Swami’s Words of Wisdom Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba Human desire is illimitable and without end. It makes you pursue the mirage in the desert; it makes you build castles in the air; it breeds discontent and despair, once you succumb to it. But develop the thirst for Krishna; you discover the cool spring of Ananda within you. Krishna Nama makes you very strong and steady; it is sweet and sustaining. Mine, not thine, this sense of greed is the root of all evil. This distinction is applied even to God!- my God, not yours! Your God, not mine! Your life is really like a tapestry. You look at one side and see all the disconnected and loose ends, and say, ‘What a mess my life is!’ God sees the finished product on the other side and sighs, ‘How beautiful you have become!’ The individual born in the lake of Society must swim and float in the calm waters, and joining the River of Progress, merge into the Ocean of Grace; Man has to move from the stance of ‘I’ to the position of ‘We’. To this day, we see only the wild dance of go-stricken individuals, who hate society and behave most unsociably. All men have two constables ever with them; They are the symbols of his sentence of imprisonment. They are ‘Abhiman’ (Sense of I) over ‘Mamakar’ (sense of mine), the egoistic feeling and the pride of possession. Man is a prisoner of his senses as long as these two keep him under guard. Man strays away into misery and pain, because he loses the sense of value and runs after the temporary and the trivial. He ignores the voice of God which warns and guides him from within; and he pays the penalty for the transgression. Man is equipped with a return-ticket when he takes birth. Holding it in his grasp, he earns and spends, rises and falls, sings and dances, weeps and wails, forgetting the end of the journey. But though he forgets, the wagon of life moves toward the cemetery, which is its terminus. It brings no glory to man if he is tied helplessly to the wheel of birth and death. His glory and greatness consist in disentangling himself from that revolving wheel. Do not consider any act of service as demeaning. Sweeping the streets, for example, is not below your dignity. Do you not sweep the floor of your homes? Do you not scrub and wash off dirt? When you undertake such tasks, the villagers will also gladly share in them. Why feel ashamed to be good? The ridicule that may be cast on you has been the reward of many saints. It will soon fade away. Muhammad was driven out of Mecca by those who could not appreciate his teachings. Jesus was crucified. But their names resound in the heart of millions. Remember, God is your guardian, when you sleep; when you are helpless; even when you have forgotten or neglected or discarded Him. He has no need you offer or promise to offer. He is ever content, ever blissful, ever full and ever free. Do your duty to yourself – that is enough offering for Him. You may have a vast scholarship, fame or fortune. But, the bee can give you a lesson on how to be free from torment. The tree can teach you forbearance and tolerance. It offers shade to all, irrespective of age, sex or religion, nationality or status. It helps with fruit and shade even to the foe who lays his axe on its trunk! The dog can teach you a lesson in Faith, Self-less service and the process of Dedication. There is only one God and He is Omnipresent”. True. But to concentrate on the Omnipresent, some fixed point or preliminary form is needed. And to conceive of the Divine as present everywhere and at all times, the mind of man is to be clarified and purified by means of a certain psychological process called Sadhana. My activities are not for publicity or propaganda or even to confer joy on others! They are for conferring joy primarily on Me! I have no need to please others and to earn approval or appreciation. For, I and you are not different entities; you are I; and I am you. I am the current that flows into every bulb and illuminates it. Those who see me as separate are seeing falsehood. I am in your hearts; you are in Mine. Don’t be misled into doubt and distress. Dogs may bark and jackals howl; but Truth moves Majestically forward. A person being transferred from one Goal to another will have two constables who will escort him; the ‘Punya’ and the ‘Papa’ ( good consequences and the bad consequences of actions) are the consequences who lead man from one birth to another. If you must escape from their attention and avoid migration from one Goal to another, act – but do not calculate the consequences. That is to say, do not worry about the consequence; leave it to God who prompted the act and made it possible. Dedicate the act, the will and the wish, all to God. Happiness and peace do not follow when man is fed well, clothed well, housed well, and educated up to a good standard and employed under comfortable conditions, with no injury to health or security. There are many who have all these in plenty but who are yet worried or in pain or discontented. They depend on the inner equipment of man, not his outer skill or riches. The ultimate step of Self-realisation depends upon the base of Self-confidence. You must therefore develop as a first step Confidence in your own self. Without having and developing Confidence in your own self, if all the time you are talking of some power being with someone else, if in this way you travel all the time and depend on power which is with someone else,