Shared by: Mrs.Yaani Drucker

This is from Yaani Drucker, the author of  "Not Guilty".

Yaani and her husband Al Drucker (Author of Sai Baba Gita) are well known Sai devotees.

Not to be missed!

Baba’s Return Waits on Your Enlightenment

We all want God’s grace, right? What is God’s Greatest Grace? Baba says, “My greatest Grace is the 3 zero’s - that is, I will take away your riches, your reputation, and your relations.” That’s God’s greatest grace? Who in their right mind would ask for that?

Only one who wants liberation will embrace this ultimate expression of God’s love. Baba says, “I give you what you want, so you will come to want what I have truly come to give you, namely liberation itself.”

On a particularly memorable trip to the ashram, after only his first darshan, Al was blocked from entering the ashram compound, ‘for getting married.’ In an interview, perplexed, I asked Baba for His blessings to marry Al Drucker. I had, after all, received many intimations that same was indeed God’s will. Not only that but I was very much in love, and was satisfied that my heart was pure and that I was not interested in a very prominent Sai devotee for the wrong reasons.

Baba’s gruff reply: “Why do you want to marry that man? His body is filled with cancer.”

Without skipping a beat, I answered, “Baba, I love him. I’ll take care of him.”

At that point Baba shouted, “You’re worse than an animal.”

What? How does standing with my soul companion in his hour of need, make me worse than an animal? Only much later did I understand that Baba was not responding to those words, but rather to the circumstances under which I had already given myself to the man I love as no other. Baba says, “Animals have a reason and a season. Man has no reason and no season.”

Now, would it come as a great surprise that what spread through the ashram like wildfire was not that I love Al and will take care of him, but rather the part about being worse than an animal. I came away from the interview knowing that I could not walk away from Al, even of God himself were against the relationship.

Next visit to the ashram, I asked the ashram director to ask Baba to please forgive Al and me and to please permit Al to return to the ashram. Later two strapping men knocked on my door and asked if I was Mrs. Drucker. Upon admission, they asked me to leave immediately, quoting Baba as having said, “She’s a disgrace to the ashram.”

It so happened that just prior to this visit, I dropped in on some dear friends. He took out his deck of tarot cards and I chose the card on which was written ‘disgrace.’ Jim said, “Great card; means ‘God’s grace.’” I took my dismissal as God’s grace.

When I returned home, with this further evidence against me, Al too became convinced that my earlier constant assurances about our union were not from a pure place. Had Al asked Baba directly, he would have known for himself one way or other. I would have been wise to wait.

I was dubbed ‘the lady of ill repute’ both at the ashram, and also in my own home, from the man I love with all my heart soul and strength and was willing to walk into hell for? How could having my reputation so tarnished be God’s greatest grace?

I was felt completely alone. Baba too kept up the heat; in my next interview when I again pleaded for Baba to take Al back, Baba gruffly retorted, “Why should I take him back? He’s a very bad man, and you also sometimes very bad,” I had nowhere to turn but within. It took me 10 long agonizing years to internalize all that had taken place, 10 years of accepting that I was the worst person in the universe, before I finally dared to ask myself what exactly was my crime? Upon daring to look, all I could see was that I had married the man I loved as no other, and had stuck by him through thick and thin. My love never waivered for Al, for Baba, or for all my Sai family.

Once you realize you are in jail for a crime you never committed, you want out more than anything else in the whole world. That is exactly where Baba needed me to be. When we really look carefully, we see that we are all in jail, all behind bars, all on death row. The thing is that most of us go along with the unjust verdict because somewhere within us we are actually convinced that we are guilty. Only when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are and have always been innocent, will you demand your freedom with everything that is in you. Once you one pointedly demand your freedom, it cannot be denied.

In ‘unjustly’ losing my reputation, I discovered that I was never guilty and that I deserve to be in heaven with God NOW. Is it necessary for you to undergo such a strenuous outer journey, to reach that inner realization? Of course not. You can change your mind NOW. You too can see that you are in jail because you thought you were guilty, when you were actually always innocent, without undergoing the loss of reputation.

We all thought that we had defied God in making ego to replace God, and thus we deserve the self-imposed bondage that we have all succumbed to in this illusory world of sickness, suffering and death. In making ego to replace God, we did nothing wrong. God is still our creator, and He still loves us all with the love of a thousand mothers. Most of us are not even in touch with this primordial guilt, but we do all experience, to some extent, sickness and suffering and our all lives will most assuredly culminate in death, and we simply accept all these eventualities as somehow good and right, and even God’s will. It is this blind acceptance of life’s unkind vicissitudes that exposes our unfounded guilty verdict. Once we know our innocence, we know that we deserve the very best only and always.

Ego needs us guilty in order to exist. As long as we view ourselves as guilty, so long we will accept that we deserve punishment, and so long ego keeps us bound to time, to reincarnating again and again and again, so as to exist at our expense. Once we truly see our innocence, ego loses its grip over our minds, and we are free. We don’t have to lose our reputation in order to see that. That is all the loss of reputation gave me. Why not see it NOW, without having to endure the agony of God’s Greatest Grace?

God wants us all enlightened, and hopefully that can be accomplished without the devastation of loss of reputation, riches or relations. Surely, just one of us undergoing such agony is enough for all of us to wake up. I don’t want you to lose your reputation. That, for me, was pure hell. My prayer is that you be free of ego by gently getting what became obvious to me through much struggle and suffering. The only purpose for sharing that I am awake, is in hopes that it will plant the seed that you too can reach enlightenment, even NOW, and that you deserve nothing less and should settle for nothing less, with all your heart, soul and strength because of who you are and have always been.

Things did come full circle when in very my last interview Baba said, “I love you. You are ALWAYS working for Me.” Aahhh, what sweet music after a very long arduous trek – a journey without distance to a place I never left, not in truth.

I don’t know what if anything, my journey to enlightenment has to do with furthering Baba’s return, but maybe, just maybe His return waits on your enlightenment. Who if not you? When if not now?

Those ‘enlightened’ saints and sages in temples and caves, chanting the eternal “OM” are doing more for the world than all other worthy causes combined. Yearning for Baba to return in a worthy cause, but desiring your enlightenment is an even more powerful herald of the Golden Age to come. Baba is coming back to usher in the Golden Age, and for that He needs a critical mass of us enlightened.

The greatest service you can render to the planet is to wake up to the truth of who you are. The greatest service! Greater even than yearning for Baba to return and save the planet.

Blessing and love, Yaani

Posted by Aanchal Sai Sharma & Sneha Sharma