Control Your Senses
A Second Visitor: Swami, I have been away from business and I want to talk with Swami, but if I stay another month then there will be only one final talk with Swami. I want to talk with Swami now, and then stay a month.
Sai: Tomorrow is Thursday. Swami will see each of you individually, then you can make your plans when you want to leave or whether you want to stay. With you, it is like this: You have a few doubts; now you want to clear those doubts immediately so as to leave room for new doubts (much merriment from the interview group). That is your plan.
Sai (to a Visitor): You have some plan for poor people. What are the details?
Visitor: The old Mandir. We should make a number of new homes for the poor people. Then those who are now staying in the old Mandir can move to the new houses and the old temple can be made like new. It is Swami’s first Mandir and it should be saved for history. If people continue to live there, it will tumble down in no time at all. To use it just for living looks like a lack of respect from the people who are in Puttaparthi.
Sai: That can be discussed further at a later time. Now, Swami is troubled that all of you have come from so far and have spent so much, and your love is so touching. There is no price for that love even if measured in crores [millions] and crores. Swami wants your happiness. Swami will teach as quickly as possible.
Visitor: But now is the time because there is the world conference in May and Swami’s devotees will come here. It does not matter whose plan it is to save the old Mandir; it should be as though it is everyone’s idea and all should work together to accomplish it.
Sai: You draw up a plan and show it to Swami. How to do it.
Visitor: And one other thing I must ask Swami because people say Swami must be asked. I want a little plot of land. On the opposite hill if I have a little place and then put a big shed, I have the plan, so that there is a big place where they can come and gather and do yoga or whatever it is. But then when I am so close, that is closer than from here to the old Mandir, but not just outside the gate so that people will be saying this or that about me, then I am outside, and then — you know…
A visitor interrupts: … so that no control…
A Second Visitor: No control…
Sai: A faithless garden. (Much merriment from the interview group.)
Visitor: Well, you know, nobody can come and say, ‘No cooking,’ and so on.
Sai: It might be all right to start, but then you will have many more problems than you wish for. All the dogs from the villages and other problems.
Visitor: The thing is what I have said at home, that I would like to have a little house outside the compound.
Sai: With all the dogs together, you are going to have a great problem. Ten puppies each.
Visitor: But, anyway, you…
Sai: We will discuss it. You may start enthusiastically, but then the problems that will be coming [in the future] will not be good.
(Swami now moves His hand, and a large mass of sugar-candy appears in His hand and is distributed. The group exclaims how sweet and delightful it tastes.)
Sai: Complete sugar.
Visitor: Not only sugar. It is flavored.
Sai: Every day should be sweet like this, that Swami would again make sugar.
Visitor: Someone told me that I should not let anybody touch these earrings that you gave me because they are sacred. But I don’t like to tell people not to touch.
Sai: Nothing like that, about touching. Was everyone angry because Swami did not come this morning?
Visitor: No, no, Baba. We were singing bhajans and talking about the gopis.
Sai: Gopi means sense control, one who has controlled the senses. It is not a lady’s name.
Source: Conversations with Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai
