Advice to Seekers
In His discourse on Good Friday in 1975, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba said that we should reduce the wandering of the body so that we can concentrate, contemplate and meditate.
If somebody says Sai Baba’s powers have been given to him, then we run to him. Sai Baba’s powers are such that they are not given to anybody else. Nobody has the ability to take powers from Sai Baba or the ability to give them to someone else. Sai Baba’s powers are not given like that, and you should not be led away by such statements. Each one’s power is within him; it is not possible to give such power to another person.
By allowing a weak mind to get control over us in this manner, if we begin running from place to place, when are we going to get strength of mind and control our own mind? We must be able to follow one thought, one path. One does not have to search for spiritual power by going around the world and spending a lot of money. Be in your own house; develop it in yourself; such spiritual power is in you! You don’t have to run for it here and there. God is not external; God is not outside you; God is inside you.
You are not a man, you are God yourself. You are not one person, but three: the one you think you are (physical), the one others think you are (mental), and the one you really are (spiritual) is God. Don’t be under the delusion that God is somewhere and you have to search for Him. God is in you. When you are able to realize that, and when you are able to develop the spiritual power from within you, then you will see God. You are going in the path of worldly consciousness. When you take the path of super-consciousness, you will get realization and you will be able to see the Truth.
The wandering of the physical body
The first thing you have to do is to develop self-confidence. It is people who have no confidence in their own self that begin to wander about, to waver, and to take to various different paths. When you take your body to different places and when you go about moving aimlessly, the mind also goes to different places. The first thing is to steady your physical body. If the body is moving all the time, then the mind is also moving. If you have a container filled with water and the container is continually moving, then the contents will continually be moving. So in this context, we should not keep moving our body and our limbs in an aimless manner; this is a very essential part of our practice of meditation. We should sit quiet and the body should be steady.
Why do we ask people to sit straight and to sit quiet in meditation? We do so because when the body is straight and quiet, the mind inside is also straight and quiet. If you cannot control your body, how can you control your mind? The first thing is to control your body by keeping all the limbs and body organs steady. The basis for the mind wandering is that your physical body is also continually wandering. So the first thing you have to do is to give up this continual wandering of the physical body.
Concentration and meditation
Many people think that concentration is the same thing as meditation, but there is no such connection between concentration and meditation. Concentration is something that is below your senses, whereas meditation is something that is above your senses. Many are under the false impression that concentration is identical with meditation, and they take to a wrong path.
Concentration is something that we use involuntarily in our daily normal routine life. Just look at this, I am now reading the newspaper. My eyes are looking at the letters. My hand is holding the paper. My intelligence is thinking now. Mind is also thinking. Thus when the eyes are doing their work, the hand is doing its work. When the intelligence is doing its work and the mind is also doing its work, then I am able to get the contents of the newspaper. It means that if I want to get at the matter that is contained in the newspaper, all these enumerated senses are concentrated, coordinated and are working on the newspaper.
Not only this, if one wants to drive a car, unless one has concentration, one cannot drive a car on the road. All the normal routines like walking, talking, reading, writing, eating, we do only as result of concentration. If concentration like this is part and parcel of your daily life, then what is it that we practice to get concentration? What we have to practice is something beyond these normal senses. We must rise from being below the senses (that is the state of concentration) to the senses (that is the middle position called contemplation), and from there we must rise above the senses—that is called meditation.
Between concentration and meditation there is a border area that covers both and that is the area of contemplation. To be in that area of contemplation is to free yourself of worldly attachments. If you break away from all the worldly attachments—all the routine attachments in the world—then you will enter the region of contemplation. When you have completely broken away all your attachments, you break through this area of contemplation and you get into the area of meditation.
First develop Self-confidence
These steps can also be described as starting from self-confidence, and then getting self-satisfaction and then self-sacrifice, and the last step is self-realization. The ultimate step of self-realization depends upon the base of self-confidence. You must therefore develop as a first step confidence in your own self. Without having and developing confidence in your own self, if all the time you are talking of some power being with someone and some other power being with someone else, if in this way you travel all the time and depend upon power that is with someone else, when are you going to acquire any power and confidence in your own self?
Peace and bliss are within you; they are not something that is external to you. You may think of going to the Himalayas for getting peace. Yes, your body may go to the Himalayas for getting peace, but your mind may be left behind in the city. How are you going to get peace? You have brought your body to India; but still, if you have the same habits that you are used to in America, what is the use of bringing the body to India? Body is not the essential thing. The transformation should come in your mind; the change should come in your mind.
Many people collect a lot of information, they take a lot of information, but they do not use it to bring about a transformation of their own self. Information is useless, but the transformation in you is important. You can go on mentioning the names of many eatables. Are you going to relieve your hunger in this way? But even if you actually eat one thing only in practice, you are going to relieve your hunger. Therefore, instead of saying so many things in your talk or in your speech (all that is simply book knowledge), if you are able to put into practice one of the things you say, that is going to be useful.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 13
