For Mankind: The Next Step
Following is an extract from an address delivered by Al Drucker, from California, in the presence of Bhagavan, on 25th December 1980, at the Sathya Sai college hostel in Puttaparthi, India.
Jesus of Nazareth lived 2,000 years ago, but His presence continues to be felt in the hearts of hundreds of millions of His devotees everywhere. He lived His short life with such ability and such sacred purpose that He rose above the narrow confines of His culture and times, and transcended all human limitations to manifest His divinity in its full splendor. His was a holy birth and He came on a sacred mission. He was a great world teacher of love and compassion, and He so transformed His followers that they recognized in Him the long‑promised and long‑awaited messiah—the savior who redeems His people. So they called Him the Christ, and today more than one‑third of the people of the world adore Him as the Lord Jesus Christ.
When Jesus spoke of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God telling of the blessed Father in heaven who had sent Him, it was Sai of whom He spoke. Again it was Sai whom Jesus addressed when He prayed to God, “Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Now, 2,000 years later, it is the Father Himself who has come to finally lead the world out of this Kali Age [Iron Age] that has darkened and plagued mankind’s history for 5,000 years.
The human mind is barely able to comprehend the awesome fact of the advent of God in human form. To draw us near Him, He graces us with signs and wonders and miracles; then He fills us with His divine love that transcends all possibilities of human love, and melts our deepest doubts and fears and feelings of loneliness. He gives us words and teachings that reach deep into the core of our being, and He shows us that all the glitter of this world is worth nothing but pain and heartache. Thus He awakens in us the yearning for a deeper truth, an inner peace and joy which only He can give and that the world itself can never provide.
So we begin to strive on the spiritual path—we struggle, we suffer, we experience, we mature, we discover, we find our inner source, we gather wisdom, and slowly with His grace, we transform. Slowly we advance from one stage to another.
When the time is ripe, the blossom falls off to make way for the fruit. The little caterpillar, earthbound and limited, sheds its form and turns into a butterfly and flies away. Such seems to be the Godward path. And as Swami has told the Christ story to us, such was also the life of Jesus as He developed His divine qualities. While still in body‑consciousness, Jesus viewed Himself as the servant, the messenger of God, and in the tradition of the Bible, separate from God, what has been called the dvaita, or the dualistic stage.
Then He immersed Himself for 12 years in intense spiritual sadhana [spiritual effort], after which He journeyed as a pilgrim to temples and monasteries in Kashmir [India] and Tibet, and other holy places in the Himalayas. There He became imbued with the sacred teachings of the Vedas, and His heart flowed with the divine current. Through His one‑pointed devotion and through God’s grace, in time the young Isa became transformed into the Son of God, developing some of the authority and power and luminous splendor of the Father Himself.
When He was close to 30 years of age, He left behind the sacred places of Bharat and returned to His native land of Judea to preach the word of God to the Jews. It was in this effulgent state of God‑consciousness that He manifested Himself as the messiah to His followers. Finally, through the agony and passion of the crucifixion, He came into the full atmic awareness and declared, “I and the Father are One.” It was then that He merged with Sai into the ocean of divine love and bliss, to become the cosmic Christ.
Swami frequently advises us to examine our own movement on the God path, to see how far we have progressed. Are we still totally earth‑bound in body‑consciousness? Or are we ready to move on and to let go and fly to God?
We sense the imminence of a worldwide explosion about to happen that will shake the whole earth to its foundations for ages to come. I am not speaking of predictions of calamities or catastrophes that may or may not happen. I am talking about an explosion of Good that, we can be absolutely sure, is to happen. I am talking about the explosion of Sai consciousness over the whole world—the spiritual revolution about to burst forth.
Look around and you will see people coming from everywhere—from North America, from South America, from North and South Africa, from all over Europe, and India, from the Orient and from Southeast Asia, from Western Asia, from Australia and New Zealand and the Pacific. You may wonder about the communist countries… I remember Swami saying, “Don’t say ‘communist’, say ‘come you, next’.” So they, too, will soon be represented here.
Bhagavan Himself has called us His beloved children and has told us that we not only have the right, but the duty to claim our divine inheritance. Jesus took the Ten Commandments of Israel and the Laws of Moses, and the books of the prophets and distilled them all down into two basic principles on which He laid the foundations of His whole life and teachings. They were: “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But not just your neighbor, you shall love your enemy, even if he hates you and curses you and despises you. You shall love him as much as you love yourself and as much as you love those nearest and dearest to you. Thus shall you live in peace and brotherhood with all men.”
Now, 2,000 years later, Sai has gone even further by reminding us of the ancient advaitic [non-dualistic] teachings, that we must see and experience everything and everyone as exactly identical with ourselves, for there is only the one Self. There is no other. And that Self is love itself. That Self is God.
So here is our direction from the Lord for our next step. By living these precepts, Bhagavan told us, Jesus earned the right to be called the Son of God. By elevating our own lives to the sacredness and nobility of Jesus’ life, bringing joy and love and compassion and righteousness to all we touch, we, too, can call ourselves Emmanuel, the anointed one, the Son of God, and deserve to sit at the footstool of our dearest Father, Lord Sai.
As our hearts expand, we see only the good in all of God’s creations. Swami tells the story of Jesus and his disciples coming upon the body of a dead dog lying in the road. Some of His disciples tried to direct Him around this unpleasant scene, but Jesus went very close and looked at the remains for some time and said, “Someone must have loved this animal very much to have taken such good care of it when it was alive. See how perfect its teeth were—so pearly and shiny and white.” When most of us would have revolted, He saw only the positive and the good.
We are told that in the early days of Christianity the newly‑formed community of Christians lived in constant joy and brotherhood, full of hope and love, and God‑consciousness. This is what attracted so many new converts to them wherever they went. Imagine these simple and innocent folk filled with their belief in the Savior, their beloved Lord Jesus Christ, pitted against the pagan might of imperial Rome, the conqueror of the ancient world. This most tender of flowers was caught in a thicket of thorns. What chance of survival would one give it? Yet in time, not only Rome, but all of the wild, warlike tribes of Europe and the barbarian hordes coming down from the east and north succumbed to the Christ message and bowed down to the prince of peace.
In this way, slowly over the centuries, Sai has been transforming man, not only in Europe but everywhere in the world. He has used the great religious streams—Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and others, each appropriate to its place and time, as His instruments for directing man away from his lower impulses and toward his higher essence. Slowly, Sai has been preparing mankind for the coming of the Father.
Now man has reached a point in his evolution for the next big step forward. On the one hand, man already has the power to destroy himself and all higher forms of life on the planet. But he has also reached a level of maturity and global mobility, not only a physical mobility but also a psychological and intellectual mobility that permits him to break free of prejudices and boundaries that have kept him tied down over the centuries.
We are breaking down not only national barriers but also the religious barriers, racial barriers, language, and economic barriers that have kept us from loving each other. We have reached this state because our Divine Teacher is here amongst us, and His grace has been showered upon us. This grace is available to all of humanity, which will soon learn of its glorious destiny. Soon, everywhere man will reach out across the fence to his brother, to revive an ancient dream of world brotherhood, with all mankind united through the common bond of love. That dream, so long deferred, is now about to become a reality on a global scale.
How fortunate we are to be called in during these early beginnings of the Sai era, now unfolding. It is a golden age that will brighten the world for millennia to come. Let us dedicate our lives to Him and let us go out and invite the people of the world to dedicate their lives to Him and thereby make His advent one long triumphal procession of mankind returning to its father, like the prodigal son, returning home.
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, April 1981
