Learning Through Reading

1313 · Dec 22, 2021

What is the best way to please God and earn His Grace? Bhagawan lovingly reminds us of this today.
The Lord is now worshipped by offering Him everything you yourself crave, treating Him with all the honors you would like to receive yourself. The idol is bathed and washed, adorned with jewels, fed and fanned, surrounded with fragrance, and so on. But the Lord is pleased only when you do what the Lord desires! How else can you win His Grace? How else, if not by caring for His children, worrying about them, helping them, and saving them? How else, if not by helping them recognize Him as their Lord and Protector and nurturing faith in Him through your own righteous and sincere life! You must see everyone as parts of your own body, and just as you try to heal any bruise or wound as quickly and effectively as possible, you must heal the troubles and pain of others to the extent of your abilities and means!
Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Divine Discourse, February 19, 1970
Service is the highest form of worship and the best penance.
Sai Baba

1313 · Dec 23, 2021

Only those who attain perfection in the moral, social, and spiritual spheres are true students. One should not strive solely for physical strength and worldly happiness. Strive to learn to control your mind. A person who becomes a slave to his mind will inevitably become weak, no matter how powerful he may be. Therefore, it is very important to make your mind an obedient servant. The mind possesses immense power. It is in the mind that virtuous qualities arise. If you have lost your wealth, you can earn it again. If you have damaged your health, it can be restored with the help of a good doctor. But if you have lost Human Values, life becomes meaningless. Human values are the foremost need of the present time. They cannot be acquired by reading the Scriptures or listening to the teachings of the sages. They are not sold, and no one can give or pass them on to you. They blossom from within. If you develop noble thoughts and follow the path of Truth in your daily life, then universal human values will blossom within you and protect you under all circumstances.

Sathya Sai Baba
Divine Discourse, January 14, 2003

1313 · Dec 24, 2021

The time has come for man to awaken.
Man in the West has been asleep for many centuries.
He has become entangled in wars and struggles on many levels. In doing so, he causes great harm to society.
Man needs great and sacred values to guide him. He must feel a duty toward God for his life to have meaning.
He needs to learn to fight for ideals instead of taking pleasure in struggle for its own sake.
And he also needs to be a partner to his wife, because modern men often live neither for their wives, nor for their children, nor for themselves. They live by following their animal instincts and rejoice in change. This is the basis of all their suffering and struggle.
Therefore, the Western man should first of all understand this: for one who loves change so much, the most important change is the transition from being bound to worldly affairs and the body to connection with the soul and God.
Only when man takes the path leading to God will the suffering of society, manifested in cruelty, selfishness, criminality, and other terrible things, come to an end.
Every man should feel responsible for the poverty of the society in which he lives. No one should blame others. Everyone who does not take an active part is guilty.
Seva (service to others) is the best way not to waste time.

Sai Baba

1313 · Dec 25, 2021

There is not a single situation without a solution. Never limit your thinking to one lifetime. There is not just one life. You have already lived so many lives that you ought to know this.
But you forget your past lives. This is necessary so that your memories do not burden or overwhelm you.
Always believe that My eternal justice balances everything. No one is rejected, no one is privileged. There is no injustice in the world—in the entire universe, there is none.
Always remember this truth: the less a person knows, the quicker and more unconditional their judgments are. Do not blindly believe what your eyes see; it may lead you seriously astray.
It is better to believe that God (I) has no unsolvable problems. If you do not know how to get out of a dead end, ask God! Ask with all your heart, and I will help you.
Today is exactly the same as in many other lives.

Passions are very widespread. This is a sign of Kali Yuga (our time), since, along with many other things, it is also characterized by passions.
Passions always indicate that a person is threatened with a fall.
At first, passions are always very small, but in the end they become great and terrible: first the bottle belongs to you, then you belong to it, and finally, you yourself become it.
First you smoke one cigarette, then ten, twenty, and so on.
First you watch the news for fifteen minutes, then one, two, three films, and finally you become attached to the television from morning until evening.
First you take one pill, then five, ten, and so on. Viewed more broadly, passions do not bring joy at all. They all have one thing in common: to a greater or lesser extent, they intoxicate and weaken the body and mind.
A person intoxicates themselves because they do not accept this world—often, what they themselves desired and created!
You are on Earth in order to become one who is aware and awakened. Intoxicating yourself is precisely the opposite.
If you cannot live without your intoxicants, then at least take care of your relationship with God. Repeat God's name (27.11) and ask Him for help.
His blessing may work in such a way that you begin to regard Him as an intoxicant. And believe Me, of all addictions, He is the most valuable, the most fortunate.
Sai Baba

1313 · Dec 26, 2021

DEEP REST AND SADHANA
(Shri Shri Ravi Shankar)

Deep rest is the most essential aspect of sadhana (spiritual practice). You are so tired from constantly doing one thing after another. Now simply sit for a while and be alone with yourself. Practice meditation. When you meditate, you begin to see a new world before you.

