This Book

The Rama Story, Stream of Sacred Sweetness, has been for millions of men, women and children, for many centuries the perennial source of solace during sorrow, vitality when floored by vacillation, illumination while confounded, inspiration in moments of dejection and guidance while caught in quandaries. It is an intensely human drama, where God impersonates as man and gathers around Him, on the vast world-stage, the perfect and the imperfect, the human and the subhuman, the beast and the demon, to confer on us, by precept and example, the boon of Supreme Wisdom. It is a Story that plays its tender fingers on the heartstrings of man, evoking lithe, limpid responses of pathos, pity, exultation, adoration, ecstasy and surrender, rendering us transformed, from the animal and the human, into the Divine which is our core.

No other story in human history has had such profound impact on the mind of man. It transcends the milestones of history and the boundaries of geography. It has shaped and sublimated the habits and attitudes of generations. The Ramayana, the Story of Rama, has become a curative corpuscle in the blood stream of mankind, over vast areas of the globe. It has struck root in the conscience of peoples, prodding and prompting them along the paths of Truth, Righteousness, Peace and Love.

Through legends and lullabies, myths and tales, dance and drama, through sculpture, music and painting, through ritual, poetry and symbol, Rama has become the Breath, the Bliss, the Treasure of countless Seekers and Sadhakas. The characters in the Rama Story have invited them to emulation and to be elevated themselves. They have provided shining examples of achievement and adventure; they have warned the wavering against vice and violence, pride and pettiness; they have encouraged them by their fidelity and fortitude. To every language and dialect that the tongue of man has devised for the expression of his higher desires, the Story of Rama has added a unique, sustaining sweetness.

Sai (Isa, God), whose Thought is the Universe, whose Will is Its History, is the Author, Director, Actor, Witness and Appraiser of the Drama that is ever unfolding in Time and Space. He has now deigned to tell us Himself the story of this one epic Act in that Drama, wherein He took on the Rama role. As Rama, Sai instructed, inspired and invigorated, corrected, consoled and comforted His contemporaries in the Treta Age, As Sai Rama, He is now engaged in the same task. Therefore, most of what the readers of 'Sanathana Sarathi' perused, month after month, (during these years) with ardour and pleasure, as instalments of this narrative - the Ramakatharasavahini - must have appeared to them "contemporary events and experiences", and "direct counsel to them in the context of contemporary problems and difficulties". While reading these pages, readers will often be pleasantly struck by the identity of the Rama of this Story and the Sai Rama they are witnessing.

"Science" has moulded this earth into the compactness and capsularity of a spaceship in which mankind has to live out its destiny. "Sai-ence" is, we know, fast moulding this spaceship into a happy home of Love. This book must have been willed by Sai as a paramount panacea for the removal of the ills that obstruct that Universal Love - the morbid itch for sensual pleasure, the mounting irreverence towards parents, teachers, elders, spiritual leaders and guides, the disastrous frivolity and flippancy in social, marital, and familial relationships, the demonic reliance on violence as a means of achieving immoral ends, the all-to-ready adoption of terror and torture as means of gaining personal and group gains, and many more evils besides.

Sai Rama has recapitulated herein, in His own simple, sweet and sustaining style, His own Divine Career, as Rama! What great good fortune, this, to have in our hands, to inscribe on our minds, to imprint on our hearts, this Divine narrative! May we be processed by the study of this Book into efficient and enthusiastic tools for consummating His Mission of moulding mankind into One Family, of making each one of us realise Sai Rama as the Reality, the only Reality that IS.

Sai has declared that He is the same Rama come again, and that He is searching for His erstwhile associates and workers (bantu, as He referred to them, in Telugu) in order to allot them roles in His present Mission of resuscitating Righteousness and leading man into the Haven of Peace. Let us pray, while ruminating over the first half of this Story, that we too be allotted roles and may He grant us, as reward, the Vision of that Haven.

N. KASTURI
Editor, Sanathana Sarathi