Bend Before Prema and Sathya
The following are excerpts from Sri Sathya Sai Baba’s discourses during Shivaratri, March 1963
Do not grieve that the Lord is testing you and putting you to the ordeal of undergoing them. For, it is only when you are tested that you can assure yourself of success or become aware of your limitations. You can then concentrate on the subjects in which you are deficient and pay more intensive attention, so that you can pass in them, too, when you are tested again. You should not study for the examination at the last moment; study well in advance and be ready with the needed knowledge and the courage and confidence born out of that knowledge and skill. What you have studied well in advance must be rolled over and over in the mind just before the examination; that is all that should be done then. This is the pathway to victory.
Many grieve: “It is said that darshanam (getting the audience) is papa-nashanam (destruction of sin); well, I have had darshan not once but many times, yet my evil fate has not left me and I am suffering even more than formerly.” True, they have come and have had darshan, and they have sowed fresh seeds secured from this place, seeds of Prema (Love), Shraddha (Faith), Bhakti (Devotion), Satsang (Good company), Sarveshwara-chinta (Godly thoughts), Namasmarana (Remembering God’s Name), etc., and they have learnt the art of intensive cultivation and soil‑preparation. They have now sown the seeds in the well‑prepared fields of the cleansed hearts. Now, until the new harvest comes in they must consume the grain already stored in previous harvests. The troubles and anxieties are the crop collected in previous harvests; so do not grieve and lose heart.
In this sacred land, people have forgotten the real source of sacredness, of holy life, of living in peace with oneself and others. Now the time has come to remind them of it. With jewel in the neck, the wearer has been searching for it everywhere else. A person must hold the mirror to the face. The Vedic clarion call will soon ring in ears of humanity. The Person has come to remind man and to redirect him along the True path.
If anyone challenges you to show them one text where the principles of Sanathana Dharma (Eternal Religion) are succinctly stated, tell them about the Bhagavata Gita. It is the essence of the Vedas (Scriptures of Eternal Truths) and the Shastras and the Puranas. It is like a bottle of fruit‑juice obtained from a basket of fruit. It will not get dry, or rot like the fruits, for the juice has been well extracted and preserved. Its taste and excellence will persist until the end of this Yuga (Age) and then it will merge in the Vedas.
In the forest of Samsara (worldly life), the body is a tree, while the thoughts, feelings, and imaginations of man are the branches, twigs and leaves. Worry, anxiety, and fear are the monkeys that frisk among the branches. Grief in its various forms represents the insect pests that destroy the blooms. The blossoms are smiles; the owls and crows that infest it are anger, hatred, sloth, and spite!
The Sun never rises or sets; it appears to rise and appears to set on account of the revolution of the earth! What happens when the Sun rises is that the avyakta (invisible) becomes vyakta (visible), that is all. This series of udaya (rising) and asthamana (setting) of Sun exist only for those who feel it and does not exist for those who deny it. The duality of appearance and non‑appearance can be overcome by jnana. So, also, when the jnana‑bhaskara (Sun of Knowledge) is known, it is experienced as shining always with undiminished luster.
Lingam means simply “the sign,” “the symbol”; it is just a mark that indicates merging (laya); that is to say, the passing away of the mind and all mental agitations and all mental pictures, which means this objective world. Shivaratri is the day on which the Moon, the presiding deity of the mind, is as near laya as possible, and so, just a little extra effort that day leads to full success; the sadhaka can thereby achieve complete Manonashana (destruction of the mind). The realization is that everything is subsumed in the Lingam (the symbol of the Formless).
God is a huge fire, and the sparks that fly out from it are the jivis (individual souls). The jivis are infinitesimal fractions of the same effulgence, having the same splendorous essence as their base. But the wind of vasanas (impressions left on the mind by past actions) sweeps upon the sparks and puts out the light and destroys the heat. But the same wind cannot put out the fire, it can only feed it further and cause its splendor to shine forth in even greater measure, for the Sankalpa (Will) of the Lord can only add to His Glory.
Just as the dreams you see are shaped by the experiences, cravings, and disappointments of the waking stage, the experiences of the waking stage are the results of your previous lives. While dreaming, you do not relate the incidents and emotions to the waking stage, do you? You feel they are un‑related, unique, genuine experiences, is it not? So, too, you do not realize that your joy and grief, your actions and reactions in the waking stage are all based on your past lives. But they are so based.
A great painter once came to a Prince and offered to do a fresco on the palace wall. Behind him came another, who declared that he would paint on the wall opposite, whatever painting the first one drew, even if a curtain hid it from view and even if he was not told the subject of the fresco! Both were commissioned to the tasks they had accepted. The second man finished his work at the very moment the first one announced that he had completed the task! The prince arrived in the hall, where a thick curtain partitioned off the two artists and their paintings. He saw the fresco and admired it very much. Then he ordered that the curtain be removed, and lo, on the wall facing the fresco there was an exact duplicate of the picture that the first man had so laboriously painted! Exact …because what he had done was to polish the wall and making it a fine big mirror: Make your hearts, too, clean and pure and smooth, so that the Glory of the Lord might be reflected therein, so that the Lord might see His own image therein.
The players do not derive as much joy as the onlookers; so develop the attitude of the onlooker, the witness (drashta). The batsmen, bowlers and fieldsmen do not get a fraction of the pleasure that the `fans’ beyond the boundary derive. They note each fault and excellence in stroke and defense; they appreciate the finer points of the game. So, too, to get the maximum joy out of this game of living, one should cultivate the attitude of the onlooker, even when one has to get embroiled in the game.
I will not bend before anyone for anything. I am therefore unafraid. I bend for Prema and I bend before Truth, that is all. Do not worry about worldly comforts and ask Me about those things as if they are all‑in‑all. Do not waste your precious lifetime in distracting doubts about the existence of the Lord in human form here and now. Cultivate prema toward all; that is the greatest service you can do to yourself, for all others are but you yourself. You, too, should bend only before prema and sathya, not before hatred and cruelty and falsehood.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 3
Man did not come here to sleep and eat; he has come to manifest, by disciplined processes, the divine in him. That is why he is called Vyakti (individual), he who makes vyakta (clear) the Shakti (power) that is in him¾the Divine energy that motivates him. For this purpose, he has come endowed with this body and the intelligence needed to control it and divert it to useful channels of activity. You must achieve this by Dharma‑nishtha and Karma‑nishtha—steady pursuit of morality and good deeds.
~Sathya Sai Baba
