SATHYA SAI SPEAKS - Volume I [2,3,4]

[Guest guest]

In view of the ensuing glorious event of the 80th Birthday of the Divine Lord

Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, we propose to start posting of all the Divine

Messages titled as 'Sathya Sai Speaks' for the benefit of our members and all

the Sai devotees the world over. We request you to pass on/forward/spread these

Divine messages to your Sai circle so that they also derive spiritual benefits

and bliss form them. These Divine Messages are not only for Sai devotees, they

are for the entire HUMANITY. Lord Krishna taught humanity the ways and means of

salvation for mankind in 'Bhagavad Gita' in Dwapara Yuga. 'Sathya Sai speaks' is

the Bhagavad Gita of Kali Yuga.

With Sai love, Sai brothers, - ''

***

Om Sri Sai Ram

SATHYA SAI SPEAKS - Volume I [2,3,4]

2. SHARANAAGATHI

I DO not give 'speeches'; My talks are more of the conversation type; I want

that you should follow every word of what I say with reverent attention, for

your Anandam is My Aahaaram---your joy is My food. You can get Anandam only by

following the advice I give you and this is why I am particular that you should

listen carefully and take to heart all that I say. This is not a mere lecture,

wherefrom you do not seek new lessons for life. The Lord is a Mountain of Prema

(Love); any number of ants carrying away particles of sweetness cannot exhaust

His Plenty. He is an Ocean of Mercy without a limiting shore. Bhakti (devotion)

is the easiest way to win His Grace and also to realise that He pervades

everything; in fact, is everything! Saranagathi (total surrender), leaving

everything to His Will, is the highest form of Bhakti. (Devotion) Once a

Brahmin was crossing a riverbed near which some men were washing clothes.

Finding a nice new silk shawl on his shoulder, they fell upon him in a group,

shouting that it belonged to the Palace and had been given to them to be

washed, but had been stolen and had not been traced. The poor Brahmin

yelled 'Narayana, Narayana,' when the blows rained on him and so, Narayana rose

from His Seat in Vaikunda and proceeded forward; but in a moment, He walked

back and resumed His Seat much to the surprise of His Consort who asked Him the

reason for the strange behavior. Narayana said, "I wanted to help that poor

Brahmin who has fallen into a den of scoundrels, but he has started beating

them, blow for blow; My Help is no longer needed."

Conquest of ego needed

When Bhakti is just emerging as a sapling, a fence is needed to protect the

tender plant; that fence is Sanathana Dharma (Eternal Religion) and its rules,

regulations and restrictions, directions and commands. When the fruit is green,

it will not fall even when the gale is furious; but when it is fully ripe, it

drops to the ground even in the silence of the night. A small fire will go out

in smoke even if a little green is placed on it, but the forest fire will

reduce to ashes even the greenest tree, which impedes its fierce march! What is

needed is the conquest of the ego. The bullock shouts

14.5pt">'ham hai' 'ham hai' (I am, I am), in its egoistic pride. And so, when it

is just a few days old, you tie it to a post, apart from its mother; you work it

to skin and bones; but yet, the animal does not learn the lesson of humility.

Even its skin when drawn tightly across a drum resounds egoistically,’

Ham Ham Ham. And so, the skin has to be cut into slender strings and then when

the strings are pulled, the bullock reveals that it has benefited by all the

punishment it has undergone; it murmurs thum thum thum, (you you you), and its

ego is gone. The Haridhaasa (mendicant) goes along the streets, singing the

glories of the Lord. He has the

sounding cymbals, two of them, the eternal duet of good bad, joy-grief,

pain-pleasure in his right hand and he twangs the thambura (stringed musical

instrument) of Samsara with his left. Samsara (worldly life) is the tune to

which his songs have to be adjusted, it is the Shruti (musical note). But both

the Shruti and thaala (marking of time) are for the purpose of heightening the

effect of the song, which issues from

his mouth, the song of the glow of God.

