Sai Ram Light and Love Swami teaches... 27 - 29 December, 2005
Medicine for the Mind
On the New 2006 Year resolve that you will start every day with Love, spend
the day with Love, fill the day with Love, and end the day with Love. There
should be no difference of caste, creed, colour, religion or nationality. You
must wish everyone to be happy. The country will prosper and the world will
prosper and everyone will be happy. Being a human, you should make others
happy. Let your heart is full of Love. You should share it with others. You
must share your Love with at least five persons per day. You should practise,
experience and share with others this Divine Love.
We are now bidding farewell to the year 2005 and welcoming 2006. There is an
intimate relationship between the two. We give send-off to one while we welcome
the other one. In the same way we should bid farewell to bad qualities and
welcome good divine qualities.
You may offer all your bad qualities to God. There is nothing wrong in this.
It is only God who can take them and bestow His grace on you to foster good
qualities. For example, suppose you have a soiled, torn and mutilated hundred
rupee currency note, no one will accept it. But, if the number is intact, the
Reserve Bank will accept it and give a good note of same value in return.
Similarly God only will accept the bad qualities provided they are offered with
sincere devotion and repentance and shower His Grace on you.

Give away 'Love' to all; give up the ego; display heroism in service; with
compassion to fellowmen, feel your intimate kinship with them. Visualise the
Atma that illumines all; derive unending Bliss therefrom.
All who come embodied are Avatars, that is to say, advents of the Divine,
manifestations of God. What, then, is the special feature of Rama, Krishna,
Buddha, Christ? Why do you celebrate their birthdays with such reverential
enthusiasm? The speciality is this: they are aware; you are unaware of the Atma
which is the Truth.

What is Atma? (One may call Atma by other names as Brahman, God, Absolute,
Cosmic Consciousness, Swami's Omnipresent Form, the Great Oneness, Universal
Soul, Primal Cause... the meaning of all are practically the same with very
little differences according to the context where they are used). There are
nothing in the arena of Creation what is not expression of Atma. Human beings,
the other bodies, animated or unanimated, atoms and galaxies may be different
but the Atma is one. It cannot be fragmented and always remains uneffected.
One moon is reflected in hundreds of thousands of pots. There is only one
Atma which is reflected in the infinite numbers of beings. You place one before
zero, the zero gets value. World is zero, Sun is zero, Moon is Zero. Actually
all existence is like zero only. It gets value because of the Atma behind them.
Human's biggest folly is forgetting own divinity. All should realise that they
come "from God." Of all forms of knowledge, the one that is most beneficial is
practical knowledge which is relevant to everyone. You have to act on the
conviction that the same Divine Spirit, Atma dwells in one and all.

The Atma has no modification or mood. It is the individualised embodiment
that undergoes modifications and is caught in moods. Once you know that you are
in essence the Atma,what is your inner Reality, you too will be unaffected. The
individual also cannot be alone, separate from the rest. 'I' seeks other 'I's
and seeks to become We. (But, it usually strays from I to They. And does not
reach the God, We). The wise are those who know the Atma (the Divine Self).
They distinguish between That and This, Thath and Thwam, the Absolute and the
Relative, the Universal and Particular, that is falsely conceived as separate
from the Universal.
Human being is not just the body, with its limbs and other mechanisms but
Atma, the Divine Person. The soul is the Personality. And the person realises
Ananda only when the Atma is cognised. This achievement cannot be won through
riches or authority of office, scholarship or status, fame or force.
Human alone has the ability to understand the phenomenal world around. Human
can grasp the ways and waywardness of the world; human can delve into its
evolution and involution, its contraction and expansion. Therefore, human has
to give it only a relative value, and follow as human's only goal, the search
for the Atma and the attainment of the Atma. And, the search has to be through
continuous, consistent sadhana. Boundless spiritual potential is encased in
every being and expresses itself as Jnana (Supreme Wisdom).
Life is as a dream. In the dream, you experience joy and grief; but when you
realise that both joy and grief are unreal, when you awake into the
consciousness of the Atma, you will no more have the thrill of joy or the
despondency of pain. You will not have any longer fear or anxiety, fear of
death or anxiety about the future.

A wise human being keeps reason sharp and clear, and sees things as they
really are and listens to the advice what is known to all devotees as Swami's
sacred saying. Life is a Challenge, Meet it; Life is Love, Share it;
Life is a Dream, Realise it; Life a Game, Play it.
Life is the Lion's march across the forest, fearless, masterful and
victorious. The roar of the lion makes all the denizens scamper in panic; so
too the Halo of Wisdom scatters the dark brood of fear and doubt.
Life sweeps along like a wild typhoon; the allotted years do melt like snow
before the Sun, remember it.
When death comes one must be glad to meet it since he comes for the last
time and there will be no more birth. Human weeps when he/she is born; Human
should not weep when he/she dies. Human must die triumphant over death.
Otherwise, human lives only to consume tons of food, as a burden upon the
Earth. You seek to escape pain and grief; but, they are inescapable.
Nothing is uncaused in the Universe. Every being, object, incident has been
caused by the Primal Cause and its direction or guidance' The Sastras
(spiritual sciences) yearn for the discovery of that unseen Principle. It is
the non-dual state as in the outer world, so within. Recognise the fact that
the whole Universe is within you. You have all the powers in you. They are
derived from the Divine Spirit within you. It is the Divinity which endows you
with a free will.
Today people read all kinds of books and go after all sorts of "great
persons." They do not enquire about what constitutes greatness. Realise that
there is no one greater than each of you. But you have not discovered the real
truth about yourself, like an elephant that does not know its own strength. A
mahout with a goad is able to control it.
If you want to realise God, if you wish to experience the Divinity within
you, if you want to know your true Self, you have to develop pure, unsullied
Love. It is this that binds all people. Anyone cannot understand God and
His Secret without first understanding themselves. To grasp Swami's meaning,
you have to tear into tatters the doubts and theories you now have and
cultivate Prema (Love), for the embodiment of Love can be understood only
through Love. The essential nature of Love is sacrifice and faith. It is Love
that brings even a person far away closer and more intimate to you. It is Love
that drives away the feeling of separateness and promotes the feeling of
oneness. Love also raises a person from the animal to the human. Prema (Love)
is the Prana (Life Force) Love and life are inter-related and intimately
connected.

