readily and she offered him the two special vadis in a container. She sat and watched to see that he ate them. Without hesitation, Sathya began to masticate the two poisoned vadis. As Lucrecia Borgia watched he ate up every morsel. Perhaps he knew he was eating poison, perhaps not, but he must have sensed something was wrong because immediately after finishing his vadis he left and walked back to Subbama's home. Lucrecia Borgia, very anxious to know what happened, left the other boys still enjoying the feast and followed after young Sathya Sai. By the time she reached Subbama's home, she could hear Sathya vomiting in the garden. She stood and watched. She was startled and very frightened when she saw him throw up the two vadis whole, even though she had seen him masticate them and chew them up very thoroughly. She began to realise that he was no ordinary youth but somebody special, a being beyond all castes.
She watched him as he composed himself after the ordeal and sat down on the garden seat to recover. She went down on her knees before him and begged for his forgiveness. Sathya Sai fully forgave her, as through the years he has forgiven others who tried to do him harm. So it was that his would-be-murderer became one of his followers. The young Avatar was fully aware even before this attack on his life, that there were many people in and around the village who hated him with a great animosity and violence. His own village was, it seemed a small sample of what the world was to become as his mission grew to world wide dimensions some believing, loving and serving him in various degrees, while unbelievers scorned him and the violent hatred of a few seemed to be a menace to his very life.
The episode of the poisoning made Sathya realise that some of these slings and arrows of hatred against himself, might also strike his good friend and sponsor Subbama, so he decided that while seeing her often himself, he would find another place for his meetings with his devotees, but where? The cave where he often went to meditate was too small for the purpose, so he decided to build his own sanctuary in the form of a hut. Some good friends came along to help him and in a very short time, an adequate hut was constructed. It was a rough and primitive building, but adequate for his present purposes. So he began having his meetings in this little, quiet sanctuary on the edge of the village. This went on peacefully for a time, but his enemies had not gone to sleep.
A small group of youths among the most violently active members of his enemies, formed a plan, an evil plan which they felt sure would achieve the purpose of removing forever, the 'young upstart', Sathya Narayana and give them a bit of good sport at the same time. So it was that one evening when they knew for sure that Sathya was in his hut with a very small number of his closest devotees from the village, they silently crept up to the hut, carrying a pail of petrol and a strong prop. Firstly, they securely propped the door so that it could not be opened from the inside, then they doused part of the wall with petrol and set fire to it. When the flames had taken firm hold, they slipped a short distance away and sat on a rise to watch the fun. Soon the flames were crackling lustily and noisily up the front wall of the hut but to the utter amazement of the watching youths, no shouts, no calls for help came.
Whether or not if they had humbled or frightened their victims sufficiently, thus proving that Sathya Narayana was an ordinary mortal, they would have removed the prop and released them, it is impossible to say. Inside the hut Sathya and his friends soon realised that the walls were in flame and burning rapidly. One of them jumped up to open the door but young Sathya who knew the door was blocked, told him to sit down. "Just wait and have no fear," he said "all will be well". Then after a gap had already been burned in the wall and the hut was unpleasantly filling with smoke, Sathya waved his arm. All had full faith in their leader and felt that this was a sign to bring rain. It was within a minute or two, a gigantic clap of thunder was heard over the hut and over the village. The thunder continued with a violence which seemed to break open the sky and make the Earth tremble. In no time at all, a torrent of rain began to fall. Those inside could hear nothing but the heavenly organ music of their saving rain. Another sound could be heard very dimly above the torrent that pelted against the hut and the Earth beyond. This was the sound of the shouts and curses of the young delinquents who, wet to the skin, were running towards the shelter of their homes. The storm ended as suddenly as it had come and silence reigned, but the heavenly fire-brigade had done it's work. Within the charred wood over the front wall was a gap big enough for Sathya and his friends to walk through. The friends with Sathya were too over-awed to say much. He had saved their lives with a wave of his hand and their belief in his power was beyond all doubt, perhaps even some of the young criminal fire-bugs were beginning to wonder and doubt their own arrogance and think that the hated youth against whom they scoffed, might indeed be somebody special.
