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Posted on: June 29, 2016

Guru Poornima Special Offering
(Daily Episode)

Part - 21

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

NATURE IS THE BODY OF GOD

Man has the rare good fortune of adoring Nature as the Body of God and offering grateful worship to God. But, is he conscious of God being the Source and Sustenance? Does he give God the first place in his thoughts which is His due? Or, is he engaged in the activities of life in total disregard of God? It is a pity that, instead of paying attention to God, Nature and Man, in that order, men today are concerned most with themselves, more with Nature and very much less with God. From birth to death, from dawn till night, man pursues fleeting pleasures by the exploitation, the despoiling, the desecration of Nature, ignoring the truth that it is the property of God, the Creator, and any injury caused to it is a sacrilege which merits dire punishment.

• Divine Discourse, July 11, 1985.

REFLECTIONS ON THE ABOVE

Sai Ram. Speaking to students many, many years ago, Swami said,

These days, man thinks he is very advanced and civilized. Advanced he might be in terms of science and technology, he is less civilised than the ancients. I can see you are looking rather surprised. Well, look around and see what man is doing. He is not merely cutting trees but wiping out entire forests. He is not merely killing animals for food but wiping out so many species like the tiger, the lion, elephants, and so on. He is polluting the air, the rivers and so on. Now look at the ancients. They did cut trees, but only to a minimum; other than that, they worshipped trees. In fact, they worshipped everything - plants, animals, even snakes, land, mountains, rivers, air, sky... you name it. Why? Because they saw God in everything. Modern man laughs at ancients and calls them barbaric. Who is barbaric and uncivilised? The ancients? Or the modern man who disrespects, tramples down upon, pollutes and even destroys Nature on such a massive scale? Modern man has no time even for his aged parents, whereas ancients revered their parents and took care of them in their old age? And after all this, modern man gives himself a medal for being civilised and laughs at ancients, describing them as barbaric. Now tell me, who is more civilised, modern man or ancients?

By the way, what Swami said about ancients, applied in a sense to ancients all over the world and not only in India. By way of substantiating it, let me quote parts of a letter written by Chief Seattle, when about a century and half ago, the tribe he headed was compelled by pressure to sell its land to the Government in Washington. This is what Chief Seattle said in part, and his anguish is unmistakable:

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The air is precious to the red man for all things share the same breath - the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves.

This we know; the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.

The Almighty is above all. He is the God of all men, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

The fears that Chief Seattle expressed then have unfortunately come true. Let us go back to three key phrases in the Sai Quote we are trying to understand today. They are

• Nature as the Body of God,

• God, Nature and Man, and

• The truth that it [i.e., Nature] is the property of God, the Creator.

Let us spend some time going behind these, in order to understand better what Swami is telling us. We shall start with the second of these, namely, God, Nature and man. In Swami’s University, they have a course called Awareness, which is essentially a structured course on Spirituality. One of the many things they teach is the relationship between God, Nature and man. As we know, God first created the Universe, then filled it with inanimate entities and finally introduced living beings on earth. Slowly the living species evolved and finally humans appeared, just recently, say about a million years ago, which is a very short time on Nature’s scale. To teach the relationship between these three entities, we draw a triangle, identify the top vertex with God, the bottom right vertex with Nature and at the bottom left vertex with man. This way we show that (i) both Nature and man came from God who is the Master of all, and (ii) man and Nature are interconnected. We usually call this the Golden Triangle.

Now what’s the big idea of introducing this Golden Triangle? What the teacher would do after drawing the triangle on the board is first wipe out the bond between God and Nature; the triangle is gone and there are only one two lines making an angle. The teacher would then segment this angle into two lines, one which shows God and man at two ends and another which shows man and Nature at two ends. He would then say:

Boys, do you see what modern man does? He dissociates Nature from God, claims a direct relationship between himself and God, that is what the God-man line shows, and then a separate relationship between himself and Nature. Why does he do this? Because it allows him to do the following. First, he would worship God devoutly, or at least claim to do with all his ostentatious rituals. Having done that, he would then enter the business world and merrily pollute air, water, land, kill animals, destroy forests, and so on, all for making money.

If such is the contradiction in the case of those who believe in God, imagine how much worse it would be if the person did not believe in God. In today’s world, a very large number of people do not, and that’s how humanity has landed up with so many difficult and almost insoluble problems.

So, what’s the solution? Let’s go back to Swami again. He says,

O man! Remember, Nature came from God and you came from Nature, who is really your Mother. In the same way, Nature can be regarded as the dress of God; all of which means you not only owe respect to Nature but also must understand that Nature having come from God is really the property of God. He is its Creator and not you!

In the language of the Golden Triangle which was meant to highlight the triangular sort of inter-relationship between God, Nature and man, today’s situation can be described as the breaking up of this sacred triangle in three different fragments. That obviously is going to upset the balance ordained by God quite a lot, and when Divine balance is disturbed what can we expect except trouble?

Incidentally, Swami has drawn an interesting analogy between modern man’s attitude and that of the demon king Ravana, who is the main villain of the epic, the Ramayana. If you recall, the Ramayana is the story of the Rama Avatar, with Sita His consort representing the Universal Mother. What does Ravana do? He abducts Sita, trying to make her his own. And what happens to him eventually? He pays a very heavy price. His kingdom is destroyed, thousands of his followers get annihilated in the big war between Rama and Ravana, he loses all his sons, and finally his life.

The moral of it all is clear. This is what Swami once told students:

Ravana is to be seen as a caricature of modern man, who is so greedy that he is ready to grab everything he can from Nature but is not willing to even offer her minimal respect. In fact, he has gone to the extent of causing grievous harm. Is this how you show respect and gratitude to the Universal Mother?

I shall conclude by drawing your attention to a) what Chief Seattle said towards the end of his letter and what Swami says towards the end of the Sai Quote. First the Chief:

The Almighty is above all. He is the God of all men, and His compassion is equal for the red man and the white. The earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator.

And now Swami’s concluding remarks:

The despoiling, the desecration of Nature, ignoring the truth that it is the property of God, the Creator, and any injury caused to it is a sacrilege which merits dire punishment.

Bearing these two quotes in mind, please think about what is going on right now as regards pollution of air, land and water. Is this how we should show our gratitude to God who not only gave us air, water and land free but in a pristine condition? Think about it. Jai Sai Ram.

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Radio Sai Team