Sri Sathya Sai Speaks

The basis for the entire world is the prema of the Lord. Even if one is able to learn by heart the essence of all the Vedas, and even if one is able to compose poetry in a very attractive manner, yet if that person does not have a purified heart, he is a useless person. What other greater truth can I communicate to you.

The education of today is not real education. It appears that the education of today is merely an avocation to enable you to make a living. While pursuing such a path which enables you to eke out a living, you also promote individual selfishness. The aim of real education is character. That kind of education in which there is no sacredness and character is useless. What is the use of acquiring so many different types of education? You must try to learn that, by which you can escape death. You may have acquired a degree like an MA or BA. You may have acquired a position in life. You may be doing many good things on this earth. Maybe you will also be practising japa or thapa; but whatever you may do, you will not be equal to the devotion of devotees.

One may have acquired a lot of knowledge and spent all his life in education; but what is the use of being educated if he cannot shed his mean qualities. You may spend a lot of time and learn many things but you will only become argumentative in your life. By education of the type that you are having, you can never acquire complete wisdom.

If you want the security, the safety and the well-being of the country, and if the country is not to fall into danger, then it is essential for you to develop three things. They are: service to the country, sacrifice without being selfish, and devotion to spirituality. There is a great need to train young people who have a strong determination in this regard. Today, the entire life appears to consist of simply imitating others. The student is destroying his own ideas and his individuality. A student is becoming a slave in the process of imitating others.

I am hoping that the students of the Sathya Sai Colleges will not only excel others in getting marks and credits in the examinations but will also take care to see that there are no remarks about them. In fact, not getting remarks on one’s behaviour is more important than getting marks. Therefore, I am hoping that the students will keep this sacred quality and bear in mind the important requirement that they should accept discipline, devotion, and duty; and that they should serve the country.

Today, while being students and acquiring various degrees like M.A., M.Com., Ph.D., and so on, students wear clothes which give the feeling that they are street beggars, and they have no humility at all. Today’s students call themselves citizens of this great country of Bharath and they move about like beggars and hippies on the street, without any good qualities. The students of the Sathya Sai Colleges should set an example by their behaviour and see that this aspect is completely eliminated. I am hoping that you will develop good qualities and set an example to others.

The country should be proud of you and your qualities. You should not think that you are being educated only to get a degree and imitate others like a slave. You should conduct yourselves in such a way that you bring credit to your country. You should acquire such education which will enable you to stand on your legs and not be a weak person who always depends on others. You should not become beggars with a begging bowl of a degree and move from office to office in search of a job.

As a student, your father and mother have brought you up, and the first thing that you have to do is to show respect and gratitude to your parents. How can students, who cannot do this, show gratitude to their mother country? Your parents have given you the gift of your body, of your clothes, of your entire life. If you cannot show gratitude for this, what kind of service will you be able to render your country?

The Sai Organisations should be such that they will look at all religions with equal-mindedness.

You must recognise this truth and be prepared to propagate it in the world. It does not matter to which religion, sect, or community you may belong, you should accept the basic principles like:

The concept should be implanted in your heart firmly. Yesterday you were told that man without God is not a man. God without man is always God. This implies that God is still God, even if man is not there; but man without God is not human. Man then becomes inhuman.

We see that animals and birds are also eating their food, looking after their offspring, and doing other similar things. Unless human beings do something distinctive and different from what the animals do, what is the use of calling themselves human beings or educated people? If we are not in any way different from the animals, why should we get educated at all? We see educated men behaving like animals, why should the students of today live the kind of life which in some respects is similar to that of street dogs?

The first thing which students should ask themselves is what is meant by affluence in life. The kind of pleasure and joy experienced by a Maharaja is also being experienced by a dog in the street. Do we conclude that a dog and a Maharaja are on the same footing? This is not correct. Man is not born merely to eke out a livelihood. Animals, birds, and other living things are also eating food. What kind of special effort are the animals making? They do not grow food. They are getting enough to eat at appropriate times. If you spend all your life in merely searching for your food, what is the use? This cannot certainly be the purpose of your life.