Friends of the young Avatar helped him repair the hut and it served his purpose until the number of his followers required bigger premises. Then together under Swami's leadership, they built the Mandir now known as 'the old Mandir' that is another story.
Why is it, one may well ask, do world changing Avatars such as Rama, Krishna, Jesus and Sathya Sai Baba have so many enemies and suffer so many attacks on their lives, often right from their very birth? At first sight it seems incredible that one who brings light and redemption from the heart of God to all mankind should have even one enemy. Yet if we think about it with sufficient depth, we will see that with God's plan of evolution of consciousness and the development of beings with divine consciousness, there must of necessity be struggle and conflict in this training field of Earth. Without struggle, consciousness would remain static without any development and of course, struggle requires that there must be both the good and the bad forces. And so there exists the great divine drama through which we earthlings learn our lessons. Sometimes the struggle between good or forward-pulling forces and bad or backward-pulling forces gets out of hand out of balance. The Asuric or demonic forces gaining such strength that they threaten God's plan. At such times God takes direct action where a God-man comes to Earth with commission to rectify the balance, by reducing the evil and helping and promoting the good. In this way he brings an uplift to the consciousness of humanity and changes the world thereby.
But the entrenched dark forces who hold the power and most of the worldly wealth, do not want such a change. Any change will threaten their ignorant, self-centred lifestyle and so they resist it in every way they can, even to the extent of attacks against the life of the God-man. But the God-man will only leave the Earth when his mission is completed. The crucifixion of Jesus was part of his mission, indeed the greatest part, so it does not represent the defeat of the God-man but rather his victory. Incidentally, it may be asked why are there attacks against the greatest of the spiritual teachers the God-men, and not against the lesser ones. It must be because only the great ones are a real threat to the world order; the greater the sunshine, the stronger the shadow. So by the very light they bring, the Avatars create their own deadly enemies. "To teach the truth," said an old sage, "Is like carrying a lighted taper into a powder magazine". Only One with the absolute power of almighty God can carry the lighted taper of absolute Truth into the powder magazine of the dark forces of Earth.
The Sai cure for stage fright.
One bright sunny morning in the year 1966, as I sat at my desk in Leadbeater Chambers in the Theosophical Society's Headquarters estate, two Indian gentlemen appeared in my doorway. As I knew and respected them both as followers of Sathya Sai Baba, I called to them to come in and jumped up from my desk to greet them. Their faces and eyes were shining as if they were bringers of good news. But the news they brought was more alarming than good from my point of view. One of them, Sri Venkatamuni, at whose home Swami usually stayed when in Madras in those days, said to me, "Swami would like you to give a short talk, one of two talks to precede his discourse tomorrow evening at Osborne House. We trust you will agree." He smiled. When I had regained my powers of speech after this startling announcement, I asked one or two questions. "Where was the discourse to take place? For how long did Swami want me to speak? And who was the other person giving a preliminary talk?" I was thinking that after I had obtained the relevant details I could perhaps find some way to refuse politely. "It will be at Osborne House in the city," Venkatamuni answered, and went on, "He would like you to speak for a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. The other speaker will be Dr T M Mahadevan, who is the Head of the Department of Higher Philosophy at Madras University." He seemed to expect me to be pleased by this but, in fact, I was even more alarmed. Further conversation indicated that the talks would be given in the large grounds of Osborne House and about twenty thousand people were expected. The men waited silently to hear a delighted acceptance from me.
But though I had lectured and taught to adults and children for years in Australia and given talks to Theosophical members at the Headquarters hall at Adyar, never might I say, without some nervousness, this request was quite different. If I agreed, I would find myself speaking before the great Avatar, to say nothing of the Head of the Department of Higher Philosophy at Madras University and the audience would be not a few hundred or a few dozen as of yore but twenty thousand or more. My first impulse, a very strong one, was to find some way in which I could say no. But I was to find then, for the first time, that when Swami makes a request, one can never say no. So I found myself agreeing to their request. Their faces brightened even more but I felt that my own face was rather stiff.
