Respect God’s Commandments
“If anyone serves me, he must follow me.” ~John 12:26
“When we live and practice Jesus’ teachings we are true Christians, not before.”
~Sathya Sai Baba, Christmas 1979
Practice the spiritual disciplines necessary to take you along the path Jesus trod. Hear the Lord’s name resounding in your heart. See Jesus ever with you. Become one with the everlasting light. Know God as the inner Self as Jesus did…
Everyone who seeks God must pass through the same stages Jesus went through. His divine campaign showed all that the death blows dealt by the powers of darkness could be overcome by quiet discipline and God’s love…
Your quiet success will show others that peace, harmony, Divine Love, and contentment are possible and worth achieving. Your calmness, composure, humility, purity, virtue, courage, and conviction will encourage others to follow Jesus. Your mission is a great responsibility. You must teach mankind by your every action. Such is the purpose of life, words alone are not enough…
When we begin our spiritual practice; character reform and life of service to others, we enter God’s company as a novice who must remain watchful lest he disobeys a commandment and earns disfavor. One must develop the qualities of absolute loyalty and sincerity. One must respect God’s every commandment, serve Him faithfully, and surrender to divine will without the slightest reservation. As one progresses, he is given the position of a trusted servant with some small duties to perform. This closeness to Divinity allows him to develop divine qualities and grow in spirituality.
Gradually others begin to see him as an extension of the Lord’s hand and he earns the privilege of being recognized as a member of God’s holy family.
When this third state matures the separate self becomes lost in the Ultimate Self. God alone remains. All is One. Jesus said, “I and My Father are One.”
You and your heavenly Father will one day become One.
Take Jesus as your guide, follow His example, pass through the same stages of growth in awareness He passed through. Do spiritual practice.
Jesus progressed from spiritual study to a concentrated search for God in the physical world. Then He moved on to inner visualization and contemplation of God. His final practice was meditation on God and union with God. Therefore you follow Jesus’ path for the salvation of the soul by these practices: you must live in love, study the scriptures, live by divine law, pray to God, call on Jesus constantly, see His form in all, feel Him always near, and become One with the everlasting light which is God’s essence.
Source: Divine Discourses of Sathya Sai Baba, “Follow Jesus,” p. 14-25
