To the Mothers
Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, in His discourse in 1974, advised mothers on how to inculcate the right values in their children so that they can be the pillars of the nation.
Many of you sit in dhyana (meditation) and after some time start complaining, “Oh, why is it I am not able to concentrate? Bhagavan! Help me to fix my mind on you!” Do not get impatient and bewail. Feel rather that you must make the mind pure and clean, so that God Himself will be tempted to possess it. He is the chora (thief) of hearts. 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 He values most, the thing you have taken most pains to foster. He carries away the pure thoughts, the deeds soaked in the sweetness of sympathy and compassion, the feelings of love that do not crave requite. God is no ordinary thief!
This Thief makes people richer by His theft! Richer in happiness, serenity, and self-esteem! The more this thief is loved, the more He steals! He wakes up the sleeping and then steals what the household has kept for Him. Many times, people pretend sleep so that He may come and steal the things they have kept for that very purpose. He calls out: “Tasmat jagratha, jagratha!” (“Therefore, wake up, wake up”), and then He carries away the treasure He seeks and finds.
Imprint His teachings 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 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 of you who are not affluent have to borrow vessels for cooking for a marriage feast from some rich neighbor or an acquaintance or have to hire them from some institution that keeps such big vessels for helping others. The code of conduct, whether you borrow or hire, is that you clean the vessels before returning them; they have to be given back just as they were brought from the owner. Cook in them, then clean them before you restore 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 as it were, borrowed a clean heart from God—the Supreme giver. When finally you give it back, see that it is as clean and pure as when He gave it. That is the code of conduct, or else He will not accept it!
Even experienced teachers nowadays delight in merely injecting the components of the textbooks into the brains of the children under their care! For, they endeavor only to push them through the ‘examinations’, so it is just a question of guessing correctly the questions that may appear in the question paper and mugging [memorizing] the answers to just those! Once the boys and girls have written the things, with which their heads have been stuffed, they return home with their heads emptied and hollow. What you teach must, however, be imprinted on the heart, not stacked in the brain. That will mold their character and make them useful for society.
Take the example of Dhruva [a devotee of Lord Narayana]. His stepmother told him that he could win the favor of the King, his father, only through God’s grace, which he has to win through penance! So, the five-year-old boy went into the forest and 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, with God.
Recognize child’s potentials
In the tender hearts of the children, there is a potential of devotion and attachment to higher ideals and objectives; this 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 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. They have reprehensible habits and ways of life. They smoke, play cards, gamble, drink, and fight in the home; they utter falsehoods, talk scandalously, boast and slander in the presence of the children. How then can they lead their children on the right path? You will have to persuade such parents to mend their ways and be inspiring examples rather than enemies and obstacles.
But before you advise the parents, see that you have no defects to which the children can point their fingers! 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. Let love be the flywheel of the home and faith in God the bedrock on which the relations between the members are built.
India is the teacher to humanity
Indian traditions and Indian modes of living are now being cast away. Crude manners of dress and speech and personal appearance are replacing them. Children should be taught to look upon these with disgust, they should know them for what they are—aberrations and vulgarities! Now, obscene posters are pasted along the roadsides by cinema theatres to attract fans; they contaminate a child’s character very subtly and silently. Children must make the elders feel ashamed when they see such demeaning and deleterious posters appearing in public view! They have to awaken in the elders a sense of shame at the lowering of human values. Unless we plant these ideals in the children, India will go down to the depths of degradation.
How can you tolerate these obscene pictures, these posters publicizing pornographic films, this most objectionable type of dress, this brazen behavior and appearance? Do everything possible to root out this evil. Train the children and the young to remove this blot from the face of Mother India.
India stands forth as the teacher to humanity, thanks to the virtue, the fortitude, and the moral strength of the women of past and 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 are national tree roots
Establish the status of the mother in the home as the upholder of spiritual ideals and therefore, the guru [preceptor] 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 to yield the harvest on which the nation has 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, which has to give the fruits of work, worship, and wisdom to the next generation.
The Sathya Sai Bala Vikas (value-based education program for children) has been evolved in order to feed these roots, strengthen these foundation 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 of the shallow material culture, mainly imported from the West.
Parents and teachers and even the leaders of the nation are devoid of admiration and adoration, understanding and practice, of the basic principles of Bharatiya (Indian) culture; children are denied the precious heritage which is their due; they are inducted into alien ideals, thoughts, and habits. They are praised for reciting foreign nursery songs to the neglect of native rhymes! The educated child cuts himself away from the village and the unschooled children.
The older people have but a little distance to travel, before they disembark. But, remember, the children 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, Mathru devo bhava, Pithru devo bhava, Aachaarya devo bhava (revere your mother, revere your father, revere your teacher).
So long as a nation grows up with these three noble ideals, it can never be pulled up by its roots and dried up. For, adoration of the mother as Divine, of the father as God and of the preceptor as God will make the growing generation cherish the heritage, which is handed down by them and through them. The generation gap will not be an unbridgeable chasm.
Source: Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12
