Movement

excerpt from The Near and the Dear by Dada Mukerjee

Meeting too often creates an attachment, and attachment is not good for saints."

Some old devotees of Babaji, who had known him in the early days, used to tell of his love of movement, the way he changed his residence from one part of the country to another, staying in one place for a while and then moving again.

They would mention the names of several places where he is said to have spent parts of his early life, and also the names by which he had been known. Their regret was that they did not know all the places where he stayed and all the names given to him. They were emphatic that no one except Babaji himself knew them, and he would not reveal anything.

There is nothing unusual or unnatural in such movement by saints. Saints, or realized souls, have no attachment for any place or person. For them, all are the same. Saints who are not living the lives of householders do not have the problem of moving family members, transporting household effects, being tied to assets or property, or setting up a new household. There were no such problems holding Babaji; he was free to move.

But what was the purpose or the motive behind his movements? We can only speculate about it.

There is a class of people in society who run from place to place using assumed names to escape the clutches of the law. They are lawbreakers, outlaws. But no one who had ever had any glimpse of him could imagine that Babaji was moving and changing names to escape the dragnet of the law! The saints are guardians of the Creator's law and live as faithful law-abiding citizens, binding themselves with all the laws meant for people living in society. This is necessary for peace and harmony, for the paths of our sadhana here and for the ultimate goal of life — union with the divine.

The saints, working for our upliftment, teach us obedience to the laws of the family and take care to separate the spurious from the real - the substance from the shell - so that the full benefit of obedience to the rules of the household and society can be achieved. We have to seek clues elsewhere.

It was not for evading that Babaji moved about, but for obeying in full spirit the self-imposed law which was working on him, with no allowance for any lapse in its fulfillment. One of the reasons that Babaji was a fugitive was to escape from the people gathering around him. If he stayed at one place for a long time, he would attract people with all their cares and offerings, and they would try to bind him by creating a new family around him. All that was left for him was to stealthily run away without leaving any trace of the route he had taken.

He hinted at something like this at Kainchi in May 1972. We had just arrived from Allahabad. He was sitting before the bathrooms surrounded by devotees. After the preliminaries about our journey and the distribution of prasad, he looked me in the face and said, "Dada, next winter I shall not come to Allahabad anymore." My reply was, "So do not come. What is the difficulty in that?" Some people were not happy with my reply, and when Babaji did not come the next winter, they started saying that I had prevented his visit. On hearing my reply, Babaji kept silent for a while and then said, "Dada, take leave for six months so that we can move about visiting places. I love movement and do not like to sit at one place." After some time, while talking to others, he got up and caught hold of my hand. Before moving, he said in the presence of all, "Do not be sad. I have been coming there regularly for the last fifteen years and this is not good for a saint.

The way the whole thing was done was unique and gives an insight into his way of dealing with us, which we seldom noticed. That he would not come next winter was not given as an announcement from the “higher” one, but was extracted from me as if with my full consent, with his patting and cajoling me. In our hurry, or in our desire to talk to or hear him, we missed this delicate and human aspect, a part of him which was all but unknown to us.

His reference to attachment was our attachment for him — not his attachment for any one of us. He had no attachment for anyone or anything, so there was no need of saving himself. It was only to save us from our attachment to him that he stopped coming to Allahabad. He wanted us to cut our attachment to his body, and the belief that his body was there was for us.

The container, however precious or attractive, is not the substance we aim to acquire. We are told to set aside the container by taking hold of the contents.

When we could not separate them, or failed to let go of the shell, he snatched it away from himself and threw it off. The real Babaji is always with us and cannot be lost. Only the imitation one which stood before us creating illusions is gone.