Foreword by N. Kasturi

Dear Reader!

 

The Bhagavatha is a dialogue between a person under the sentence of death and a great saint, who prepared him to meet it. We are all under a sentence of death; our hearts, like muffled drums, are beating funeral marches to the grave. Some reach it late, some soon. We require the counsel of a great saint, to prepare us too, for meeting death and witness the horizon beyond.

The Bhagavatha is a Ganga, emerging from the Lord, and merging in Him, after a long journey through geographic descriptions, historic annals, philosophic disquisitions, hagiological narratives, epistemologic enquiries, and after fertilising the vast valleys of human minds, with the pure pellucid waters of Krishna-episodes.

Bhagavân has come again as Sathya Sai for the revival of dharma among men; one important aspect of that revival is the re-establishment of reverence for the ancient spiritual texts, like the Bible, the Koran, the Zend-Avesta, the Tripitaka, the Vedas and the Bhagavatha. Reverence can spring at the present time, only when the inner meaning of the statements and stories is explained in clear, simple, charming style by the very person who inspired the original scripture.

Here, in this book, we have His version of that voluminous textbook of bhakti, which Vyâsa composed at the suggestion of sage Nârada, so that he may win peace and equanimity.

This is not just a book, dear reader. It is a balm, a key, a mantra - to soften, solve and save, to loosen the bonds, to liberate from grief and pain, thirst and tutelage.

Open it with humility, read it with diligence, revere it with devotion, observe its lessons with steadfastness and reach the goal that Vyâsa reached and Nârada attained, that S'uka taught and Parîkchit learnt. What greater recompense can man hope for? [See also SSS - IV: Words with wings, part b]

 

Translated by N. Kasturi.
Prasanthi Nilayam, Guru Pournima, 18-7-1970.

 

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