Three types of devotion

I remember telling a questioner in Maharashtra, while in the previous Body, that

there are three types of devotion: the vihanga method, where like a bird

swooping down upon the ripe fruit on the tree, the devotee is too impatient and

by the very impatience he exhibits, he loses the fruit, which falls from his

hold; the markata method where like a monkey which pulls towards it one fruit

after another and by sheer unsteadiness is not able to decide which fruit it

wants, the Bhakta too hesitates and changes his aim much too often and thus

loses all

chances of success; and the pipeelika method, where like the ant which slowly

but steadily proceeds towards the sweetness, the devotee also moves direct,

with undivided attention towards the Lord and wins His Grace! Bhakti and

Shraddha (devotion and faith) are the two oars with which you can take the boat

across the sea of Samsara. A child told its mother when it went to bed at night,

Mother! Wake me up when I get hungry." The mother answered, "There is no need,

your hunger will itself wake you." So too, when the hunger for God comes, it

will itself activise you and make you seek the food you need. God has

endowed you with hunger and He supplies the food; He has endowed you with

illness and He grows the specifics you need. Your duty is to see that you get

the proper hunger and the right illness and use the appropriate food or drug!

Man must be yoked to Samsara and broken; that is the training, which will teach

that the world is unreal; no amount of lectures will make you believe it is a

snake unless you actually experience it. Touch fire and get the sensation of

burning; there is nothing like it to teach you that fire is to be avoided.

Unless you' touch it, you will be aware only of its light. It is light and heat

both; just as this world is both true and false, that is to say, unreal.

Habit of judging others as atheists or theists

There is a widely prevalent habit now of judging others and labeling them as

theists or atheists. What do you know, what can you know of the inner working

of another's mind? There was once a queen who was a great devotee of Rama; she

felt so sad that her husband, the Rajah, never even uttered the name of Rama

and had no Bhakti. She had vowed that the first occasion, on which she got

evidence of his Bhakti or at least respect for Rama Nama, she would conduct

Pooja (ritualistic worship) in all the temples and feed the poor on a lavish

scale. Then, one night, while fast asleep, the Raja uttered the name of Rama

thrice plaintively and prayerfully. She heard the Namasmarana and was happy at

the discovery of her husband's devotion to Rama; she ordered general rejoicing

throughout the kingdom and the feeding of the poor. The Raja did not know the

reason for the celebration for he was only told that it was an order of the

Rani, which the officers carried out. Similarly, a husband may not be aware of

the excellence of a wife's spiritual attainments. There is the case of a couple

who were proceeding through a thick jungle on pilgrimage to an inaccessible

shrine. The husband saw on the footpath a precious stone, shining brilliantly

when the sun's rays fell upon it from between the leaves. He hastily threw some

sand over it

with a movement of his foot so that his wife may not be temped to pick it up and

become a slave to the tinsel. The wife saw the gesture and chided the husband

for still retaining in his mind a distinction between sand and diamond. For

her, both were the same.

Keep the Name as constant as breathing

The Raja who spoke in his sleep the sacred name of Rama felt very sorry,

according to the story, that he let Rama Nama out of his mouth, for he believed

that no one should know of his 'love' for Rama. There are many who will not

shout about their Guru or their favorite Name and Form, but whether you declare

them to others or not, keep them ever in your consciousness. Rama Nama or any

other name must be as constant as breathing. For this, practice is essential. A

person once told Dr. Johnson, the famous English thinker, that he could seldom

get

time to recite the Name of God, what with the hundreds of things he had to do

from morning till nightfall and even far into the night. Dr. Johnson replied

with another question. He asked how millions of people found space to live upon

the face of the earth, which is two-thirds water and the rest is too full of

mountains, deserts, forests, icy regions, river beds, marshes and similar

impossible areas. The questioner said that man somehow struggled to find living

space. So too, said Dr. Johnson, man must somehow find a few minutes a day for

prayer to the Lord.

