Oneness Essential

Today is an auspicious day, for the New Year is welcomed with great expectation and the old year is given a grand farewell. This ritual has occurred since the history of man began. But what is the net result? Only despair and distress, anxiety and insane fear! The New Year is an occasion to inquire within and discover the reasons for these negative emotions.

Everyone strives to be at peace with himself and with society (the community in which he has to live) and to be fulfilled. He tries to acquire peace by accumulating wealth, which gives him power over others and the ability to command the conveniences and comforts that he thinks will confer peace. He seeks to hoist himself to positions of authority and influence so that he can shape events according to his aims and fancies. But he finally realises that both these paths are beset with fear, and the peace that he secures thereby is liable to quick and sometimes violent extinction.

How then can man achieve peace? Only through love! Shanti (peace) is the fruit of the tree of life; without it, the tree is a barren stump. It has no value or validity. Fruit is encased in bitter skin so that the sweet juice may be preserved and guarded against marauders. The skin has to be removed before tasting the sweetness within and strengthening oneself with its nutritive value. The thick rind is symbolic of the six evil passions that encase the loving heart of man: lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride, and hate. Those who can remove the rind and contact the sweetness within through hard, consistent discipline attain the peace we all desire. That peace is everlasting, unchanging, and overwhelming.

Reason for insecurity

Of what avail is a car, bank deposit, or bungalow in a posh extension in this city? If you have all these but no love in your heart, the heart becomes a dark deserted temple where the bats of lust and anger breed in everlasting night. Such hearts are foul, diseased with terror and error.

We have this vast gathering of workers of the Kamani Organisations in the various fields of Kamani enterprises [Kamani is a wealthy industrial family]. The industrial, the agricultural, the mercantile, the political, and the administrative—these are like the five vital airs that sustain activity in man. These five must not be at loggerheads; they must work in unison, prompted by love and mutual respect. Only then can the community have peace, security, and happiness. If they do not understand each other and cooperate, or if any one of them strays away into another path, disaster is inevitable.

This necessary cooperation is unfortunately not visible at the present time. Factional interests are predominant and competition is rampant in all fields—labour, politics, administration, commerce, and agriculture. Because of this, anxiety and insecurity stalk the land both in rural and urban areas, and people live with death or disaster threatening them at every corner. An ominous uncertainty shadows them. Human thought then turns to violence and revolution as the obvious cure.

Duty is God, work is worship

But those solutions can never cure, they only worsen the illness. Excitement blinds the reasoning faculty. Passion, violence, and cruelty create more problems, without solving the existing ones. These characteristics are now flooding the land like a deluge. Persons who have no training and no sincere yearning to bear responsibility and discharge the obligations of office are raised to positions of authority. Ability as well as willingness to discharge duties and to bear burdens—these alone entitle men to hold authority over others. Duty is God; work is worship. The power that office confers has to be handled with that attitude of gratitude and reverence.

If every worker, however and wherever placed, remembers and practises this, work will give happiness, contentment, and peace, both to the person concerned and to the society of which he is a limb. The Kamanis erect transmission towers all over the country. It is only when each nut and bolt is fixed fast and firm, that the towers can stand up to the rigorous test of wind and weather. How can we judge whose share in the erection is more important and whose is less? The work of each is essential and valuable. Having the skill and willingness to perform his share of the responsibility in the common enterprise is a person’s title to that position. One item of work cannot be declared as high and another item as low, as that will not only engender malice and hate, but is not correct.

Use skill and intelligence

While going along a road, a man sees a ripe fruit on a tree. The mind craves the fruit, but that by itself cannot fulfil the craving. The feet take him near the tree, but that does not bring about the consummation he desires. The man’s trunk stoops, the hand picks up a stone, the shoulders throw the stone at the fruit, and the fruit falls to the ground. But that does not end the story. The fruit has to be picked up by the fingers, and transferred into the mouth. The teeth have to bite into it, chew it well and the tongue has to send it to the stomach. The eating part of the task is thus over.

But, even that does not end the story of craving for the fruit. Since so many instruments cooperated in the fulfilment, gratitude has to be rendered to each of them. So the stomach sends strength and satisfaction to every limb that shared in the adventure of securing the fruit and eating it—the eye, the feet, the hands, the fingers, the shoulder, the tongue, the teeth, the gullet. Not one of them is neglected.