My other visitor, who had not spoken yet, was Major Rama Rayaningar. My wife Iris and I, in the time we had been in India, had had some pleasant associations with Rama and his wife Mathara. Now he spoke. "I will send my car and driver to pick you up, you and your wife, tomorrow evening in good time to take you to Osborne House." I thanked him very much because I had no idea where Osborne House was in the great city of Madras. Now the two ambassadors from Swami took their leave and I was left alone with a very important task before me.
I put aside the work I had been doing before they came and sat down at my desk to think of a subject for my speech and to make some notes. I had about a day and a half to prepare a twenty minute speech so that part of it should not be difficult. I thought of a subject. It would be about one of Swami's greatest miracles, that is how he changes the nature of people. As the old alchemists strove to change lead into gold, Swami not only tried, but succeeded in turning the base metal of human nature into the gold of human divine nature. So I would call the talk "Lead into Gold." I began to make some notes. Then it occurred to me that as I would probably be in a state of platform panic, standing near Swami and facing the huge audience, I should really write the whole speech out. In my past experience in giving radio talks, I had cultivated the art of reading a radio talk just as if I was speaking it without the written text. This was something I knew now that I could do with confidence. I wrote out the whole talk, timing it to be no more than twenty minutes, and felt rather satisfied.
But my self-satisfaction received a blow the next evening when we drove through the gates of Osborne House and saw the very large grounds, with a big crowd already sitting on the grass under trees and under the stars above. It all looked rather gala with lights in the trees and a well-lit platform near the big house itself. Some friends conducted me to the platform where Swami was already sitting with Dr Mahadevan on the other side of him. Iris was taken to a reserved place in the front row of the audience. Everyone was treating us as honoured guests but I felt more like a lamb being led to the slaughter. As I climbed onto the platform, Swami greeted me with a loving smile of welcome. I realised afterwards that I should have knelt and touched his feet but all I did was to put my hands together and give a stiff bow. He gestured me to a seat on his right. For a few moments I looked at the faces in front of me. They seemed to stretch onto eternity. Swami asked the philosopher to speak first. I was both glad and sorry, glad that I would have about twenty minutes respite and sorry that I was too busy with my fears and my own thoughts to listen properly to what the philosopher was saying. I felt sure it would be of interest but my mind was too agitated to follow it.
The twenty minutes respite seemed to go by in a few seconds and the moment came when it was my turn to stand and deliver. Swami gave me a loving smile, like a kind mother, as he gestured to me to go forward and give my talk. I know now, as I did not know then, that he is the witness within us and knew then the turmoil that was taking place in me. Before I began, he lifted his hand beside me, palm upward, as if he was raising the petals of my aura. This had the amazing effect of calming me considerably. The crowd seemed to merge and I felt as if I was talking to one and so I began to read my speech with confidence. At intervals I saw Swami's hand making the same gesture of upliftment which kept the panic at bay. Still I was very glad when it was over and I was able to resume my seat. Now Swami stood up and went to the front of the platform. A deep hush fell over the large congregation. With joy they waited to hear the words of God. There was utter silence except when Swami made some joke. Frequently a ripple of laughter went through the crowd. I felt very relieved that my own trial was over and I could relax and listen. Swami spoke in Telegu so I couldn't understand what he said but it was a joy to sit there near him and hear his golden voice and study the reactions of the crowd. I hoped I had, myself, performed to his satisfaction but how would I ever know? Iris would probably say I had done alright but then she was a little prejudiced and very kind-hearted.
