Swami teaches... Part 3. The Beacon Light for Students,Teachers and Parents

[Guest guest]

Light and Love Swami teaches... 7 - 10 October 2007 Part 3. The Beacon Light for Students, Teachers and Parents The Motto: The true person of learning is the one who sees with equal eye different beings. True knowledge should become an integral part of one's being, flowing in one blood in an endless stream. The World's prosperity or otherwise is based upon the character of the youth. Any country filled with noble beings of great virtue is bound to be peaceful and happy.

Every one should realize what one owes to the society in which one is born and from which one derives so many benefits. Young people should reflect on the question what gratitude they could show to the society, which has given them so much. What service are you doing to society? Put into practice at least a fraction of what you have studied. Plunge into society andengage yourselves in social service. If you have no other work, join in any service activities. Let service should become your life's goal. Use your own abilities, talents, and inner strengths. The value of service as a sadhana is for realizing the Oneness of all in God and the oneness of one's Self with God. Humans would build shanthi (peace), on this foundation of Atmajnana, knowledge of Atmic unity. Swami does not recommend the giving up of karma, for it is not possible.

What is generally meant by Karmasanyas* is the giving up of rites and rituals prescribed by the scriptures only then, when the spiritual seeker is ready for that, have an inner call for that. Swami calls upon to adhere to a new rite, seva a new yaga, sacrifice of the ego, a new ritual of worship, Saranagathi, dedication of all thoughts, words, and deeds at the Lotus Feet of the Lord and acceptance of all that happens as Grace from Him. Do not come to Swami with your hands full of trash. Come with empty hands and carry away Swami's Grace and Love. The only desire all should cherish is to win Dhaiva preethi (the Grace, Love of God). Young people should enthrone thyaga (sacrifice) in their hearts, wear the crown of justice on their heads, and carry the sword of truth in their hands. These are the weapons needed, to defend the nation. It is the privilege and duty of the young men and women to promote the welfare, progress, and peace of the world. Each person creates own reality. Transform all your actions into sacred duties. Experience the Love of the Divine. That is the meaning of the first Swami's declaration: "My life is my message." (Swami's second message is, "The life my devotees is my message.)" Today if you wish to earn the esteem of society, you have to secure Dhaiva preethi. For this, you have to entertain fear of sin. What is sin? It covers all those activities, which are motivated by selfishness born out of regarding the body and sensual pleasures as the primary things in life. Punya (merit) arises from all actions which take one nearer to God para + upa + kaara = Paropakaara. Sin has defined as Parapeedanam (causing harm to or forgetting the Divine). Know yourself and achieve equilibrium of the Self. One of the challenges facing the evolution of any person is in overcoming the demands of the individual ego. What is ego in everyday life context, what is egoism that everyone would overcome?

 

