A Force of Love

Every visit to Baba’s house is life changing in its imprint, gentle or pronounced, upon the soul. And yet, by His grace, on a recent visit I was touched beyond worldly measure.

On a busy Friday afternoon, I brought my infant son to Baba’s house. Since he had already been there as a newborn, I have to confess that this was supposed to be a quick visit, something I was trying to fit into the banality of my busy life. I did not expect the divine to seep into the mundane, but perhaps its beauty is in that one never does expect such a thing. As I walked around the house, I noticed that a little girl, about five years old, was diligently following me around. I thought she was fascinated with the baby, which she was, but there seemed to be more to it.

“Hello,” I said to break the ice. She jumped right to it. Can’t we count on children to speak their minds without any prompting? “Are you going to lay that baby on God’s bed?” she asked with an utmost sincerity as if her life depended on it. I wasn’t expecting her to speak those words. “Well, yes,” I replied, awestruck.

As I moved swiftly from Dr. Donkin’s room to the men mandali’s room, I saw her again, peeking in, as if checking on me to make sure I was going to keep my word. This time her grandmother and her sister were with her. “Sorry,” her grandmother, Donna, said. “She won’t leave the house until you set that baby on Baba’s bed.” Compelled by her words and will, I was drawn to go right ahead and do what I was being asked to do. I asked Eden (that was her name) and her sister Emery to accompany me while I laid my son, Henry, on Baba’s bed. They were delighted to help.

Baba’s room was full of His lovers. We walked in slowly, feeling goosebumps at our good fortune at being given this opportunity. The girls, whom I had not known a minute ago, held my hand like they were my family, as I gently laid my baby onto Baba’s bed in lieu of His darshan. The baby rested on the bed and tears welled in my eyes. I had laid him there before but this time felt different. Compelled by the little girl’s purity of desire, this experience, while never intended to be a ritual, had assumed a meaning that was way deeper than just the act of taking darshan. In that poignant moment, I was living through the stories I had heard of—Baba holding, cuddling, kissing and tickling babies. I remembered an account of a mass darshan where, despite the great pain in His neck, Baba bent forward each time to kiss a baby or a child. Oh, the Godman in His absolute divinity and humanity bending down towards each baby—a physical manifestation of the individual droplets that make the ocean, each droplet with a burning urge to unite with Him. And Him with them.

Jane Haynes (the President of the center from 1980 to 1995) was passionate about inviting parents to bring their babies to take darshan at Baba’s bed. “She felt it was very important for them to begin their lives that way if possible,” says Wendy Connor, Jane’s daughter. Hearing this from Wendy deepened my own soul searching about the intention behind this act. What was I doing in placing my child upon His bed? What were all those parents doing when they brought the apples of their eyes to meet God in human form?

Laying one’s child on His bed is like laying a piece of your own thumping heart. It is a dedication not just of your own life but that of another being, of a family, a part of mankind circling back to God with a humble prayer to love and engulf the being in His arms so that the soul is protected in this life and beyond. And yet the irony, as it applies to so many spiritual things, is that in this act we delude ourselves of giving to the Beloved what was given to us by Him. And He in His majesty accepts, as if it was ours to give.

In His great work, The Prophet, Khalil Gibran wrote on children, “They come through you, but not from you.” They come from God Himself. The act of laying them at His feet is the physical symbol to remind us of our roles as their safekeepers. Gibran goes on to write, “You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.”[i]

At the opening of a nursery school that Baba attended in Ahmednagar in 1948, He gave the following message: “Babies and infants, everywhere in the world, are the very epitome of God’s purity and innocence… I am also called “Baba,” which endearingly means a baby. In fact, all God-realized souls are unsophisticated, like babies. I therefore see and enjoy my purity and colorlessness in the unselfconscious ones—the babies.”[ii]

After our visit, Emery and Eden played with Henry as the afternoon sun shone abundantly in Baba’s compound. In the three children, I saw a glimmer of gurgling joy. Their natural companionship made me think of Baba as the divine archer to whom the arrows had boomeranged back, albeit momentarily, but with a great force. A force of love.

[i] The Prophet, By Khalil Gibran, “On Children,” poets.org
[ii] Lord Meher, Online Edition, by Bhau Kalchuri, p.2676