In meditation, you receive deep rest. When you are satisfied, you rest, and this rest brings an increase in happiness.

The pursuit of happiness makes you tired. When you chase happiness, you become exhausted, but when you abide in your Higher Self, when you rest, you gain energy, and this gives you strength, joy, and happiness.

Therefore, from time to time, stop this rat race and take time to be with yourself and get some rest. This is what knowledge is, and this is what spirituality is.

Often, even in the name of sadhana, we begin to involve ourselves in some activity and become tired again. I tell you, the physical body does not make you as tired as the mind does. Work does not make you as tired as your desires do. True sadhana is to be calm, content, and rested.

1313 · Dec 27, 2021

Selfless love for Me does not make you divine. Let Me tell you what it is: devotion. Devotion is love for a name and form, a cause, a mission, or an idea. You are devoted to sports and music. You are devoted to the Guru and God. This is not spirituality. Spirituality is when you can show equal devotion to everyone, regardless of whether they can be useful to you or not. When you simply love everyone unconditionally, that is spirituality. Many people here have devotion, but now I have a problem with this! I encouraged it until now because it was necessary to bring you here. You have done well. I must give you credit for that. *The next exam concerns spirituality, not devotion.* Having traveled the path of devotion, you must now take a step forward to learn spirituality.
*Pure selfless love is spirituality.* Devotion helps you get here. It will not take you any further. It leaves you here. *If you want to go beyond this point, you must learn to love—unconditionally, selflessly, everyone and everything!* Practice this, because this is the next stage. This is where we are all headed. *We will move quite quickly*. You must begin now and here. Do not put it off any longer.
Sai Baba

1313 · Dec 28, 2021

Does free will exist for a human being?

Swami! In the modern world, even a great deal of knowledge is only half-knowledge and partial understanding. We have no clear idea about anything. We would like to know what the difference is between free will and divine will.

Bhagavan: Only ego and ignorance create doubts of this kind. Because you identify with the body, you are unable to comprehend reality. In essence, you are slaves to your senses. Therefore, you are not free. How, then, can you possess free will? God is the master of everything. He is above all. He is bound by nothing and limited by nothing. He is absolutely free. Therefore, only God has free will, or divine will.

Today everyone believes that they have free will, allowing them to do whatever they please, and that under the guise of this free will they can make any decision. One thing may happen today and something completely different tomorrow, but divine will never changes. Using your freedom of choice, you may achieve success or failure, gain or loss. If you succeed, you become arrogant and egotistical. If you are unsuccessful, you become upset and disappointed.

But divine will is a transcendent phenomenon. What you should do is simply submit to it. This means being willing and able to meet and joyfully accept everything that happens in life, both bad and good, with the feeling that ultimately it will benefit you. You need to accept it as God’s gift. This is true jnana and bhakti (wisdom and devotion).

In fact, you do not know what is good for you. God knows everything and everyone—all the “whens,” “whys,” “whats,” and “hows.” Everything happens according to divine will. If you know this and sincerely believe it, if you have truly and completely surrendered to God’s will, you will never be overcome by euphoria, egoism, arrogance, sorrow, dejection, or disappointment.

Divine will is present within you in the form of conscience, reminding you of your responsibility. It is antarvani, the inner voice. But you ignore it, pay no attention to its calls and messages, and consequently suffer. When the mind is turned inward, when the intellect is attuned to the primordial principle, and the senses are kept under strict control, you can clearly hear the inner voice, which is none other than the voice of God. Divine will is God’s “master” plan.

Sai Baba, Sathyopanishad, Book 1, Chapter 5

1313 · Dec 28, 2021

I never asked you to earn Me.
I only want you to need Me.
Your Path is not a path of merit.
Constantly offer Me the desires that arise in your mind each time they appear.
They cannot shock Me, for they arose by My Will. Bring Me your doubts, your fear, your desires, your anxieties, your inability to Love the World, your indecision to Serve, your jealousy—all the shortcomings that stand in the way of your spiritual progress.

Sathya Sai Baba.

