Miniature Replica of Balaji Temple at Narayanpur

Everyone who visits India makes at least one visit to the temples or mosque. Spirituality is so strongly observed that even an atheist is confused. It is difficult to explain about the crowd standing in long queue for six hours just to get thirty seconds glimpse of the idol inside the temple, of offering garlands and coconuts which are recycled and resold at stalls outside the temple, of eating oily and sweet Prasad even though the health does not permit. To an atheist, temples are just architectural monuments to be enjoyed for their carvings on pillars and ceiling, but to a devotee, it’s a place where their prayers can be answered, it’s the place where they can find peace and compassion.

Whatever the reason, the temple devoted to Venkateswara at Tirumala is believed to be one of the richest pilgrimage center in India. The temple is visited by about 50,000 to 100,000 pilgrims daily, while on special occasions and festivals like the annual Brahmotsavam, the number of pilgrims shoots up to 500,000, making it the most-visited holy place in the world. The popularity of this temple is so high that they have made replica of this temple in different parts of India.

Image source 

 One such replica is in Narayanpur, near Pune. Not having the opportunity to visit the temple at Tirupati, I was curious to visit this place at Narayanpur.

We started from Pune early morning; it was warm and sunny day. Driving through the crowded traffic took a long time; we finally touch the express highway for a pleasant drive through vast fields spread for miles. The plants and trees on route were yellow and light green, family informed me that in rainy season the fields come alive, with lots of greenery and waterfalls on hills. It makes a pleasant drive.

After a long drive of more than 100 minutes, we finally drove through dirt part to reach the beautiful Balaji temple.

You are suddenly transferred to a different world as soon as you enter the gates. The lawns are manicured, the cleanliness is maintained, against the backdrop of the hills, the temple stand proud and prominent, mimicked in wood and painted in grey oil paint. The sculpted spire over the sanctum sanctorum is painted yellow to pay obeisance to the gold spire of Tirumala-Tirupati temple.

On special request from authorities, we were allowed to bring our car closer to the temple; we left our slippers in the car and walked on the red carpet into the temple. No photography is allowed and we were asked to deposit our gadgets with the security.

Inside the big iron carved gates, was a gold temple. Family informs me that it is exact replica of the original temple. Even the black stone and other building material have been brought from Tamil Nadu, The construction of the temple went on from 1996 to 2003. The prayers and procession also take place on festivals. The priests who perform the puja also hail from same families as those of the original temple. One of the most important offering in this temple, is the ‘Thulabharam’. In Thulabaram ritual, a devotee sits on a pan of a weighing balance and other pan is filled with materials greater than the weight of devotee. Devotees usually offer sugar, jiggery, holy basil leaves, banana, gold coins; this is mostly performed with newborn babies. We took ‘parikarma’ around the temple. There were carvings on the walls and paintings in bright colors on the ceiling. Deities were housed in small cubicles where people offered their prayers. At the end of the round, big size laddoo was distributed to every visitor.

We finished seeing the temple in 15 minutes, family tells me that they spend many hours doing parikarma at Tirupati, and they have to pay extra cash to cut short their queue or enter from the back entrance.

The unique ritual of tonsuring of ones head is also done here at temple premises and I did see many people donate their hair in exchange for the blessings of the Lord. The collected hair is publicly auctioned to international buyers from time to time for cosmetic use and hair extensions.

On our way back, the ride was picnic style, feasting on figs, guava,

mangoes

and of course bhel puri at the dhabbas.

My Spiritual Guru is in Mumbai this week

Normally I am a late riser but I do wake up early sometimes if the duty or the interest beckons, and this time it was the latter. Like every year, this year too I had family staying at my place, during Babaji’s visit,  who would be attending Satsang all three days, but since the distance is too far (at Bayender)  and me with a weak body, I was to attend only one special one on Sunday which is hosted by Babaji, My Spiritual Guru.

That meant sleeping early at night to wake up early the next day. But New Year eve program on TV was distracting, so while the rest of the family went off to sleep by 10pm, I stayed late night watching the TV program at Star Plus Channel as we saw the change from year2011 to the year2012.

I was too drowsy to wake up at 5am on 1st day of the year2012, but the activity of my guests drinking tea/spiritual discussions/bathing etc woke from my slumber and I was ready by 6am.

We reached the venue at Bayender by 7am, and struggled in long queues to get inside the compound. Although the hall was empty inside, there were long queues at every entrance and lots of commotion outside by the people who believe in cutting queues. The stronger and influential ones always have easy way out while the rest wait patiently for their turn.

Anyways, I found a chair facing a big screen and waited for 2 hours, till it was time for discourse.