Example of the highest type of detachment

Bhakti and the attitude of surrender that is its final fruits will give you

great courage to meet any emergency; such courage is what is called

Renunciation. The story of Mohajith is a good example of this highest type of

detachment. Mohajith, the Prince, went to a Sage in the forest and sought

guidance in the spiritual path. The sage asked him whether he had conquered

attachment as his name indicated. The Prince said that not only he, but also

every one in his kingdom had! So the Sage started to test the truth of this

claim. The sage took the Prince's robes, soaked them in blood and hastened to

the Palace Gate with the gruesome stow of the murder of the Prince by some

ruffians in the jungle. The maid whom he met refused to hurry with the news to

the Royal apartments because she

said, "He was born, he died; what is the special urgency of this news that I

should interrupt my regular routine and run to the King and Queen?" When at

last he got an audience and was able to communicate the sad news to the father,

he sat unruffled, whispering to himself, "The bird flew off the tree on which it

had alighted to take rest." The Rani too was unmoved. She told the sage that

this Earth is a caravanserai, where men come and stay for the night and when

dawn breaks, one by one, they tramp their different ways. Kith and kin are the

words we use for the attachment to the travelers cultivated in the caravanserai

during the short term of acquaintance. The wife of the "dead" Prince was also

unaffected; she said, "Husband and wife are like two pieces of wood drifting

down a flooded river; they float near each other for some time and when some

current comes between, they are parted: each must move on to the sea at its own

rate and in its own time. There is no need to grieve over

the parting of the two; it is in the very nature of Nature that it should be so."

Grow with self-respect and dignity

The sage was overjoyed to see this steady and sincere Vairagya (dispassion) in

the rulers and the ruled. He came back to the forest and told the Prince that

while he was away, a hostile army had invaded his Kingdom and slain the entire

royal family and captured his Kingdom and enslaved his subjects. He took the

news calmly and said, "All this is bubble, impermanent, flimsy. Let it go the

way of the bubble. Guide me to reach the Infinite, the Imperishable." Such

courage comes out of the Grace of the Lord; it needs generations of learning

and struggle. Meanwhile, you must start with the first step, the cleansing of

the mind and the cultivation of virtue. Even if you do not start with that

step, at least do not laugh at those who do,

and discourage them. Do at least this much! Then, do not depend upon others for

doing your work, like attending to your personal wants. Do them yourself; that

is real freedom. Again, never accept anything 'free' from others; pay it back,

in service or work. That will make you self-respecting individuals. Receiving a

favour means getting bound to the giver. Grow with self-respect and dignity.

That is the best service you can do to yourself.

There is no seniority or juniority among devotees

'Uncle' Moon is 'uncle' to all the children of the world. So also, the Lord is

every one's Father, in whose property every one can claim a share. But in order

to get it, you must reach a certain age, a certain standard of intelligence and

discrimination. The infirm and the idiotic, He will not consider fit to receive

property. His property is Grace, Prema. But if you have Discrimination and

Renunciation, you can claim your share, as of right. Bring 'Bhakti' and lay it

here and take from here spiritual strength! The more such business is done, the

more pleased am I. Bring what you have, namely, your sorrows and grief, worries

and anxieties,

and take from Me joy and peace, courage and confidence. In My view, there is no

seniority or juniority among devotees. The mother spends more time tending the

sickly child; she just asks the older children to look after themselves; she

feeds with her own hand the infant. That does not mean that she has no love

towards the grown-ups. So too, do not think that because I do not ostensibly

pay more attention to one person, he is beyond the ken of my Prema. Note this

also. In this Avatar (Divine Incarnation), the wicked will not be destroyed;

they will be corrected and reformed and educated and led back to the path from

which they have strayed. The white-ant infested tree will not be cut; it will

be saved. Again this Avatar will not select some place other than the place

where the Nativity took place for the centre of Its Leelas, Mahimas and Upadesh

(divine sport, miracle power and divine instruction). This tree shall not be

transplanted; it will grow where it first rose from the earth. Another

specialty is this: the Avatar has no affinity or attachment in Its Career to

members of the Family wherein it appeared. Unlike the appearances as Rama,

Krishna, etc., where the Life was played out mostly among and for the family

members, this Avatar is for the Bhaktas, the Sadhus and the Sadhaks (devotees,

noble souls and aspirants) only. It has no Japa (recitation of holy name),

Dhyana (meditation) or yoga (practicing union with God). It knows no worship;

