Salutations to Ganesh !
Victory be to Shri Hari,
Who is Existence, knowledge, Bliss.
Oh, Lord of the universe.
Do not be harsh.
Be kind towards me.
You are verily the ocean of mercy.
You are verily a wish-fulfilling tree
Or verily a chintamani.
You glory is great.
Saints sing it often.
Have mercy on me – your own Dasganu.
So Gajanan Maharaj –
A realised soul
A partisan of the poor and the weak
Stayed with Bankatla.
Devotees from far and near
Came and bowed before Maharaj.
Is it necessary to invite bees
To sucj honey from flowers?
One morning, Maharaj
Was in a meditative mood.
The sky at the eastern horizon
Was crimson.
Birds chirped,
Cocks crowed,
The wind caressed the tree tops,
The aed were up in their beds
Telling beads.
The housewives were busy,
Sprinkling the yards,
With water mixed with cow dung.
Calves were making thrusts at udders of their mothers,
At such a pleasant time
One sadhu arrived
To have a darshan of Maharaj.
He was poorly dressed,
With a torn loin cloth
And an ochre colored cloth
Tied as a headgear.
He had a roll o fdeer skin on his back.
Number of people thronged
To have darshan o fMaharaj
How could such a tardy sadhu
Get an access to Maharaj?
So the sadhu sat all alone in a corner.
He mused to himself –
“I heard about Maharaj,
And came here from Banaras
I am chreishing a desire
To offer ganja to Maharaj.
Would Maharaj accept it?
Would the people around him –
Allow me to hand it over to him?
Or will they drive me out?
It seems, ganja is not popular here.
People hate one
Who consumes it.
To me ganja is the highest delicacy,
That is why I long to give it to Maharaj.”
As he was merged in these thoughts,
Maharaj came to know of his arrival
And said to one near him –
“Bring him here who has come from Banaras.
look, he is sitting over there.”
The sadhu in the corner
Sprang to his feet overjoyed.
He said to himself –
“Maharaj surely knows past, present and future,
How else could he spot me out?
It has been noted on Jnyaneshwari
That a yogi can see beyond
The vision of ordinary men.
Maharaj is a great yogi.
He will know my heartfelt desire.”
So they brought the sadhu
Before Maharaj.
Maharaj said unto him,
“Oh, take out from your zoli,
That which you have been
Keeping there for me.”
The sadhu bent down,
And touched Maharaj’s feet,
And rolled before him like a child,
On the ground.
Maharaj touched him and
Raised him up and said –
“Why did you fix it in your mind
To give me that thing?
Were you not ashamed then?
Why hesitate now?”
The sadhu said, -
“Forgive me Maharaj,
I shall surely take it out.
But promise me that
You won’t forsake it.
I know that yo do not need it.
You will be accepting it
Only to favour me and honour me.”
Whatever a devotee desires,
God fulfils his wishes in many ways.
Anjani had desired Shiva as her son,
So Shiva fulfilled her desire
And was born to her as Hanuman.
In the like manner
You accept me and my ganja
And do not discard it even hereafter.
Let it constantly remind you of this humble self.
Shiva who was an embodiment of knowledge
Has praised ganja.
Ganja may degrade an ordinary man,
But will elevate one who is a great yogi.”
Maharaj thought for a while.
Then yielded,
Even as a mother would
Yield to a stubborn naughty child.
The sadhu took the gaja
Out of his zoli and filled it in the chilim
Maharaj puffed it off –
The sadhustayed there for few days,
And then went off to Rameshwaram.
This is how Maharaj came to smoke,
And, mind you, he was no addict.
The real saints are like lotus leaves.
The water of common human desires
Won’t stick on to tarnish their spirits.
Often Maharaj sang the Vedic hymns
With the same age-old intonation.
The learned brahmins looked askance,
And said unto themselves –
“Verily Maharaj is a born Pundit!
How else would he sing thus the hymns?”
At times Maharaj used to sing
One song in various ragas.
One such song was –
“Chandan chawal belaki patiya.”
At times he used to say,
“Gana Gana Ganat botey”
At times he used to maintain a deep silence.
At times he used to lie motionless.
At times he used to move in jungles.
At times he used to get into a devotee’s house.
It so happened that
Janarao Deshmukh – a man well known there
was on his death bed.
Physicians had lost hopes.
Messages were sent round –
“Janarao won’t survive
Come and see him.”
Someone said –
“Run to Bankatlal,
He has a saint in his home.
If he wills,
Janarao will survive.”
So hurriedly they went to Bankatlal,
Asked him to give some tirtha
Sanctified by Maharaj.
The tirtha of a saint
Has the power of heavenly nectar.
Bankatlal led them to his father.
Father Bhavaniram was kind.
He took a glass of water,
And told Maharaj.
The condition of Janarao Deshmukh,
Solicited Maharaj to give the tirtha.
Maharaj nodded.
Bhavaniram tipped the tip of the toe
Of Maharaj into the water.
They hurried the sanctified water
To the dying man,
And administered it to him.
