Visitor: I look at Swami's photograph on my desk at home in my country. And I receive Swami's instructions. He ordered me to come to India for this Conference.

SAI: You think of Sai and get some feeling.

Visitor: I look at Swami's photograph and send Him questions and problems from other people, and I receive His orders and instructions for those people. Is that all right?

SAI: No. It is not all right. For yourself you may ask. But you should not think of placing yourself between a devotee and Sai. That is a wrong idea.

THE 16 FACTORS OF THE AVATAR

A Visitor: What are the 16 points of the Avathar? I have asked and nobody knows.

SAI:The difference between man and Avathar? Man experiences the 15 factors, but he is not their master. They go their own ways. As control starts to be gained, man comes closer to the 16th, the all-knowing Paramatma (supreme self). The five working organs have to do with talking, taking, walking, rejecting (excretion), and eating. The five sense organs: hearing, touch, sight, taste, smell. The five elements: earth, water, fire, air, space. The 16th factor is the all-knowing Paramatma.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF BREAKING COCONUTS

H: One sees people breaking coconuts in front of Swami's car as He is departing from Prasanthi Nilayam or Brindavan.What is the significance of this?

SAI: As long as there is water, meaning worldly desire, in the nut, and as long as the meat clings to the shell, the nut will grow if planted. As the unplanted nut ages, the water disappears, the meat leaves the shell, and the nut will not grow. The nut is chosen as a symbol because of the three eyes - the two physical eyes and the eye of wisdom (unopened). When the nut is broken, it symbolizes breaking the closed heart and asking the Lord to take the contents. This is 'surrender'. Nothing inside can be concealed and, once the nut is broken, it will never grow again.

DISCOVERING THE MOST VALUABLE PRIZE

SAI: Mr. 'X' is a great scholar with various degrees and a lifetime of sadhana in the Himalayas and elsewhere.

H: I suppose degrees are O.K., but the only scholarship of interest to this individual is scholarship in Swami's teachings. It is like locating the greatest deposit of gold in the world. Why work at anything else?

SAI: The mention of gold is important. Deposits of gold are not limited to one place in the world, but gold is found only by certain individuals. God is not limited to one place only. He is everywhere and He may be found at any place by those who are pure of heart. And by that I mean where there is love in the heart.

H: No doubt gold is in every place, but great treasures of gold are seldom found. It is the same with great springs of water. In Baba, one finds the spring of divine sweetness.

SAI: Waters from springs are often impure. Pure water may be found by digging for it. One person may dig 100 feet and another person may find pure water at 40 feet or at 10 feet. It is the same in the spiritual life. The amount of work needed to find the divine sweetness depends on purity of heart.

H: Is it only by the strength of one's love for God that he comes to union with God, or are there other essential factors?

SAI: The most beneficial thing that can happen to a person is that he should draw God's love to himself. His love for God is of less importance, because it is an imperfect mixture of divine and worldly love. The most important action to gain God's love is righteousness, dharma. Spread out on a flat surface there may be gold, silver, copper, iron filings, diamonds, rubies, silks and other things of value, but a magnet pays no attention to all the riches; it selects only the iron filings. It is the same with devotees. God does not select on the basis of wealth. He looks to the purity of heart.

FACING GOD AND SADHANA

H: Swami; speaks of 'facing' God. Please explain.

SAI: When two people face each other, each enters the eye of the other, and they are different only in name and form. Otherwise, they are the same. So, it is important to face God directly and be one with Him. That is why one naturally closes the eyes in a temple, so as to use the eye of wisdom instead of the physical eyes.

A Visitor: The word, 'sadhana' is used in so many different places.

SAI:Sadhana is just replacement of the bad tendencies of the mind by the divine attributes of the Atma. Mind has two principal bad characteristics: its tendency not to go straight, but to move obliquely; and its tendency to desire and grasp all objects that it sees. It is compared to the snake, which moves by twisting and bites all it sees. The mind must go straight to God by facing Him directly.

