THE CHALLENGE AND MIRA'S RESPONSE
In 1523, when Mira was twenty, her husband Bhojraj, passed away. In some literary works on Mira, Bhojraj is depcited as a jealous husband, who, out of spite against his wife's devotion for God-which deprived him of the sweetness of his conjugal life-treated her badly.
In other works this is emphatically contradicted, and Bhojraj emerges as a somewhat melancholy figure who loved his wife dearly, but did not get adequate response, for Mira had given herself completely to the Lord.
In any case, after passing away of her husband, a new chapter opened in Mira's life. It was certainly the most trying period of her life and most fruitful too. It is said that at this time, Mira received spiritual initiation from a monk, Raidas, by name. Her widowhood, by itself, could only mean intensification of spiritual life for her.
Now, after receiving intiation from a spiritual teacher, her spiritual yearning and absorption, her longing for holy company, her utter disregard for the conventional ways of the world-all increased a thousandfold and created difficulties for her.
Meanwhile, her father-in-law, Rana Sanga, passed away, and Prince Vikramjit brother of Bhojraj, became the Rana or ruler of Chittore. He wasted no time in enforcing disciplinary measures on Mira.
Mira's devotional practices were uniquely her own. She danced and sang before Giridhara Gopal. And she would lose no opportunity of association was so great that she cast aside all conventions of the royal household in order to get the inspiration of spiritula company. This hunger for holy company was naturally not understood by those who had not undergone self-purification.
Vikramjit, the Rana, now passed orders that Mira should give up her unseemly singing and dancing before the image and the even more objectionable seeking company of holy men.
Was she not a woman, a widow? Then why so much anxiety to meet these men? Vikramjit did not hesitate to spread scandals against this purest of the pure women.
When Mira was obstructed in her worship in the palace, she went to a temple outside and there continued her spiritual practices in her wonted manner. Her supreme devotion and ecstasies soon attracted the attention of people, and from far and near they began to flock to her, to give homage and to receive spiritual inspiration.
This angered the Rana and others in the household all the more. Mira was now virtually made a captive in the palace, and one inhuman torture followed upon another.
Mira was not only a lover of God, but an inspired poet. Her poems, of which she used to make song-offerings to the Lord, give an account of what she had to go through at the hands of the Rana. One would be surprised how terrible were the oppressions, but how easily Mira went through them. In one song Mira records her experience:
"Mira is happy in the worship of her Lord;
Rana made her a present of a serpent in a basket;
Mira, after her ablution,
On opening it found the Lord Himself.
Rana sent a cup of poison;
Mira after her ablution,
Drank the cup which the Lord had turned to nectar.
Rana sent a bed of nails for Mira to sleep on;
That night, when Mira slept on it,
It became a bed of flowers.
Mira's Lord averts all her trobles,
Ever her kind protector;
Mira roams about in ecstasy of devotion
She's a sacrifice to the Lord."
Mysterious and various are the ways in which God's grace flows through the lives of devotees. When Bernard Shaw heard the news of Gandhiji's assassination, he exclaimed, 'This is the consequence of being a good man in this world!' Gandhiji was a devotee of Sri Ramachandra. When a few days before his assassination, a bomb had burst in his prayer hall, and Gandhiji escaped unscathed, people thought who can destroy him whom God protects? But a few days later God refused to protect him from the assassin's bullet.
Again, Prahlada, of Hindu mythology, who was aboy devotee of Vishnu, could not be killed by being trampled under the foot of an elephant, or by being thrown from a hill top, or on being administered poison, or by various other ways. The heavenly Father did not save Christ from being nailed to the cross. The cup of hemlock worked very well with Socrates. But Giridhara Gopala saved Mira in all possible ways.
Ordinarily we are bewildered when we study the various consequences of being a true devotee of God. Our difficulty in understanding grace arises from the fact that we have a gross view of devotion as an investment.
I have loved God, so He must now become my policeman, doctor, lawyer or a lifeboat for me whenever I am in trouble. As a cash-return for devotion, we want security bonds from heaven. This is religion of racketeering, and commercialism taking the various forms of the promissory notes of 'indulgences.'
Thus, grace is present not only when the poison turns to nectar; it is also there when the poison works.
The Lord's grace is there when the good man graciously takes the consequences of being good. Mira took the poison not because she was in any way sure that it would turn to nectar, but because whatever was sent, came from the beloved.
The proof of grace is in this God-given capacity for ready acceptance of whatever comes from the Lord, and from the standpoint of the devotee, the consequences just do not matter.
When Pavhari Baba, the great Indian saint, was smitten by a serpent, he exclaimed, 'Ah, a messenger from the Beloved!' Good and evil, pain and pleasure, prosperity and adversity, life and death-all are messages from the beloved.
When we do not see this dual throng of opposites as acceptable or unacceptable, but only as a conferring of love from the beloved, we have tasted bhakti or devotion.
The proof of God's grace is not in any incident favourable or unfavourable, but in the God-infused strength of the soul, which can accept anything that comes with joy and resignation. It is not in what comes, but in how how you are given to receive what comes.