What is Spiritual Hunger?
Sai: Who are you? Who are you?
Hislop: I am the accumulation of all my past, all my ideas.
Sai: Who is that ‘My’? Who is that ‘My’? Who is that ‘My’ who is claiming? Between the love and yourself there is this claim. What is love and who are you?
Hislop: I am that which I am, the accumulation of all these…
Hislop’s wife: The accumulation is the idea that you have, but according to Swami, you and the love are the same thing. You are the one who makes the separation.
Hislop: Yes, I am the one who puts the separation between us. I am the ego.
Sai: Ego is untruth.
Hislop: Ego is untruth, then I…
Sai: But you are not ego. You are truth. Ego is not truth. Any amount of arguments and discussions like this is just words. You will not get this without spiritual practice, without sadhana. An example: Someone asks us what sugar is. We say it is brownish and sort of sandy, because we know sugar. But the sweetness has no form. Like that you can describe sugar, but you cannot picture the taste, because the taste has no form. Even pertaining to the world, there are so many things we do not know, and we don’t imagine or worry about it. We should feel intensely for God instead of so much discussion and reading books. We must get into the field and try it out. Even if someone writes a book, it is his spiritual experience. You love your wife and she loves you. But if she is hungry, you cannot eat for her. And if you are hungry, she cannot eat for you despite the fact that you love each other dearly.
Spiritual hunger is like that. Each man must seek and appease that hunger according to his faith. Even though Swami tries to explain, you do not grasp it. It is only through experience you must come to it. When you start to learn to drive, you must have an open space for practice; but once you learn, then even on a narrow road you can go with confidence. It is just like in a school. Gradually you go and you understand. If big words are used, the child does not understand them when he is still learning the A B C’s. In the beginning, we do not understand things of the world and do not even understand ourselves, so how can you understand that which is beyond you? So, first you try to understand yourself by doing spiritual practice, by doing sadhana. First ‘I,’ next ‘You.’ ‘I’ plus ‘You’ equals ‘We.’ Then ‘We’ plus ‘He.’ Then only ‘He.’
Hislop: No. I don’t understand that.
Sai: First ‘I,’ then ‘You.’ First ‘I’; that is life. Next ‘You’; that is the world. ‘I’ plus ‘You’ is ‘We.’ ‘We’ plus ‘He’ is God. Then only ‘He.’ There is love, the person who loves, and the person you love. And when all get together, it is bliss. You see, there are three blades in the fan. The three blades represent the three gunas [qualities]. Only when the blades circulate together in harmony do you get the air. When they move in the same direction they bring the cool air. Within us, the three gunas are going all in different directions. When you turn them in the same direction, all going around together, then you will get the one-pointedness and you will be enabled to know.
A Visitor: Could it be like this? It is the experience of a number of people, including myself, that one does sadhana gradually. But then suddenly comes such an experience that ordinarily would have taken an immense time. Does it come suddenly because of Your grace?
Sai: Another example: In a house, each one does a particular job and divides the work. In the evening when the family has finished the work, nobody says, ‘Father, I did such and such work and you must pay me.’ It is one house, so you don’t ask for payment, you just do the work. But when people from come to do work, you fix the rate and pay accordingly. When you pay them that shows they are outsiders. But when they are your own, you don’t have to pay them. They work with interest and no pay is expected.
Similarly with God, when you think God is the nearest and dearest to you, like one family, you don’t ask for pay. The one who surrenders like that, he is My own, he does not have to look for payment. But the one who says, ‘I have done so much sadhana,’ and barters with God and says, ‘I have done so much sadhana and you should give me such and such a reward,’ then that is the difference; he is an outsider. The child who is small does not ask the mother, ‘I want milk, I want to be changed,’ and so on, but the mother looks after every need of the child without its asking. When you have surrendered yourself completely to God and become God’s child, you don’t have to tell God what you want. He will give even more than you have asked for. But it is only by love that He is your dearest. Do your sadhana and there is closeness to God; then you don’t have to tell Him that you want this or that. Because you are like a little child, He will come and give you more than even what you ask for. Ego is what prevents us from getting close to God. It is that ego: ‘I’ have to do this, ‘I’ have to get all this. You must see that ‘I’ am only the instrument of the Lord. Like the fan is an instrument, you are an instrument of the Lord. Now, is the fan making the fan rotate, or is the current making the fan rotate?
Hislop: The current is making the fan rotate.
Sai: The current is God, so you are only the instrument. Even the fact that we think that our eyes see things and our ears hear things, that is not correct. My eyes are here, but the mind is in Bangalore, thinking of this or that. My eyes see, but my mind is somewhere else. Mind is important. The body is like a flashlight; the eye is the bulb; mind is the battery cell; intelligence is the switch. Only when the four work together do you get the light.
Hislop: Surrender to God is everything, of course, but . . .
Sai: The word, ‘surrender,’ in English, is not quite correct; it is not the right word. It does not quite explain. When you say, ‘surrender,’ you are separate and God is separate. That is the meaning you get. But God is not separate.
Source: Conversations with Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba
