SAI BABA GITA – Part X – Answers for all questions

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TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Start your Spiritual Practice when you are Young If you

want to develop these two qualities you have to start in your childhood and use

this early period of your life in a sacred and ennobling way. In the world today

many people undertake spiritual practice only when they reach old age. After

they have thoroughly enjoyed the objects of luxury and have become disgusted

and exhausted by worldly pleasures, they consider embarking on the spiritual

path. Having spent their lives concentrating on sense objects, on family life,

on children, on wealth, on properties, on name and fame, they become

disillusioned in old age. They realize that there is nothing true in these

things and that peace of mind and lasting joy cannot come from the phenomenal

world and from worldly pursuits. After they come into the evening of their

lives and are haunted by the emptiness of their experiences, they begin

to do spiritual exercises. But in old age, when you are suffering from all sorts

of physical and mental weaknesses, it will be very difficult to practice and

live a rigorous spiritual life. Even then you should not be discouraged,

thinking that there is no possibility for spiritual advancement in old people.

Opportunities for spiritual experiences are certainly available to them.

Instead of not thinking of the Lord at all, it is far better to think of him,

at least in old age. When it comes to thinking of the Lord, there are no

restrictions whatsoever with respect to time, place or age. That is why the

divine teacher has declared in the Gita, "At all times, in all places, think of

me." But he has also declared that the best opportunity for practicing these

spiritual exercises in a determined way is in your youth. When your physical

strength, the strength of your sense organs, and your mental strength are

there in abundance, that is the best time to undertake spiritual exercises. The

process is something like reserving a plane ticket before embarking on a

journey. When you arrive at the airport, after first having reserved your

place, you are likely to proceed smoothly with your journey. On the other hand,

if you go to the airport only at the last minute, without having a reservation,

you may not get on the plane. It all depends on chance. You may end up having

to go by a slower way or you may have to delay your journey. It is the same way

with people who start thinking about spiritual matters in their old age. They

may or may not be able to advance spiritually in a significant way at that

point in their lives. But if the same individuals had in earnest undertaken

spiritual exercises from an early age, they would be sure to achieve spiritual

success in their old age.

6pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Do not waste your Youth If you waste your time

enjoying the pleasures of life during your youth, wasting the power of your

body and your sense organs, then if you want to reach your goal of merging with

the Lord in your old age, you may not get that chance. There is no meaning

whatsoever in serving delicious food to the demons, and then, when they have

consumed everything worthwhile, offering the leftovers to God. Do you think

that will please God? No! After all your powers and capacities have been

dissipated by the demons of anger, greed, lust and pride, you try to offer God

what little is left. But that offering will not be accepted by him. In this

context, the Gita has emphasized that your youth is a very precious period

which has to be used with great care to advance yourself spiritually. When you

have had something for a long time and taken it for granted, you may not

appreciate its real value. It is only after losing it that you truly appreciate

it. As long as you have your eyes, you do not know the value and the

preciousness of your eyes. You only realize the importance of vision when you

lose your eyesight. In the same way, when you have good health and all your

faculties are in their full glory, you do not understand their true value.

After having lost your health, and when your faculties have become impaired,

then you repent and lament that all your capacities and powers are gone. But

lamenting at that point is useless. During youth you have allowed the bad

habits and bad traits to become your great friends and get deeply rooted within

you. You squandered and misused the capacities that have been given to you,

blindly following your sensual desires. Later, these bad habits and bad traits

become your principal enemies in old age.

0in 6pt; TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Most young people do not use their powers of

discrimination properly. They do not try to sort out who is their true friend

and who is their foe. If you follow only your senses and lower instincts, and

have not developed your intelligence to understand the meaning of life, then is

there any reason for calling you a human being? Should you not be called a mere

animal? Once you understand the significance of human life and fill yourself

with the noble qualities of a human being, your senses will no longer be able

to confuse you. Use your Body for the Sake of God These days you are using God

for the sake of the body. You are not using your body to worship God. You pray

to God for good health whenever you are sick, but you are not using all your

physical strength and faculties, when you have them, to worship

God. You imagine that there will be plenty of time later on to engage in

worship, and so you go on wasting your time. You think that after retirement

you can begin to take up the contemplation of God and do spiritual exercises.

Perhaps you feel that it is better in the meantime to enjoy life and to enjoy

the objects of the world while you are still young. But how can you start

thinking of God when you become old, after having lost all your capacities. If

you are not using all your physical powers and capacities for the worship of

the Lord now, then later it will be too late. When children make fun of you and

call you 'old monkey!', will you then have the strength to start an intensive

spiritual life? When your hair is gray, when you are hardly able to move, when

you are barely able to see, when all the sense organs have become weak, will

you then be able to use them for the worship of the Lord? No, it will not

be possible. The scriptures have very forcefully described the futility of

starting your spiritual practices only during your last days. It is stated that

when the god of death finds you and shouts, "Come! Come!", when your own

relations are anxious to get the corpse out of the house, when they are all

shouting, "Take it away! Take it away!", and when your wife and children are

there sobbing, can you think of the Lord at that time? Can you tell your

relatives to stop crying, can you tell death to wait a little bit because you

want to think of the Lord for a few moments? You should accumulate in youth all

the things which are necessary to lay a strong foundation for a happy future. Do

you really think that it is possible to think of the Lord only after you retire?

No, it is not possible. You should be fully engaged in regular spiritual

practice before retirement. But instead, you immerse yourself in business, and

continue with that even after retirement, or waste your time going to clubs, and

in many other ways dissipate your precious life. You cannot start Spiritual Life

when Death is at the Door A housewife once asked her husband, "At least now in

your old age shouldn't you be thinking of God? You never took the time to do it

before, during your busy period. Please, do it now!" The business man replied,

"I have no time even to die, no less to think of God." But do you think that

death will not come to someone who says that he has no time to die? Will death

come only according to his wishes? No, time waits for no one. Therefore, while

you still have time you have to make use of it in a proper way. The enemy

called death, along with his soldiers called disease, will be

waiting to wage war against your body. Men die most pitifully and helplessly

during such periods of time when they are attacked by disease and death. But no

army can attack those who have won the grace of the Lord. Therefore, during

youth itself you have to earn the grace of God and equip yourself to meet all

the challenges of your enemies when they come to lay siege on you. Above all,

you must be firmly convinced in your own heart that this journey of life is

going to be a long one. Any other journey, whether it be by bus, train or plane

lasts for only a short time; you need not make too many preparations for these.

