Sai Spiritual Showers - Issue 3/78

Sankara, when quite a boy, was one day offering Puja to Devi, in the absence, of his father and of his insistence. He placed milk before the image and pleaded that the Goddess should sip the cup and drink a little of the offered milk, as he thought She was doing when his father did Puja. He wept so sincerely and with such agony that Mother quaffed the entire quantity!
That set another problem before the boy, for, he knew that every day his father used to share the 'offered milk' with him. That day, since the cup was emptied, there was nothing for him; so, Sankara wept, complained and pleaded pathetically to the Devi, in the Image. The Mother felt great pity for the innocent helpless boy who had taken Her to be a 'Real Presence'; She did not "create milk and pour it out of Her palm" as I do. She just pressed Her maternal breasts and filled the cup. Sankara drank that cup and was happy beyond words. It was his Avedana, anguished yearning, that brought the response.