In this worldly life love is manifesting in several forms known to all. This
love based on physical relationships arises our of selfish motives and
self-interest. The Divine is Love for the sake of Love alone. This is called
Bhakthi (devotion). One characteristic of this Love is to give and not to
receive. Secondly, Love knows no fear. Thirdly, it is only for Love's sake and
not for selfish motive.
(Love for the God should not degenerate into fanaticism and hatred of other
names and forms. This type of cancer is affecting even eminent people nowadays.
Believe that all who revere the God and walk in fear of sin are your brothers,
your nearest kith and kin).

For experiences the bliss of the Divine the prime requisite is Kshama
(forgiveness). Human is embodiment of the quality of Kshama. There is nothing
in this world that you cannot achieve with this quality. Hence, faith is
supremely important. This faith can be acquired and strengthened through Love.
A person who has this attitude of Kshama can be considered to be endowed with
sacred Love. This cannot be learned from textbooks. Not can it be acquired from
preceptors not from any one else. It is to be cultivated by oneself in rimes of
difficulties, trials and tribulations that one is forced to meet. Only when we
face problems and difficulties that cause grief and misery this quality of
forbearance and forgiveness has the scope for taking root. When you are
confronted with problems and difficulties you should not get upset, and become
victims of depression which is a sign of weakness. You are embodiments of
strength and not weakness. Therefore, in times of despair, you should be filled
with the feeling of forbearance and be ready to forgive and forget.

This quality of Kshama (forgiveness) is the greatest power for a human
being. If one loses this quality, he/shebecomes demonic. Kshama is Sathyam,
Truth Kshama is Dharma, Virtue Kshama is Ahimsa, Non-Violence Kshama
is Yajna, Sacrifice Kshama is Santhosha, Happiness Kshama is Dhaya,
Compassion Kshama is everything in the world.
Today we find jealousy and hatred dancing like devils all over the world.
People with jealousy and hatred are pursuing the wicked path and bringing ruin
on themselves. One may raise the question as to how to get over these dangerous
pests of jealousy and hatred. This is possible when you make all the sense
organs function in unison. If you look at the functions of the sense organs you
may notice that even if one organ stops functioning in harmony; life will be
limping. When mind conceives a thought, all the organs are co-ordinating to get
the thought executed. If senses do not follow thoughts, life will become
miserable. When there is forbearance, all organs co-ordinate harmoniously and
work in unison.
A pictorial example. Tongue is the one that tastes the food and passes only
palatable items of food insidewhich is converted by the internal organs into
energy giving blood. The tongue does not retain it. But for this vital part
played by the tongue, the other organs would not be able to function at all.
When the other organs became jealous of the tongue and stopped sending food
with a view to harm it, they spelt their own ruin by such action, as they could
not function when there was no food and consequently no supply of energy for
these organs to function. Similarly jealousy on the part of a person ultimately
results in own ruin. Anger begets anger and jealousy begets jealousy.
Examine the thing which you do not like very closely and with great care. Do
not jump to conclusions, favourable or unfavourable. Focus all your powers of
observation and judgement on one topic and it will surely stand revealed.
Individual can and should be the Master of his mind. The mind is the architect
of your progress or decline. If you have faith, more than half the battle is
won.
(For the fool, the mind is a formidable dinosaur; for the intelligent, the
mind is an angel. The trained mind is torn by fear; the pure elevated mind is
placid and unruffled).
The world itself is subject to constant agitation; how can your plan to
lead a quiet contented peaceful life upon it succeed? It is like trying to
float without any heaving or falling while being tossed about on the waves of
the sea. Under such conditions, the best thing is to recognise the fact and not
to worry about the unavoidable.
The life is a mixture of sorrow and joy just as day and night.
In this arena of Maya to obtain peace in mind, human's primary duty is to
surrender to God. "Surrender" means attaining the state in which the devotee
feels the oneness with God. If you have God with you, all other things are got
easily. People should strive for God-Realisation because they came from God and
should go back to Him.
You may begin worshipping God with specific form and name. But when you are
faced with difficulties you experience God as a helper. In different ways the
devotee has to develop the relationship to God.
There is the story of a rich man with four wives, who expressed what they
wanted him to get for them during a trip abroad. The first wife, who was
spiritually enlightened, prayed for his safe return. The second wife wantedhim
to bring some sacred books. The third wife, who was ailing wanted him to get
some medicines. The fourth wife, who was a "modern", asked him to get her
sarees and jewellery. The merchant on his return gave the three wives what they
wanted and stayed with the first wife because she had no other desire except to
have him back.
God responds to devotees in the same manner. To those who aspire for wealth,
He gives wealth. Those who seek knowledge, He will help them to acquire it.
Those who are ailing and who pray to God will get the relief they pray for. God
builds hospitals for their treatment. Those who pray to God for oneness with
Him, will realise Him. This is the way God responds to the four kinds of
devotees.
(Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 1. "Manushya and manas,"
Chapter 25; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 11. "Play the game," Chapter 50 and "To
three Pandiths," Chapter 53; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 27. "Cultivate
forgiveness and love," Chapter 1; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 29. "The devotee's
ordeals and God's grace," Chapter 49 and "Realise God through love," Chapter
53).

Namaste - Reet