Swami teaches... Worship through good qualities directs to the Omnipresence Divine

[Guest guest]

Sai Ram

 

Light and Love

Swami teaches... 5 - 6 March 2006

Worship Through Good Qualities Directs to the Omnipresence Divine

There is a distinctive type of devotion by which you worship God with a

good, clean mind and good conduct. It is a superior type of worship - to

worship God through good qualities, good conduct, good thoughts and good

company. The scriptures have described this kind of worship as worship through

good qualities what are picorially precious flowers the God.

The first flower with which we can worship God is ahimsa - non-violence. The

second flower is dhama (control of senses). The third flower is dhaya

(compassion to all living beings). The fourth one is kshama (forbearance). The

fifth flower is shanthi (peace). The sixth flower is thapas (penance). The

seventh one is the flower of dhyana (meditation). The eighth is the flower of

Sathya (Truth). The inner meaning of this statement is that God will shower

grace on you if you worship Him through these eight flowers.

The flower of truth is the form of divinity. Truth is that which does not

change at any time. In the world, we experience truths of a relative nature.

The flowers in nature fade always, drop down, lose fragrance. The natural

flowers which you are using for worship have not been created by you. You are

bringing flowers which have been created by the sankalpa (will) of God. What is

the greatness in using the flowers created by God and giving them back to God

Himself?

From the tree of your life, to pick out such fruits which you have protected

and which you have grown in the form of good qualities and offering them to God,

there is some distinctiveness in that. In order to promote good qualities, you

have to undergo several troubles. It is through these good qualities that your

mind can also acquire the Divine concentration.

(Today, meditation is taking many forms. To sit in padmasana (lotus posture)

and to make the Kundalini shakthi rise from basal plexus to Sahasrara (the

cranium) is not dhyana). True dhyana consists in recognising the presence of

God in all types of work. God is the indweller of all.

All are sacred because the same God shines in every one's heart. All the

names of God are full of chaithanya (divine power). God's name is omnipotent

and self-effulgent. The birth-right of every human are freedom and

fearlessness.

(A hermit once met the Cholera Goddess on the road, returning from a

village where she had thinned the population. He asked her how many she had

taken into her lap. She replied, "Only ten." But, really speaking, the

casualties were a hundred. She explained, "I killed only ten; the rest died out

of fear!" It is because this single aim of the Divine essence has been given up,

that all this confusion, has come about).

Fearlessness is the hall-mark of divinity. One can become fearless through

thyga (renunciation or sacrifice). You must recognise that the Atmic power is

behind all thoughts. God has no distinctions of caste and creed. There is no

caste for any of the five elements, earth, water, fire, air and sky, all of

which have emanated from God.

To practice fearlessness, before you undertake to do any work, you should

regard that work as God.

The Upanishads are teaching: "The work I have to do, I regard as God and

make obeisance to God in that form". The harmonium player will make obeisance

to the harmonium before he starts. A dancer before she begins her dance will

make obeisance to her gungroo.

The significance of all this is the faith and belief that God is present in

all things. Thus to regard the entire creation as the form of God and to

perform your duty in that spirit is meditation. When you enter society,

recognise society as a form of God, recognise what exists as omnipresence in

society and thereby acquire good qualities in serving society.

The main aim of culture is to cultivate mental calm, mental courage, to make

every one feel kinship with every one else. There is a general neglect of the

higher aspects of culture. People know the details of the personal lives of

film stars. They do not care for the pandith toiling in the same street; they

do not know the names of the poets and the painters of their own town. That is

the tragedy of the educated classes; they have no sense of values.

 

Boast of your inner Divinity which is your greatest treasure. Do not lower

your ideals for the sake of cheap fame or vulgarise public taste. Instead of

worldly enjoyment of sex, give bliss of the Self. Contribute to the expansion

of love, the purification of motives, the enlargement of sympathy, the

tolerance of difference, the respect for individual striving. Your hearts

must become kondas, that is, huge mountain peaks, and on the top, as in

Arunagiri, the Jyothi (light) of knowledge must shine like a beacon. Learn,

experience, and be happy. Control, canalise and secure. It does not even matter

if you have no faith in God. Have faith in yourselves, that is enough. For, who

are you, really? Each of you is Divinity, whether you know it or not.