Each limb must act effectively at the exact juncture to meet the duty entrusted to it and accepted by it, so that the body may live in health and in tip‑top efficiency, alert with all its skills and potentialities. This is true also of the enterprises that man undertakes with others of his kind. Each one must resolve to use his skill and intelligence to discharge his obligations.

Sharing love deepens it

Man has not come into this world to strut about for a while on the stage, consuming food and gaily gallivanting. Man comes into the world so that he may bask in the presence of God, through the exercise and cultivation of love. The earth is a great enterprise, a busy factory, where the product is love. By means of sadhana (spiritual practice), it is possible to produce love and export it to the millions and millions of people who are in need of it. The more it is shared, the deeper it becomes, the sweeter its taste, and the vaster the joy. By means of love, one can approach God and stay in His presence, for God is love. When one lives in love, he is living in God. If you deny God angrily, you are drying up the strings of love in your heart. If you declaim that God is nowhere, you are installing night in your heart and making it ready for dark schemes and misdeeds.

Once upon a time, a monk wearing an ochre robe chanced to enter a village full of atheists. He fell in with a gang of defiant youth who challenged him to show them that the God he adored actually existed. He said he could, but before doing so, asked for a cup of milk.

When the milk was placed before him, the monk did not drink it but sat looking at it, long and silently, but with increasing curiosity. The youth became impatient; their clamour became insistent. The monk told them, “Wait a minute, I am told that there is butter in milk but I must say this cup does not have it, for I do not see any of it, however hard I look!”

The fellows laughed at his innocence and said, “Silly man! Don’t rush to such absurd conclusions. Milk has butter in every drop; that is what makes it so nourishing. If you must see it as a separate concrete entity, you have to boil the milk, cool it, add sour curd, wait for some hours for it to curdle, then churn it, and collect the butter that floats.”

“Ah,” said the monk, “that makes my task of showing you God much easier! God is in every being and every atom of the universe. They exist because of Him, and we can recognise them and enjoy them. To see Him as a concrete entity, you have to follow a prescribed procedure, earnestly, strictly, and sincerely. At the end of it all, you can experience His grace and His glory.”

Divine is everywhere

Nature, all around us and with us, is the vesture of God. There is evidence of His beauty, goodness, wisdom, and power all around us, wherever we turn our eyes. But the art of recognising Him is strange to us and so we deny Him and live on in darkness.

The music emanating from all the broadcasting stations of the world is around us in the atmosphere, but they do not assail our ears at any time. We are not aware of any station. But if we have a receiver, and if we tune it to the correct wavelength, we can hear the matter broadcast from any particular station. If we fail to tune it correctly, we will get only nuisance instead of news! So, too, the Divine is everywhere—above, around, below, beside, near, as well as far. To recognize it, you require not a yantra (machine) but a mantra (mystical formula, potent with psychological undertone). Dhyana (meditation) is the fixing of the exact location of the station, love is the correct tuning in, and realizing the reality and the bliss it confers is the happy clear listening!

Work in the spirit of love; it leads you on to worship.  Work without any regard to the proportion of benefit you derive from it. Work, since it is your duty, work, since you love to work. Work, since that is the way to offer God gratitude for the skills with which He has endowed you. This kind of work leads to wisdom. Wisdom means the recognition of the immanence of the Divine in every being.

Discipline ensures happiness

The relationship between the worker and the employer should be like that between the heart and the body. Both are bound intimately with each other; they depend on each other for their very existence. The employer must take upon himself the role of the father and the employees must accept the role of the children, attached by love and gratitude to the father. Love and affection have to govern the relations between the two, not hatred or envy. If the anger and irreverence of a few are allowed to blind the rest, all will suffer.

In the community hall I inaugurated just now, I want weekly or monthly bhajan (group singing of devotional songs) sessions and satsang (spiritual gatherings). Arrange some good adhyatmik (spiritual) talks or discussions on these occasions. I desire also that you should run a Bala Vihar for your children, where they will learn stories from the scriptures, epics, and the lives of saints belonging to all religions. Children must also be taught habits of cleanliness, mutual help, and cooperation. They can also be taught to sing bhajans and to enact little plays on themes selected from classics. They will also learn habits of discipline, for these alone can ensure individual and social happiness,.

Embodiments of the Divine spirit! I am happy to meet all of you. May the New Year grant you mental peace and may your life’s ideal of self‑realisation be fulfilled. May all comforts and full contentment be added unto you, that is My blessing.

Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 11