You are born for your own sake

Prashaanthi ‘Vidwanmahaasabha is meeting here for the second time and I am glad I am here to witness the dawn of Aanandha that is lighting up every face. I have also come to confer on you Aanandham. Really, all this misery is caused by mankind itself, not by any extraneous agency. Having all the instruments of joy and contentment in one’s possession, if man is miserable, it is only due to his perverseness, his stupidity. He has been warned, over centuries, by the scriptures of all languages that he should give up greed and lust, give up the habit of catering to the senses, give the belief that he is just this body and nothing more. But, yet, he does not know the illness that is torturing him.

The disease is due to ‘vitamin deficiency,’ as they say; the vitamins are sathya, dharma, shaanthi and prema (truth, righteousness, peace and divine love). Take them and you recover; assimilate them into your character and conduct and you shine with fine mental and physical health. The more material wealth you collect, the greater the bother and the greater the sorrow when death calls. You have no peace if you struggle to win it through the accumulation of wealth. You have come from your villages, so many thousands of you, to this place to see Sai Baaba and to hear Him, is it not? Well, over and above those two aims, you must have a third one too. You must also see yourself and hear your inner voice, urging you to discover your own truth. I am prompting you to discover your Reality. That is My Mission.

Save yourself by yourself

You should not be swayed by the demon of doubt. Doubt comes only from ignorance; it disappears when knowledge dawns. When a man was tiding on horseback with another carrying a bed behind him, passersby concluded that the rider was the master and the man behind was his servant. When both reached a caravanserai and when the rider was feeding the horse and the man with the bed was sleeping on it in the verandah, men thought the former was the servant and the latter, the master! Conclusions drawn on flimsy grounds are always subject to revision. You are born for your own sake, not for the sake of any one else. You have to cure yourself of the disease of ignorance, just as you have to cure yourself of the disease of hunger. No one else can save you from both. “Uddhareth aathma-na athmaanam”: “Save yourself by yourself”

God is in you, but like the woman, who fears that her necklace has been stolen or lost, recognises that she has it round her neck when she passes a mirror, man too will recognise that God is in him, when some Guru reminds him of it. The joy’ that you then get is incomparable. Every Indian must realise that the science of self, discovery is self-heritage. He must value it and earn it. Now, there are many scholars, able to expound that heritage, but few who practise it and earn the reward. That science was explored by sages and laid down in clear and simple terms. Not to know it and not to practise it is the greatest loss that this country suffers from. Fancy for naveenam (the modem) in preference to the sanaathanam (the classical and the eternal), is the cause of this misery. Sugarcane should not be equated with any cane! Only those who do not know the taste of sugar will do so.

Seek jnaanam (spiritual knowledge), which is the seat of sweetness. Get rid of the desire for sense-enjoyment, which like the pleasure you get while scratching itching eczema, only makes the complaint worse. You cannot cure it by yielding to the temptation to scratch. The more you scratch, the more you are tempted to continue, until bleeding intervenes. So, desist from that vain pursuit and concentrate on spiritual matters, or at least, move in the world with the everpresent consciousness that it is a morass, a net, a trap, into which attachment and desire will precipitate you. Be a true bhaktha and become so small that you wriggle out of the shackles of the senses or be a true jnaani and become so huge, that you escape by breaking the shackles.