Part Three

When we moved to Toronto I couldn't find any jobs at the beginning. My sister was working in a

daycare center in Toronto. She had told me that sometimes they get supply staff from an agency if

there is any one absent, and suggested I try that agency for work. Since I studied Early Childhood

Education in Montreal, I worked in daycare centers before moving to Toronto. So I thought it's a

nice idea to start with. So I applied to that agency and after the formalities I got

hired by that agency. Even though I was a supply staff I got work almost everyday but not at the

same daycare center. Everyday I had to go to different daycare centers. The staff in a daycare

center would not respect the supply staff because we're just temporary staff. Even they can't be

blamed. If there's a new staff in a room, the regular staff would have double the responsibilities -

explaining everything to the new staff as well as taking care of the children. So it's not surprising

that they get frustrated and they take it on the new staff. So I had to put up with a lot of

mistreatments in the daycares I went to. In Montreal and Cornwall I had quitted my jobs because of

the mistreatments of someone or the other. But this time I decided to be patient. The reason was

not just that it was hard to find jobs but there was another reason too. That was kind of spiritual.

Since I was notified about my ego in one of my dreams I thought maybe I was a powerful person in

my previous births. Maybe that's why I chose to be born with less power this time to work on my

ego. So I thought the experiences I got in the daycares can be lessons for me to reduce my ego.

So I was tolerating all those mistreatments and kept on going to work. This is when my nephew's

demise happened. It was a tremendous shock for everyone in the family. It wasn't that easy for us

to cope with the situation.

So I took a week off from work. Next week in order to go to work I tried to accept one shift. It was an eform we were supposed to click. I had the agency's website on my cell phone. So I tried to click on the accepting button on their eform as usual but my finger had clicked on the other button. That means I'm not accepting that shift. My family members who were standing next to me were making fun of me telling me that I purposefully clicked the other button. But I knew that I had genuinely tried to accept that shift. But my finger had pressed the wrong button. It was a surprise for me. It didn't happen before. I usually accept the shifts that way. Then I thought since my late nephew knew my issues with the daycares, he was the one who made my finger touch the other button. So I took more days off until my mind got stronger before I started to work.

After my nephew's demise, just like everyone else in the family I also felt deep misery and sorrow. But since I have a spiritual side I decided to choose the spiritual path. Otherwise the loss is unbearable I thought. Spiritual path doesn't mean going to temple very often. It is deeper than that. My late nephew is guiding me into the spiritual path through dreams and all that. In one of the dreams he made me think that the physical body is just a temporary one and one day it will be destroyed. Because of him we went to the holy city of Varanasi. We took a dip in the holy river Ganges. While we were there I felt like we were a little elevated. Even though the western media and the youngsters told otherwise I felt some divine power when we were there. I felt like I belonged there. It so happened that my parents had to go to India before I was born. My grandfather from my dad's side went to South India. To fulfill his desire of going to the holy places in North India my father flew to India with my mother and took his father to the holy places like Rishikesh, Varanasi etc. My older siblings were left with my grandparents from mom's side. After they returned from India only me and my younger sisters were born. As a joke my father used to tell me that I am the consort of lord Muruga (Valli) from Thiruchendur and so on. Since childhood I have been inclined to be spiritual. I jokingly tell my parents that maybe a sage from Rishikesh was born as me. But when I was in Varanasi I felt like I lived there in one of my previous births or something.

I was very tolerant while I was working as a supply staff in daycare centers. Maybe the universe or some higher power decided to put an end to that. One day I fell unconscious in the washroom and didn't get consciousness for nearly two hours or so. My husband was doing night shifts at that time. So he came home from work in the morning and after taking a shower he ate breakfast, drank tea and went to sleep as usual. I too drank tea and went to the washroom as usual. That's when I fell unconscious. Since my two sons didn't have classes that day they were in their room studying. When I regained consciousness after two hours I found myself on the washroom floor. I managed to get up and as soon as I got up I was nauseated. That sound made my sons come and knock on the washroom door and ask 'are you ok?' I opened the door and told them what happened and told them to wake up dad. Since I was dizzy and nauseated my husband and children took care of me. After that incident I was afraid of going to work. To go to work I had to travel alone to new places using Google maps. When my shift got confirmed I used to get directions from Google maps the previous night. Then by using the subway and buses I traveled to that place. But after that incident I was worried what if I faint while traveling alone to work. So I decided to quit the job. I called that agency and told them that I'm going to quit the job.

