Sai Inspires - 15th January 2006 from Prashanti Nilayam

[Guest guest]

Be alert to the call everywhere, at all times; be ready with a smile, a kind

word, a useful suggestion, some knowledgeable care, a pleasant reply. Look

for chances to relieve, rescue or resuscitate. Train yourselves so that you

may render help quickly and well. Service is the most rewarding form of

spiritual discipline, the most satisfying and the most pleasurable. It springs

out of love, and it scatters love in profusion. Plant a seed on stone with

love, and the seed will discover love inside the stone and draw sustenance

therefrom. - Divine Discourse, 18th May 1969. Love is Selflessness. -

Baba Divine Love Embedded

12.0pt"> Loving Sai Ram and greetings from Prashanti Nilayam. Swami says that

His Love is present everywhere and that life without Love is impossible. We all

nod our heads when we hear this but do we spend even one moment to reflect on

what exactly Swami means? Let us start with a newborn baby and compare it

with, say, a newborn calf. The calf may be an infant but almost immediately

after it is born, it manages to struggle to its feet and drink milk from its

mother. The human baby, on the other hand, has to be picked up by the mother

and fed; if the mother fails to do this, then the baby has to starve. One might

ask what has all this got to do with Divine Love? Everything. God it is who

gives the gift of life; and amongst all living

beings, human life is the most precious, as Baba reminds us ever so often. And

human life gets off to a start with a wonderful taste of Divine Love. How?

Well, it is like this: Divine Love is present in everything in Creation, and

this includes every insect, bird and animal. Thus it is, for example, the

tigress protects fiercely its cubs. And, as Shirdi Baba reminds us, little

tortoises feel highly reassured by the mere glance of the mother tortoise. But

in the case of humans, Divine Love works at a much higher level. For months

when the baby is in the womb, the mother

thinks fondly about the baby to be born. When the child makes its appearance,

the mother takes care ever so sweetly throughout the childhood period, and in

so many ways too. Swami says that while we might think all this to be natural,

what is really happening is that that the Divine Love embedded in the mother is

resonating with the Divine Love embedded in the child. Remember what Baba

tells us about Creation? He says, “I separated Myself from Myself so that I

could love Myself.” What precisely does this mean? It means that God is latent

in the diversity found in Creation. It is to stress this that Swami often quotes

the Gita where Krishna declares that He is the Atma and this Atma is present

everywhere, including in all beings, human or otherwise. Thus, the love a

mother shows for her child is Divine Love at play that is to say it is a case

of “Myself loving Myself”, as Swami puts it. Innumerable are the ways in

which God promotes such love. While the love feast between a mother and child

is associated entirely with happy circumstances, there are occasions when

tragedy triggers Divine Love into glorious action. Some years ago, a musician

in England contracted flu and unfortunately for him, the flu virus caused some

brain damage. As a result, this man lost a good bit of his memory. For example,

he did not remember who he was. His wife, who used to be with him in the

hospital, was frustrated. But then one day when the friends of this musician

came to visit him in the hospital, he

spontaneously began to conduct them, as if they were an orchestra. The wife was

puzzled and asked the doctor how he could remember music but not what was

happening currently. The doctor said that music was in a part of the brain that

had escaped damage, whereas the part that had been infected leading to partial

loss of memory was different. One fine day this man was discharged and went

home with his wife. For her, it was an agonising period. The man did not even

know how to dress. He would sit in front of the piano and play pieces he had

learnt a long time ago but when he turned

the stool to face her, he would not even remember that a moment ago he was

playing music. For months the woman stayed with him and nursed him as best

as she could, but it was proving to be a huge strain. She then arranged for

this man to be in a home for the disabled and went off to America. Her aim was

to divorce this man, forget him and start a new life. She stayed separated for

several months; she was physically free but mentally tormented. All the time

she worried: “How is he getting along?” She then decided to come back because

love dragged her, she said. It was back to a tough life and called for plenty of

sacrifice but she did not mind. She said that she realised that true love meant

sacrifice. From England, let us move to America. A young man lies there,

totally paralysed by an injury he suffered while on military duty in Iraq. He

is 23 but absolutely helpless, more than a newborn baby; he cannot even turn in

the

bed. His mother has left her job so that she could attend to her son 24 hours a

day. The father too is there to help as much as he can, even as he struggles to

earn more to pay for the unanticipated expenses. Recently, this young man was

able to move his facial muscles just a bit and to the parents that looked like

a smile. How thrilled they were! Yes, there are millions of people all over

the world who are taking care of mentally retarded children, spastics, polio

victims, people paralysed by accidents and so on. For every one of them, life

is a perpetual and harrowing struggle; yet, they all do not mind the struggle

because it enables their loved ones to live.

Few of us understand the intimate connection between true love and sacrifice.

We all talk enthusiastically about Swami’s Love; yet, how many of us know about

the sacrifice that Swami is making? Just consider: From 20th October 1940 when

Swami dedicated Himself to the service of mankind, has Swami taken one day off

in 65 long years, one single day? Has He had a single day of vacation? Remember

on Sports Day in 1999, He took upon Himself a grievous injury to save boys who

were doing a stunt from disaster? If all that is not sacrifice then what

exactly is it? Yes, whether we like it or not, Pure Love and Sacrifice always

go together. Love without sacrifice is meaningless while Sacrifice without Love

is impossible. Think about it! Jai Sai Ram.

With Love and Regards, "Heart2Heart" RadioSai e-Journal Team, In Sai

Service. To see the complete schedule of today's RadioSai programmes,

Visit us at www.radiosai.org to know more about RadioSai and our

e-Journal "Heart 2 Heart".

Attachment: (application/octet-stream) [not stored]

Attachment: (application/octet-stream) [not stored]