Life 47 (May 24 - Jan 25)

[winston]

How many hours of effort is necessary to earn the grace of the Divine?

You should pray to the Divine to give you the strength to bear all troubles and face all difficulties. If you have even an atom of grace of the Divine, a mountain of troubles can be overcome.

"If a fraction of the time that is spent in worrying about wealth, provisions, wife, children, friends and business, is devoted to contemplation on the feet of the Divine, one can face the messengers of death without fear and cross the ocean of samsara!"

It is not necessary to devote many hours to prayer. It is enough if one thinks of Him with all his heart and offers himself even for a few moments.

A single match stick when it is struck can dispel the darkness in a room that has remained closed for years. Mountains of cotton can be burnt down by a single spark.

Likewise, wholehearted chanting of His name even once, can destroy mountains of sins. But the chanting should not be done mechanically like playing a gramophone record. It should emanate from the depths of the heart.

- Divine Discourse, Apr 14, 1989.

Even if one small ray of the grace of the Divine falls on you, all your sins will be burnt away.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

How do we constantly check our progress and worthiness on the spiritual path?

Just as a thermometer indicates heat of the body, your talk, conduct and behaviour, indicate your mental equipment and attitudes and show how high is the fever of worldliness that afflicts you. These must be pure, untinged by passion of emotions, like hate or pride.

Talk in peace, promoting peace in others. What is the use of japa (recital of Mantra) and dhyana (Meditation), when your talk and conduct are not even human? How can you hope to approach the divine while groveling in the slush of the bestial?

Resolve this day to cleanse the mind of impurities, so that you can imbibe the inspiration it is intended to convey.

Aspirants for mental peace must also reduce luggage they have to care for; the more the luggage, the greater the bother. Objective possessions and subjective desires - both are handicaps in the race for realisation.

A house cluttered with lumber will be dark, dusty and without free movement of fresh air; it will be stuffy and suffocating.

The human body too is a house; do not allow it to be cluttered with curios, trinkets, trash, and superfluous furnishings.

Let the breeze of holiness blow as it wills through it; let not the darkness of blind ignorance desecrate it.

- Divine Discourse, Oct 12, 1969.

Life is a bridge over the sea of change; pass over it but do not build a house on it.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

How should we play our game of life in this world and how do we deal with all the noise and clutter?

As all rivers hurry towards the sea, let all your imaginings wend their way to Him.

The Play is His; the role is His Gift; the lines are written by Him; He decides the dress and decoration, the gesture and the tone, the entrance and the exit. You have to act well your part and receive His approbation when the curtain falls.

Earn by your efficiency and enthusiasm, the right to play higher and higher roles - that is the meaning and purpose of life. Do not get too much attached to the world and too involved in its tangles.

Keep your emotions always within hold. The waves agitate only the upper layers of the sea; down below it is calm. So too, when you sink into your depths, you must be free from the agitation of the waves.

Know that most things are of no lasting value and can therefore be brushed aside; hold fast to the solid substance only. Use your discrimination to discover which things are lumber, and which are treasure!

- Divine Discourse, Jun 09, 1970.

The Divine is the director and all humans are mere actors. Be good performers in His play.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

How can we elevate simple Sadhana (spiritual Practice) and earn His grace?

We may ask, how can a man sunk in relative knowledge become aware of the Atma (Inner Self)? But there is no reason for despair or for condemning ourselves as mean and low.
For when small men make big decisions, they earn encouragement from the great.

When the tiny squirrel decided to share in building the passage across the sea, did it not receive the blessings of the Divine? The squirrel knew that its help could only be infinitesimal but the feeling of dedication which prompted it won the grace of the Divine.

Men, however, do not sublimate small spiritual efforts through high purpose. They engage in bhajan, worship and meditation, but these are physical exercises! The mind does not elevate them into sincerity. The mind does not pour forth or vibrate in them. So, they remain at the human level.

They do not rise to the level of the Divine. "Can a lake be filled when there’s a sprinkle of rain? Can thirst be relieved, with saliva? Can the belly be full, if breathing is held tight? Can live cinders be secured by burning blades of grass?" asks a poet.

Logs must be burned if charcoal is needed; sheets of rain alone can fill a lake to the brim; a glass of cold water alone can cure a person of thirst, nothing less! The heart has to be offered in full. Devotion must fill and overflow the heart.

- Divine Discourse, Jan 08, 1983.

Gemstones have to be sought deep underground; they do not float in mid-air. Seek Him in the depths of yourself, not in the tantalising, kaleidoscopic Nature.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What is the best Yoga or pathway to achieve success in the spiritual quest?

There are some who are attracted by various systems and methods, which claim to help people realise the self. But I must tell you that none of these can make you realise Him.

I am saying this most emphatically. Premayoga, the discipline of love, alone can lead you to Him. Other yogas may calm the mind's agitations temporarily and may improve health and prolong life for a few more years but that’s all they can do!

What is the good you hope to achieve with that body in extra years? If love is absent, it weighs you down like a big burden; if love is cultivated, then the body can be used for serving others, without regard for the interests of the body!

The body should be guarded and sustained for the service one can do with it to others, or for realising Atma while in it. There are some who follow a rigorous timetable of japam, dhyanam, etc.

Of course, this is good practice, but don’t stick to this timetable even when you have a call to go help a person whose need for service is great and urgent.

If you give up your meditation and serve him, you will benefit more from the service than what you may gain from meditation!

- Divine Discourse, Nov 22, 1970.

The fulfilment of man's life on earth consists in filling oneself with the Love of the Divine and transmuting that love into acts of service. –

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

How should we train the mind to get attached to noble thoughts and practices?