When I came down from the platform and was walking towards the house, I met the Rajkamara, or Crown Prince of Venkatagiri. I had had a few good talks with him on past occasions and I admired his knowledge of the Sanathana
Dharma and Vedanta. Now he looked at me and said, "That was a good speech. You should have it printed." I knew he was not flattering so I felt happy that, in spite of the platform panic, I had not failed. The speech was some months later printed in an edition of the "Sanathana Sarathi", Sai Baba's ashram magazine.
Swami's cure for the disease of platform panic, which is with a sweet smile and gentle hand, to push you in at the deep end of the swimming pool and if necessary to help you to swim, did not cure me entirely that night at Osborne House but it went some distance towards it. Swami, however, persisted. Whenever he found me near the deep end of the pool, so to speak, he tumbled me in. On many occasions, when the opportunity presented itself, he would ask me to speak impromptu to a group of students or adults. On one evening, for example, he had all his students of the Whitefield College gathered together in the dining room of their hostel at Brindavan ashram, he saw me at the back of the group trying to make myself inconspicuous. He sent one of the students to call me to him. When I got there he said with a sweet smile, "Give these students some good advice, will you? Only about ten minutes." Then he vanished and I was left standing in front of them. I did not know what to say. Then suddenly I thought of something Dr Bhagavantam had been talking to me about that day. So I told them how very fortunate they were to be at a University college under Swami's guidance and protection. The abuse of drugs by students had reached India from the west and other Indian Universities had become affected by this great peril. I managed to fill in ten minutes talking about this and the other great advantages they had under the influence of the Avatar. They were a good audience, as Indians usually are. I could see their eyes shining with joy. When Swami returned and took over, he remarked, "That was good advice you gave them." Then he talked to them for about an hour while their eager faces remained rapt in joy. Later I asked my friend, Narender, who was the Principal of the College, what Swami had talked about. "Oh," he said, "He was mainly scolding several of them for undisciplined behaviour." "They were listening with such rapt attention," I protested. He replied, "They listen with joy to Swami whether he is scolding them or whatever he is saying."
And so my lessons went on and my old stage fright passed away to a large extent. Along the way I discovered that I was not the only one going through this curative treatment for platform panic. Dr Sam Sandweiss of the USA, a psychiatrist and author of two good books about Swami, once confided to me that when Swami took him on a tour of the ashram passing by groups of students or perhaps adults, he in his own words, "walked in terror" because he knew that at any time Swami might stop and suddenly ask him to speak impromptu to a group. He knew from experience Swami might suddenly say, "Say a few words to these people or these students, Sandweiss," and it often happened. Like me, he said he had been born with an inborn fear of speaking to a group of people in public. The cure seemed to have worked on him when both he and I had to give talks from the platform in Rome at the International Sai Conference in 1983. But he confessed to me that underneath he still had a degree of the old panic. I suppose that I had a degree of it too, thought nobody seemed to think so.
Of couse, as the years passed by and I found that part of my work for the Avatar was platform speaking, for which he had been training me, of course, and training my friend, Sam Sandweiss, the old panic had evaporated and all I felt was a kind of tension when I first went onto the stage. Some of the great actors, who spent years on the stage, tell me that when they first go on the stage to play their parts, they always feel this tension, this initial stage fright, but they consider it a good thing as it inspires them to put on their best performance. I was happy to see Dr Sam Sandweiss as guest speaker from America at a Sai National Conference held in South Australia. He had much platform work to do there and I said to him, "I doubt if Disraeli or Gladstone or any other great orator could have held his audience in such rapt attention, drawing both laughter and tears from them, as you have done here. You must have thrown off every scrap of your old stage fright." "Not quite," he replied, "I still have a little of it every time I go onto the platform to speak." Perhaps, I thought, even the greatest of orators had that same thing at the beginning of their great speeches, yet it no doubt vanished after the first few opening sentences. And they spoke for maybe hours, bringing pleasure to their audience. If there is any inspiring speaker who does not feel any initial tension, it must be Sai Baba himself.
Bhakti yoga, it is said, is the most essential of all the yogas.
