Discipline for Children Swami says that we should discipline our children and not allow them to wander about without control. He further says: Discipline is the mark of intelligent living. Parents should not allow children to fall away from their control, and wander about without compass or anchor. Many parents feed and fondle their children, and then, in the name of freedom, leave them to find their own friends and pleasures. They take them to films regardless of the impression they create on their tender minds. They entertain the friends of their children, but do not inquire their antecedents or habits. They even encourage their children to smoke and drink, not knowing they will one day have to rue their action. They thus declare by their action that they are the enemies of their own progeny! I like children; I take great care of them; I pay them great attention. I give, and advise parents to give them [the children], proper advice at the proper time. I insist on discipline, on reverent obedience to parents, on regulated food and play, on rigorous allocation of time for study, bhajan (devotional singing), meditation, etc. I also recommend some items of service, like nursing the sick. I condemn frivolous talk, luxurious living, deleterious habits, addiction to films, horror comics, pen-friends, exotic dress, outlandish coiffures designed to draw attention to oneself, etc. By these means, boys and girls are slowly drawn into unrighteous and immoral ways. Discipline trains you to put up with disappointments; you will know that the path of life has both ups and downs, that every rose has its thorns. Now, people want roses without thorns, life has to be one saga of sensual pleasure, a picnic all the time. When this does not happen, you turn wild and start blaming others. If each one cares for his own pleasures, how can society progress? How can the weak survive? Mine, not thine—this sense of greed is the root of all evil. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, pp. 56-57 Establish the status of the mother in the home, as the upholder of spiritual ideals and therefore, the guru of the chidren. Every mother must share in this effort—the expansion and steady manifestation of the God-consciousness latent in every child. Children are the crops growing in the fields, to yield the harvest on which the nation has to sustain itself. They are the pillars on which the foundation of the nation’s future is built. They are the roots of the national tree, which has to give the fruits of work, worship, and wisdom to the next generation. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, pp. 236-237 In the tender hearts of the children, there is much potentiality of devotion and attachment to higher ideals and objectives…. Do not think that they do not know anything; that you can divert them any way you wish; this is a mistake. Recognize the great potentials of the child; adopt such methods as the child himself might suggest or indicate. Help the child to reach Godliness and become aware of its high destiny. Do not presume that the child is some inferior personality or that it is incapable of attaining the heights. Sathya S

Games the Mind Plays Life sustained by food is short; life sustained by the atman (Divine Spirit) is eternal. Do not lay claim to long life, but to divine life. Do not pine for more years on earth, but for more virtues in the heart. The Buddha knew and made known to the world the truths. Everything is grief. Everything is empty. Everything is brief. Everything is polluted. So the wise man has to do the duties cast upon him with discrimination, diligence, and detachment. Play the role, but keep your identity unaffected. Have your head in the forest (ashram/retreat), unaffected by the aimlessly rushing world. But it is your duty, a duty you cannot escape, to fully engage yourself in your work, unconcerned with loss or gain, failure or success, slander or praise. The Gita instills this very lesson in you: “Whoever does upasana [steady worship] with no thought other than Me, him I shall have with Me; I shall bear his burden now and forever.” The Gita says, “Keeping Me ever in memory, engage yourself in the battle of life.” This ‘Me’ to which Krishna refers is not something outside you or extraneous to you. It is your own diviner reality, which you can cognize in the silence of your own dhyana (meditation), when you shut out of your awareness the distraction of the senses, the mind, and the ego. You can take refuge in the calm coolness of your heart where He has installed Himself as the charioteer. You must only engage yourself in work that is purifying, with an attitude that sanctifies. Most people do not know how to set about on this most rewarding adventure. They waste their lives in sorrow, wading through disappointment and despair, for they cling to something as theirs and treat something else as belonging to others. They grab and grieve, and labor to acquire and lose. Desire multiplies desire, and man sinks deeper into discontent and distress. The behavior is really artificial; it does not conform to man’s real nature, the prompting of his atman, which is divine. Sathya Sai Speaks, vol. 13, pp.100-101 What is required is the awareness of the vicious game that the mind plays. It presents before the attention one source after another of temporary pleasure; it does not allow any interval for you to weigh the pros and cons. When hunger for food is appeased, it holds before the eye the attraction of the film, it reminds the ear of the charm of music, and it makes the tongue water for the pleasant taste of something that it craves for. The wish becomes very soon the urge for action, the urge soon gathers strength and the yearning becomes uncontrollable. The burden of desires gradually becomes too heavy and man gets dispirited and sad. Train the mind to turn toward the intelligence for inspiration and guidance, not toward the senses for adventures and achievements. That will make it an instrument for reducing your vagaries and saving time and energy for more vital matters.

Body Performs & Mind Distinguishes The body performs actions; the mind distinguishes between right and wrong. The atma [individual soul] functions as the witness. Although these three appear to differ from each other, they are interrelated; it is only when the three are integrated and harmonized that man can achieve self-fulfillment. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 19, p. 182 Analyze yourself and discover the several layers of consciousness, the physical, the sensory, the nervous, the mental, the intellectual, and arrive at the very core of even the last layer, the layer of joy. The panchakoshas (the five sheaths) have to be transcended, so that you may attain your truth, which is atma. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 5, pp. 8-9 Is it the body that derives joy from looking at a thing of beauty? Or is it the atma? What is it that relishes the food that is consumed? The body or the spirit? What is it that enjoys fragrance or is moved by companionship? Enquiring in this manner, it will be found that the atma is the enjoyer and not the physical body. The body by itself is gross and incapable of experiencing joy. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 20, p. 88 The sky might be reflected in a pot of toddy (liquor), but [the latter] does not defile it. Similarly, in this vehicle, the body, the atma dwells pure and undefiled. The fruits of action, good or bad, fair or foul, adhere to the vehicle not to the indweller, the See-er. Prema Vahini, p. 29 Humanness and God-ness co-exist as inseparables. They are the negative and positive poles that have to be together to produce the warmth of love and the light of wisdom. Once you have established yourself in the higher Self, you would not get lost, you can then wander freely in the realms of the unreal. If you have not experienced the self as a spark of the supreme Self, your wanderings will be as fruitless as the trekking that animals do by instinct, so try to transform the humanness with which you are endowed into the divinity that is its real core. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 12, p. 184 The ‘I’ that lives within the body is like a lion in a cave. It is the monarch of the forest, but it limits itself to a few square feet of rocky floor! Let it roam out, renouncing the petty possession. So long as you crib yourselves into the body-consciousness (I am the body), you are the lion moping in a dusty cave! Do not feel “dehasmi” (I am the body). Roar, “Brahmasmi” (I am Brahmam, the Universal Divine), I am all this and more, I am all that is, was, and will be, and then littleness, time, space, ego—all will flee from your heart! You will be love, love, love—and naught else. That is to say, you will be divine, one with the One.

Past Actions and Merit Through activity man attains purity of consciousness. In fact man has to welcome activity with this end in view. And why strive for a pure consciousness? Imagine a well with polluted and muddy water so that the bottom of the well cannot be seen. Similarly within man’s heart, deep down in his consciousness, we have the atman. But it can be cognized only when the consciousness is clarified. Your imaginings, your inferences, your judgments and prejudices, your passions, emotions and egoistic desires muddy the consciousness and make it opaque. How then, can you become aware of the atma that is at the very base? Through seva (service) rendered without any desire to placate one’s ego and with only the well being of others in view is it possible to cleanse the consciousness and have the atma revealed. Sanathana Sarathi, November 1997, Back Cover When the thirst for liberation and the revelation of one’s reality is acute, a strange and mysterious force in nature will begin operating. When the soil is ready, the seed appears from somewhere! The spiritual guru will be alerted and the thirst will be quenched. The receiving individual has developed the power to attract the one who gives illumination. Sathya Sai Vahini, P. 97 The merit acquired in past births appears now as a keen thirst for liberation, as a sincere endeavor to approach a guru, as a determined struggle to succeed in sadhana (spiritual practice), and comes to fruition with the realization of the atman. Jnana Vahini, P. 64-65 The Divine principle is the reality, the base, the essence, and the ocean on which the waves rise and fall. Discard the name and form (which rise and fall) and contemplate on the existence, consciousness, and bliss in each cell and particle. Then you can immerse yourselves in eternal bliss. Bliss is omnipresent. One has only to realize its universality. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 10, P. 372 Liberation is just the awareness of truth, the falling off of the scales of delusion from the eye. It is not a special suburb of select souls; it is not a closed monopoly of expert sadhakas (spiritual seekers). Like the Godavari (a river) losing its form, its name and its taste in the sea, liberation dissolves the name and form, aptitudes and attitudes. You are no more separate, particular, individual. The raindrop has merged in the sea, from where the drop arose. Of course there was no bondage at any time and no prison; there was only a fixation in the mind that one was bound, that one was in prison, that one was limited and finite!