The ego is nevertheless a vital aspect of conscious awareness and can therefore never be destroyed but tamed and put into control of intellect and conscience. (All things in the world should be used properly. A knife can be used for cutting vegetables or another's throat. How a knife is used depends on the human using it). The ego is frequently responsible for considerable misery and suffering, and a lack of peace and harmony generally. The ego in everyday life is responsible for many other negative human traits, below are several of them. 1. Being critical and judgmental of others,2. being rigid and inflexible,3. being manipulative, 4. need to feel superior,5. feeling anxious and fearful,6. mood swings, taking everything too personally and too seriously,7. constant need for approval and praise,8. feeling hurried and driven to do things, competing rather than cooperating,9. feeling resentful and guilty, 10. unable to live in the present moment, 11. addictions to alcohol, tobacco and other Mind altering substances, 12. overly concerned with personal appearance, 13. overly concerned with success, 14. feeling insecure, 15. constant worry over trivialities, 16. clinging to the past, 17. feelings of despair and hopelessness, feeling life is meaningless, 18. the need for power over others, etc. Typical signs the ego is when people blame others for everything that goes wrong in their own lives. The ego also revels in the illusion of always being busy. Such people consider themselves very busy, unfortunately without any significant results. The ego often revels in disaster, particularly when it happens to people who are not liked. People often like revel in the misfortunes of others on whatever scale the misfortune occurs. Most people find it is much easier to revel in the misfortune of others than to share in their happiness. The ego can, and profoundly will hold people back both in everyday life and in personal evolution and progression on the path. Until the ego is tamed and its influence transcended, peace, and harmony cannot be achieved and maintained. The ego causes an illusory focus on those aspects of the physical world that are really not at all important for peace, harmony and happiness, and most importantly for enduring and true evolution and progression. The ego constantly strives to be always right, always superior, never wrong, and never inferior and likes to make comparisons, particularly with other people as a function of living in the material world. The other side of the ego is in feeling worse or inferior by comparison with others. There is no difference between this side of the ego and the one suffering from delusions of grandeur. Ill-digested learning results in the diseases of egoism and pride, as in the ease of Ravana by Ramayana. Ravana was a master of a larger number of Vidyas (types of knowledge). However, he could enjoy no peace or bliss because he did not practice in the right way what he had learnt. Ravana was a great scholar. Rama was equally great as a scholar. However, he wasmuch more than that. He was a good man. Ravana performed rigorous penance and mastered a vast deal of knowledge (even more than Rama mastered). However, the result was ignorance arising from indigestion. Unable to control his desires, he brought ruin on his clan and his kingdom. His studies have not saved him from his evil qualities, which brought about his ruin. People should realize the distinction between "greatness" and "goodness". Most parents want their children to acquire greatness. However, they have no true idea of what is greatness. They may desire that their children should become great scholars, get big jobs and acquired large wealth. Do these constitute greatness? The mark of goodness is to see the divinity in every human being. There is no use in acquiring greatness without goodness. At first, you must seek goodness and not greatness. You must realize that greatness related to power, position or wealth is transient. It is lost when power and position go. Goodness is always respected . Rama was devoted to truth and righteousness. Hence, he became a good man and not a mere great man. After thousands of years, the very name Rama evokes veneration. That is the sign of goodness.

"I am not bound to win; I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to the light I have" (Abraham Lincoln).

It is living according to Dharma and justice, to love all and cherish faith in God, to help the needy and raise the lowly - all theses constitute goodness.

There are two qualities in human. One is the animal nature; the other is humanness. Unfortunately human is forgetting own humanness by falling a prey to the six enemies - lust, anger, greed, envy and others - and misusing his God-given talents. Human being thereby degrades to the level of the animal. On the other hand, human should use own mind, status, and talents to become virtuous, pursue the path of righteousness and strive to raise himself from the human to the Divine.

"Again, you have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own Self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that Self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity" (Krishnamurti). Transformation of the heart is what is called for. All that you do should lead you nearer to God. There are three types of approaches towards the Lord. The Eagle type, which swaps down on the target with a greedy swiftness and suddenness, which, by its very impact, fails to secure the object, coveted. The Monkey type, which flits hither and thither, from one fruit to another and unable to decide which is tasty. The Ant type, which moves steadily, though slowly, towards the object, which it has decided, is desirable. The ant does not hit the fruit hard and make it fall away; it does not pluck all the fruits it sees; it appropriates just as much as it can assimilate and no more. What is basic to all these in the spiritual path are the chanting of the name of the Lord. By this way, you can experience God more easily. Start now, with the first step, Namasmarana (remembrance of the Name of the Lord, the Universal Indweller). That will lead you on to the further steps, until the goal is reached. Person who use hands to perform good deeds, who use tongue to utter the Lord's name and who cherish in mind truth and compassion is a carrier of triple purity that makes human life sublime.

 

Can anything be more sustaining than remembrance of the Lord? Is there a heaven higher than inner joy?

