The True Offering
Among yajnas, there are two types—the outer and the inner, the outer being a reflection of the inner. The inner yajna is the bird in the hand; the outer, the bird in the bush. But since the sanctified vision and urge are absent today, what is happening is, the release of the bird in the hand with the attempt to catch the bird in the bush. The value and significance of the inner yajna have to be understood first. It involves awareness of the Divinity that is dormant but decisive in the very center of our reality. Worship it, propitiate it, please it, become it.
The mind is the altar. Place the animal that is to be offered as oblation (the evil aspects of your character, behavior, attitude, etc.) and sacrifice it to the deity invoked. Though born as a human, man is burdened by animal instincts and impulses that have attached themselves to him during his previous lives as an animal. He has passed through many an animal existence and each has left its mark on his mental make-up, like a scar on the skin when a wound has healed. For example, man is afflicted with the disease of aggressive conceit, called madha in Sanskrit. This is not a natural trait of man, but a relic of a former elephantine life.
Man is sometimes pitiably a moorkha (foolish), which is a relic of his past existence as a sheep. Some have an inborn tendency to steal, which may be reminiscent of their past, of creatures such as a cat, which is also a sly poacher. Some are endowed with profuse unsteadiness and waywardness, an inheritance of their monkey existence. Man is known in Sanskrit as nara and the monkey as vaanara.When vaa (vaalam/ tail) is subtracted, vaanara is reduced to nara. Man has lost the tail, but he has still all the waywardness and unsteadiness of that animal. All such animal traces must be sacrificed on the altar of the mind as part of the inner yajna.The outer visible yajna is a means to convey this inner purpose and message.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 15, P. 176-177
The basic chitta (inner consciousness) has to be freed from down-pulling impulses. Of what good is it to cook a rare and costly dish in a vessel contaminated by dirt? Of what good is it to plant a precious seed in rocky soil? Puja or archana [prayers]offered without a purified heart is sheer waste of time. But even a short sincere session of puja spent in divine awareness yields much fruit. …
The material and the form are inseparable, but the seeker must dwell on the form that he desires to be manifested in all its glory, rather than on the material. He must dwell long and deep over the thought that God is found through every particle in the universe, free from any limitations of space and time.
Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 15, P. 111