Coat the Heart with Love When the morning sun is above the horizon and you walk away from it toward the west, your shadow lengthens and struts before you. That shadow is maya [illusion], the primal illusion, and the basic ignorance. It deludes and hides truth and clothes it in the costume of falsehood. To discard maya and escape from its shadow, you have to walk sunward. Then the shadow will fall behind you. When the sun (the source of reason and intelligence) climbs higher and higher, then the shadow becomes shorter and smaller, until at last, when he [the sun] is right on top of you, the shadow (maya) crouches at your feet, surrendering to you, you can trample on it. So, too, when your intelligence is supreme, maya cannot caste her evil spell on you. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 6, pg. 235 The multiplicity is neither real nor unreal. It is relatively real, temporarily real, pragmatically real. Mithya [delusion] is a combination of truth and falsehood, apparently real but fundamentally unreal. Real for most practical purposes but unreal when the basic nature is unraveled. Mithya is the mixture of truth and falsehood, the knowledge of the serpent, that is negated when the knowledge of the rope is won. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 10, pg. 305 Maya is the will that causes all three gunas (attributes of action). It is a clear flawless mirror. When the satwic (spiritual) nature is reflected in that mirror, God results; when the rajasic (active) nature is reflected, the jiva (individualized self) results; when the tamasic (inert) nature is reflected, matter (the objective world) is the result. All three are Paramatma (the Universal Soul), but they derive their reality as its reflections. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 14, pg. 142 We now know that the illusion is like a mirror. The mirror reflects within itself all that is before it. The convexity or concavity of the mirror or the covering of dust that might have settled on it will certainly blur the reflected image, but it cannot distort the objects themselves. God, the world of matter, and the individual soul, all three are images of the Universal Soul reflected in the mirror of illusion and warped by the human characteristics that tarnish the surface of the mirror. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 10, pg. 307 God will not be reflected in a mind full of likes and dislikes and desires or a mind that is disturbed by impure thoughts. If you want to realize the presence of God in all beings, you must recognize the importance of purity and steadiness of mind. When the mind is pure and steady divinity will be resplendent everywhere.

Chitta The tongue tastes, the eye sees, the ear hears, the skin feels, and the nose smells, each sense acts thus throughout life, is it not? The senses have to be withdrawn from the external objective world and turned toward the internal mental consciousness or intelligence known as chitta. Patanjali [wrote the treatise on grammar, medicine and yoga] calls this process, in his Yoga Sutras, as pratyaharam [withdrawal of the senses]. However, I shall also define it in another manner; the inward activity of the chitta, that is to say the perpetual in-sight of the chitta, the fundamental directive force of all the senses, that is the real meaning of pratyaharam. It is only when the chitta, or the mind realizes that this is all maya [illision]-born and maya-maintained that it will draw back its feelers from the sensory world, and give up its worldly selfish attitude. The general nature of the chitta is to waver and hesitate and flutter in its search for happiness and peace when it knows that the things it ran after are transitory and meaningless, it grows suddenly ashamed and disillusioned. Then, it begins to illumine the consciousness and to clarify it. The sadhaka (spiritual aspirant) who has attained this stage will be watching the outer world as a huge pantomime. His inward look will give him such joy and contentment that he will repent for all the time wasted in external activities and pursuit of sensory joy. So, the straight, sharp, single-pointed vision of the chitta toward the atma [soul] within, that is the real pratyaharam. Patanjali has explained that when the chitta is fixed in one place, it is named dhaarana (meditation). I would say that it means more, the undeviating attitude of the chitta, its unwavering character. When the chitta gives up the attachment to external objects; when it is saturated with repentance for past foolishness; when it is filled with remorse; renunciation and understanding; when it directly fosters the development of progressive qualities of head and heart, then truly it becomes fit to join the ideal. It contemplates only the ideal. Such fixed attention is what is meant by dhaarana. To whichever place the chitta may wander, instruct it to find only Brahma there. Whatever ideas and pictures it may form, in those creations of the mind, instruct it to find only Brahmam.

