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Posted on: June 15, 2016

Guru Poornima Special Offering
(Daily Episode)

Part -7

In 2006, eager to start a service which will help everyone to connect with Bhagawan's teachings on a daily basis, Radio Sai began 'Sai Inspires'. All who subscribed to this service, received an email from us which had a concise message of Baba accompanied with His image. This daily offering was received well, and soon the subscriptions grew. Today nearly 100,000 people from all corners of the world wait for this message to help them tide over their day with peace and ease. The power inherent in these discourse capsules is indeed tremendous. How much we benefit from it and how best we harness this energy depends purely on how seriously we ruminate over these words and how sincerely we put our learning into action. To help us in this noble and elevating exercise, Prof. G. Venkataraman has taken time out to elaborate on these messages. His reflections will not only give us a deeper understanding into what the Lord is communicating to us but also give us tips to translate them into our daily practical life with more ease.

The best way to value the Master is to master His values. As we prepare to celebrate Guru Poornima (July 19), when we pay our respects and obeisance to the Divine Master, let us work to offer Him the tribute that the Lord loves the most from us - to make our lives His message, to make His love and wisdom shine in us. To aid us in this endeavour we have this series where Prof. Venkataraman for the next 26 days from June 9, 2016 shares his insights on select Sai Inspires messages. We hope this will help us to understand His teachings better and bolster our determination to walk on the sacred path.

Sai Inspires Message

PURITY IS THE ONLY WAY TO GOD!

To realize God it is not necessary to have wealth, gold or other emblems of affluence. Nor is great scholarship necessary. All that is needed is pure, selfless devotion. Today men with selfish and impure minds attempt to worship God. Without purity of thought, speech and action, it is impossible to experience the Divine. God cannot be realized through ostentation and self-conceit. The basic-requisite is the shedding of selfishness and possessiveness so that one can engage oneself in actions in a disinterested spirit. Any person is entitled to embark on this quest without regard to sex, age, caste or community.

• Divine Discourse, October 6, 1986.

REFLECTIONS

A very large number of people believe in God, who also call themselves devotees of God. At the same time, very few devotees want to know anything about God, much less to ‘realise’ Him. As Krishna Himself declared, a large percentage of devotees worship God merely for either getting relief from the problems they face in life or for gaining material advantages such as wealth, power, property, etc. On the other hand, in the above Sai Quote, Swami is asking us not to stop with merely filing various kinds of requests but to realize God.

The question now arises: “What exactly does realizing God mean, and what are the prerequisites for such a realisation?” That is what we shall now examine.

People often offer prayers like: “Oh God, I am in all kinds of trouble. Why don’t You save me?” Or, “Oh God! I want to become the President of this country. Please help and bless me!”

Suppose you go to one of those praying in this manner and ask that person, “Excuse me sir. This God to whom you are praying; where is this God, how does He look, and what must we do so that He grants our wishes?” The one who is ardently praying would hardly have any clear cut answer. No surprise in that because most people are largely interested in getting favours from God rather than truly knowing anything about Him or realizing Him.

Some might protest and say: “Look! We all know for sure that God is definitely out there. Why then bother about knowing where exactly He is? He is there, He will definitely hear our prayers, and He is always so ready to grant boons. What more do you want?”

This kind of a response is no doubt quite common but that does not really answer the question raised. The point is that we all have come from God which makes Him our ultimate Father and Mother. Hence, just as one knows all about one’s bodily parents, surely one ought to know something about our Eternal Parent as well, right?

OK, agreed. The question now changes to: “But what exactly is it that one is supposed to know about Him?” And the answer to that is: “Many things, such as how God is present everywhere, in everything and all the time, how He is the source of all virtues and goodness.”

The doubting Thomas might then persist and now ask: “OK, one knows all that; what good does that do?” This is the way humans often think - to seek material benefit in return for anything we do. Thus, the question now becomes: “What benefit do I get if I do such and such a thing?”

This is how we get things wrong in relating to God and in realizing Him. Do you recall that back in the old days, Swami used to begin His Discourses with the phrase: “Divyatmaswaroopalara”? Do you know what that phrase means? It means: Embodiments of the Divine Atma. Through that greeting, Bhagawan was reminding every one of us that at the core, all of us are verily God. Later, Swami switched to “Premaswaroopalara!” meaning, Embodiments of Divine Love. This phrase was meant to remind us that since we are verily God, our feelings, thoughts, words and actions must always be saturated with Pure Love.