But there was one component I didn't tell anybody about that incident (I didn't want anyone to think that I'm crazy). At the beginning I couldn't remember anything. But I tried to recollect my memories. I remembered after drinking my tea I was walking to the washroom and sat on the toilet as usual. When I kept trying to remember more and more about those morning incidents only I remembered when I sat on the toilet I felt some energy in front of me. I felt that it was a kind of energy which can punish the bad and reward the good. The closest description of that energy can be Lady Justice. That's all I was able to remember and then I could remember finding myself on the floor. Now, when I watch the Tamil TV about a Hindu demigod called Saneesvaran, who corresponds to the planet Saturn I can tell the energy I felt in the washroom that day was also similar to him. It can be said that he's equivalent to Lady Justice in manners. 

But this is not the first time I felt like this. Once I felt my late brother's presence while I was working in the brake pads factory. I thought he tried to help me with my issue at the workplace then. Since most of the people don't understand these kinds of subtle intuitions I don't tell anyone about these experiences.

The younger generation from our families, people who think a little revolutionary and of course people from other religions often make fun of the pantheon of our Hindu Gods. Since I'm a devotee of lord Shiva I usually don't bother much about lord Vishnu. Since my nickname is Geetha and also I learnt the essence of the Bagavath Geetha is: 'do your duty and leave the rest to god' at school, I like it very much, which was recited by lord Krishna (one of the incarnations of lord Vishnu). Also I read about lord Rama in a book called 'Sakkaravarthi Thirumakan' (The venerated son of the emperor) written by the former chief minister of Tamil Nadu state, late Rajaji. Lord Rama is also considered one of the incarnations of lord Vishnu. Those were the only connections in-between me and Vaishnavism (one of the Hindu denominations considers Vishnu as the Supreme Being) until I got an insight of lord Vishnu. It happened like this: Once my niece's family took me to Florida when they drove there. One of my sisters lives there. We went to Marco Island. That beach has a bountiful of seashells. People usually pickup seashells when they go there. So my sister gave everyone a shopping bag. There were a lot of seashells. So we picked up a lot of them in our bags for fun. When we returned home I had two bags full of seashells. I didn't know what to do with them. I remembered in Sri Lanka when we went to a beach called Pasikuda, there were people selling figurines made out of seashells. So after I washed them thoroughly I was trying to make something with them. One day while I was figuring out what to do with the seashells I was amazed by the different varieties of seashells and kind of awestruck by the different life forms within the sea. While I was thinking deeply on that matter, suddenly a notion arose in my mind that there's an aspect of Vishnu in the sea. It hit me suddenly and I stood still for a while. Then only I realized what had just happened.             

I was contemplating on it for the next few days. Little by little it dawned on me that Lord Vishnu's and his consort Goddess Laxmi's lives were always connected with the ocean. Lord Vishnu is considered as lying down on a serpent called the 'Adisesha' in the so-called milky ocean. Even Goddess Luxmy Devi is considered to have emerged from the milky ocean when the celestial beings churned the milky ocean. The first two incarnations of lord Vishnu's supposed ten incarnations (Dasavathara) were the fish and the tortoise, no? Both happened in the ocean. Lord Rama's life ended up in the Sarayu river; Lord Krishna's city of Duvaraka is considered to have emerged from the sea and drowned in the sea no? Baby Krishna's famous 'Kalinga dance' happened in the Yamuna river no? Goddess Laxmi is also called the 'daughter of waves' (Alai Mahal). So the ocean is so connected with both of them, no? After I understood this truth I made a figurine of Radha and Krishna with the seashells. They are known as the combined forms of feminine and masculine realities of God in Vaishnavism (a sector of Hinduism).