I was first introduced to the philosophy of bhakti yoga by the late Dr I K Taimni at the "School of the Wisdom" at Adyar in India. Dr Taimni, himself a scientist, occultist and theosophist, constantly wore a happy, smiling expression that is often a sign of a bhakta. It seemed to me that his life was inspired and governed by some living divine Love.
Taimni's tentative attempt to interest us in bhakti took the form of discussing some of the aphorisms from the classic, Narada Bhakti Sutras. But I, along with most of his other students, I fear was too immersed in the "head" to be interested in the philosophy of the "heart". I was fascinated by the theosophy of the Absolute, the emanation of the universes, the seven principles of man, and so on. The ancient truths of the East, crystallised in theosophy, seemed to offer all the answers. The studies brought a mental expansion that threw off the old fetters of religious dogma, and led by exciting ways into broader vistas of understanding.
Devotion to a God-with-Form, and the yoga philosophy that goes with it, seemed like an unnecessary intrusion into my new-found theosophic world. I decided that bhakti yoga was certainly not for me.
One of Narada's Sutras states that divine love, "Is like the experience of joy which a dumb man has when he tastes something sweet". The man has a strong urge to express what he feels but is unable to do so. Every man is in fact dumb when it comes to describing the inner experience of even ordinary, let alone divine, love, when it bursts the dam of the heart. The ineffable experience came to me the first time I was alone in the presence of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
This was the beginning of a complete turn-about that changed my attitude to many things, including bhakti yoga. Instead of regarding bhakti, as I had before, as an emotional bath for the mindless, I began to understand what the sages meant when they said that it was the most effective yoga for the vast majority of people in this dark Kali Age.
I learned another lesson too. Philosophising about love and of devotion to God is really of little avail until the Christ-child of Divine Love is born in the individual heart. That child is usually fathered by some Form that spells Divinity. This may be a Self-realized guru, a great saint, a Godman or Avatar of the past, some other chosen Form of God, or, above all, a living Avatar.
There have been great bhaktas of the Christian religion who have found their inspiration in the image of Jesus Christ. Then again, the Forms of Krishna, Rama and others, have opened the hearts of millions in Asia. In practically all religions there are degrees of bhakti directed to some chosen Form of God. You don't have to meet a living Avatar to be initiated into the Yoga of Devotion, but I believe it is a tremendous advantage if you do. I, myself, probably needed a spiritual bomb to shatter the thick mental shells around my heart. And so I met a Living Divine Form to ignite the necessary explosion.
Bhakti yoga deals in the main with the control and purification of the emotions. The means of purification is devotion to God in an ever-increasing degree. The aids and steps to strengthening and increasing the devotion are elucidated by Narada and the other sages who wrote about the bhakti pathway. Sai Baba confirms, and applies the ancient teachings, and goes beyond them.
One of the acknowledged aids to fostering devotion is satsang, or the meeting together of spiritually-minded people; especially those following the same Shepherd, or chosen Form of the Divine. Such meetings should be used, it is taught, to tell and hear stories about the Beloved One, to talk of his divine attributes and sing of the glories of God. Even when engaged in the ordinary activities of life the devotee should, where possible, sing songs of praise to Divinity.
Followers of Sai Baba in all countries meet regularly to sing bhajans, which are songs of praise to the glories of God in his many Forms and under His many Names. For, as Baba says, the One God fills all Forms and answers to all Names. Sai devotees are taught that they should have family bhajan singing in their homes at least once a week, and should meet regularly with other devotees for group singing.
Bhajans are mainly in Sanskrit, but Baba encourages the composition of such songs in other languages to suit his followers, for the Sai Movement is international. Many bhajans are now sung in English, Chinese and other tongues.
While the company of spiritual people is beneficial, that of great souls, saints or Godmen is of inestimable value for the enhancement of bhakti, Narada tells us. It is not easy to find such elevated Beings in the ordinary walks of life; indeed a searcher would be fortunate to meet one in a lifetime. And that is doubtless an important reason why devotees travel from far countries as often as possible to spend time near Sathya Sai Baba, and thus have their bhakti batteries recharged.
