Spiritual Wisdom
Bhagavan has seven chief characteristics: prosperity, glory, wisdom, non-attachment, creation, preservation, and dissolution. Whoever has these seven you can consider as having Divinity in Him. These seven are the unfailing characteristics of Avatars, of the Supreme Power, which persists fully when it has apparently modified itself with deluding power. Wherever these are found, you can identify Godhead. You are also of the same nature as the atma with Supreme Power, but, like the prince who has fallen into a den of robbers and is growing up there, the atma has not recognized its true identity, that is all. Though he does not know, he is nevertheless a prince, whether he is in the palace or in a forest or in the robber’s cave. Very often, the prince will have got intimations of his real status, a craving for the bliss (ananda) that was his heritage, a call from his inner consciousness to escape and become himself. That is the hunger of the soul, the thirst for lasting joy. You are all like the man who has forgotten his name. The hunger of the mind can be appeased only by the acquisition of spiritual wisdom.
But this spiritual wisdom everyone must achieve some day or the other. It can be got through devotion or karma (activity) or royal yoga. These three are only different names for the process of churning the milk to get the butter that is immanent in it. Once the butter is rolled into a ball, it can be kept separate and unimpaired in the liquid where it was all the time. Similarly, the liberated person can continue in the world free from attachment, once they have realized that they are of the same substance as the Immanent Brahman. When that Brahman is seen through delusion (maya), it appears as endowed with qualities and is referred to as Lord or Bhagavan.
Seven chief characteristics of Bhagavan–Sri Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol 1
Spend your time in company of good people. Brush up your brains by the brush of discrimination. I will not ask you to give up your critical faculty. Evaluate, discriminate, experience, and analyze your experience; then, if convinced, accept. Devotion, yoga, spiritual wisdom—these are three doors to the same Hall; some come this way, some that way, but all enter the same Hall. The spiritually wise person sees everything as the divine substance, the devotee sees everything as the play of God, the karma yogi sees everything as the service of the Lord. It is all a question of aptitude and taste and the stage of development of reason and emotion.
As a result of spiritual wisdom, Thirumalacharya said, delusion (maya) goes, but delusion does not “come” and delusion does not “go”. When a light is brought into this hall, you say that light has come and darkness has gone, but where has it gone? Put out the light, it is dark! The darkness does not come from where it had gone, suddenly, through the doors and fill the hall. It is there all the time. It did not go. Only the hall was lit and light prevailed. So also, when the grace of the Lord is won, spiritual wisdom will prevail, and the delusion of separateness is powerless. How can that spiritual wisdom be earned? By a slow, systematic process, eliminating all limiting factors–greed, lust, pride, envy, hate, and all the snaky brood of possessive instincts and impulses; by the educative influence of dharma, the body of rules laid down by the experience of generations for the regulation of living; by study, rumination and practice; by analysis of the experiences of the waking, dreaming, and sleeping stages; by learning to be a witness of all this passing show without getting involved in its tangles; by overcoming all trends that divide and differentiate.
Eliminate all limiting factors by systematic process—Sri Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol 1