We bought a condo in Scarborough and moved there in 2014. We lived there for around five years. Then we bought a big house with our daughter's family in the city of Pickering and moved there. Our plan is to live separately (one family in the basement and another one in the upper section). We had some struggles during those processes. Finally we bought the house and moved there in November 2019. Within a few days after our move my husband had a weird dream. In that dream, someone came to our house and told me that we have to vacate our house. So I came rushing up the stairs to convey him the message. And when I knocked on the door he opened it with an anxious heart. But when he opened the door there was his mother standing instead of me. He was crying in his mother's arms. That was the end of the dream. When he told us about the dream we didn't understand the meaning of it. Because of the happy ending of the dream (the appearance of my mother-in-law) we didn't bother about it too much. However I had a similar dream in a few days. In the dream my daughter and I were making something in the kitchen and some water got spilled on the floor. Instead of wiping it I just kicked the water out. Then a person who was sitting on a small stool in the kitchen was telling us, 'since we're spoiling the house we have to move'. I was begging him to change the decision but he said it's final. When I woke up from the dream I was so upset and scared. Since we had two dreams about eviction I got scared. I was praying to God telling him 'after all those struggles now only we settled down and if we have to evict where can we go' and so on. And then I had another dream. In that dream the sacred Bilva leaves (Lord Shiva's favorite leaves) were falling inside the house through the sunroof. I was a little bit contended after that dream. Even though we bought this house together our plan was to live separately like one family in the main floor and another one in the basement. Daughter said they can live in the basement but my husband said we can live there. Since the basement was not renovated we all lived together until it got renovated. Since there are five rooms on the second floor we decided to let me and my husband move to the basement and two sons also can live in the rooms and I can cook for four of us so that they can come and eat with us or bring their food to their rooms. The basement got renovated and me and my husband moved to the basement. At that time my husband was doing the evening shift (4pm-12am). Since my sons usually bring their food to their rooms I had to stay alone in the basement at night until my husband came from work around 1:15am. At that time my mind started to think about those weird dreams and I was getting scared. Those fears were getting worse as time went by. To avoid those fears I started watching the YouTube videos of the 'Radio Sai'. I was free from those fears once I started watching those videos. That organization was started in 2001 by Baba himself as a channel of the World Space Satellite Radio service. Over the years it has grown into an Internet Radio streaming service offering 24/7 streams to Asia, Africa and America continents in Telugu and other language Discourses and Bhajans. A lot of people shared their Sai experiences on that channel. Through those contacts I got invited to a WhatsApp group called 'Sathya Sai Yugam - 4'. I accepted that invitation and joined the group.

On that group they've posted the audio version of the Tamil translation of the book called Sai Baba: Man of Miracles, written by an Australian called Howard Murphet. I've already read his second book called Sai Baba AVATAR. From the preface of the book I came to know about his first book. I wanted to read that book too, but I had no chance to read it. Now my wish came true after so many years. 

Murphet had read about Shirdi Sai Baba (the previous incarnation) from a book written and published in England. Then he read about him from other books. He felt a deep stir about Shirdi Baba from the first introduction.  

After spending some time in Europe during their expedition around the world, he and his wife decided to stop for a while in India on their way home to Australia. They had two purposes in view. One was to go more deeply into Theosophy by attending the six-months "School of the Wisdom" at the international Headquarters of the Theosophical Society in Adyar, Madras.

Their second purpose was to travel through the country to discover if there was any deeper spiritual dimension in the life of modern India. Was there, they wondered, anything left of the mysterious India described in the pages of Paul Brunton, Yogananda, Kipling, Madame Blavatsky, Colonel H.S. Olcott and other writers? Would it be possible to find somewhere, in an ashram or jungle hermitage, a great Yogi of supernormal powers who knew the secrets of life and death? They thought that about a year should suffice for that program. 

The Theosophy School was enjoyable and it prepared them for their upcoming exploration. Their search took them to several ashrams throughout the length of India. They met hermits and ascetics in their caves in the Himalayas. 

They first heard the name Satya Sai Baba from a wandering yogi. He had not himself met this holy man, nor been to his ashram at a village called Puttaparthi. This, as heard, was a difficult place to reach, being in the wilds of the interior: one had to do the last part of the journey by bullock cart or on foot over rough tracks. Still, the Swami was no doubt worth the effort, the yogi thought, since Murphet was interested in miracles. He was known to have siddhis (powers), to be a great miracle-worker.

"What kind of miracle"? Murphet asked.

"Well, it's said that he can, for instance, produce objects from nowhere."

Later, when he heard that his followers regarded him as a reincarnation of Shirdi Sai Baba his desire to meet Baba became even stronger. But the bullock-cart safari into the interior of south India would have to wait a little while. On their return, they decided to recuperate for a time in the tranquil tree-filled Theosophical Estate.