On the other hand, "Evil company must be shunned by all means," writes Narada. "For it leads to the rousing up of desire, anger, delusion, to loss of memory, to loss of discrimination and to utter ruin in the end".
A student has to be very well established on the path of devotion before he is securely insulated against the effects of bad company. Even an advanced bhakta is in danger of succumbing to the evil influences of those around him, for the sensory urges in his subconscious sleep lightly and can easily be aroused. So it is an important rule that evil company should be shunned at all times.
Even so, the devotee's greatest enemy is really himself, that is his lower self or ego. Sai Baba is constantly stressing the need to transcend this ego, this bundle of sense desires, attachments and delusions that has been building-up in each individual for a lifetime. For many lifetimes, Baba says. Self-inquiry and self-examination are important weapons in the battle of the ego. The devotee must keep an eye on his own motivation, detecting any self-interest content, even in thoughts and actions that appear on the surface to be altruistic. He must seek to lower that egocentric content, and increase the element of genuine love and service to God.
When down-pulling emotions, such as anger, pride, possessiveness and the rest of the brood, make an appearance, they should, Narada states, be directed towards the Divine Form that is the object of devotion. It may seem very strange to the novice that he should be taught to turn the barbs of his most shocking thoughts and feelings towards his beloved Guru.
But Sai Baba confirms this ancient teaching. I have heard him say to devotees, "Bring your worst thoughts and emotions and place them at my feet. I will burn them away in the eternal fire."
Even advanced devotees will at times lapse into detrimental attitudes of the mind. When this happens, they should think of the Divine Name dear to the heart, and offer their errors to Him. This, done with love and surrender will lead to purification.
Another important yoga discipline on the path to emotional purification is given in Narada's Sutra 74 which states, "Do not enter into controversy about God, or spiritual truths, or about the comparative merits of different devotees."
It is not difficult to see such controversy can easily lead to feelings of anger, contempt, superiority or inferiority all of which stimulate and enhance the ego.
Besides, as Baba points out, mere reason cannot solve the spiritual mysteries or find the ultimate Truth. There is bound to be a diversity of views on such matters, and the devotee must be tolerant of other people's religious beliefs. Friendly discussion is in order, but not debate and conflict. As to the comparative merits of devotees, only God Himself can judge such questions truly.
Although, as stated earlier, most people need the great inspiration of a Divine Form for the birth of bhakti, it can be developed and increased by spiritual practices. "Devotion manifests itself in one whosoever it can be when one has made oneself fit for such manifestation by constant sadhana (spiritual disciplines)," says Narada in Sutra 53.
Related to this is the statement by a great Christian bishop who was queried several times by one of his priests on the subject of how to develop Divine Love. The bishop repeatedly answered in the same way: "Love God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself." "I know I should do that," replied the priest, "but please tell me how to do it." The bishop finally gave him the only help that can be given in this problem. He said: "You learn to walk by walking, to swim by swimming, to ride by riding; in the same way you must learn to love by loving. Practise loving thoughts, speak lovingly, and perform action of selfless love daily. Through such disciplined actions, love of God and man will grow in you until you become a veritable master in the art of loving." Knowledge, will, and action can lead, if not to the birth, at least to the development of devotion to God.
Man is not all emotion; he has also a discriminatory intellect and will power. These should be exercised in the yoga of love. Narada certainly indicates this teaching in some of his aphorisms. He states, for instance, that the aspirant should give constant loving service, should give up fruits of his actions and through discrimination, pass beyond the pairs of opposites, such as pleasure and pain. The student must strive to reach that state of constant inner joy which is part of his true nature. He should be unaffected by pleasure and pain, praise and blame, and the other pairs of opposites.
The Sai Bhakti way, while confirming this truth, has a still greater content of Jnana, Karma and Raja yogas than are foun