 

Whenever there is a vacuum in any heart, Love flows into it and is glad that it can fill the emptiness. It is never held back; it is offered in abundance without guile or deceit. it does not wear the cloak of falsehood, flattery or fear. The tendrils of Love aspire to cling only to the garments of God. It senses that God resides in His splendor, in every heart to discover that the seat of God is real devotion. You feel like purifying yourselves and making your entire life one fragrant flame. That is real worship, real bhakthi. Worship is just a means of educating the emotions. Human impulses and emotions have to be guided and controlled. It is absurd as putting the cart before the horse. The physical is subordinate to the spiritual. The body is the cart and the spirit, the horse. (Of course, the cart should be kept in good condition; vice ruins the body and makes it unfit for the journey of life). The age long instincts of human have to be trained and transmuted by contact with higher ideals and powers.

There are different methods of worship for spiritual seekers on the saguna (with qualities, with form, materialized) and the nirguna (without qualities, attributeless) paths. Both paths are accepted equally. From aspect of the nirguna path, those gurus who get their feet worshipped by their devotees and those who think that it is a great boon so to worship them are both lacking in sense. Paadhapuja (ritual worship of Guru's feet with flowers) has in much an atmosphere of publicity, both for the Guru and the sishya (disciple). From nirguna aspect, why worship the body which is decaying every moment? Obey the Guru, follow his instructions, progress along the spiritual road on the saguna path of worship, these are the best means of Paadhapuja; when you achieve some success in these, the craving for Paadhapuja itself will disappear, must disappear. Offer the heart, clean and pure, broadened by sadhana to include all living beings in its grasp.

Since you cannot swim across the flooded stream, you board a raft. So also, since you cannot master the nirguna, you resort to the saguna and struggle to swim across to the nirguna through Aradhana and Upasana (worship and contemplation). You must reach higher. Leaf, flower, fruit, water, - are all primers for the initial stages. Clean the mind of all the animal and primitive impulses, which has shaped it from birth to birth. The Atmasambandha (connection with the Soul) is the-everlasting unchanging sambandha (association). As a first step, you use the flower, the lamp, the incense, etc., and worship the saguna form. The temples must inspire to deepen faith in the moral code that regulates and enriches his/her profession, the restrictions, and regulations that strive to canalize impulses and instincts. The temples will inspire Atmadharma, leading the pilgrim into him/herself, to search for the Mahasakthi that is behind the Icchasakthi, the Kriyasakthi and the Jnanasakthi (power of the will, the work, and the wisdom) that human is endowed with. Dharma is the path by which the Mahasakthi in the temple of your heart can be tapped, experienced, and realized; without adherence to dharma, it can never happen. Have the Name on the tongue and the Form in the eye and the demon called unending desire, will fly from your mind. /Kaama (worldly desire, lust) has a two-headed son, krodha-lobha by name, the twin-headed monster anger-greed. Through the malignant designs of these three, you are robbed of lasting happiness/. Soon, your bhakthi moves on to newer forms of dedication, newer offerings, purer, more valuable, and worthier of your Lord. No one sticks to the slate for long; you feel that you should place before the Lord something more lasting than mere flowers. --- *More about the Karmasanyas http://www.dj6qo.de/dnye/dnye5.htm PS: In the part 2 has mentioned: Gargi said: "No. The wife is one-half of the husband's. This means that she should pursue Dhya (inquiry, examination, introspection) together with the husband..." In addition, Swami explains that 'dhya' is derived from 'dhyan' and refers to the proper dhyana or intense meditation on the Lord. It means concentration on the Godhead. To fix the mind on God, the activities have to be controlled. For, success in that process of control one should overcome the handicaps of the Gunas, the Sathwa, the Rajas and the Thamas. (Reet's compilation from, Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 2. "Primers of spiritual education," Chapter 23; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 5. "Dharma and dharmashaala" Chapter 12; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 18. "The Victory," Chapter 17; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 25. "Parents and Teachers Must Set The Example," Chapter 11; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 29. "Make Swami's words your beacon-light," Chapter 9; Sathya Sai Speaks. Vol. 30. "Role of Sai Youth in World Crisis," Chapter 14; Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 32 Part 2. "Seek God within," Chapter 14; Sathya Sai Baba. Dharma Vahini, Chapter VII. Page 29). Namaste - Reet