It will not pray to anything, for It is the Highest. It only teaches you to

worship and pray. To a worldly man, a God-intoxicated person will appear mad

and he will laugh at him for it. But to the God-intoxicated man, the worldly

appear insane, foolish misled, blind. Of all the insanities that harass man,

God-madness is the least harmful,

the most beneficial. The world has suffered untold damage due to its "mad"

rulers and "mad" guides; but nothing but harmony, peace, brotherliness and love

have come out of the 'God-madness' of man!

Prashanthi Nilayam, Maha Shivarathri, 1955

3. GOD AS GUIDE

God is Maha Shakti (Supreme Energy) and Jiva (individual being) is Maya Shakti

(Deluding Power); He is the genuine, the Jiva is but the shadow, the

appearance, and the delusion. Even I have to put on Maya Shakti to come into

your midst, like the policeman who is compelled to wear the dress of the thief

so that he can get entry into the gang of thieves to

apprehend them and bring them to book! The Lord cannot come down with. His Maha

Shakti unimpaired; He has to come with diminished splendor and limited

effulgence, so that He can become the object of Bhakti and Dedicated Service.

In this world, which is impermanent, and ever transforming, the Immanent Power

of the Lord is the only permanent and fixed entity. In order to realise the

eternal and the true, one has perforce to attach oneself to that Source and

Sustenance. There is no escape from this path. It is the destiny of one and

all, irrespective of age or scholarship, clime or caste, sex or status. While

proceeding along the road, you can watch your shadow falling on mud or dirt,

hollow or mound, thorn or sand, wet or dry patches of land. You are unaffected

by the fate of your shadow, is it

not? Nor is the shadow made dirty thereby. It does not worry in the least where

it falls or what it wades through. We know that the shadow and its experiences

are not eternal or true. Similarly, you must get convinced that 'you' are but

the shadow of the Absolute and you are essentially not this 'you' but the

absolute itself. That is the remedy for sorrow, travail and pain.

The First step in spiritual discipline

Of course, it is only at the end of a long and systematic process of Sadhana

that you will get fixed in the truth; until then, you are apt to identify

yourself with this body and forget that the body, which casts a shadow, is

itself a shadow. The first step in Sadhana is the adherence to Dharma in every

individual and social act. The Dharma (righteousness) which is followed in

relation to Prakriti

(objective world) will automatically lead on to Dharma in the spiritual field

also; only you must stick to it through thick and thin. When Aswathaama in the

blindness of his fury slaughtered the children of the Pandavas, Arjuna who

caught him prisoner threatened to cut off his head; but Draupadi the bereaved

mother interceded to save him! She said it was not Dharma to return murder for

murder, to slay the son of one's own Guru. Such steadfastness is needed in the

path of Dharma (virtue); that alone is the sign of true surrender: "Let the

Will of the Lord

prevail; one's duty is but to connect oneself with the current of His Grace."

While in jail the prisoner cannot call even his clothes his own; so too, while

in this jail serving your term, what can you call your own? He gives you food

and clothing. He lets you go when the sentence ends, or perhaps sooner if He is

pleased by your behavior while in prison.

Keep the faith in the Lord undiminished

The greatest obstacle on the path of surrender is ahamkar (egoism) and mamakaara

(mineness or possessiveness). It is something that has been inhering to your

personality since ages, sending its tentacles deeper and deeper with the

experience of every succeeding life. Only the twin detergents of discrimination

and renunciation can remove it. Bhakti is the water to wash away this dirt of

ages and the soap of Japam, Dhyana and Yoga (repetition of God's name,

meditation and communion) will help to remove it quicker and more effectively.

