To the Mothers
In a landmark discourse, Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba issues a candid, endearing call to young mothers to embrace their responsibility as their children’s first spiritual preceptor, their efforts being crucial to sustain India’s moral and spiritual greatness.
Many of you sit in dhyana (meditation) and after some time start complaining, “O Why is it that I am unable to concentrate? Bhagavan! Help me to fix my mind on You!” Do not get impatient and bewail. Instead, you must make the mind pure and clean so that God Himself will be tempted to possess it. He is the chora (thief) of the heart. When thieves enter the house, they select things of value; they will not bother about firewood or charcoal bags! God, too, when He comes in the role of a thief, looks for the most precious thing—the thing that He values most; the thing that you have taken most pains to foster. He carries away the pure thoughts, the deeds soaked in the sweetness of sympathy and compassion, and the feelings of love that do not crave requite. God is no ordinary thief!
This Thief (Swami) makes people richer by His theft—richer in happiness, serenity, and self-esteem. The more you love this thief, the more He steals! He wakes up the sleeping, and then steals what the household has kept for Him. Often, people pretend to be asleep so that He may come and steal the things they have kept for that very purpose. He calls out: Tasmat Jagratha, Jagratha, which means “Therefore, wake up, wake up,” and then He carries away the treasure He seeks and finds.
Imprint on the heart
You have that treasure in you, but you do not know it; hence you do not keep it ready for Him. You feel that you have nothing to give Him, and that you are poor and downtrodden. Once you offer the heart to God, there is no more wail or want.
Those who are not affluent have to borrow the cookware from a wealthy neighbor or acquaintance to prepare the feast for the marriage. Or, you can also rent them [cookware] from some institutions. The code of conduct, whether you borrow or rent, is: clean the dishes before returning them. Indeed, they have to be returned in the same condition as they were when they were borrowed from the owner. You can cook in them, then you have to cleanse them before you return them intact to the person who lent them.
The immortal beings who have assigned for themselves this role, this venture of celebrating a ‘life-time on earth,’ have borrowed a heart from God—the Supreme Giver—in a clean condition. When finally you give it back, see that it is as clean and pure as when He gave it to you. That is the expected code of conduct, or else He will not accept them.
Even experienced teachers nowadays delight in the mere injection into the brains of the children under their care the components of the textbooks. They endeavor only to push them (students) through the ‘examinations.’ So it is just a question of guessing correctly the questions that might appear in the paper and mugging up the answers for just those. Once the boys and girls have written the things that their heads have been stuffed with, they return home with heads emptied and hollow. What you teach must, however, be imprinted on the heart and not stacked in the brain. That kind of teaching will mould their character and make them useful to themselves and society.
Take the example of Dhruva (a spiritual aspirant who did penances as a child to seek God). His stepmother told him that he could win the favor of the king, his father, only through God’s grace, which he had to win through penance. So the five-year-old boy retired to the forest, and he practiced austerities that were unparalleled in history. As a result of the penance, his desire was so sublimated that in the end he declared, “I do not care for royal favor, or even the worldly throne. I shall attain the kingdom of God; I shall sit in the lap of God.” Thus, he rejected the lordship over humans, and preferred the joy of being a child of God.
Recognize the great potentials
In the tender hearts of children, there is much potentiality for devotion and attachment to higher ideals and objectives; these can be developed and cultivated by you. Do not think that they do not know anything, that you can divert them any way you wish; this is a mistake. Recognize the great potentials of the child. Adopt such methods as the child himself might suggest or indicate. Help the child to reach Godliness and become aware of its high destiny. Do not presume that the child is some inferior personality or that it is incapable of attaining the heights.
The parents themselves are not competent to guide the children. They dote on them and do not know how to correct them. In fact, they (the parents) have reprehensible habits and ways of life. They smoke, play cards, gamble, drink, and fight in the home. Further, they utter falsehoods, scandalize others, boast, and slander in the presence of the children. How then can they lead their children on right lines? You will have to persuade such parents to mend their ways and be inspiring examples, rather than be like enemies and obstacles.
But before you advise the parents, see that you have no defect that they can point their fingers at. Earn the right to advise before you venture on the mission. First, set right your own homes; see that the atmosphere of the home is free from hatred, pride, slander, and greed. See that love is the flywheel of the home, and that faith in God is the bedrock on which the relations between the members are built.
India: Teacher to humanity
Indian traditions and modes of living are now being fast cast away, and crude forms of dress, speech, and personal appearance are replacing them. Children should be taught to look upon this [misplaced behavior] with disgust; they should know them for what they are—aberrations and vulgarities. Now obscene cinema posters are pasted along the roads to attract fans, and they very subtly and silently contaminate the character. Indeed, the elders should be ashamed to permit such demeaning and deleterious posters to appear in public view. Children should awaken a sense of shame in their elders when they tolerate such exhibits that lower human values. Unless we plant these ideals in the children, India will degrade.
How can you tolerate these obscene pictures, these posters that publicize pornographic films, this most objectionable type of dress, and this brazen behavior and appearance? You must do everything possible to root out this evil. Train the children and the young to remove this blot from the face of Bharata Mata (Mother India).
India stands forth as the teacher to humanity, thanks to the virtue, fortitude, and moral strength of the women of the past and the present. You have to maintain these qualities and foster them so that she [India] might hold her head high among the nations of the world.
Children—roots of the tree
Establish the status of the mother in the home as the upholder of spiritual ideals and, thus, the Guru [spiritual teacher] of the children. Every mother must share in this effort—the expansion and steady manifestation of the God-consciousness latent in every child.
Children are the crops growing in the fields that will yield the harvest for the nation to sustain itself. They are the pillars on which the foundation of the nation’s future is built. They are the roots of the national tree that will yield the fruits of work, worship, and wisdom to the next generation.
The Sathya Sai Bala Vikas [spiritual classes for the young] has been evolved in order to feed these roots, strengthen these foundational pillars, and fertilize the growing crops. Children are now growing up in an atmosphere polluted by corruption, anxiety, and hollow pomp because people are enamored by the shallow material culture, mainly imported from the West. Parents, teachers and even the leaders of the nation fail to admire, adore, understand, and practice basic principles of Bharatiya [Indian] culture. Children are denied the precious heritage that is their due; instead, they are inducted into alien ideals, thoughts, and habits. They are praised when they recite foreign nursery rhymes, neglecting native rhymes. The educated child cuts himself away from the village child or the children of the unschooled.
The elders have but a little distance to travel before they disembark. But the children, remember, have many miles to go, and they take the nation along with them to perdition or progress. The rishis (sages) of old knew the value of our culture, and the deep peace and security that the heritage of that culture can give in times of turmoil and strife. They prescribed three disciplines for everyone, young or old. They declared, Matru devo bhava, Pitru devo bhava, Aachaarya devo bhava [Treat mother as God, treat father as God and treat your guru as God, respectively]. So long as a nation grows up with these three noble ideals, its roots would not be uprooted and dry up. Adoration of the mother as the Divine, of the father as God, and of the preceptor as God will make the growing generation cherish the heritage, which is handed down to them and through them. The generation gap will not be an unbridgeable chasm.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12