From Narrow to the Broad Vision Man is like a seed. The seed sprouts, becomes a sapling, grows into a tree, and fulfils its destiny, offering flowers and fruits to the world. So too, man rises from childhood through adolescence into youth and middle age. When fully grown up he has to justify himself by offering to the world the flowers and fruits of good thoughts and deeds, himself acquiring the fullness of wisdom. A bird has need of two wings; a cart must have two wheels, without these, they are mortally handicapped. Man too, must have two types of knowledge; to live on and to live for. The one helps him to eke out his livelihood and the otherårewards him for having lived at all. The one is called jeevanopadhi (the means of living), and the other, jeevanaparamavaadhi (the goal of living). The one enables us to garner the material riches that make our lives comfortable and safe, the other answers the questions that haunt us and pressurize us while we live; whence have we come?, to where are we proceeding?, how did the universe originate?, etc… From the narrow vision of ‘individual need’ man must voyage out into the broad vision of the ‘Universal.’ When a drop of water falls into the ocean, it loses its narrow individualities, its name and form, and assumes the form, name, and taste of the ocean itself. If it seeks to live separately as a ‘drop,’ it will soon evaporate and be reduced to non-existence. Each one must become aware that he is part of the one Truth that encompasses everything in the universe. It is reprehensible to stick for one’s whole lifetime to the low narrow paths of selfishness, envy, and greed. Make the heart big and the mind pure. Then only can peace and prosperity be established on the earth… He, who announced Himself as the messenger of God, developed through the blossoming of Divinity and the expansion of compassion and service in Him, to a stage when He declared Himself as the Son of God. And then, finally, He rose to the status of ‘I and My Father are one’ Even a child would be eager to pass from one class to the next higher one. He would hate being in the same class, vegetating for years. Then what can we say of persons with intelligence and discrimination, satisfied with the attainment of the lower steps? Jesus passed through the entire process and inspired all mankind by His example and teachings, to be generous and kind, detached and discriminating, and to bring light and love to all… Jesus sacrificed His life and poured out his blood to instill love and compassion in the heart of man, so that he may be happy when others are happy and sad when others are sad… You must realize that the Divine current, that flows and functions in every living being, is the One universal entity. When you desire to enter the mansion of God, two closed doors confront you; the desire to praise yourself and the desire to defame others. The doors are bolted by envy, and there is also the huge lock of egoism preventing entry. So if you are earnest, you have to resort to the key of prema (love) and open the lock, then remove the bolt and throw the doors wide open. Education must train you in this difficult operation.

Atman Life sustained by food is short; life sustained by the Atman (Divine Spirit) is eternal. Do not lay claim to long life but to divine life. Do not pine for more years on earth, but for more virtues in the heart. The Buddha knew and made known to the world the truths: everything is grief; everything is polluted. So the wise man has to do the duties cast upon him with discrimination, diligence, and detachment. Play the role, but keep your identity unaffected by the aimlessly rushing world. But it is your duty, a duty you cannot escape, to fully engage yourself in you work, unconcerned with loss or gain, failure or success, slander or praise. The Gita instills this very lesson in you: “Whoever does upaasana [worship] with no thought other than Me, him I shall have with Me; I shall bear his burden now and forever.” The Gita says, “Keeping Me ever in memory, engage yourself in the battle of Life.” This “Me” to which Krishna refers is not something outside you or extraneous to you. It is your own divine reality that you can cognize in the silence of your own dhyana (meditation), when you shut out of your awareness the distraction of the senses, the mind, and the ego. You can take refuge in the calm coolness of your heart where He has installed Himself as the charioteer. You must only engage yourself in work that is purifying, with an attitude that sanctifies. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 13, P. 100 Through activity man attains purity of consciousness. In fact man has to welcome activity with this end in view. And why strive for a pure consciousness? Imagine a well with polluted and muddy water so that the bottom of the well cannot be seen. Similarly within man’s heart, deep down in his consciousness, we have the Atman. But it can be cognized only when the consciousness is clarified. Your imaginings, your inferences, your judgments and prejudices, your passions, emotions, and egoistic desires, muddy the consciousness and make it opaque. How, then, can you become aware of the Atman that is at the very base? Through seva (service) rendered without any desire to placate one’s ego and with only the well-being of others in view is it  possible to cleanse the consciousness and have the Atman revealed. Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 13, P. 166-167 On the royal road to spiritual realization, there are three stages as mentioned in the scriptures: Karmajijnasa, Dharmajijnasa, and Brahmajijnasa. Jijnasa means deep inquiry. A person becomes fit to inquire into Brahman and succeed in that inquiry only when his consciousness has been trained and shaped by inquiry into the modes of activity and mores of conduct—the karma (action) and the dharma (righteousness)—which clarify and purify. He who discriminates well before engaging in any activity will naturally be righteous in conduct and behavior.

Our Duty to the Atma To get at the core of God at His greatest, one must first get into the core of himself at his least, for no one can know God who has not known himself. When man is entangled until the moment of death in stilling the clamor of the senses and catering to the needs of this illusory world, how can he thrill with ecstasy of the awareness of his own atmic core? From the monarch in the palace to the beggar in the streets, all are caught up in the game of extracting pleasure from the outer world. The illiterate man and the scholar are equally busy in the pursuit of this mirage. So, what are we to say of the superior capacities of scholarship? Earning money, guarding the earned money, increasing it by the surest and the safest methods, thus the struggle goes on… plus, plus, plus! The bondage to worldly things tightens faster and faster. No one pauses to enquire how deep and how real is the joy that these earnings can give. And what of the “fashions” that he enslaves himself to? They justify these aberrations as social obligation and duty. But have people no duty toward the atma? Have they no obligation to recognize the atma? Should they not bind themselves fast to the atma that is the reality? It is sheer cowardice to avoid this duty, to ignore this obligation, and to escape from this bondage. Of course, you have to live on the earth and understand it. You have to study the universe and derive joy therefrom. But to believe that it is the be-all and end-all of life is a sign of insanity. Analyze every object and discover the cheapness and hollowness of each. Then genuine vairagya (detachment) will be planted in your heart. So, utilize the priceless weapon, the perfect mirror, that God has given you, the buddhi (intellect), for the journey to God. Sometimes, the buddhi is enticed by the fake delight that the mind revels in, through the senses. Sadhana (spiritual discipline) has to be used at this moment to turn it away from serfdom to the mind. It must be restored to its status of regulator and controller of the vagaries of the mind. Sadhana alone can help man to choose the right path and pursue it relentlessly. Every religion in every era and clime emphasizes the One and marks out the path to reach it. They warn us against too much attachment to the world, which is basically poisonous. Sadhakas (Spiritual aspirants)! Embodiments of love!Yearn always to be as close to your Divine core as possible. You need not desert your family and run away into loneliness. You have only to keep in mind the comparative triviality of the world. Death stalks every living being, disintegration waits on all created things. From a world so transient, so uncertain and unstable, one has to win the goal of eternal peace and eternal bliss. The eternal atma is associated with the ephemeral body. Discrimination alone can make this plain. Detachment alone can make the road clear.