Why I Love Villages Most

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba spoke to Indian villagers in 1975 and expressed that He loved the villages because the virtues of detachment, uprightness, honesty, and sincerity still existed there while it had fast disappeared from the towns.

The Sun is not the only gift that has dawned on this village this day; ananda (divine bliss), too, has dawned. For I have come to make you aware of the ananda you are. Ananda is the home from which you have strayed away! It is your place of nativity. You seek your home elsewhere, and so you are afflicted by distress and disappointment. Know that ananda is your nature, sustenance, and goal.

Villages are the places where this knowledge comes easier to man and takes deeper roots. That is the reason I love villages most. For, the virtues of detachment, uprightness, honesty, and sincerity that are essential prerequisites for acquiring this awareness are surviving, in however attenuated a form, only in villages this day. They have disappeared from towns long ago. Of course, you have your troubles and handicaps, but certainly you have fewer obstacles to overcome when you decide to lead the good life and attain the awareness of your divinity.

Man’s body is God’s home

Why is man afflicted today with fear and anxiety? Are we to search for the reasons outside us or do they lie with us? The reason lies in the false emphasis we have laid on things of the material world, ignoring things of the spirit. The body that man bears is essentially the receptacle of God. It is a temple where God is installed and where God is the Master. It does not deserve all the attention you now pay to fulfill its urges, needs, and whims. It is equipped with very valuable instruments that can help you in the journey, but you seldom use them!

The senses bring you impressions from the outside world, but you do not evaluate these impressions by the touchstone of a clear reason or a balanced mind. You do not proceed from one step to another in the march toward the elimination of the ego and the emergence in to the One. City dwellers are buffeted by storms of passion and emotion, and they are hunted or haunted by phantom desires and wild imaginings. They have neither the inclination nor the insight to dedicate their time, their skills, and their activity to divine ends.

The Divine is the core, the essence of your being. God is everywhere. When He is recognized and adored as the Indweller of your body, it becomes a temple, and it is no more a burden. God is shining, announcing Himself through you. He is expressing Himself through every thought, word, and deed that emanates from you.

Go deeper within

In the temple that is built and put together, we have an idol that is sculpted and molded by man. But in this temple that is gifted by God, God shines in His own light, and manifests in His own glory as love, power, and wisdom. He shines and manifests thus not only in a single body, but in all bodies. He is the Indweller in each; so when you insult, injure, or inflict infamy on another, remember you are inviting the pain to visit your own self, for the other is none other than your own self.

Seek the gem of divine knowledge within you, just as precious stones have to be sought in the bowels of the earth. Now what you seek is trivial trash. Go deeper, where the treasure is stored. I know you have, in this village, as in most villages, a big chariot festival when the replica of the ‘Installed Idol’, the processional form, is taken round the entire village with great pomp and paraphernalia. The wheeled chariot or the palanquin is decorated with reverent attention; bands of musicians and dancers are engaged to precede the chariot; many come to the festival to admire the decoration of the chariot; more are interested in the songs and dances, the songsters and the dancers; only a handful are drawn by the idol that is the central figure of all the gaiety and adoration.

The human body, too, is a temple chariot; the atma (divinity) is installed therein; and it is dragged by emotions, impulses, passions, and urges along the streets of desire. Success and failure, joy and grief, gain and loss, are the dancers who accompany this procession of life. Here, too, many pour their attention only on the chariot, its height, its decoration, and its progress. Many others are concerned with the dance of dualities, the pain-pleasure duet that is part of the procession. Few pay attention to the atma, the crown and consummation of human existence.

Listen to the inner voice

Sages and saints have known that the most noteworthy achievement of the senses of man is the glorification of the God within. “They are not eyes, they are but globules of glass that do not earn a vision of God,” says one. “They are not ears, they are but muscular protrusions that do not relish the praise of God,” says another [Saint] Surdas condemns the hand that does not worship God and calls such hands sticks of wood. The world and its attractions may appeal to your instincts and impulse, but God draws out your love as no worldly thing can. Develop the inner vision, the habit of listening to the inner voice, and you are assured of unshakeable peace and infinite joy.

In the village you are ever in contact with God, His grace, His tenderness, and His love. In the cities, life is more superficial. You may not have the benefit of the radio or the electric current; but you can hear the birds sing at sunrise and you can bask in the bright Sun underneath the pure blue sky. When you get the twin gifts of medical care and schooling facilities, you need nothing more for marching onward to happiness and peace. But I find that in several villages, the behavior of some one person or some one family disrupts life and breeds fear, faction, and fighting. Only the potent drug called love can cure this. The forces of brotherhood, mutual help, and sympathetic understanding have to overpower the sinister influence of these individuals and promote unity and strength.

Foster & feed man’s heart & spirit

Many leaders of this country are promising to provide a quantity of food, some kind of dwelling, and a few yards of clothing to everyone so that people may be happy. They also promise to each schooling so that they may write and read letters and grasp the news from the papers. But these cannot ensure peace, for man is not merely a bundle of bones and muscles, he is equipped with a heart and a spirit and these have also to be fed and fostered.