But for this journey of life you must equip yourself for all the contingencies

of a long journey; otherwise you will be suffering greatly later on when you

are faced with real problems and real troubles. In the compartment of freight

trains used to transport chemically-active substances, a stamp is

placed at the time of manufacture giving a particular date in the future. It is

the day when that container has used up its normal service life and must be

returned to the depot for recycling. It is the same for the container that is

your body. Here also a return date has been written on it by God himself. You

do not remember that you have to go back. People totally forget this

all-important truth. If you really want to enjoy all the pleasures of life at a

later stage, then during youth you have to earn the grace of God. In the course

of human life the early periods of childhood and youth are very important. Not

realizing the great value of this period of your life, you waste your time

during youth. You use a golden cup, adorned with precious gems and jewels, for

a low, mean, contemptible purpose. To feed the fire of your senses you are

using costly sandalwood as fuel. The vessel is very precious, the fuel is

also precious, but the food you are choosing to cook with their help, is insipid

and worthless. Such a precious body and such sacred fuel is being squandered

away for the sake of enjoying useless trivial things in life. Things without

value are put in this precious vessel and used for sordid enjoyment. You are

using a golden plough to plough the field of your heart, but you produce

nothing but useless weeds. True Human Life involves Discrimination and

Renunciation The field of your heart is most precious and sacred. The divine

teacher has declared that even that field belongs to him. The Lord has declared

that he is both the field and its knower. He is the true owner of your heart and

of your body. He has identified himself with them. What are you doing with this

sacred heart and body? You are using a golden plough to raise useless

crops of sensual pleasures. Any person who is aware of the preciousness of the

heart and the preciousness of the feelings that are there will not misuse these

things. Life must be used for good, for the welfare of others, for reaching the

sacred goal and for treading the sacred path, and for bringing about a shining

effulgence in the heart and mind. You have to use this life for merging

yourself in the divinity. Only then will you have the authority to say that

your life has become sanctified and genuine. It is said that it is very

difficult and almost impossible to get a human life. What is so special about

human life? Why is it so difficult to get? All the pleasures which animals and

birds enjoy, you can also enjoy. In that case, what is the meaning in declaring

that human life is so very precious, so very special? It is because you have the

ability to discriminate between right and wrong. It is because you

have the ability to give up attachments and hatred. Therefore, you have to use

the intelligence given to you to make a distinction between the animal way of

life and the human way of life. By not discriminating between the true self and

the lower self, by not developing your higher intelligence, you become the

victim of agitation and sorrow. You cannot find inner peace because you do not

follow the right path. With a firm determination, young people need to

undertake the three types of penance, physical, mental and vocal, and thereby

set an example for the world. You have to use the active principle within you

to subdue the slothful principle, and then, you have to use the serene

principle to subdue the active principle. It is impossible to be serene as long

as your heart is filled with the slothful and active natures. When the head is

empty you can hope to fill it with some good ideas, but if your head is

already full of all sorts of useless thoughts, how is it be possible to fill it

up with any thing sacred and great? You have filled your head with all sorts of

unnecessary worldly stuff. You will have to first empty all that out. Only then

will you be able to fill your head with sacred feelings and sacred thoughts.

Keep your Concentration unwaveringly on God Many of you are following a

meaningless path and living a meaningless life. You cry when you are born and

you cry when you die. In between, through your whole span of life, you go on

crying for useless things. Do you cry when you see the decline of

righteousness? That is what you should cry for, that is what you should use

your strength and abilities for, to correct the decline of righteousness and to

help heal the wounds that follow its decline. What is right living? It is the

constant remembrance and uninterrupted contemplation of the Lord. It is

discharging your daily duties thinking of the Lord. The Gita has not taught

that you should give up your family, that you should give up your wealth and

property, and then go to the forest. No! Take care of your family. Do your

duty. But keep your concentration constantly on the Lord. Whatever you do, do

not forget your goal. If you give it up, you will get lost and stray onto the

wrong path. Your divine goal must be solidly set in your mind. Keeping your

goal in view, perform your daily duties. Do not allow any flaw or defect to

taint your words. Always adhere to truth. Some people think that in times of

difficulty they can modify the truth. They may even feel that it is necessary

to tell untruth sometimes. But in difficult situations you can develop

sufficient presence of mind to keep silent, instead of telling either the truth

or

an untruth. If you tell the truth, tell it dearly and sweetly. Do not tell the

truth in an unpleasant way, or tell an untruth in a pleasant way. Whenever

there comes a difficult testing time, you should learn how to avoid

compromising situations without ever telling an untruth. In certain

circumstances you will have to conduct yourself in an extremely careful way.

You should know how to use words without hurting people. It has been said that,

"He is the fortunate one who knows how to talk without ever hurting anyone." You

should neither hurt others nor be hurt by others. Here is a small story. Be

Steady in your Practice A housewife attended a series of meetings at which a

spiritual teacher was expounding the scriptures. She was concentrating and

listening with great attention to everything that was being said. One day, the

speaker

recounted the story of Rama and Sita, and in that connection declared that for a

wife, the husband was the only goal in life. He said, "It is the responsibility

of the wife to satisfy her husband and make him happy. Always treat the husband

as God." The housewife after hearing all this went back home. She was so

impressed by this discourse that she resolved to put into practice immediately

all that she had learned. As soon as the husband returned home for his midday

meal, she took a container of water and poured it over his feet, thinking that

she was worshipfully serving her husband thereby. The husband was confused and

flabbergasted. He entered the house and sat down to dry his feet, but before he

could do so she insisted on doing it for him. After seeing all this, the husband

went into his office and rang up the doctor. Her husband did not know that his

wife had been attending the discourses. The doctor came

and decided to give her some sleeping pills. He said that it looked like an

attack of hysteria, but after a rest of one or two days she probably would be

all right. The husband ate his meal and told his wife to go and have some rest;

then he went to his office. His wife went right back again to the meeting to

hear the next lecture. That afternoon the speaker was explaining the delusory

relationship which exists between husband and wife. He said, "Who is husband?

Who is wife? Nothing is permanent. All these things are just temporary and

transient. In truth nothing exists." Then he added, "God alone is true. He is

the only real truth." The housewife went back home and sat in her shrine room.