 

The body consciousness is the product of Maya (illusion) or ignorance. It is

not easy to get rid of this Maya.

There is a story to illustrate the hold of Maya. Once, the Lord summoned

Maya and told her: "Maya! I am acquiring a great deal of bad name on account of

you. Everyone blames God as Mayopadhi (wearing the disguise of Maya). I am

getting into disrepute because you are always following me. Hence do not any

longer remain with me. Get away from me." In all humility, Maya bowed to the

Lord and said: "Oh Lord! I shall certainly carry out your command. But, please

tell me any place where you are not present and I shall go there." The Lord had

a hearty laugh and said: "There is no place where I am not present. You and I

are twins I put you this poser only to get your reply." So Atmic and Maya

realities are twins, always connected with each other.

 

At present, half a life-time of human is spent in eating and sleeping. Much

of the remainder is wasted in useless talk and simian pranks or in back-biting

and slanderous gossip. Little time is devoted to thinking about how one can

improve him/herself or serve others. Usually no attempt is made to understand

the purpose of life. Human has to discover, as enjoined in the Bhagavatam

(devotee of God), how one can get back to the source from which human being

came. This is the natural destiny of all beings. The secret of human existence

is to know how to make the best use of time to realise one's Divine destiny.

 

How to perform this realisation? One of the way's is to collect and store

your good qualities in imaginable siritual bank.

Banks help to keep money safe when you deposit it with them. But money helps

you in worldly distress. You accumulate it with great care, by thousands of acts

of denial, denying yourselves this comfort or that convenience, saving in this

item and that, spending less and earning more; but a day comes when you have to

leave the pile and go, emptyhanded.

There is another spiritual bank which receives deposits and maintains

accounts strictly and confidentially. That deposit, growing by your spiritual

efforts, will give you joy and peace. Dharma and sathya and prema are the

currency accepted by that other bank. All acts, words and feelings ringing with

the purity of these metals will be accepted as deposits.

The common bank will not give loans to all and sundry; its help is only for

those who are credit-worthy, who have impressed by their industry and integrity

that they will make good use of the money and keep their word. Spiritual bank

too will save from distress and grief those who have sathya, dharma, shanthi

and prema. Common bank will help only in proportion to the deposits that stand

in your name; spiritual bank too deals like that. The consequences of the

meritorious activities of previous births can be drawn upon now; but unless you

have them, no cheque will be honoured. Moreover, only those who have the account

can operate. Each must have a separate account in own name; one brother cannot

draw on the account of another brother; the wife cannot draw on the account of

the husband. Common bank will give loans if you mortgage your house or

lands, property that has come down to you from your ancestors, gold jewellery

that has come to you from your mothers, etc. Spiritual bank also will allow you

to draw upon the accounts of previous births, and deposits made then. That is

why you find some people, who are obviously wicked and cruel, mean and miserly,

yet leading happy lives, free from pain and grief. They have drawn upon deposits

made in the past. They are entitled to that happiness. Common banks have safe

deposit vaults, where customers can keep their valuables, jewels, legal

documents and other things like silver and gold, which attract thieves; they

can then be free from worry; they can sleep in peace. Spiritual bank, dealing

with spiritual accounts, has also a safe deposit vault. Surrender your jewels

of intelligence, cleverness, capacity to serve and the gem that you most value,

namely, your EGO to the care of God; then, you can be happy.

Common bank deals with one type of dhanam; spiritual bank deals with

another. (Dhanam means any valued possession, an object of affection). This

dhanam (money) and the rest can be earned by any one; even black marketeers and

dacoits, crooks and pirates can amass money. But dhanam which is acceptable in

spiritual bank comes only to those who struggle to be virtuous and detached,

humble and holy. The most valued possession in spiritual bank is self-knowledge

and sense-control.