Men may have superabundance of food, clothing, and houses, but their hearts may be dry and their spirits gloomy. Sense-control, self-confidence, contentment, absence of hatred and greed—these are far more precious as possessions than land, money, or houses. The Seva Samiti [volunteering committee] that has been started in your village, with its subsidiary units of Mahila Vibhag and Bala Vikas (all Sai organizations), will sow the seeds of these disciplines and promote peace and happiness.

Above all, cultivate unity and brotherhood. A single fiber of hemp cannot bind even an ant; thousands rolled into a rope can tame a wild elephant into quiet submission. In unity lies strength and prosperity. Unity in the villages can usher in a new era of joy and prosperity in the entire nation.

Make the temple of Vinayaka inaugurated today the hub of this new movement. The temple is to the village as the heart is to the body. You have all joined to build it and bring it into being; continue to reap its benefits together and to share its light together. With the grace of God what seems impossible can be achieved quite easily. All are children of God; do not injure anyone, for that injury will react on you quite soon. You reap as you sow; you cannot grow a fruit-tree when the seed you have planted is that of a weed.

Think of God to be rewarded

There are some ignorant persons who laugh at bhajans [devotional singing] and other acts of worship and characterize them as waste of valuable time! These persons might laugh at your pouring bags of paddy seeds on slushy fields and condemn that act, too, as waste of valuable food material! But you know that for every bag of seed, Mother Earth will give back, in a few weeks, grain tenfold or even twenty-fold. Time spent in thoughts of God or adoration of the Divine is, indeed, well spent, for it rewards you with a rich harvest of mental peace and courage.

When thieves attack the neighbor, you become alert and keep vigil; you feel that it may be your turn next. So you must see that thieves do not enter the village. Then all can be safe and secure. Your neighbor’s loss is as much your own. Do not inflame your anger and blow it into a conflagration that may destroy the entire village. Be cool and calm. Take a glass of cold water and lie down quiet for a while till the fury loses its heat. Do not fly into a passion and throw vulgar abuse at the person you dislike. And be careful, do not indulge in behaviors and start imitating them before your children, for they will learn these behaviors and start imitating. You cannot easily correct them later.

Remove evil from your heart

Goodness is Godliness. Never talk ill of others; spend your time in showering love and in mutual help. Wake up early and sing the glory of God in group bhajan moving along the roads and cleansing the atmosphere polluted by anger and hatred. Let the air you breathe be free from evil vibrations. When you mention the sky you point your finger upward to indicate that it is there. But the sky is here also. It is one of the five elements, the panchabhuthas. Its sign and symbol is sound; wherever sound is, there we can infer is the sky. There is an inner sky also, the akasha [sky] in the heart. Just as the Sun and Moon in the outer sky are hidden by thick masses of cloud, the Sun (intellect) and Moon (mind) in the inner sky are also hidden and suppressed by thick clouds of vice and evil. So make all efforts to remove these clouds by the strong gale of devotion to God.

When you cook any item of food in a copper vessel, however fresh and fine the vegetables are, however clean the daal (lentils) and salt, however free from grit and dirt the tamarind fruits, if the vessel has no lining of tin, the food made therein will turn into poisonous stuff. You all know this truth. The heart, too, is a copper vessel where you prepare various types of food for yourself and others. See that it has a good lining of love; or else it, too, will cause harm and pain to you and the rest.

Fortitude conquers anger

Love…love…love… first…love, as long as life lasts. For Myself, I can say, I shower more blessings on those who decry or defame Me than those who worship and adore Me! For, those who spread falsehoods about Me derive joy there from; I am happy that I am the cause for their exultation and joy. You, too, must accept this line of argument and be very happy when someone derives joy by defaming you. Do not respond by defaming that person, then the chain of hatred will bind both and drag both down. Life will become a tragedy. Conquer anger by means of fortitude; conquer hatred by love. Do not feed anger with retaliation; do not feed hatred with fury.

Forget and forgive all that has happened amongst you until this very moment; start a new chapter of love and brotherhood from now on. The professors and the students of the Sri Sathya Sai College are ready and eager to come to your help, whenever you need it. Some young men from this village are students of this college; when they come home, you must remind them of the ideals of service and reverence that we are instilling into them.

The college is trying to help them not only to earn a university degree but also to become skilled and enthusiastic servants of the weak and the disabled, and efficient citizens of the nation. They should not behave like the half-educated haughty youth who wander the streets with a transistor on their shoulders, pursuing the vanities of the world and running into debt and dissoluteness.

They should preserve and develop their ancestral patrimony (not only land and riches, also heritage and culture); they should be assets to their parents, the society, and the nation. They should not exploit the innocence and ignorance of the very parents who have sacrificed everything to send them to college and maintain them in hostels. Send your sons to the college; there they can learn to escape these temptations and to be useful and efficient for the task of preserving Indian culture and spirituality. Encourage your sons to realize the meaning of My mission and to become fit instruments for spreading, by the example of their lives, the message that I have come to give mankind.

Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 13