December 1995
Publisher's Desk
It's a Sign of the Times
By Satguru Sivaya
Subramuniyaswami What is on everyone's mind is our Loving Ganesha's visiting New Delhi and drinking all the milk in that great metropolis, then moving on to London and ingesting all the delicious milk in the city. Our Lord of Obstacles recently roamed the planet, country to country, hamlet to hamlet, home to home, removing barriers to belief and creating an unprecedented event of auspiciousness of what is to come.
It is not unusual for the Gods to manifest themselves in these ways. Each kind of happening holds a special meaning, and the art of signs or portents is an old one. Milk drinking is one sacred portent written of in the holy texts. The predictions of scripture tell us that this event may not bode well for the generals of armies. It also marks the end of the need for strife, signaling that peace is forthcoming. That indeed would be another great miracle. We shall wait in patient anticipation for the next happening and the next. These events of mystery usually happen in sets of three.
In parapsychology such events are called phenomena. They usually happen in small ways among devout disciples, but this time Ganesha has deliberately created a wide-spread marvel of an unprecedented nature, commanding the attention of a jaded world on the front page of newspapers in almost every country. These continue to arrive at our Hinduism Today editorial offices daily. He, in His majesty, has also brought all Hindus of the world together, building their faith. Millions picked up the phones in Durban and Delhi, Kuala Lumpur and Berlin, calling family and friends to report the news, to ask if it was happening there too, to gossip about why it occurred here and not there. They all marveled to see little children innocently feeding a stone image as though such things happen every day and stood aside as eager onlookers of other religions participated in feeding the loving Lord gallons of milk and receiving His unbounding blessings.
We had the great pleasure in gifting a Ganesha murti to a small Amman temple in Denmark. He arrived on Ganesha Chaturthi, 1995. When the first puja was performed and a coconut broken, there came a loud sound from the image and a bright light flashed. Seconds later drops of milk flowed from the eyes of this eight-inch-tall sculpture. A month later He was drinking liters of milk, and it was all video taped. The Danish press came and when the journalists tried to feed him, it worked! They were convinced that something quite unusual was happening. They wrote their stories that evening, headlining the event in leading journals. Sri Lankan and Indian devotees had to stand back as Danish citizens came forward to receive His penetrating blessings. All rejoiced together.
Miracles are what make people believe in religion, people who would not ordinarily pursue traditional philosophy. Miracles entice them. In Sri Lanka the Buddhists call exaggerated writing which is not so factual 'writing under a full moon.' Often it's done to put across the point in another way, a way people won't forget it. So we have the story that a Saiva saint disappeared into a temple sanctum. People reported at the time that they saw this with their own eyes. A thousand years later people are not so sure that maybe they were "writing under a full moon." But the 1995 milk miracle makes us think again about all those stories we take to be fables. Maybe they are true after all. Maybe a thousand years from now our milk miracle, witnessed by so many, will be taught as a religious tale, and scientists will say we were all victims of mass hypnosis or some such thing.
We believe 108% in supernatural events. In our own temples we burn notes to the devas, and remarkably these prayers are answered. How does it work? No one can explain. But there are thousands of people who have experienced it and testify that it works. Maybe it's just all your own superconscious mind. We can't cut out the mystical and the magical or even superstition, since 80% of Hinduism is made up of this. We have to take it all. We don't discriminate against any part of it. We don't call any part of it a lesser understanding, either.
On page 24 you will read about the opening of a special 200-acre theerta in Austin, Texas. There we are watching the heavens as helicopters drop bushels of golden marigold flowers on the new temple to the sheer delight of devotees who worked so hard to make this day happen. That day the mahatmas danced. We danced the joy of being free from the world. His Holiness Swami Buaji, now 105, is there (wearing orange socks). We enjoyed a reunion after 25 years. He and I reminisced the time we walked the Paris streets in 1969 with 65 devotees trailing us.
Soaring high in a helicopter H.H. Swami Chidananada Saraswati of Rishikesh and I bathed the three-story magnificent tower over Her Royal Highness Radha Rani. The darshan when the curtains opened at the awaited auspicious moment was overwhelming. Much praise to His Holiness Swami Prakashananda Saraswati Maharaj for his remarkable achievement. Praise, praise and more praise. Do visit Barsana Dham and have Mother's darshan. Do make it soon.
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