The slow and the steady will surely win this race; walking is the safest method

of travel, though it may be condemned as slow. Quicker means of travel mean

disaster; the quicker the means, the greater the risk of disaster. You should

eat only as much as you feel hunger, for, more will cause disorder. So proceed

step-by-step in Sadhana (spiritual effort); making sure of one step before you

take another. Do not slide back two paces when you go one pace forward. But

even the first step will be unsteady, if you have no faith. So cultivate faith.

Sathyabhaama once asked Krishna, "Why are you: doing things like ordinary men?

Yudhishthira, the eldest of the Pandavas is the best of the brothers but you

hobnob always with Arjuna, whose reputation is not above board." Her faith was

not steady! What do people know of the motives that prompt the Lord and His

actions? Some found fault with Narada for repeating the name of the Lord,

always, without intermission. But until Saayujyam (merging in the Absolute),

the name has to be used; the idea of separation will end only with mergence,

not before that. Do not waver or doubt when once you are convinced. Seek to

understand and satisfy yourself. After that, do not be misled. When the Sun is

over your head there will be no shadow; similarly when faith is steady in your

head it should not cast any shadow of doubt. When man loses his way and strays

into the wilderness, believing that he is the body or Gunas (qualities) or the

object, then the Avatar comes to warn and guide. Keep the faith in the Lord

undiminished; you can then safely move about in the world. No harm can come to

you! Be like the village women with pots over their heads, one over the other,

keeping balance even while talking and walking along the winding lane. They do

not forget or ignore the burden or the goal. They are vigilant, conscious of

the hardships on the way, the stones and the pits; it is the inner

concentration that pays dividends.

One should depart the world with a smile

Every one has to make his exit some day; that moment should not be a moment of

anguish; one should depart gracefully, with a smile and a bow. In order to do

that, a lot of preparation is necessary. To depart, leaving all that has been

accumulated during a long lifetime is a hard task; so prepare for it by

discarding attachment to one thing after another from now on. You see many

things in dreams and you acquire many things during dreams: power, pelf,

status, and reputation. But when you awake, you do not weep over the loss, even

though for the duration of the dream all that was very real and gave you real

satisfaction and joy. That was a 'dream', you tell yourself; what prevents you

from treating with similar nonchalance the possessions gathered during the

waking stage of your life? Cultivate that attitude and you can depart with a

smile whenever the curtain falls on this dreamland stage.

Pray to the Lord to show you the way

In order to bring conviction to you in all this, it is best you approach a Guru

(spiritual preceptor) who knows the Truth by experience and whose daily

activities, words and thoughts reflect this realisation. The Guru is called so

because the letter GU signifies Gunaatheetha---one who has transcended the

three Gunas (qualities)---the Thaamasik, the Raajasik and

14.0pt">even the Saathwik (ignorant passionate and virtuous); and the letter RU

signifies one who is Rupa Varjitha (one who has grasped the formless aspect of

God-head). Of course, he could come to that stage only through the sublimation

of the lower into the higher qualities and the steady and conscious ignoring of

the part played by mere name and form. In the preliminary stages of spiritual

Sadhana, name, form and quality all have their part to play in the molding of

the spirit. The Guru destroys the illusion and sheds light; his presence is

cool and comforting. That is why this day, a Pournami (Full Moon day), is

allotted for paying due honour to the Guru. Moreover, the Moon is the presiding

deity of the mind and Pournami is the day on which the mind has become fully

beneficent. Of course, you must know what you have lost, so that you may start

on the search to recover it! The Guru has very often to tell you that you have

forgotten your real name or that you have lost the most precious part of

yourself and yet are unaware of the loss. The Guru is the physician for the

illness, which brings about the suffering of alternate birth and death. He is

an adept at the treatment needed for the cure. If you

do not get such a Guru, pray to the Lord Himself to show you the way and He will

surely come to your rescue.

Prashanthi Nilayam, Guru Pournami, 1-8-1956

The mind must become the servant of the intellect, not the slave of the senses.

It must discriminate and detach itself from the body. Like the ripe tamarind

fruit, which becomes loose inside the shell, it must be unattached to this

shell, this casement called body. Strike a green tamarind fruit with a stone

and you cause harm to the pulp inside; but, strike the ripe fruit and see what

happens. It is the dry rind that falls off; nothing affects the pulp or the

seed. The ripe aspirant does not feel the blows of fate or fortune; it is the

unripe man who is wounded by every blow. - Shri Sathya Sai

4. DIVINE LIFE

A CONVENTION of the Workers of the Divine Life Mission must include all

humanity, for no one is outside its pale; all are plodding along the road to

the realisation of the Divinity that is immanent in each. The mission on which

every individual has come is to merge the individuality in the Universal. The

life that each being is leading is saturated with the Divine; Existence or Sath

is derived from the source of all Sath, Brahman (Supreme Reality) Itself;

Consciousness or Chith is derived from the source of all Chith, Brahman Itself.

Bliss or Ananda is derived from the source of all. Ananda, Brahman Itself. You

are all Sath-Chith-Ananda Swarupa (embodiments of Existence -

Consciousness-Bliss); only, you are unaware of it and imagine yourself to be

this individual or that, and subjected to this limitation or that! This is the

myth that must be exploded in order that Divine Life may start. It is the

Divine that inspires, that activates, that leads and fulfils the life of each

being, however simple or complex its physical structure may be. From the Anu

(atom) to the Brihath (Universe) every single entity is moving towards the

estuary where it merges in the sea of Bliss. Divine Life is the very breath of

all beings; it consists of Sathya, Prema and Ahimsa (Truth, Love and

Non-injury). For, how can any one be false to another when there is no other at

all? Falsehood comes out of fear. When there is no second, there is no fear at

all. No one is loved more than the Self: so, when all is the self-same Self,

all is loved as the Self is loved. As for himsa, who is to injure whom, when

all are but

one?

Faith in the Almighty will remove anxiety

How to lead the Divine Life? There is no special membership that entitles you to

it. Every struggle to realise the Unity behind all the multiplicity is a step on

the path of Divine Life. You have to churn the milk if you wish to separate and

identify the butter that is immanent in it. So too, you have to carry on

certain processes of thought and action in order to get to the hard core of

faith that this world is a funny mixture Of Sathyam and Asathyam (real &

unreal), that it is mithya (false), in fact. The Divine Life does not admit of

the slightest dross in character or delusion in intellect. So, people dedicated

to it must emphasize

this by precept and example. Wipe out the root causes of anxiety and fear and

ignorance. Then only can the true personality of man shine forth. Anxiety is

removed by faith in the Lord; the faith that tells you that whatever happens is

for the best and that the Lord's Will be done. Quiet acceptance is the best

Armour against anxiety; not the acceptance of the heroic. Sorrow springs from

egoism, the feeling that you do not deserve to be treated so badly, that you

are left helpless. When egoism goes, sorrow disappears. Ignorance is just a

mistake, mistaken identity of the body as the Self! In fact, you must each one

try to become ego-less and then the Lord will accept you as His Flute. Once,

when a number of people were asked by Me what they would like to be in the

hands of God, I got various answers: some said the Lotus, some the Sankha

(Conch), some the Chakra (Discus) but no one mentioned the Murali (Flute). I

would advise you to become the Murali, for then the Lord

will come to you, pick you up, put you to His lips and breathe through you and,

out of the hollowness of your heart due to the utter absence of egoism that you

have developed, He will create captivating music for all Creation to enjoy. Be

straight without any will of your own, merge your will in the Will of God.

Inhale only the breath of God. That is Divine Life that is what I want you all

to achieve.

Venkatagiri, April 1957

A mere five-minute inquiry will convince you that you are not the body, or the

senses, the mind or the intelligence, the name or the form, but that you are

the Atma Itself, the same Atma that appears as all this variety. Once you get a

glimpse of this truth, hold on to it; do not allow it to slip. Make it your

permanent possession.

Shri Sathya Sai

 

TO BE CONTINUED...

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