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The Life and Teachings of Hazarath Tajuddin Baba Written by Pujya Acharya Sri Ekkirala Bharadwaja |
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Preface 
As far as Man is concerned, life is one of the greatest values, especially human life; and all other things derive their value from it. Life is a compact of both the visible and the invisible about him, the visible comprehending his body, it's needs, the society, culture and civilization and the inventions that contribute to his mundane happiness, and shape and channelize all the visible processes of life towards the evolution of lasting and healthy spiritual happiness. The latter includes such values are beauty, knowledge, love and harmonious human relationships. Man's search for progress, in the course of his history, has been oriented to this pattern, sometimes with greater and at others with lesser success. It is natural that this two-fold progress of Man should fit in well into the pattern of the theory of organic evolution of Man as a race, in the past and in the future. Man has evoluted the present state both in his subjective and objective accomplishment and has incontrovertibly proved his natural superiority to other creatures in the struggle for existence. Now that his dominance on the earth's surface is complete, the one motive that has hitherto held the progress of the whole race into some sort of a unity has disappeared. And not finding any other creature to dominate or fear, mankind has started fearing, conquering and annihilating itself on a scale which is unprecedented in history. Man, as he did several times in his long history , has once again lost sight of the fact that contentment in subjective life and harmony in objective life are the primary goals that are essential to him; and has started mistaking partial and one-sided development of the human community for real progress. Such a perversion of values has inevitably resulted in man's material progress, that infact runs even counter to his own welfare, collective and individual. It is time that we pause, assess our own standard of values and shape our life accordingly.
The perversion of the natural line of progress, mentioned above is the result of imperfect comprehension of the line along which the future evolution of man should take place in order not to bring the two into sharp conflict. It looks as though, Man's evolution, in the physical and psychological sense, has come to a blind end where no further development is taking place, the impulse spending itself in just changing forms. Evolution seems to have shifted to the psychological plane and is manifesting itself in evolution of knowledge and technology. Even this development seems to be running to it's culmination and already we have signs of evolution shifting to the spiritual plane. We see it in the new philosophical concepts of man and his place in universe; we see new attitudes to ecological living; the ideal of conquest of the nature giving place to one of harmonious relationship with it ; we see new ideas of culture manifesting themselves in the latest shifts to simplification of man's life. The cultural revolution in communist countries and the latest trends in the West manifesting an ever-growing interest in spiritual culture are unmistakable signs of this process. Among those sections of mankind, who have not yet awakened to this new trend, we find an appalling lack of direction and certitude in man's attitude to his own progress. This human crises is nowhere more manifest than in the evolution and predominance of the pervert replicas of every positive and constructive institution that man had evolved in the past; we have real education which a few great men demonstrate in themselves as against the vast sea of pseudo-education that commences in our educational institutions ; we have dirty politics besides real dedicated political leadership; we have the merely negative and negating "isms" ; we have vast shares of pseudo-religion, bigotry and charlatanism around occasional oases of genuine spiritual evolution of man into something that transcends the narrow confines of the material and the physical. It is for mankind to discriminate wisely between the two with the help of the right standard of values and regain the vision of a heaven on earth which mankind once seemed capable of achieving. This right standard of values, I believe, is provided most clearly by the laws of Man's spiritual evolution. Man's misery is based on his needs, which only the world outside can supply. This was, is, and would be, the ultimate limit of man's worldly achievements and when those few who could transcend it show us the way out to something fuller, mankind has therein a glimpse of the next possible, and even the more worthy line of man's future or 'possible' evolution. Every race, nation and epoch has produced a few men of this strange power. What is interesting to note is that the basic tenets of their teaching, though they belong to different times, religions and countries, have a strange agreement, which is not based on any direct knowledge of one another on their part. The Upanishadic Rishis, the galaxy of Buddhist sages, the prophets of the Bible, and Christ and many Muslim mystics, in spite of their racial and temporal aloofness from one another, have an intrinsic "oneness" and the technique of the attainment of the transcendence they expound is one of it's essentials. In the lives of great mystics and saints we have a glimpse of the way to transcend the last barrier to man's progress and evolution. And only when this way is explored to the full can we hope to replace the present phenomenon of mere change, which passes for progress with real, infinite, progress. It has, as its hallmark, the resultant inner contentment fitting in with the external harmony. Besides, it provides us with the missing link in the chain of man's further evolution. It is an ordained fact of history that all the rest of the outward forms of religions are bound to annihilate one another and that unendingly; and, in the process, that section of humanity which does not realize the need to shed obsession with forms external has to pay dearly in blood and material happiness. The wiser section has to pick up the grain and cast aside the chaff. This is the line adopted by all the great mystics. Though forms of religion find a threat to their supremacy in the perfect mystics, the mystics have found nothing but a threat to human existence and happiness in mere adherence to forms which, by any stretch of imagination, do not contribute to man's spiritual growth. Every religion has a demonstration of the infinite possibilities of progress it can offer mankind in its perfect saints; and the vast majority of mankind who do not attain to that sublime height only represents a failure of man to practice it properly. If a vast band of failures cling to forms of religion and reject the perfect saints, the wiser are those who reject the former and follow the latter. The future of man, I believe, is ultimately based on this essential choice and that the key to establishing the right scale of human values rests with them. It is with this faith that I present this humble sketch of one of the foremost of saints which mankind has produced in very recent times. In this sense, I believe, he represents the superman of the future who can be realized if mankind successfully rises above dogma bigotry; only if Hindus, Muslims, Christians and men of all other religions succeed in looking upon themselves just as fellow human beings venturing across the sea of progress in vessels of different make. But if they identify themselves too much with their vessels than with their purpose, the results shall only be mutual annihilation in which process they shall provide an easy handle to those demonic forces that threaten to destroy mankind just out of sheer instinct. Every sane aspirant for spiritual perfection has to look upon all saints of all religions as belonging to a single brotherhood, as they really do, and must seek to belong to that brotherhood, which rises above the narrow dogmas. May the glorious life of Tajuddin Baba of Nagpur serve this noble purpose. _________Acharya Ekkirala Bharadwaja |