Are There Still Saints in India? Part 1

The mysterious attraction

My name is Premi. In 1993 I had come down to Rishikesh and I went and sat at Mastram Baba’s place on the left bank of the Ganges. I was doing some japa (reciting a mantra) and meditation on this rock where Mastram Baba’s small mud hut is, and when I saw the tree near the platform on the other side of the riverbank, there was an attraction. It was a sort of magnetic attraction. So in the evening I walked along the Ganges from Mastram Baba’s place up to the Laxman Jhulla bridge which I crossed, and I came to the place where the people have their baths.
When I came up to the spot I was looking for, there was a swami (one who dedicates his life to God) called Midhaji drying his clothes on the clothes line. He saw me, and I saw him, and I asked him,
“What is this place?”
“This is Sacha Baba’s place,” he replied.
So I asked him who Sacha Baba was. He then invited me to his room to have a cup of tea, and said he would show me Sacha Baba. So he took me to the temple after tea, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and I pranammed (bowed) to the statue of Sacha Baba in the temple. But I was still not satisfied, and I told him that I wanted to meet the real Baba. (Baba means a sage, a saint)
“There is one real Baba here,” he explained. “His name is Mahatma Hans Rajji. He is in his room, and he will open his door at about five o’clock. Then you can have his darshan.” (meeting a Master)

The two questions

So at five o’clock he took me to Mahatma Hans Rajji’s room. He had opened his door so Swami Midhaji went in and told him that someone had come for information. So he sent me in, and when I saw Mahatma Hans Raj Baba, I felt that I had met him previously, maybe from a previous life, but it was very difficult to say at that time.
When I sat down, I looked at him and kept looking at him, and I still felt there was some sort of connection which I was unable to explain. The first thing the Mahatma (Mahatma literally means a great soul, a saint ) asked me was where I had come from, so I told him I had come from Delhi. I told him I liked his place very much and that I wanted to stay there. I also said I wanted to ask him one or two questions.
He replied,
“Yes, you ask me.”
“I was reading about Guru Nanak (great Indian Saint born in the 15th century and who founded the religion of Sikhs), and he said that if you meet a true saint it is a great blessing. But how can it be possible to find a true saint in our time? There are no true saints in this country anymore!”
“Acha!” (Ah yes !)
Then I asked him how this world had come about, because according to science, there is this “big bang” theory, whereas when we read the Upanishads and the Indian Shastras (Upanishads and Shastras are holy Texts), they talk about something else.
“That’s so !” he replied. Then he added, “Listen, first of all go and sit on that particular platform where Sacha Baba used to sit. Then stay here at the ashram for two or three days.”

And the “big bang” ?

I accepted and went and sat on the platform. And when I was sitting there, at about six o’clock, I found that suddenly my thoughts had stopped. No thoughts were coming anymore. But I could still see the Ganges, all that was around me, and I was aware of everything. And suddenly, in that awareness, a word came. The word was sankalpa ( a sankalpa is a thought-force, a decree, directed will power used to materialise something or a new situation or event). So I immediately realised that I was reading something that might have happened sometime in the past, that this entire world is a “notion” or a “thought” which takes form in the great cosmic world. It is known as sankalpa. (Continued in Part 2)