WE ARE TRULY FEARLESS

H: Baba says, 'Why fear when I am here'. That must have a wide and deep meaning. Will Baba speak of it?

SAI: 'I am,' refers to the Atma, who is always everywhere. The Atma is like the lion, without fear. 'Fear', refers to the body, which is subject to worry, depression, trembling and fear. Body is like a sheep, wavering this way and that way. Body is always looking for information, gathering information, questioning. Whereas Atma, like the lion, is full of courage and without fear. 'Atma' is God. You are God. God is omnipresent. This 'I' is you. That 'I' is you. You are all.

A Visitor: What is 'Jnana'?

SAI: Jnana is ordinary knowledge, knowledge about living in the world. Special knowledge is wisdom. Love is giving and forgiving. Selfishness is getting and forgetting. Love is expansion, and selfishness is contraction.

OUR ATTITUDE TO THE OPPOSITES - ‘GOOD’ AND ‘BAD’

A Visitor: I see evil on all sides and am puzzled.

SAI: Here is this banana. The skin is useless to us, so it is regarded as bad. But, if there were no skin, the inside would not be protected. Do not regard anything as bad. If a person has done evil to you and you take it as evil and retaliate, then you also have become bad. But, by remaining good and not regarding others as evil, you gain the right to reform them. If there is a bad smell in the room, and if incense is lighted, the fragrance changes the smell of the room. Bad actions should be met with good deeds and a good viewpoint, and the evil will be changed. The difference between good and bad is a function of time. Food when eaten is good. In time that same food undergoes a change, is excreted, and is called bad. Whereas, truth remains the same and does not change with the passage of time. Therefore, the time sequence is just imagination.

H: The thought arises that some persons are wholly bad, their crimes are so vicious.

SAI: No person is wholly bad, for God is in every person's heart. A mother and son may fight in court over property, but the relationship of mother and son remains. Two people who have come to hate each other live in two houses. Each has a picture of Baba over the door. The house represents the body, and Baba's picture represents the God resident in the soul. The body may have to be corrected in its behaviour, and the best way is to attract the person with love. There is absolute good, but there is no absolute bad. Bad changes, bad is a distorted aspect of good. But it is not possible when one has the ordinary physical vision to see good and bad as one. Only when one knows the divine spark in oneself and in others, only then one sees good and bad as the same.

If one can adopt as an attitude the truth that good only is real, and that all one sees is essentially good, even though distorted, one acquires a great strength if he can see the world this way. The learned might argue about the world and say that all this is illusion and despair, but they can never hope to live without loving the world. Love is not to be disregarded. The world might seem to be untruth from the material viewpoint, but the world is truth if looked at from the transcendental viewpoint.

THE PRINCIPLE OF KARMA

H: We are asking Swami about the 'bad' people. How about the poor victim of vicious action?

SAI: Everyone is good, but there are bad actions. Action and reaction. In terms of the victims of bad action, everything was exactly right. We see only the present. Baba sees the past also. A four-year-old boy was attacked by robbers for the gold chain around his neck. The robbers blinded the boy so he could not identify them. The boy was crying bitterly that he could not see. The parents also were crying. They came to Baba. In the past life, the boy had been a cruel man who had blinded several people. The boy will continue blind but, as a man, if he starts to consider, understanding that he is blind because of past dark deeds, and then sincerely repents his bad tendencies and makes a genuine effort to change himself, praying to God to forgive him, Baba may forgive the karma and restore the eyesight.

H: How should we relate to so-called 'bad' people?

SAI: Keep the body separate from people who give bad food to the senses, even though all are brothers. Let souls be in God, bodies apart.

H: Often it is very difficult to choose the right action. How may one acquire the ability to make this discrimination?

SAI: Every man has the discrimination to know what is right action and what is wrong action. Wrong action develops guilt feelings. Whereas right action is free and without such fear.

(To be continued)....

- Heart2Heart Team