(In many cases modern human has no idea of sense-control, no conception of

self restraint and leads the life of a libertine. The aim of sense-control is

to achieve one-pointed concentration. It helps also to steady the mind. Without

mental steadiness human gets dehumanised).

 

Broadening your heart and making it bigger and bigger, you should make it as

big as God Himself. Though beginning with the ideas of 'I' and 'mine', if you

ultimately move on to the place that "all are mine", "all are one," gradually

you will become broader in your vision and you burst and merge into God who is

omnipresent.

 

Many individuals today declare that God is omnipresent. But how many

individuals having realised the truth of this omnipresence? It is not clear

whether they are using this word with any understanding of its meaning or

experience of its truth or out of ignorance. Every student similarly speaks

breezily about Swami's omnipresence and omniscience. It may be based on

book-knowledge. Many who use that epithet today are simply mouthing what seems

expedient for the occasion. You can find God everywhere today, but you can find

few true devotees of God.

God's omnipresence is certainly true. But one gets the right to speak about

it only when one has experienced it at least to a small extent. Even if a few

drops of nectar are swallowed, a modicum of purity may be achieved. Hence, one

should strive, in however small measure, to experience the omnipresence of God.

 

The tree is sustained by its roots. It is only when you look after the roots,

you will have the tree and its fruits. When you nourish the roots by supplying

manure and water, the tree comes up well. Likewise, it is only when you realise

that the entire cosmos is sustained by the Divine that you can experience the

omnipresence of the Divine.

Some high-souled beings have striven to experience the omnipresence of the

Divine. But the prevailing social and educational consumer-society's system

cannot enable to get this experience. This is because most people have lost the

capacity to control the senses, which is the prerequisite for experiencing the

Divine.

In the Andhra country, there were three "Rajus" - Potharaju, Thyagaraju and

Goparaju. All the three were spiritual giants. Potharaju is Pothana, the great

author of the Telugu Bhagavatam. Pothana dedicated his work to the Lord, his

Bhagavatam has earned undying fame. From the moment he started composing the

Bhagavatam, Pothana recognised that it was entirely the work of Sri Rama and

should be dedicated to Him as a pious offering. He regarded Rama as the

inspirer of the poem. Thyagaraju, the saint-composer lived upto his name by

renouncing all worldly things. He declared that God alone was all that he

needed. The third devotee is Goparaju, who worshipped Sri Rama installed

in the Bhadrachalam temple. He offered all his earnings and possessions to Sri

Rama.

These three saints had recognised the omnipresence of God. They are verily

Bhagavathas - devotees of God.

The Bhagavathas of the old days lived a care-free life, placing their full

trust in God as the supreme protector. Because of this faith, they were fully

competent to declare that God is omnipresent.

 

One's life becomes sanctified by treasuring God's name in one's heart with a

feeling of intense love. In the absence of such love, all so-called spiritual

practices will prove futile. Various spiritual disciplines are necessary only

for the purification of the heart. Once the heart becomes pure, there is no

further need for study of the scriptures or spiritual practices. God does

not care for how long and in what ways you have practised sadhana (spiritual

discipline). What He wants is sincere, wholehearted and intense love for Him.

Recognise the difference between the Divine and the human. Divinity, although

all-knowing and all-powerful, acts as if, It does not know anything. The human

being, totally ignorant and incompetent, pretends to be all-knowing and

all-powerful. (Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 4. Beacons of

light, Chapter 7; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 6. "This bank and that bank," Chapter

19; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 15. "The flowers that God loves," Chapter 9; Sathya

Sai Speaks. Vol. 22. "Experiencing the Omnipresence," Chapter 12; Sathya Sai

Speaks. Vol. 26. "Chaithanya and the 'Outcast,'" Chapter 9).

 

Namaste - Reet