The Story of Rama

The Rama story, stream of sacred sweetness, has been for millions of men, women and children, for over million years, the perennial source of solace during sorrow, vitality when floored by vacillation, illumination while confounded, inspiration in the moments of dejection and guidance while caught in quandaries. It is an intensely human drama, where God personates as man and gathers around Him, on the vast world stage, the perfect and the imperfect, the human and the sub human, 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 finger on the heart -strings 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 the human history has had such profound impact on the mind of man. It transgresses the milestone 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 bloodstream of mankind, over vast area of globe. It has stuck 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 and the Treasure of countless seekers and Sadhakas. The characters in the Rama story has 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.

“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 toward 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 in his own simple, sweet and sustaining style, His own Divine career, as Rama. What great good fortunes, this to have in our hands, to inscribe in our minds, to imprint in 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 molding mankind into one family of making each one of us realize Sai Rama as the reality, the only Reality that IS.

Sai is searching for His erstwhile associates and workers (Buntu, as He referred to them in Telugu) in order to allot them roles in His present Mission of resuscitating Righteousness and leading man into Heaven of Peace. May each of us be allotted a role and may HE grant us as reward the vision of that Heaven.

[From Mr. N. Kasturi’s Forwarded for Ramakatha Rasavahini]

Let us see what is the inner significance or the inner meaning of this Story.

Shri Kasturi – Rama Katha Rasavahini:

Rama is the Indweller in everybody. He is the Atma-Rama, the Rama (Source of Bliss) in every individual. His blessings upsurging from that innerspring can confer peace and bliss. He is the very embodiment of dharma, of all the codes of morality that hold mankind together in love and unity. The Ramayana, the Rama story, teaches two lessons: the value of detachment and the need to become aware of the Divine in every being. Faith in God and detachment from objective pursuits are the keys for human liberation. Give up sense objects, and you gain Rama. Sita gave up the luxuries of Ayodhya so she could be with Rama, in the period of “exile”. When she cast longing eyes on the golden deer and craved for it, she lost the presence of Rama. Renunciation leads to joy; attachment brings about grief. Be in the world, but not of it.

Each brother, comrade, companion, and collaborator of Rama is an example of a person saturated with dharma. Dasaratha is the representative of the merely physical, with the ten senses. The three qualities (gunas) – serenity, activity, and ignorance (sathwa, rajas, thamas) – are the three queens. The four goals of life, the purusharthas – i.e. righteousness, riches, fulfilment, and liberation – are the four sons. Lakshmana is the intellect; Sugriva is discrimination (viveka); Vali is despair; and Hanuman is the embodiment of courage.

The bridge is built over the ocean of delusion. The three Rakshasa chiefs, Ravana, Kumbhakarna, and Vibhishana, are personifications of the active (rajasic), ignorant (thamasic), and pure (sathwic) qualities. Sita is the Awareness of the Universal Divinity (Brahma-jnana), which the individual must acquire and regain while undergoing travails in the crucible of life. Make your heart pure and strong, contemplating the grandeur of the Ramayana. Be established in the faith that Rama is the Reality of your existence.

[Baba – Ramakatha Rasavahini]

The name ‘Rama’ is the essence of the Vedas: the story of Rama is the ocean of milk, pure and patent. It can be asserted that no poem of equal grandeur and beauty has emerged from other languages or from other countries until this very day: but it has provided inspiration to the poetic imagination of every language and country. It is the greatest treasure inherited by his good fortune by every Indian.

The name that the Ramayana glorifies, cleanse all evils. It transforms the sinner: it reveals the Form that the name represents, the Form that is charming as the name itself. As the sea is the source of all the waters of the Earth, all beings are born from ‘Rama’. A sea sans water is unreal, being sans ‘Rama’ is without existence now or ever. The azure ocean and the Almighty Lord have much in common.

The Stream of Rama’s story meanders through many a curve and twist: nevertheless, the sweetness of Karuna (tenderness, pity and compassion) persists without diminution throughout the narrative. The stream turns and tours through sadness, wonder, ridicule, awe, terror, love, despair and dialectics but the main undercurrent is the flow of Dharma (righteousness, morality) and the Karuna (compassion) it fosters.

(P.1 & 2 – Ramakatha Rasavahini)