Sai itna dijiye jaamey kutum samaye, Mei bhi bhukha naa rahun, Sadhu naa bhukha jaye (lord! Give me as much as to meet my responsibilities, and take care of the pious), says Kabir.
While Upanishad says, “the space between bondage and liberation measures two feet only. Bondage says this is mine and liberation says nothing is mine.”
Compare these to Swami Bedananda’s words: “Instead of asking too many from Mother (Kali), ask liberation from sense of dearth.” Bedananda is one among those many Sadhus whose chemistry with Kali (the Mother Goddess) is that of “baby on Her eternal lap.” No wonder why those — from the “trifle gutter snipe” to mighty ministers —who feel and fathom this association and often make a beeline to savour the divine sport, acquiesce in one word, “this Baba is different, because he is simple, approachable and comprehendible.”
Babuji and not a Baba as they call him is a penniless wonder who has renounced all moods of scarcity save one: the “want for the Mother’s soft touch.” And yet he says he hasn’t seen Her, though his followers (he doesn’t provide initiations) vouch they have seen miracles happen from his word of mouth.
Perhaps in this “liberation from the sense of dearth,” emerge Babuji’s multifarious services of socio-religious works. These include running none-to-pompous programmes of eye-donation camps, aid for the differently-abled, encouraging organ donation from the dead, distribution of clothes like the one that took place on the Mahalaya Day — the Day preceding the beginning of Nabaratra.
As no social work is devoid of spiritualism his daily activities are interspersed with routine evening discourses and pious advices for the mundane.
True, to many of his followers among whom are the members of Puri Royal family, the Babuji who sleeps and rises in 10x10 dingy enclosure, with idols of his Mother and Vishnu and by a Yajna Kunda is “despite being a man has all the trappings of a mother and not an inch less.”
Didn’t Swami Vivekananda once speak out how a man with womanly attributes was godlyIJ