Good and Bad
Sathya Sai’s discourse on a distant Deepawali day holds as good today: light the lamp within to destroy the negativities, and rejoice as God shines forth.
The body is the temple where God dwells within, and is installed in the heart. But, it is not enough if you go on repeating this very pleasing axiom, and pretend that you have joined the ranks of the good. To make that statement is a great responsibility. This requires you to behave every moment as if you are aware of the God within. The priest in the temple first cleans the altar, then he scrubs and polishes the vessels used for worship, and then, he pours water sanctified by mantras in order to cleanse the idol, and finally, he offers adoration through flowers and fragrance, reciting the meaningful names of God.
Likewise, you too have to cleanse the senses, the instruments of action and knowledge, and remove all the blemishes of bad habits, tendencies, feelings, and thoughts. Render yourselves pure, steady, and selfless. Then only can you deserve the chance of worshipping the God within. Until then, the temple will be in ruins, infested with bats that revel in the darkness. The word vyakti is used to refer to the individual man, not without a certain degree of appropriateness. The Sanskrit word means he who has manifested. What has man made manifest? The answer is: the Divinity in him. That which was non-manifested due to the heavy overlay of desire and ego has been manifested as a result of sadhana [spiritual discipline], and the a‑vyakta [non-manifested] has become vyakta [manifested]. He who has achieved this is the vyakti, and not other humans. Keep the mirror of the heart untainted by desire, and its chief attendant, anger; then, the God within will clearly shine therein.
As soon as you rise from bed in the morning, examine for a few moments your thoughts, plans, habits, and attitudes toward others that are ready to pounce on you, and then decide the shape of things to come throughout the day. Identify in the motley crowd the vicious, wicked, evil, harmful, and the ones that burn in anger and breed on greed, and instead, assert that you are not willing to be led by them. Throw your inclination on the side of the good, constructive, clean, ones that urge you to love, renounce, and rise up a purer, stronger, and happier man than when you went to bed. That is the real sadhana, not simply spending a few minutes watching your breath or wandering homeless, and living on alms.
There is a belief that is strongly held and justified by many that good deeds and bad will cancel each other out, and it is only the balance that one has to suffer the consequences there of. That is to say, the consequences of sin can be diminished by the consequences of acts of merit done by the same person; ten sins and eleven meritorious acts mean that the balance is favorable to the doer! But, this system of accounting does not hold true in the spiritual field. The consequences are there, but they do not cancel out each other.
It is like this: a man scatters seeds of thorny plants as well as of fruit trees. Both grow together, and both have to be endured. They sprout distinctly, and are ruled by their own innate dharma [characteristics]. You may have in an orchard a thousand fruit trees and one thorn bush, but that [bush] will not turn into a fruit tree by association with the rest. What has to be done is to pull it out and destroy the thorny bush. Identify it as thorny and harmful; and, then, by discrimination, pull it out by the roots. If the roots remain, when the rains come, the tree will sprout again even if the slightest trace of life is left in it.
Only very few are now able to spot out the thorny bushes and uproot them; so, they have to suffer the thorns even while they are enjoying the fruits. You must reap the mixed harvest if you do not take note in time. As I said at the beginning of this discourse, the tragedy is that man seeks to avoid the progeny of sin with pleasure; he seeks to earn the fruits of meritorious deeds, but is not inclined to follow the meritorious path. Be vigilant about your steps. Do they lead you along the road that will take you to the goal you have in view? Or do they turn away from it? How can you reach east when your steps move toward west?
Many people ask me, “Swami! When can I realize the truth? Please grant me self‑realization.” My reply is, “You will be liberated the moment the ‘I’ goes; do not ask for `my’ liberation. `My’ liberation! The ‘I’ should go; the ‘I’ and ‘mine’ should go. That is liberation itself. This ‘I’ has been created, protected, and grown by your own ignorance. A baby has no ‘I’ or ‘mine.’ It easily gives up anything from its grasp; the ‘I’ hardens with the increase of intelligence, and it does not part with a doll or a toy. Do not allow the role of the separate ‘I’ to damage the springs of love and sacrifice in your heart.”
In order to escape the nefarious influence of this ego, cleanse the heart with constant contemplation of God, His glory, leelas [divine play], beauty, and amazing attributes. Contemplate the vast so that your heart too might overstep its limits and become vast. Bhoomaa [earth], the vast, alone confers joy. Another directive I give is: Be more concerned with your own progress, and correction than with the good and evil of others. There is time enough to worry about the good of others after you have become good yourself. But, try as far as you can to give ananda [happiness] to others; desist from causing pain to others. You must feel the pain of others as your own, and you must be happy when others are happy. That is the way to realize the unity of all. Above all, be vigilant because the fruits of sadhana may be destroyed by negligence. When the rains come, the earth is green once more, for the seeds of grass are underground, though you thought the land was dry and fallow. Satsang [company of the good and holy] and satkarma [good actions]—these have to be kept up all through life.
Deepawali or festival of lights celebrates the destruction of Narakasura, the king of Pragjyotishapura by [Lord] Krishna. Narakasura literally means the demon who, with every act of his, was taking a step toward hell. It symbolizes ignorant and evil-minded men and their pura or habitation or fort? It is called, Prag‑jyoti‑sha! Prag means the first, the initial. Jyoti means light; and sha means forgetting or ignoring. The city which has forgotten or is ignoring the primal light, the body where man lives that has neglected the atma that is the primordial source of light (intelligence, jnana), that is the Prag‑jyoti‑sha pura over which the naraka (hell ward) marching demon ruled. And, Krishna saved him, by destroying his demonic tendencies and showing him the light.
Source: Sanathana Sarathi, May 1971