That evening the husband came back from his office half an hour early, thinking

that his wife may not be well and perhaps he could help her in some way. He

knocked on the house door and asked her to kindly open it. From the

shrine room she answered, "There is no mother, there is no father, there is no

house, there is nothing, not even a husband." He was quite alarmed by this

behavior, but somehow he got her to open the door. When he came into the house

he went straight to the telephone and called the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist

came and examined her in detail. He gave his diagnosis. He said that after all

this listening to these discourses she had developed some peculiar attitudes;

but if she could be kept at home she would soon get over them. All arrangements

were made to keep her from going to the lectures. Everyone was informed. The

driver as well as every servant of the house was told not to let her go there.

After these restrictions had been put on her by doctor's orders, she did not go

to the lecture for two days and she started behaving in a normal way again. So

the detachment she had developed was only temporary and

superficial. It did not last. Now the husband was happy. The normal daily

routine resumed. After a week this lady went again to the place where the

lectures were being given. On that particular day the speaker was expounding

the teachings of the Gita. He explained that whenever one uses words one should

tell the truth and one should not tell it in a compromising way. She heard this

and returned home. Her husband told her that there was a marriage reception

that day, and asked her to join him. She got ready and went there with her

husband. The marriage ceremony started. There was a tradition in those parts

which calls for the auspicious necklace that is worn by the bride to be taken

to every elder, who then touches it and blesses it. The father of the bride

came to this lady, recognized her and asked her, "How is your mother? Is

everything all right?" These questions were a matter of courtesy, exchanging a

few words with her while he held out the sacred necklace, asking her to touch it

and bless it. She answered, "My mother is doing fine. She is quite all right,

but you know, a week ago my mother-in law died quite suddenly and her body was

taken to the cremation ground the following day." The neighbor who was sitting

next to her told her, "Why did you have to say such an inauspicious thing while

touching and blessing this necklace, which is meant to impart a long and happy

life to the new bride and her future family?" The housewife replied, "Should I

tell a lie just for the sake of this necklace? No, I will never tell a lie. It

is a fact that my mother-in-law died last week and that the body was cremated

the next day." One intelligent young lady sitting nearby told her, "Mother,

certainly you should speak the truth, but you should also be aware of the

circumstances and think through what is appropriate before you

say anything." Tell the Truth but use Discretion in your Words Whenever you hear

a spiritual teaching on a particular day, you will go about implementing it with

a great deal of fervor and conviction; but only on that very day. But this is

not the correct way to pursue your spiritual studies. You should use your

intellect to understand the context in which you find yourself before you use

words in a given situation. Whenever you do a particular thing or say

something, you should know that truth is the royal means for reaching your

ultimate goal. The tongue should not be tainted by untruth. The body should not

be tainted by violence. The mind should not be stained by bad thoughts and bad

feelings. It is only when you sanctify all these three, the tongue, the body

and the mind and bring them into harmony, that you will be able to get

the sacred vision of the Lord. Students should be extremely careful in telling

the truth. They should certainly tell the truth, but be careful not to go on

talking and hurting others unnecessarily. Have control over your tongue.

Whenever there is a misunderstanding with someone, if you tell him all his

defects, with the justification that everything you are telling is true, then

there are bound to be complications later. You should never hate others. When

you have love in your heart, your words will naturally be very sweet. Even if

anger develops, it will be of a fleeting nature. There are four types of

people. The anger of a person who is of a serene nature will be very

short-lived; it recedes immediately. The Gita has declared such a one as a

great soul. The second type will have this anger for a number of minutes, but

it will soon

fade away. The third category of person will have this anger continuously, all

day long. The one in the lowest category will have this anger throughout his

life. The Four Types of Anger The divine teacher has told this in another way

also, "The anger of a good person is like writing on water; it is not at all

permanent. The anger of the second category of person is like writing on sand,

it will be washed away, one moment or another. The third type of person's anger

is something like writing on stone. Over a long period of time it too will be

eroded away. But the anger of the fourth type of person is like writing on a

steel plate, it will never go away unless you melt it and cast it anew. Only

when you put it into the fire will it get destroyed. Only through intense

transformation is there any possibility of changing

it." Things which are highly relevant in day-to-day life can be found in the

Gita. It is very difficult for you to take all the teachings that are in the

Gita and practice all of them. But you should, at least, take those teachings

which are directly applicable to your present life and put them into practice.

That way you reap immediate benefits and will rapidly progress towards your

ultimate spiritual goal. TO BE CONTINUED With Sai love from Sai brothers –

‘’ Source: http://laluni.helloyou.ws/askbaba/saibabagita/

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