Close the Windows and Save the Lamp

This discourse, given by Sathya Sai Baba at His Prasanthi Nilayam ashram in 1965, points out the way the spiritual seeker should proceed along the path to self-realization.

Mukkoti Ekadasi [an Indian festival commemorating the gods’ achievement of immortality], which happens today, is also known as Vaikunta Ekadasi (a day sacred to Lord Vishnu). The two speakers who addressed you described the traditional legend of the churning of the ocean. They talked about all the details the Bhagavatham [Hindu scripture] gives of the ocean of milk, Vishnu’s incarnation as the tortoise, Mount Mandara, Vasuki (a venomous serpent), the demons and celestials, and the various things that came out of the ocean, culminating in the nectar of immortality. That legend has great value for you because you, too, have to churn the ocean of your heart and win the nectar for yourself. The legend is only a reminder, a cue, a call.

The heart full of purity and poise is the ocean of milk. The steady contemplation of the Divine, either as your own reality or as the ideal to be reached, is the Mount Mandara planted in it as the churning rod. Vasuki (the serpent who was wound round the churning rod as a rope, emitting poisonous fumes during the process of churning and nearly frightening the demons, who held his head) is the group of the senses. The rope is held by the good and the bad impulses, and both struggle with the churning process, eager for the results that each has set its heart on.

The lesson of the legend

The grace of God is the tortoise incarnation, for the Lord Himself comes to the rescue once He knows that you are earnestly seeking the secret of immortality: He comes, silently and unobserved, as the tortoise did, holding the reflective process unimpaired and serving as the steady base for all spiritual practice. Many things emerge from the mind, when churned, but the wise wait patiently for the appearance of the guarantor of immortality and seize upon it with avidity. That is the lesson of the legend. It is a summary of the science of the Self.

“Bhajagopalam (be attached to Krishna, the Divine cowherd),” the song the doctor sang at the beginning of this meeting, carries the same message, perhaps in a simpler and easier form. Remembrance of the Lord’s name is the method for crossing over the ocean of worldly life in this age; remembering the Lord by means of His name is enough to save man. The Lord is of the nature of bliss; He is also divine bliss, which should be tasted through the name. It is being, awareness, and bliss absolute. Many doubt whether such a small name like Rama, Sai, or Krishna can take you across the boundless sea of worldly life. People cross vast oceans on a tiny raft; they are able to walk through dark jungles with a tiny lamp in their hands. The name—even the Om, which is smaller—has vast potentialities. The raft need not be as big as the sea.

Recitation of the name is like the operation of boring to tap underground water; it is like the chisel stroke that will release the image of God imprisoned in the marble. Break the encasement, and the Lord will appear; cleave the pillar, as Prahlada (Lord Vishnu’s devotee) asked his father to do, and the Lord, who is ever there, will manifest Himself. Churn and you will bring the butter latent in the milk into view. In the spiritual field, you learn that spiritual practice from yogis, who have gained and offered that fresh butter to Krishna.

Curing the infection of worldly life

Many people ridicule yogis (God-centered men) and scoff at them, calling them selfish, anti-social, self-centered idlers who run away from their obligations and seek asylum in solitude and silence. But being near does not ensure usefulness. Being far does not imply hatred or fear of company or uselessness. Viruses enter your own blood stream, and surely, nothing can be nearer to you, yet they are mortal enemies. Members of the same family are envious and suspicious of one another; brothers or sisters fight in courts of law and fill the pockets of lawyers. Even twins seldom love each other. It is not being near that counts.

In the past, yogis moved out into lonely spots and sought teachers of the inner path, much as young technicians do today, going to Japan or America or Russia to learn skills that will help build a better India. The yogis do not give up kith and kin and all chances to make a fortune because they are afraid of facing the hard realities of life; they do not flee from loss or defeat. Instead, they go to seek the secret of eternal joy. They win it, and by their lives they inspire others to win the precious secret by treading the same path they themselves have found useful.

No one calls a man selfish if he has gone abroad to equip himself better as an engineer or doctor. Why then should the man who undergoes greater deprivations to equip himself better as an engineer of the mind, utilizing its undoubted powers, not for bondage, but for liberation, be tarred as egocentric? This behavior only shows ignorance of true values. There are isolation hospitals where patients suffering from chronic infectious diseases are treated and cured. The hermitages in the forests are such hospitals, where people who want to be cured of the infection of worldly life can undergo the treatment and come out free to serve other patients.

A realized person sees the same self in all

Today is the day when during the churning of the ocean, nectar emerged and was distributed to the gods. The gods had slid into the calamity of losing their immortality. Man, too, is the child of immortality; that is the reason why he cannot force himself into the conviction that he will die. He sees his neighbor die, but believes that he will somehow escape death. The realized man, however, is ever ready to cast off this encumbrance and escape from the prison of name and form. Emperor Janaka was such a realized person. He never lost the consciousness of oneness.

Once, Sulabha, the celebrated woman dialectician, visited his court, and during the discussion, she challenged Janaka to treat her also as his queen, for “as a realized person, you should make no difference between people,” since realized men see the same self in all. But Janaka retorted, “As a realized person, you should recognize oneness; there is no validity in talking of men and women as distinct.” Thus he taught her the real “highest wisdom.”