The mind suffers from a false sense of values and tries to discard what is good for it.

The child must be educated to appreciate hard, chewable food which it does not welcome in the beginning. So too, the mind must be trained to picture the vast, limitless, overwhelming majesty that underlies time, space and causation.

First, it must develop a taste for the Personal Divine and later for the Impersonal, without a name and a form. All names and forms to the Impersonal Divine are attributed by the mind.

Bhajan, dhyan, Namasmarana, Nagarasankeertan - all these are steps in that education. The bliss that’s won by mergence in the Divine, is the consummation.

A sick person must swallow the cough syrup himself, so long as he is ill, however bitter the medicine may be!

A person, ill with ignorance and therefore suffering from egoism and discontent, must take the medicine of japa-dhyana (repetition of the name and meditation).

The disease of over-attachment to worldly objects can be cured only by the drug of attachment to the Divine, cultivated through japa and dhyana.

- Divine Discourse, Nov 22, 1970.

The Divine will serve you; He will save you and be by your side ever - only you have to cultivate your character and polish your interior so that He might be reflected therein.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What is the true purpose of religion and the practices they propagate?

Every one of the religious sects elaborated their own rituals and modes of worship, their own priorities in spiritual attainment and their own body of doctrines about the individual, the objective world and the Divine.

The purpose of these codes and modes was, in all cases, to purify the mind and insist on the practice of high moral virtues. But this was soon ignored and importance came to be attached to superficial conformity and outer purity.

The craving for personal aggrandisement and power made every sect, faith and religion, rigid and dry.

There is a great need today to discover the inner spring of all faiths, the spring that fertilises the outer rites and ceremonies.

A little quiet study will reveal that there is an undercurrent of moral enthusiasm and spiritual adventure. The word generally used for religion is matha; the word to indicate the mind is mathi.

Putting the two together it can be said that matha (religion) is primarily engaged or ought to be engaged in straightening and strengthening the mathi (mind).

- Divine Discourse, Oct 01, 1976.

You should not have contempt for any religion, as each is a pathway to the Divine.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What is the one significant prayer which will awaken us from the body-mind-complex and help us live in love?

Give up what must be cast away, know what must be attained and then, bliss becomes your unruffled nature!

Give up the idea of the world being valid; know the reality of the Self and attain the Source, Brahman!

This is the significance of the Prayer which you recite every day before the lessons:-
"Lead me from the Unreal to the Real;
Lead me from darkness to light;
Lead me from death to immortality.”

This prayer is asking to be led from the mundane world, constantly being built and rebuilt, resolved and dissolved, into the Divine whose Being undergoes no change!

The darkness symbolises ignorance which induces identification with the body-senses-mind-reason complex.

The light reveals the divine core, over which all the rest is superimposed by the fog of faulty vision.

Death affects only the body-mind complex.

When we are led into the light, we become aware that we are the undying Atma (Inner-Self), and so we become immortal.

- Divine Discourse, Jan 08, 1983.

When the darkness of ignorance caused by ego is dispelled by the light of divine knowledge, the effulgence of the Divine is experienced.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

How can one be awakened from this ‘wakeful dream’ that is experienced?

How can you be content, living in this illusory world, gathering and relying on illusory knowledge?

Realise the person beyond all illusion, who is the Creator of this illusion, who is revealed in and through this illusion.

Worldly knowledge is of the temporary, the particular, the finite, the individual; how can it reveal the Eternal, the Universal, the Infinite, the Absolute?

The Scriptures has the answer. It asks us to analyse our dream-experience. Dreams are unreal, they are illusory. But yet, for as long as we are dreaming, the experience is real and valid.

Often in the dreams, as a result of the illusory experience itself, awareness is created through fear or horror or pain or excitement, such that the person dreaming wakes up and the dream is destroyed.

What has caused the awakening? The dream itself helped in the destruction of the dream. So too in this ‘wakeful dream’ - in the illusory world where every wakeful experience is deemed true and valid - some experience or the roar of the "Divine axioms, which ring through the sacred texts" wakes man into the higher awareness.

- Divine Discourse, Nov 22, 1970.

The inherent nature of fire is 'to burn'; of water, 'to wet'; of stone, 'to be heavy’. The nature of man consists in the yearning 'to know’.

Source: radiosai.org

[winston]

What should we learn from the lotus and strive to emulate?

All religions are unanimous in regarding the heart as the seat of the Divine.

The Hindu scriptures have declared that the heart is the temple of God.

The sacred Upanishads have referred to the heart as a cave in which the Divine dwells.

It is stated in the Bible that the man with a pure heart can see God.

The Muslims regard the heart as located between the two fingers of God.

The Guru of the Sikhs, Nanak, declared that only a man with a pure heart can be regarded as a true Sikh.

In this way, the various faiths have affirmed that the heart is the abode of the Divine.

Many great souls have experienced the heart as a lotus. Although rooted in mire, growing up in muddy water, the lotus shines in purity. When the lotus opens its petals and looks up, it seems to say: "O Lord, please come and dwell in me." Though born in mud it does not wallow in it. Surrounded by polluted water it is not polluted by it.

This is the great lesson the lotus teaches man: "Though you are living in a corrupt world and are born in the sludge of an unrighteous society, you must turn your mind towards the Divine and make your heart a shrine for Him."

- Divine Discourse, Jul 14, 1984.

Prema (pure love) is not related to the mind, it springs from the heart. That is why Divinity can be realised only through the heart.

Source: radiosai.org