Sri Sathya Sai International Organization

The body is bound to perish one day or the other. You will have to face misery if you are attached to the body. To attain immortality and experience bliss, you have to transcend name and form. So long as you have a body, you have to take care of it. But you should not be unduly attached to it or worried about it.

If each one does their duty, in the spirit of dedication, the light can illumine all, but if the doors of the heart are shut against the light, how can darkness disappear? You cannot sit back and expect the incarnation to bring peace and joy to you. The incarnation comes to warn, to guide, to awaken, to lay down the path, and shed the light of love on it. But one has to listen, learn, and obey with hope and faith.

Carols and candles, readings from the Bible, and acting out the incidents that surrounded His birth are not enough to celebrate the birth of Jesus. Jesus said that the bread taken in the 'last supper' was His flesh, and the wine, His blood. He meant that all beings alive with flesh and blood are to be treated as He Himself and that no distinction should be made between friend or foe, we or they. Everybody is His body, sustained by the bread; every drop of blood flowing in the veins of every living being is His, animated by the activity that the wine imparted to it. That is to say, every person is divine and has to be revered as such.

Human beings are a combination of these three: bhutakasa (body), chitthakasa (mind), and Chidakasa (Atma). The first refers to the one you think you are; the second, the one others think you are; and the third, the one you really are.

To think that God would forget anybody is only your imagination - the reflection, reaction, and resound of your feelings. God never forgets anybody. It is only the devotees who remember or forget God. God loves all equally. So, develop love. Eschew all evil tendencies.

The followers of every religion, in their own way and style, call upon the one God who is omnipresent. It is the same God who confers upon all mankind, health, prosperity, peace, and happiness. No religion has a separate God showering grace upon those who profess to abide by that faith alone!

If you want to realize God, if you wish to experience the divinity within you, if you want to know your true Self, you must develop pure, unsullied love. It is this that binds all people. It is described as the tether of love (Prema-pasham).

You should develop friendship with God. If God is your friend, the whole world will be under your control. But today, the unfortunate ones are losing their friendship with God. It is not easy to make friendship with God. But you must make every effort in this direction. Once you develop friendship with God, you must take full advantage of it through spiritual practices.

Purity of thought, word, and deed is true wisdom. You don't need to undertake any other spiritual practice. People undertake various spiritual practices. But they confer only temporary satisfaction. On the other hand, when you have purity of thought, word, and deed, you will experience eternal happiness.

There is one way of getting over the results of karma. If you earn the grace of the divine, even mountains of sin can be reduced to dust. Only the divine has the power to confer such grace. A spark of fire can bum down a mountain of cotton. How is the spark to be got into the mountain of human predicament? Only through love. Develop love.

Engage yourselves in social service, remembering and worshiping God and recognizing your inherent divinity. This is the way to sanctify your lives. Be aware of the divinity in you. There is no need to search for God anywhere outside you. The bodily vesture you are wearing should not produce the delusion that you are the body. Shed that delusion and you will realize the inherent divinity (Brahman) that you really are.

Once you take to the path of service, your problems will gradually decrease. Love all, serve all. Do not consider anybody as another person. Develop the feeling that they and you are one. The entire humanity is one. What you see in this world is only the reaction, reflection and resound of the reality that is one. Once you understand this truth, you will be peaceful. Only then will your mind be steady and one-pointed in the pursuit of your study and profession. Therefore, first and foremost, engage yourself in the service of society.

Today your foremost duty is to enthrone sacrifice. Only when sacrifice reigns, love will come into its own. All your latent potentialities will then manifest themselves. You will succeed in all your legitimate undertakings. When love becomes the ruling principle, sorrow and disappointment will disappear.

Individuals are integrally related to society like different organs in a body. Humanity is a limb of nature and nature is a limb of God. If this integral relationship is understood, where is the ground for hatred? None should consider themselves as insignificant or unimportant. Everyone, small or big, is a vital part of the whole and is essential for its proper functioning like all parts in a rocket.