Babaji began his discourse at 9:30am and the Satsang lasted for 90 minutes, the message was mainly introspection on the things that we do and is it proper to act the way we do. There were many questions asked on behavior and attitude, which many devotees could identify. Happy to share his message with those who were unable to attend the discourse on 1st January 2012:

The topic was 'come out of darkness and get enlightened to find the truth' 

What is the purpose of life and how do we fulfill it?  We must try to understand the depth of this message and try to understand what does that darkness mean? The darkness mentioned here is not the one where you cannot see, you stumble and fall, but darkness of knowledge where you cannot see the truth.

Today everybody is wishing each other ‘Happy New Year’. We say 'Happy New year to everybody but if we don't practice the right methods to be happy how can we be happy? Just words don't suffice; if we wish to be happy then we have to make it happy. Let us ask ourselves what is there in this world to be so happy about it? We are actually reminding each to make the year a happy one!

So how do we find happiness? Money? Status? Family?  Think again, only when we have His grace, can we find happiness.

When there is hunger for knowledge then we can see the light.

To show our love for our Lord, we waste our time going to holy places, temples, shrine, but where is your Lord? These are just illusions.

If you love something you have to go and find it there, but if you are looking in wrong places then how will you find it? Everything that we do, we think whether it is profitable or loss to us, we don’t do anything unless we have a selfish motive. There has to be a logical conclusion to whatever we set out to do. We have to think before we proceed towards that goal

Atma and Paratma, (soul and Lord) both are inside us but there is a wall separating the two, we need to break that wall and unite the two.

How do we achieve that?

When we are sick, we go to a doctor, he prescribes us the medicines and we get well only after we follow the prescription, go to a pharmacy, get the medicine and take the dose. There is the remedy for external illness.

But what about our internal disease called Ego?

This disease has to be treated and its prescription is also within us. If we find the medicine within us, and kill this disease then we find the Shabd and then we recognize our Lord. But this is a long procedure and the distance has been created by attachment and other vices, thus we get diverted in different directions.

We make our own interpretation of all that we read in holy books, different books have different stories but all the religions say the same thing that there is only one truth, and that truth is God. Truth cannot be changed nor it is an external thing.

In Gurubhani it is explained that Spiritual Guru is just a physical body, The journey just begins with body, He is just the medium for reaching the truth. Only humans can make us understand, plants cannot, nor the rocks nor the animals. Only human can guide a human, to understand the message, to be alert in seeing that light and that sound. We don’t have to choose the Guru, all spiritual Guru’s are the messengers of God who have same goal of showing the path, with only difference being in their way of explaining and in our power of absorbing. We should not limit our self to external form but delve inside through our devotion and recognize the truth.

The biggest Seva is 'Naam ki Kamai', but we are happy with Seva (service) of external kind. Unless there is no proper atmosphere, we cannot attain anything. That is why we need to recognize real Seva, real Satsang and real Darshan.

So what is Darshan?

Darshan is not just staring at the face of your spiritual Guru. It is deep concentration to something more internal, so much so, that every other awareness is dimmed. Have you seen the love of a mother for her child? A mother will be so engrossed with the activity of her child that she might not even hear a telephone bell.

Such is the helplessness of love, when one can see nothing but the Truth and that is the true Darshan. Since we don’t understand all these things we live in darkness.

We live in darkness hence we light lamps and agarbattis to dispel the darkness. 

But what about removing the darkness of our mind? 

Only when we remove the darkness from our mind, we can connect with the light of knowledge. Spiritual Guru helps us to dispel that darkness, he is there to guide us to the proper path.

When we buy a new computer, what do we do?

It has a blank memory; we program it, whatever is the input, the resulting output we get. If you wish to delete files from your computer, you have first to scan everything before deleting, separating the important files, so that we can remove all the unnecessary files. We have to be systematic to get the best results.

Similarly, whatever you get is what you deserve. If you do devotion, you will get the results. We just have to input  the Name of our Lord, that is why we have to do Simran(meditation), because with Simran you clean your system,. We don’t wish to be entangled with unnecessary things; we have to identify what influences us and delete useless things by meditation.

There is a tourist spot a Lucknow called ‘BhoolBuliya, which is like a concrete maze where one can get lost if he is not guided properly, to find a way out, one has to distinguish some valid points.

At every stage of our life we need a Guru, a guide.

A child does not say “let me learn on my own”, he needs his mother to help him with his first step, when he grows up to go to school, he needs teacher, when he starts working he needs the guidance from his boss, thus he need support all his life, a guidance to move in this maze of life so that he does not get lost in this ‘BhoolBuliya’

We can travel the world and stay in strange places but we will always be second class citizens, we cannot find the Truth is strange places, its only when we reach our own town, when we reach our own true home, do we find peace when Atma and Paramatma meet.

But we complain that we have no time.

You have time to stand for hours in front of the mirror adjusting your head gear(pagri), decorating yourself, going to salon, parties, social gathering, but you have no time for your Lord? How would you feel if your child said that he has no time for you?  We need our child to sit with us, spend some time with us and make us happy. We advise our children to keep good company because he is likely to pick up the qualities of his peers.  Don’t you wish that your children listen to you? If we don’t fulfill our duty towards our Lord, how can we expect Him to protect us and give us his grace by guiding us towards Truth within us? If we disobey our Lord by giving excuses then how will we reach God? If we get entangled with worldly things how will we free ourselves?

After many million rebirths, we have finally achieved a human form and if we don’t utilize this human form then we know not when we get this human form again.

There is much too much pain and suffering in other reincarnation and they, the lower species, have no powers to protect themselves. Have you not seen the horse being whipped harshly and the horse cannot protest? or a worm being crushed under feet for no fault of his?  Would you like to be reincarnated to that lower species? Human form is the top of the creation, the only form when you can realize God by devotion and meditation. While you have the superior human form, in which you can find Lord, do your meditation, it’s the only form where you can find Truth.

We should not worship out of fear, we should worship out of love for our God.

Many people worship snake, giving it milk, joining hands, trying to make friendship thinking that it will not bite if you butter it. They are afraid that it might bite if not worshipped. Man finds the easy way out by showing external devotion, praying so that Gods are not angry with him, thinking that he has done his duty but this is not enough. You don’t become chef by reading cook books, you don’t get driving license by just reading instructions, you have to practice to perfect your art, no books can help you perfect your skills.

Saint Paul says:”I die daily, that which is born from flesh to flesh and other which is born from spirit to spirit, to enter the gates of heaven, only to die a royal death.”

We listen to our Guru only in his presence and forget as soon as he is gone. The way to meditation is to close all the nine apertures of our body and bring the concentration on the 10th door which is here, at the eye center, when he tastes the nectar at the 10th door and hears the sweet music, he will see the light of Truth and he will find the divine happiness.

Going for a satsang is not just to give attendance, it is a place to absorb the message, if you cannot absorb what is preached at the satsang,

Then what is the use of going for spiritual meetings?

There is no shortage of people attending satsang/temple but if they are not attentive than what is the use? Spiritual Guru is not interested in quantity of people attending his satsang, he is only interested in those who obey him and follow the path that he is guiding them. He does not want people to sit in 1st standard all their life, he wants them to advance to a better stage and graduate to attain success.

A spiritual Guru wants his disciples to graduate by following a right path because without devotion and meditation there is no eternal peace and happiness and he will continue to live in darkness.

On the subject of Spirituality

This excerpt caught my attention today

“The subject of spirituality is far too complex for a worldly man to comprehend without the intervention and assistance of a perfect Master, just as no one has ever qualified as a doctor or engineer by simply reading books, the subject of spirituality is extremely difficult and one that can only be understood gradually over a period  of time.” Spiritual Links

And yet, every second person I meet has long lecture to give me on spirituality.

Agreed, I don’t really know what I do at the temple or at any religious structure (for that matter) except to admire the architecture. I see people shut their eyes and murmur, talking to God and I wonder how they pray. Sing His praises? Ask for favors? I was told that we should never ask God of anything and let Him decide what is best for us because if we force Him to give us something that we didn’t really deserve, then it may be granted but it becomes the object of suffering in our life.

And there are people who tell me how they wished they had not forced God by going on hunger strike, fasting for days on end, visiting every temple, bathing in holy waters, and doing everything that pundit suggested for the miracle to happen. And the miracle did happen but now, they wished they could be liberated from that bondage. My friend once told me “I have stopped begging God for anything because whatever I asked, has been the cause of my suffering”

For me, spirituality has different meaning. Showing compassion and respect to every human being, irrespective of his status, size or color. If we hurt a single person, then we are unsuccessful in life. If we cannot give happiness to people then it better to keep out and be on our own. Yes, there are days when I forget my obligations towards society, hello, I am not perfect, I know, and sometimes I do get carried away and make jokes which may hurt people (which of course I didn’t mean to). but I am grateful to my loved ones who remind me when I err. I have given them that much leverage. If I don’t allow them to guide me then who will?

But, being good is to do the best we can to make other’s life comfortable. Walk an extra mile to bring a smile on a weaker face. What is the use of lying, cheating and pretending what we are not, whom do we fool? Is getting love on those grounds so important? Is it really important to impress others? Why do we care so much about other people’s opinion to shape our lives? Why do we get upset if people don’t recognize us or agree with us? Why do we feel so happy winning some meaningless contest. These are momentary happiness and they may boost our ego, but just for a while. Shouldn’t we merge with our own conscience and be true to our self?

Doing what is right and being true to oneself is religion. That is spirituality for me.