Let’s now go back to the quote and quickly absorb the important points made there. Swami says:

• Anyone can seek and become one with God. In particular that means one does not have to be rich, wealthy and famous to seek God. The Lord is for all of us and He does not bother about our bank-balance.

• Nor does one have to be a scholar, a learned person with a dozen degrees, awards and so on. Even an illiterate person is entitled to the Grace of God, as the touching story of Sabari in the Ramayana shows.

• The bottom line is that the prime qualification for going near to God is to get rid of all ego, anger, feelings of jealousy, hatred, cravings, desire, pride and possessiveness. In short, there must no place for anything other than God in one’s thoughts.

In one simple sentence, one can realize God only when one’s mind becomes immersed in God. For most of us, this would immediately raise a huge problem. People would rush to say: “Listen! I am the CEO of this huge multi-national company. I have to be in Montreal one day, in Moscow on the next and wind up in Melbourne when I am finished with the first two. I don’t even get time to catch up with my sleep. What do you mean by immersing my Mind in God?”

This is an old question, and Swami gave the answer to it a long time ago as Lord Krishna when He was giving some advice to a slightly stubborn Arjuna who suddenly forgot what was expected of him. And in this Avatar, He has explained all this umpteen times. However, since all that has been deleted from our hard discs, let us reload that teaching.

Swami makes it very, very simple. He says, for example to this jet setting CEO, “Listen my dear fellow, be a CEO, go around the world, cut your deals, and all that. I am not coming in the way of all that. But in the midst of all that, there are certain things you could do. Do you not often think of your family back home? Do you not pull out pictures from your wallet, gaze at them and think of your children getting ready to go to school or whatever? In the same way, why can’t you take a minute off to think of God? When room service brings breakfast for you in a tray, why don’t you smile and say a nice think you, seeing Me in that person? This is one simple way of seeing Me in all. And when you make deals, bargain by all means, but never cheat, never try to make an unreasonable profit, and always abide by Sathya and Dharma. That you would be able to do if you keep reminding yourself that I the Lord Supreme is in your competitor also! In short, play according to the rules of the game but above all never deviate from Sathya and Dharma.”

Just to remind you, there is an interesting scene in the Ramayana that few may remember but which underscores this. When Rama eventually confronts Ravana on the battle field, Ravana is in a chariot and shooting his arrows, etc., from there; Rama, on the other hand, is standing on the ground and giving Ravana a fight. At one stage, Ravana is unable to face the barrage of arrows launched by the Lord, gets hurt and falls down from the chariot. In boxing language, that was the moment for the ‘kill’. But what does Rama do? He tells Ravana, “You are tired and exhausted. Go back home, attend to your wounds, take some rest and come back tomorrow when we shall resume the fight!” Why did Rama do that? Because the scriptures strictly forbid killing one who is disadvantaged - that is why.

So you see, one can lead a normal life so called, but must do so with the feeling that all the persons we deal with are really god in disguise. The Divine Drama might call upon us to play many complex roles, sometimes even punishing the person we are dealing with. However, it must always be without any trace of hatred or anger. Lincoln remembered this in his famous Gettysburg address, which is why he used the memorable phrase, “With malice towards none and friendship to all.” The amazing thing is that phrase is straight out from the 12th Chapter of the Gita. Lincoln probably had never even heard of the Gita. But the God who taught the Gita was in the Heart of Lincoln too, which is why he spoke the way he did.

In the Gita Vahini, Swami compresses today's quote into one simple sentence. This is how that sentence goes:

Be in the world and act in it in accordance with the circumstances you face and in the situation destiny places you. However, the motivations for your actions must always be based on Eternal Considerations, namely Sathya and Dharma. That is because while the world is transient, you are an aspect of the Eternal Atma. Therefore, every action must carry that eternal fragrance rather than the stench of transient selfishness and self-interest.

Hope that is clear. Thanks for your attention and Jai Sai Ram.

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Radio Sai Team