Mere drinking the nectar that I create will not confer immortality on you. Everything that is born must die; everything that is constructed will disintegrate. But you can escape death, by not being born again. When you know you are the limitless Self (or the soul that is the infinite consciousness), then you are no longer subjected to the limitation of birth. That is the secret. How can you know the Self? Such an understanding is the result of a long process of sharpening the intellect and purifying the emotions and the impulses. You may do the most rigorous repetition of a holy name or practice the direst of austerities, but if you are not virtuous, all of this effort is a sheer waste of time.

You are the limitless self

You may have the best of vegetables, you may be the most capable cook, but if the copper vessel in which you prepare your soup is not tinned, the concoction you cook will be highly poisonous! So “tin” your heart with truth, right conduct, peace, and divine love. The heart will then become a vessel fit for repeating the holy name, meditation, religious vows, pilgrimage, ritualistic worship, and the other dishes that you prepare in it.

Reforming your tendencies and character is an uphill task. A man may study all the textbooks on spiritual practice, all the scriptures, and he may even lecture for hours on them, but he will slip into error when temptation confronts him. Like land that is parched, the heart may appear to be free from any crop of evil, but when the first showers fall, the seeds and roots underneath the soil change the wasteland into a carpet of green.

Once, a wandering mendicant refused to reveal his caste, creed, origin, or destination. However, a shrewd housewife discovered them quite easily. She fed him well, and when he lay fast asleep snoring, she applied a red-hot rod to the sole of his foot, and the man shrieked, “Allah.” The real core can never be altered, hidden, or suppressed.

But what is the real core? It is not the particular religious belief or the name or the language that you have learned on your mother’s lap. It is the absolute reality that you are. You know in the very depths of your being that “you are and will be.” That is the characteristic of being (existence). All beings have it. You are also eager to know, to expand by knowledge, to reach out. All beings have such an urge for expression. That is the characteristic of awareness. You seek joy; all beings do so. That is the characteristic of divine bliss. The bliss in you seeks its kin everywhere, in everything. That is why it is said: being, awareness, and bliss link the particular and the universal. Everything exists, for it is being; it is expressing itself, because it is awareness; it is pleasant, because it is bliss.

If you are able to equip your mind with this consciousness, you are a realized person. Or else you are a masquerader. There are three types of minds: (1) minds like ginned cotton, ready to receive the spark of highest wisdom and to give up in one instant blaze the weakness and prejudices of ages, (2) minds like dry wood, which succeed but only after a brief time, and (3) minds like green logs, which resist the onslaught of the fire of wisdom with all their might.

The little game the Lord plays

Herds of cattle run toward a mirage to slake their thirst, but you ought to be wiser. You have discrimination and renunciation; you can detach yourselves consciously from pursuits that you discover are deleterious. Sit quietly for a few minutes and ponder over the fate of those who run toward the mirage. Are they happy? Have they the strength to bear distress and distinction with equanimity? Have they a glimpse of the beauty, the truth, the grandeur of the universe—the handiwork of God? Have they the vision of themselves as the center of the universe?

You have read that the Lord melted and moved when someone performed acute penance, and He came and asked softly and sweetly, “My dear child, what is it you need?” He has manifested Himself to give, yet consider the grace that induces Him to ask, “What is it you need?” He wants you to express in words what you have yearned for and to ask for it from the Lord, whom you have brought before you through the exercise of silence. Such is the little game He plays. And sometimes He wills that the question is answered in the way His plan demands. Ravana’s brother Kumbhakarna was blessed with a timely twist of the tongue, so he asked for nidra (the power to sleep) instead of nigrah (the power to slaughter)!

The seer should not attach himself to the seen; that is the way to get free. Contact of the senses with the object arouses desire and attachment, which leads to effort and either elation or despair. Then comes the fear of loss or grief at failure, and the train of reactions lengthens. With so many doors and windows kept open to all the winds that blow, how can the flame of the lamp within survive? That lamp is the mind, which must burn steadily, unaffected by the dual demands of the world outside.

Complete surrender to the Lord is one way of closing the windows and doors, for then, in that stance of complete surrender to God, you are bereft of ego, and thus you are not buffeted by joy or grief. Complete surrender makes you draw upon the grace of the Lord to meet all the crises in your life, so it makes you heroic, more stalwart, better prepared for the battle.

On the morning of this day, the great Bhishma [a hero of the Mahabharata scripture] waited a long time on his bed of arrows. Resolve on this auspicious day to enter upon the quest for truth. The winter solstice is the best time to start. This morning the Sun turns north, the direction of the gods, where Siva resides. The Sun is the deity that controls the eye, the vision of man, and so these six months, when the Sun is proceeding Siva-ward, are very propitious for man, too, to do likewise.

The real heavenly nectar

Dealers in timber in East Godavari District here know that logs are floated down the Godavari River during the high floods and they are retrieved from the waters, after miles and miles of journey, at Rajahmundry or some such place. Railroad cross-ties are floated down from the Himalayan forests through the Ganges and caught at Haridwar [a city in Northern India] in the thousands. Join the flood, then the flowing stream and the journey becomes easier. So, too, if to attain the Lord you practice spiritual disciplines when the deity of vision is moving toward the divine region, you get the benefit of the momentum. Today is also Vaikunta Ekadasi. Many of you expect Me to go to the Chitravati riverbed and create nectar and give it to all. Well, on the road to the river, you meet herds of cattle that move to it and return. You have earned the verbal nectar of this discourse, which you can treasure in your mind and act upon. Know the worth of this real heavenly nectar; do not allow it to be wasted; garner it to become Godly.

Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. V