Sri Sathya Sai Speaks

Embodiments of peace (Santha-swarupalara)! I am addressing you thus today; perhaps I should have said, “Athi Santha-swarupulara !” for you have shown not only peace (santhi) but extreme calmness (athi santhi), not mere ordinary forbearance. You have been squatting on the floor for nearly three hours. Perhaps you yourselves have not realised it because Bulusu Appanna Shasthry’s learned discourse on the Gita and Kalluri Veerabhadra Shasthry’s interesting discourse on the Bhagavatha entranced you greatly. I realise that you also want Me to speak. These florists from Bangalore, devotees for many years - why, for twenty years, I should say - are preparing a floral swing, insisting that I sit on it and give audience to all. I have given them My word that I shall not disappoint them. So I shall be very brief. You will have known by now that the Chinese, of their own accord, prompted by the mysterious working of a Higher Power, withdrew from the advance lines they held on the night of the 22nd and, as I said, My birthday was celebrated in an atmosphere of joy. Some unseen force caught them by the neck and hurled them back. People are impelled forward in aggressive warfare by the demonaic power or greed and lust, but they are compelled to retrace their steps by God, by the divine power. Appanna Shasthry is the doyen among the scholars of the Gita . The Gita has as many commentaries written on it as there are hairs on My head! Yellappa’s commentary attempts to distort the Gita into a Yellappa Gita while Mallappa, by his commentary, proves that it is a Mallappa Gita and nothing else. Everyone forgets it is “Bhagavad ” Gita, the Gita that Krishna taught and Arjuna learnt. What was Arjuna’s condition, and how did Krishna cure it? That question has been tackled only by the commentary of Sankaracharya.

Appanna Shasthry said that the Avatar comes to establish righteousness and that is achieved by fostering and safeguarding the brahmins . A Brahmana is one who is installed in the essential nature of Supreme Being (Brahma Thathwa), who has realised that Brahman is the Truth (Brahma Sathyam) and no other - or at least one who is keenly following the discipline prescribed for attaining that knowledge. The brahmin is the instrument by which society has to excavate the treasure of sacred knowledge of the Absolute Reality (Brahma-jnana). Some individual instruments have become blunt and unfit. Why? Many have lent themselves to other purposes and so rendered themselves inadequate for the task. But there is no doubt that the instrument can be fashioned again out of the same metal; the brahmin can, even now, restore faith and morality by devoting themself to the original function for which they were designed by the founders of the Sanathana Dharma (Eternal Religion). As long as that possibility is there, do not ridicule or condemn the brahmin . Ridiculing the brahmin is but ridiculing God and the Vedas, for which the brahmin is the accredited signpost.

All this creation and all this history is His divine play (leela) or rather, Himself, Brahma Sathyam, also Jagath Sathyam . However, the world (jagath) is “relatively real” until the distinction between Brahman and the world disappears - and then even the world is seen to be Brahman, felt as Brahman, known as Brahmam. Then you know “All is full of Supreme Being (Sarvam Brahma Mayam).” To be more correct, there is no separate “all (sarvam)” to be recognised as full of illusion (mayam). Brahman alone is, one without a second, non-dual, single, eternal, pure, and immovable. Who created all this variety from that One (Ekam)? The answer is: There is no variety at all; so the question makes no sense. No person or force or urge or concatenation of circumstances or accident produced this multiplicity. There is no multiplicity! The One remains as One. You mistake it as many; the fault is in you. Correct your vision, remove your delusion. The Supreme Reality (Brahman) did not change into the relative world. The rope does not change into a snake; only you mistook it to be a snake. Brahman is Brahman forever and ever; your ignorance of this fact makes you see it as the world. The world stands on one leg, delusion. Cut down that leg and it falls. You experience the disappearance of this variety, this multiplicity, this prakriti, this world based on delusion every day but you do not hold on to that experience. That is the tragedy! When you are asleep, what happens to your world? In what are all your manifoldnesses subsumed? What is the source of the feeling of joy that sound sleep brings? Sleep keeps a tiny trace of the ego as a memento of the world, so, when you are awake, you are the same deluded individual, pestered by creatures of your own fantasies! That is why I very often tell you not to identify even Me with this particular physical build-up. But you do not understand. You call Me by one name only and believe I have One Form only. Remember, there is no name I do not bear, there is no form that is not Mine.