Sri Sathya Sai Speaks

Do not grieve that the Lord is testing you and putting you to the ordeal of undergoing the tests, for it is only when you are tested that you can assure yourself of success or become aware of your limitations. You can then concentrate on the subjects in which you are deficient and pay more intensive attention, so that you can pass in them too when you are tested again. Don’t study for the examination at the last moment; study well in advance and be ready with the needed knowledge and the courage and confidence born out of that knowledge and skill. What you have studied well in advance must be rolled over and over in the mind, just previous to the examination; that is all that should be done. This is the pathway to victory.

Many grieve: “It is said that getting the audience of a holy person (darshanam) is destruction of sin (papanashanam). Well, I have had darshan not once but many times, and yet, my evil fate has not left me and I am suffering even more than before.” True, they have come and had darshan, they have sowed fresh seeds secured from this place - seeds of love, faith, devotion, good company, Godly thoughts, remembering God’s name, etc. - and they have learnt the art of intensive cultivation and soil preparation. They have now sown the seeds in well-prepared fields of cleansed hearts. Now, until the new harvest comes in, they have to consume the grain already stored in previous harvests. The troubles and anxieties are the crop collected in previous harvests, so do not grieve and lose heart.

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In this sacred land, people have forgotten the real source of sacredness, of holy life, of living in peace with oneself and others. Now, the time has come to remind them of it. With the jewel around the neck, the wearer has been searching for it everywhere else. A person has to hold the mirror to their face. The vedic clarion call will soon ring in the ears of humanity. The Person has come to remind people and to redirect them along the true path.

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If anyone challenges you to show them one text where the principles of Sanathana Dharma (Eternal Religion) are succinctly stated, tell them about the Bhagavad Gita. It is the essence of the Vedas, the Sastras, and the Puranas. The Gita is like a bottle of fruit juice obtained from a basket of fruit. It will not get dry or rot like the fruits, for the juice has been well extracted and preserved. Its taste and excellence will persist until the end of this age (the Kali Yuga), and then it will merge in the Vedas.

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In the forest of worldly life (samsara), the body is a tree and the thoughts, feelings, and imaginations are the branches, twigs, and leaves. Worry, anxiety, and fear are the monkeys that frisk among the branches. Grief in its various forms represents the insect pests that destroy the blooms. The blossoms are smiles; the owls and crows that infest it are anger, hatred, sloth, and spite!

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The sun never rises or sets; it appears to rise and appears to set on account of the revolution of the earth! What happens when the sun rises is that the invisible becomes visible, that is all. This series of rising and setting of the sun exists only for those who feel it; it does not exist for those who deny it. The duality of appearance and non-appearance can be overcome by spiritual wisdom (jnana); so also, when the Sun of Knowledge is known, it is experienced as shining always with undiminished lustre.

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Lingam means simply “the sign,” “the symbol”. It is just a mark that indicates merging (laya), that is to say, the passing away of the mind and all mental agitations and all mental pictures, which means this objective world. Sivarathri is the day on which the moon, the presiding deity of the mind, is as near merging as possible, so just a little extra effort that day leads to full success. The spiritual aspirant can thereby achieve complete destruction of the mind. The realisation is that everything is subsumed in this lingam, which is the symbol of the formless.

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God is a huge fire, and the sparks that fly out from it are the individual souls (jivis); the individual souls are infinitesimal fractions of the same effulgence, having the same splendorous essence as their base, but the wind of impressions left on the mind by past actions (vasanas) sweeps upon the sparks, puts out the light, and destroys the heat. But the same wind cannot put out the fire, it can only feed it further and cause its splendour to shine forth in even greater measure, for the will of the Lord can only add to His glory.

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Just as the dreams you see are shaped by the experiences, cravings, and disappointments of the waking stage, the experiences of the waking stage are the results of your previous lives. While dreaming, you do not relate the incidents and emotions to the waking stage, do you? You feel they are unrelated, unique, genuine experiences, is it not? So too, you do not realise that your joy and grief, your actions and reactions in the waking stage are all based on your past lives. Nevertheless, they are so based.

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A great painter once came to a prince and offered to do a fresco on the palace wall; behind him came another, who declared that he would paint on the wall opposite whatever painting the first one drew, even if a curtain hid it from view while he was painting and even if he was not told the subject of the fresco! Both were commissioned to the tasks they had accepted. The second man finished his work at the very moment the first one announced that he had completed the task! The prince arrived in the hall, where a thick curtain partitioned off the two artists and their paintings. He saw the fresco and admired it very much. Then he ordered the curtain to be removed, and lo, on the wall facing the fresco, there was an exact duplicate of the picture that the first man had so laboriously painted! Exact - because he had polished the wall, making it a fine big mirror! Make your hearts clean and pure and smooth, so that the glory of the Lord might be reflected therein, so that the Lord might see His own image thereon.

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Cricket players do not derive as much joy as the onlookers, so develop the attitude of the onlooker, the witness. The batsmen, bowlers, and fields men do not get a fraction of the pleasure that the ‘fans’ beyond the boundary derive. They note each fault and excellence in stroke and defence; they appreciate the finer points of the game. So too, to get the maximum joy out of this game of life, cultivate the attitude of the onlooker, even when you have to get embroiled in the game.

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I will not bend before anyone for anything. I am therefore unafraid. I bend for love, I bend before truth, that is all. Do not worry about worldly comforts and ask Me about those things as if they are all-in-all. Do not waste your precious lifetime in distracting doubts about the existence of the Lord in human form, here and now. Cultivate love (prema) toward all; that is the greatest service you can do to yourself, for all others are but you yourself. You too should bend only before love and truth, not before hatred and cruelty and falsehood.

- Sparks from discourses delivered on the occasion of Shivarathri, 1963.