Past Actions and Merit
Through activity man attains purity of consciousness. In fact man has to welcome activity with this end in view. And why strive for a pure consciousness? Imagine a well with polluted and muddy water so that the bottom of the well cannot be seen. Similarly within man’s heart, deep down in his consciousness, we have the atman. But it can be cognized only when the consciousness is clarified. Your imaginings, your inferences, your judgments and prejudices, your passions, emotions and egoistic desires muddy the consciousness and make it opaque. How then, can you become aware of the atma that is at the very base? Through seva (service) rendered without any desire to placate one’s ego and with only the well being of others in view is it possible to cleanse the consciousness and have the atma revealed.
Sanathana Sarathi, November 1997, Back Cover
When the thirst for liberation and the revelation of one’s reality is acute, a strange and mysterious force in nature will begin operating. When the soil is ready, the seed appears from somewhere! The spiritual guru will be alerted and the thirst will be quenched. The receiving individual has developed the power to attract the one who gives illumination.
Sathya Sai Vahini, P. 97
The merit acquired in past births appears now as a keen thirst for liberation, as a sincere endeavor to approach a guru, as a determined struggle to succeed in sadhana (spiritual practice), and comes to fruition with the realization of the atman.
Jnana Vahini, P. 64-65
The Divine principle is the reality, the base, the essence, and the ocean on which the waves rise and fall. Discard the name and form (which rise and fall) and contemplate on the existence, consciousness, and bliss in each cell and particle. Then you can immerse yourselves in eternal bliss. Bliss is omnipresent. One has only to realize its universality.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 10, P. 372
Liberation is just the awareness of truth, the falling off of the scales of delusion from the eye. It is not a special suburb of select souls; it is not a closed monopoly of expert sadhakas (spiritual seekers). Like the Godavari (a river) losing its form, its name and its taste in the sea, liberation dissolves the name and form, aptitudes and attitudes. You are no more separate, particular, individual. The raindrop has merged in the sea, from where the drop arose. Of course there was no bondage at any time and no prison; there was only a fixation in the mind that one was bound, that one was in prison, that one was limited and finite!
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 4, P. 274