And lo, - the choked throat
Of the dying man cleared,
His hands moved,
His eyes opened,
His vision returned to him,
His heart beat distinctly,
Blood pulsated back to his pale face,
Warmth returned to his cool limbs.
All the near and dear ones
Shed tears of juy.
Within eight days
Janarao was up on his feet
And walked to Bhavaniram
To see one who gave him a fresh lease of life.
So you see, the water
charged by the touch of the saint
Acted as a life-giving ambrosia.
Now people may say –
None should have died
While such a saint
Breathed in Shegaon.
This is no logic.
Saints can at most
Avert dangers, when devotees supplicate to them
They do not want
To change the course of Nature.
Did not Jnyaneshwar, at Newase,
Revive the dying Satchidananda Baba?
But then did he not die
At last in Alandi?
So the point is that, saints
Will relieve your pain,
Remove your difficulties,
But will not usually interfere
In the course of nature,
Even though they are able to do so.
There are three types of deaths.
Adhyatmika, adhibhautika and adhidaivika
Adhyatmika death is a spiritual death –
The worst death in which man, forgetting God,
Merges himself into
Sensual joys of this life.
Adhibhautika death is one which is
Due to physical causes.
Adhidaivika death is one which is
Determined on past actions.
If one is not moderate in habits
And would eat like a glutton
Food that is prohibited, then he
Would be overpwered by disease
And would die an adhibhautika death.
Such a death may be averted,
By medicines
If administered by a good physician.
The adhidaivika death
May be averted by
Offering something to the deity
In exchange for the dying body.
Again, the death
Which may sweep upon a man
May be due to a physical cuase
Or due to a fore-ordained cause.
Many a time death is inevitable.
Did not Abhimanyu, the son of Arjun,
Fell on the batttle-field,
Even when Krishna was with Arjuna?
But the holy water
Of Gajanan Maharaj
Did cause a miracle.
Sometimes death may be averted
By a ritual offering to the diety.
But such an offering
Must be made with deep devotion and faith.
It is the faith which works
And miracles are wrought.
Holy water will avert death
Only when it is sanctified
With the touch of a holy man.
A clod of earth won’t turn into musk.
Robes won’t make a man holy,
If impurities and passions rage within.
Brass and gold
Both are metals yellow,
But brass is brass,
And gold is gold.
Gajanan Maharaj was a realised soel.
That is why with the holy water
Given by him
The dying man could revive.
Janarao Deshmukh recovered.
He held a sumptuous feast for sadhus.
Maharaj thought over it.
And said to himself –
“This is no good.
The ways of the world are different.
They will pester me hereafter
So I should be a bit harsh towards them.”
So Maharaj became harsh.
This frightened others
But not his devotees.
Even as Narasinhan –
An incarnation of God
was fierce to others
But not so to Prahlad – the son of Kayadhu,
A tigress is a terror
But not to her cubs.
The cubs playfully jump around her.
Even as earth in contact with musk
Or a khaira tree among sandalwood trees
Becomes fragrant,
So common men in contact with a sage gain prestige
But should a clod of earth
Or the khaira tree forget its status?
Cactus will grow
On the same land where grows sugar cane.
Diamonds and pebbles
Are together in a mine.
Are they both equal?
Both, a sage and a rogue
May live under the same roof.
A rogue
Under the garb of humility
May sail under false colors.
One such rogue
Stayed with Maharaj – Vithoba Ghatol
He supposed himself as
Lord Shankara’s nandi
He used to collect sweets
And money, offered to Maharaj,
Posed himeself as a great devotee,
Even as Kalyan
Of Ramadasa
He was often unkind and harsh
To other devotees.
One day some devotees
Came from a distant place.
They were in a hurry.
Maharaj was having his nap.
Non one would dare to disturb him.
These devotees praised
Vithoba Ghatol.
Vithoba Ghatol felt elated.
He awoke Maharaj
These devotees had darshan.
But Maharaj
Thrashed Vithoba Ghatol
With a big stick,
Blamed him for
Using his name for his own gains.
So Vithoba Ghatol
Ran away from Shegaon, never to return.
All sages do the same.
They drive away such
Middlemen as are hypocrites.
Those who are no saints,
However, favor hypocrites.
The hypocrite middlemen
Inflate the fake sages.
They raise them to imaginary heights.
All this they fo
To earn money and fame.
Both are trash.
The real saints
Who are always merged in God,
Won’t tolereate
Such a humbug.
The sages do protect all,
Even the crooked and the sinful,
But only when they are repentant.
Even the punishment inflicted on thme
Is for correcting them.
The mother earth
Would allow a thorny bush and a flowering tree
Grow side by side.
Both are usefull to the world
In their own way.
If Vithoba Ghatol
Would not have become,
So much puffed with pride,
He would have been
Loved by all as a great devotee.
He did not realise
The greatness of the great saint.
He was under a wish-fulfilling tree.
But he wished for a pebble.
He was near a wish-yielding cow.
But he only wished for a shell of a coconut.
Dasaganu prays
That this volume
May show the way
To all those who seek.
This is the offering to Hari Hara.