1313 · Dec 29, 2021

Whatever Sacred Scriptures you may study, whatever spiritual practices (sadhana) you may undertake, and whatever pilgrimages you may make, until you rid yourself of the impurities in your heart, life will remain useless and meaningless.
Purification of the heart is the essence of all Sacred Scriptures and the primary purpose of life. No spiritual lectures or sadhana can help purify your heart unless you make the effort yourself. And when your heart is purified, it will become a worthy dwelling place for the Divine.
Recognizing this fact, the Bhagavad Gita points to three stages on the path to Divinity:
engaging the body in good deeds,
using the mind to develop good thoughts and human qualities,
and contemplating God through upasana (worship of the Divine).
Through this, anyone can reach the stage where, like a river merging with the ocean, they merge with the Divine (Brahman).

Sathya Sai Baba
September 28, 1984, Prashanti Nilayam
"Self-mastery as a source of strength and power"

1965 · Dec 29, 2021

" The Shaman's Laughter" Vladimir Serkin. An interesting account of a psychologist and a Shaman. Like Castaneda with Don Juan. Many years ago, I tried to read or listen to Castaneda. It just didn't work—I would fall asleep halfway through a sentence. But then an acquaintance gave me this book to read... And I started reading. Slowly but surely))) I ordered all the books... Everything is proceeding in its own time.

1313 · Dec 30, 2021

At first glance, poems describing the games of child Krishna seem to portray objective events, but they have a deep subjective meaning. You should use the objective images as a flame to kindle the devotion arising from within. For example, there is a description of how Krishna, as a child, overturned a pot of buttermilk and ran away with a lump of butter, while Mother Yashoda discovered His hiding place through the traces left on the floor by His feet, which were smeared with buttermilk. The butter the Lord craves is the result of yoga, the final product of the mind's "churning" through viveka (the power of discrimination). He loves to enjoy it. And He takes it with Him into the solitude of Self-realization. We too can find the Lord by following His Footprints, which can be discovered everywhere, provided we search sincerely with trained eyes. You can find traces wherever there are beauty, virtue, humility, justice, truth, love, and peace. The eyes must be trained to discover the traces of God. This is how the mind should be brought under control.

Bhagavan Sathya Sai Baba
Divine Discourse, October 25, 1966

1313 · Jan 1, 2022

Today you honor the body as God. This is a distortion of reality that has led you into the dead end in which you find yourself.
The body is not God, but God’s temple. You do not need to honor the stone on which God’s face is carved.
On the contrary, you should honor the God symbolized by the stone, since the carved image merely points to Him.
The body is a highly developed machine. It is a masterpiece.
Since you do not possess your consciousness’s capacity for discernment, I have come to teach you who God is, who you are, and what significance your body has.
View the body as the word of God made flesh. See it as God’s temple, which you must maintain and care for so that it may be worthy of God.
But do not confuse the temple with its guest, the soul.
Just look at how disrespectful you are when you regard the body as God or as the soul. In the first case, you confuse the house with its owner; in the second, with its tenant.
It is therefore no wonder that instead of finding the owner, you run into a wall.

Sai Baba

1313 · Jan 1, 2022

"Give your entire self, your whole life—to Him, and your worship will change and transform you so quickly and so completely that you and He will be able to merge into One.

He thinks, feels, and acts just as you do; you think, feel, and act as He does. Just as a sculptor turns stone into a statue worshiped by entire generations of people, so will you be transformed. In doing so, you will have to endure many blows of the hammer and many wounds from the chisel, for He is the sculptor. He will merely remove the spell of petrification from you!

Give your heart to the Lord, and leave everything else to His transforming hand. Do not defile time, the physical body, or the life given to you by using them for trivial purposes. Your pilgrimage here is only part of the long journey you embarked upon on the day of your birth, and which will not end after death. Do not forget this.

Be pure, vigilant, and humble, as pilgrims should be. Value all the good you see and all the truth you hear, using them as support along the way."
Sai Baba

Удалённый пользователь 458 · Jan 1, 2022

We cannot give what is not present in our “I.” Nor can we receive it. Everything that can be received from other people must already be accessible within us before we receive it. Only then will we be receptive to such material. I can accept only what I myself am…

In order to love, one must be full of love. Those who are full of hatred attract only hatred. Those who are permeated with poison draw only a stream of poison from the whole world toward themselves. Like attracts like. The same happens with people. Those who want to radiate nectar must be filled with nectar. Those who want to attain God must awaken God within themselves. You must literally become what you want to attain. Become like the one you want to meet. To be happy, you need to be filled with happiness. You must become happiness itself. Only happiness can attract happiness. Do we not see that an unhappy mind can seek only unhappiness, even when it is very difficult to find?

Those who suffer find nothing but suffering in the world. Those who remain in a depressed state of mind see everything in depressive colors. In fact, people choose what is close to their spirit. They choose what is within themselves. Then they throw all their inner material outward and impose it on those around them. We seek outside ourselves what is already within us. The world, with all its conditions and circumstances, is a mirror in which we can see ourselves from different angles and in various forms.

