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Posted on: June 18, 2016

Guru Poornima Special Offering
(Daily Episode)

Part - 10

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

HOW TO SEE THE PERMANENT IN THE IMPERMANENT

Multiplicity is a characteristic of Prakriti (Nature). The Cosmos is a projection of the Divine. It is called Jagat - that in which things arise and disappear, come and go. Nothing seems permanent. But the spiritually realized person will recognize the permanent that subsumes the changing entity. Such a realization can come only when a person is pure in thought, word and deed. Purity must express itself in loving service.

Divine Discourse, November 21, 1990.

REFLECTIONS

Sai Ram. The world we live in is constantly subject to change. Change is taking place all the time within us, around us, above us and below us as well. So used are we to living with change that we hardly ever realize that there are things, entities - call them what you will - that are beyond change. These are what are referred to as being permanent, eternal and so on. In a curious sort of way, we unconsciously think we are permanent. I mean people attend funerals, after which they talk of the person who was there but is now gone. During all this talk, most people do not realize that one fine day, they themselves would have to go.

There is a wonderful story relating to this in the Mahabharatha, but unfortunately, I do not have time to go into that. But instead, I shall pose the following question, which, by the way, was the central point of the story in the epic that I referred to. The question is:

Why do we think that death would not touch us when we see people dying around us all the time?

I must at this point stress that people are not really as stupid as to imagine that they can escape death for ever. As they say in America, the only two things one can be sure of are death and taxes! People do know that someday, death would overtake them too. However, they often feel that is quite far off, and carry on as if death did not matter.

I am going into all this in order to focus on two important points, they being:

How come people sometimes think that death is for others and not for them?

Why is it that people who know that death is near are afraid of it?

I raise these questions because they are, in my opinion, closely related to the Sai Quote above. If we break down the various points made in the quote, we would get the following:

The Universe is a Creation of God, which means that everything in the Universe, from the atom to the galaxy came from God.

Since humans are a part of the Universe, it follows that they too came from God.

God is permanent and Creation arises when He projects Himself into a “lower” dimension, shall we say.

In such a projection, although the things that are created have all come from God, they do not have permanent existence. The very fact that they once did not exist and then had a birth means that there was a time when they were not; this automatically rules out their being permanent.

Now there is one thing that must be noted about the entities created by God, which is that having come from God, they do have something within them that came directly from God.

What this means is that every created entity is a mixture of something that is primordial and permanent, and something that is necessarily transient.

Putting all this together, we come to the conclusion that each of us, having come from God do have something Divine within us that is eternal and also something that is largely connected with the physical universe, which is therefore subject to change and would one day even disappear. The Sai Quote above is all about this intriguing mixture and co-existence, how we must carefully sort out these two aspects, namely, the eternal and the transient, and why we must do so. Swami has explained this via a simple but beautiful analogy. He says:

Imagine the ocean which is so vast. If we carefully watch the surface of the ocean, we would constantly see waves appearing, growing, and then disappearing. Supposing you happened to be one of those waves and are looking around. You would notice that waves around are disappearing all the time, hardly conscious of the fact that you too would soon disappear. Now that is one part of the perception.

Suppose the wave were to ask itself: “Who am I?” It could give one of many answers like below:

I am just a small wave riding on the ocean.

Yes, I am a wave but a part of the vast ocean.

I am not a wave though I might appear to be; IN TRUTH I AM VERILY THE OCEAN. Is not my water salty like that of the ocean?

The situation of humans on earth is very similar. Yes, in terms of the body, we are transient. But in as much as we have come from God [just as the wave is born of the ocean] in truth, we are verily God. Turning now to what Swami is saying in the quote, He is telling us,

Just because you have a body, don’t jump to the conclusion that you are merely body. The REAL YOU is the Atma within while the body is like a dress. Just as you remove the dress after it becomes dirty, so also your Atma sheds the body and seeks a new one. Birth and death are the transient aspects of life. When you look beyond the transient, you would realize that you are indeed Eternal.

Two questions now arise. They are:

1) How does one achieve this realization? and

2) What benefits does such a realization confer?

Swami gives the answer to the first question. He says that purity of thought, word and deed alone can lead to the realization that one is verily God. As regards the second question, Swami has given the answer on numerous occasions. What does the realization that one is God do to us? It puts one permanently in a state of Bliss. God is Bliss and Bliss is what one experiences when one becomes united with God.

In one simple sentence, “Happiness is union with God,” as Swami often reminds us.

Dear reader! Now and then, please do take a minute off from your busy schedule and reflect deeply on Swami’s sayings. It can make a lot of difference to your life. Give it a try!

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Radio Sai Team