A Sage Can Appear to be Like Anyone Else Sometimes - 24th August 2017

With the asked a question, she said, 'Father, is thinking due to inadvertence only? Even in non-sages?' Yes, well, let's define what we mean by thinking. Usually what I say in satsang is that thinking is not the appearance of thoughts, because this appearance of thoughts is coming whether sage or non-sage, it doesn't really matter. Thinking, as we use the term thinking, we are including that belief in the thought, that conditioning, that picking up of the identity.

So mostly in humanity, what you see is that it is the standard operating procedure, so to speak, that we seem to follow the voice of this mind and the thoughts, believe most of what it is saying. But for a sage, it is rare. So, in my inadvertence, in the sense of the rarity of it, that in the sage, just sometimes, it is picked up. There are beautiful stories like this. At one time, one being came to Shirdi Sai Baba and he noticed, 'Father, she also has been coming to you for many years, something has happened to her, she's falling very ill.' Sai Baba also, for like a few moments, then he got worried and said, 'No, no, let's go, let's see what's happening here, we'll call the doctor.' I'm paraphrasing, I was obviously not there. But within a few moments, then he came back and said, 'Everything will be fine, everything is taken care of, nothing is outside the will of God.'

So even though the Guruji says, but sometimes, for example, he says, 'When I'm irritated with someone, I want them to come right then, because if they take two minutes then the irritation is gone and I don't know what to give them.' So these are rare moments where something is picked up even in the lives of sages. And this has always been a very beautiful aspect of this for me because, you know, if there was an exhibit—and I don't actually like it when books and stories convey it's very like hundred percent, somebody was there who was just hundred percent something—see, because in reading all this and hearing all this, the freedom which was so obvious became more and more unapproachable here.

So for a long time the seeking continued because the benchmark was a hundred percent ideal that you must come to this. And when you start to hear stories like this, when you notice that, what is this hundred percent true for anyone? That's why they've done a great service to all of us by putting those moments in the lives of all the great ones. You see, that's why the part of Ramayana which is very enjoyable for me is that Ram also cried from grief when Sita Ji was taken away. He also considered himself to be a husband for a few moments. Jesus also had a tantrum with God when he said, 'Father, oh Father, why have you forsaken me?' on the cross.

In the face of so much phenomenal stimulus, especially of pain, it is very natural for a moment or two to buy into the idea that you are a limited object. You see? So the benchmark is not that hundred percent. So this is what was implied in the statement: that they go to thinking as an inadvertence, whereas for most of humanity, they seem to go to that as their actually real existence.