Everything I give is within me. Everything I receive is also already within me. My entire existence is centered in my “I.” I cannot escape myself. Here are the world and salvation, pain and pleasure, violence and nonviolence, poison and nectar.

Osho

1313 · Jan 2, 2022

Again and again I assert that the decisive questions for people are: Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?
The answer is this: a human being is God on the path to discovering that he is God.
This means: You shape your own destiny. You are not a leaf in the wind. You are the creator of your life.
People do not accept these answers. That is the whole problem; it is the tragedy of this era.
Psychology discovered the subconscious and, on that basis, created methods of multifaceted treatment.
But the subconscious is almost always regarded either as an untamable energy, a dwelling place of problems, or a magical potential.
Yet the subconscious is also a place where you can find the divine within yourself.
The subconscious is not merely a collection of the untamable, the indistinguishable, or even the painful; it is a place where the divine unites with the psychic and physical power of life.
The famous saying of the Delphic Oracle, “Know thyself,” therefore means that you must discover God within yourself and know Him as your essence.
Only then will you know directly that, from your subconscious, you continuously determine your destiny.

Sai Baba

1313 · Jan 4, 2022

HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU DEVOTE TO THE DIVINE?
(Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)

Usually, you give it the time that is left over, the time you have nothing to fill, the time when you are not expecting guests, when there are no parties, no good films, no weddings. That is the kind of time you give. It is not quality time.

Devote quality time to the Divine. You will be rewarded for it. If your prayers have not been heard, it is because you devoted poor-quality time to them. Give satsang and meditation top priority. First and foremost, give your time to the Divine. And you will be rewarded.

Maharishi Patanjali said that if we can develop four qualities—acceptance, compassion, happiness, and equanimity—we will become very stable and strong.

Those of you who meditate, look back at your past: Have your patience and compassion increased? Has your life changed? The difference is very significant.

1313 · Jan 4, 2022

When the veil of darkness envelops the mind, it is necessary to analyze the situation immediately.
If you are suffering from an attack of anger, do not rush to give free rein to your words or commit rash acts. Instead, try to discover the cause of your anger, and you will feel it gradually subside. If you are very angry, drink a glass of cold water, sit quietly, or look at yourself in the mirror.
If you are upset because of an argument, if grief is causing you great pain, sit silently in a quiet place or, conversely, take a brisk walk.
Finally, turn on the tap in the bathroom and try to dissolve the sound of your voice into the murmur of the running water. Soon you will feel that, as your voice merges with the sound of the flowing water, your sadness passes.
In any situation, one can find many ways to calm anger.

Sathya Sai Baba.
A Course of Vedic Lectures. Summer Showers in Brindavan. 1993.

1313 · Jan 5, 2022

I so often ask you not to identify Me with this physical body. But you do not understand! You continue to call Me by this Name, thinking that I have only this one, single Form. But understand: there is no Name that is not Mine, and there is no Form that does not belong to Me!

Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba

1313 · Jan 6, 2022

Do you feel My Presence with every cell of your body? If you think of God, you become God. Think of dust—you become dust. Truly, thoughts are things. You become what you think about. As you sow, so shall you reap.
Spiritual development does not grow from seeds sown in the soil of worldly pleasures. Every action committed out of hatred or malice is a great loss for the mind, while every evil thought or deed dictated by hatred, as well as every thought of resistance, when brought under control, will benefit you.
By limiting ourselves, we not only lose nothing, but gain infinitely more than we imagined. Whenever we suppress hatred or anger within ourselves, we store up an enormous energy of goodness for our benefit. This influx of energy is transformed into higher powers.
God is Love.
- Baba.
23.10.1973
"RIVER OF LOVE"

1313 · Jan 7, 2022

For all forms of spiritual practice, it is very important to have suitable company. A person is shaped by the environment in which they live. Therefore, always be vigilant about the air you breathe; it may be polluted by the wicked thoughts of the people among whom you live. Pure water that falls from the sky as rain takes on hundreds of tastes and colors, depending on the soil onto which it falls. But even the murky, slippery sludge of a drain has some hope of becoming pure water again, for when the sun shines, this sludge can evaporate and rise into the clouds, restoring the purity of its original nature. To purify the mind, prayer is water, and repentance is soap. Water and cleansing agent alone will not accomplish this task. Repentance must be accompanied by a firm resolve not to repeat evil. You must pray and ask that, through Grace, help may come in sadhana! Guard the wisdom you have accumulated from the traps of attachment and aversion. This should become the foundation of your attitude toward life. For wherever there is duality, there are fear, decline, and death.

Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Divine Discourse, January 30, 1965