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Posted on: June 21, 2016

Guru Poornima Special Offering
(Daily Episode)

Part - 13

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

MAKE WORK INTO WORSHIP AND RISE TO THE LEVEL OF GOD

True spirituality emphasises the truth that is common to all religions. One should not hate any religion or ridicule any form of worship. One must recognize the unifying truth in all religions. God is not separate from you. However, by regarding God as separate from him, man resorts to various kinds of worship. In the present day world, this type of Karmopasana (worship through action) is necessary. But one should not be engaged all his life in this form of worship. Gradually one should reach a higher level. Only then humanness gets divinized.

- Divine Discourse, December 18, 1994.

REFLECTIONS

Sai Ram. Back in the old days, Swami often used to say:

God comes down as man in order to raise man to the level of God. So, understand clearly why I am here and how I am trying to help you. Therefore, don’t waste this golden opportunity, which comes less frequently than even the proverbial Blue Moon!

In the above Sai Quote, Swami gives a simple formula for rising to the level of God. Few realise that all of Swami’s teachings are extremely simple. However, so immersed are we in worldly life, that we don’t even know what Swami expects of us. And if we try to spend a minute or two trying to find that out, there is the cell phone to make us forget God in a jiffy and pay more attention to some silly text message coming from somewhere or the other.

Since everybody is more comfortable with short messages, let me break down the Sai Quote of the day into such short messages. Message 1 from God is:

People may follow different religious faiths but all religions talk of God. They also say that God created all beings. Clearly therefore, there is only one God for all.

Message 2:

Since God is only one, His message also is only one; and that Message is referred to as Spirituality since it deals directly with the Spirit or Soul within you.

Message 3:

That Spirit or Soul within you is nothing but God; since there is only one God, the same God resides in all Hearts, acting as a personal advisor to the individual concerned.

Message 4:

Since the same God resides in every individual, He gives the same advice to one and all. We may make mistakes and understand it incorrectly. But God’s message to all is always the same. And it is that message that is commonly referred to as Spirituality.

Message 5:

This is the summary of all of the above and it says God is in you and you should not ever forget it.

The question now arises: “But what about religion? Whether we like it or not, most people are born into some religion or the other, and they adopt the practices including forms of worship, prescribed by the faith they belong to. Does not all this clash with spirituality? How does one resolve all this?” Swami’s answer is simple. He says effectively:

When you join a school you are admitted to the lowest class. From there, you slowly make your way to higher classes by learning new things, pass the high school exam, then go through college and if you are bright, join a famous university like Harvard, where you find people from many parts of the world. Similarly, when you look at say the Atlantic Ocean, you find rivers from North America, South America, Europe and Africa - all empty into the same ocean. Once their waters mix, their earlier identities cease to have meaning. In the same way, religious rituals must be practised mainly to seek the God within and realise that all are children of One God and one God only. If this feeling does not grow, then people would continue to be divided by religious differences which at times can be so strong as to even lead to much violence. Millennia have been spent in arguing about such differences and even wars have been fought to establish the superiority of one creed over another. All that is meaningless. That is not what God wants, and all such conflicts in the name of God are actually against God!

In the quote we started with, Swami makes all this very clear. Just to remind you, this is what He says:

But one should not be engaged all his life in this form of worship. Gradually one should reach a higher level. Only then humanness gets divinized.

That should make it absolutely clear. Ritualistic worship is like using floats to learn swimming. Once one has learnt how to swim, clearly there is no need any longer to use floats. In the same way, at some stage, one must graduate from routine rituals to experiencing God in His highest aspect by experiencing Bliss. That is the test of humans rising from the level into which they are born to a level where they become one with God. That is the meaning of humanness getting divinized.

All this may not be clear right away but ought to be, provided one reflects deeply about all this. Why don’t you then take some time off and do just that? Thank you and Jai Sai Ram.

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Radio Sai Team