One day several months after their return, a young pale-faced woman wearing the ochre-robe of a monk came on a visit to the Theosophical Headquarters. She was introduced as Nirmalananda. She was an American. Nirmalananda was the Hindu name given to her by Swami Sivananda when he initiated her into monastic life. After he had died she left his ashram and became a follower of Satya Sai Baba. At Puttaparthi she had witnessed many wonderful miracles. Now Sai Baba was on a visit to Madras and she was one of a small party of disciples he had brought with him.

That seemed to be a golden opportunity for Murphet. Since his wife Iris was not feeling well enough Nirmalananda conducted him to the place where Sai Baba was staying. That was the home of Mr. G. Venkateshwara Rao, a mica magnate who was also a devotee of Sai Baba. The lawns and pathways in front of the house were covered with people sitting.

Nirmalananda led Murphet through the crowd to the front verandah and there introduced him to an American named Bob Raymer. He took Murphet into a small sitting-room and left him there. In the room were only two Indian men, both standing and apparently waiting for someone. Murphet also stood waiting. Nirmalananda had already gone off somewhere.

After a few minutes the door from the interior of the house opened and there entered a man the like of whom Murphet has never seen before nor since. That man was slight and short. He wore a red silk robe that fell in a straight line from shoulders to feet. His hair stood up from his head in a big circular mop, jet black, crinkly. His skin was light brown. His eyes were dark, soft and luminous, and his face beamed with some inner joy. Since Murphet had never seen a photograph of Sai Baba he was wondering could this be Sai Baba? Baba walked swiftly across the carpet towards him and asked, "Are you the man from Australia?". He said "Yes". Then Baba went to the Indians and began talking to them in Telugu. Then Baba waved his hand in the air, palm downwards in small circles. When he turned the palm up it was full of fluffy ash, and he divided this among the two men. One of them could not contain his feelings; he began to sob. Sai Baba patted him on the shoulders and back, and spoke to him soothingly like a mother. Later only Murphet had heard that Baba had cured that man's son of some terrible disease.

After a while Baba turned to Murphet again. Standing close in front of him, Baba began circling his hand again. This time Murphet noticed Baba pulled his loose-fitting sleeve almost up to the elbow. Much later Murphet learned the reason for this. In his mind was the suspicion that Baba might be bringing the ash out of his sleeve. Baba has no difficulty in reading minds, he said. 

When the mound of powdery ash appeared suddenly in his palm, Baba tipped it into Murphet's palm. For a moment he stood there wondering what to do with it. Then a voice to his left said, "Eat it, it's good for your health." This was Bob Raymer who had just returned to the room. Actually Murphet had never expected to eat ash and enjoy it, but it was fragrant and pleasant to the taste he wrote.

Murphet also mentioned that apart from his miraculous abilities, Sai Baba had a powerful effect. He seemed to lift everyone up to some high level where there were no more worries. They became larger than life, and the usual difficulties and conflicts of the mundane world were far off, unreal. He mentioned that there seemed to be an aura of happiness around themselves. Iris mentioned that she could not stop smiling for hours after Baba had talked to her. 

He went to Puttaparthi and did a lot of research on Baba's miracles and finally himself and his wife got convinced on Baba's divinity. At one point Murphet's wife Iris had a chance to iron Baba's robe. Then they checked his robe to make sure there were no pockets on his robe. He had mentioned lots and lots of Baba's miracles in that book. Some miracles are witnessed by Murphet himself. He interviewed a lot of people also. Murphet also had a chance to witness two great miracles Baba used to do on the Sivaratri nights (the great night for lord Shiva when people do worship on Shiva the whole night without sleep). First one: The viboothi abishekam (pouring the holy ash on something) to the statue of Shirdi Baba from an empty pot by Baba. Second one: The Lingothbavam (producing the lingam - a symbol of lord Shiva) from Baba's mouth.

Once I started to listen to that Tamil audio version my belief in Baba's divinity got stronger and stronger. I was aware of the slander made about Baba on the internet. Because of the weakness of the human mind, my mind also wavered a little. But later on we heard that one of the religious denominations who brainwash other people's beliefs only made that slander about Baba.