Truly man’s requirements for his daily sustenance and upkeep are very few, but the time men spend in fulfilling their requirements is much larger than their needed demands. Time is God and so time should not be wasted. Time wasted is tantamount to waste of life. We must save time and such saved time should be used for a good purpose and should be used for resuscitating the culture of our country. Today we talk of establishing a new society and a new culture. This is a colossal waste of time. It is only when we can recognise and understand the faults that are contained in the ancient society and ancient culture that we will get the right to establish a new society and culture. The culture and traditions of our country have been applauded and praised from time immemorial by millions of people. To regard those traditions as useless and replace them by a new society and a new culture is something very foolish. This kind of objective is very selfish and wants to establish a selfish gain. This is desire which seeks to promote individual selfishness. It is not aimed at the good of the community. The youth of the country must make an attempt to resuscitate our ancient culture.

Your life is sacred and your age is a sacred age. The period between sixteen and thirty-two is a golden age. This is an age when you have the strength to overcome the obstacles that come in your way, to control your actions and thoughts. At this age, if you feel angry, jealous, or excited, you must use your strength to control your anger, jealousy, or excitement. If at this age, you do not have the strength to control your emotions, how and where will you get the strength to control your emotions when you grow old?

It is the duty of every young student to recognise every bad idea or thought that sprouts in his mind and exterminate it completely. Mind is like a mad monkey and you should not surrender to it. You should control the mind and keep it under your direction. You should not be prepared to yield to all the desires that sprout in your mind. As soon as a thought comes into your mind, you should examine whether it is a good thought or a bad thought.

For example, let us look at a piece of cloth. In reality, it is a bundle of threads; and if you examine it more carefully, you will say that it is just cotton. The first stage is cotton, the second stage is thread, and the final stage is the cloth. What would you do if you do not like this cloth? You remove the threads one by one and the cloth will not be there. In the same manner, mind does not have any specific form. It is simply a bundle of desires. These desires themselves come from the thoughts of your mind which can be compared to the cotton. Thus the three stages are the cotton or the thoughts, the thread or the desires, and finally the desires constitute the mind which is the cloth in this analogy.

So we must try to diminish these desires as far as possible. These desires are like heavy luggage in the journey of your life. The journey of life for the youth is a very long one. If you want to make your journey a comfortable one, you will have to make your luggage less; and this bundle of desires is your luggage. Today the kind of desires that enter the mind of young people are such that even an eighty-year-old man would not have had such desires in the older generation.

There is a small example which I want to give here. Many people of different categories come to Swami. They have so many different ideas and thoughts. Amongst these was a young sixteen-year-old boy. He appeared very sad and dejected and full of thoughts in his mind when I was giving him an interview. I asked him in what class he was studying. He said that he was not studying and that he had discontinued his studies.

I then asked him whether he was doing anything at all. He said that he had lost all his will power and concentration. He said that for the past six months, his life had become meaningless and disgusting. When asked what made him so dejected in the past six months, he said that his second wife had divorced him six months ago. When we look at his age, he is hardly sixteen years and he talks of his second wife having divorced him. His life was so miserable that it would have been better if his second wife had burnt him alive. Such a life is characteristic only of dogs. We should not lead such a life. We should be proud of the fact that our culture is very sacred and calls for respect to our parents.

It is the beauty of your heart that is important. It is not the external beauty of the body that matters at all. When you have a pure and clean heart, you will have the strength to cleanse the world. Young people are not prepared to respect their parents. You may ask a question as to why one should respect one’s parents. Always, whatever actions you undertake, the reactions will come to you in the future. It is your duty to respect your parents for all that your parents have done for you. If today, you show respect to your parents, then your children will respect you when you grow up. If you make your parents suffer now, your children will do the same in return for you; and tears will flow from your eyes.

If a student wants to lead a life of security and happiness in the future, he must undertake to lead a good life now. For this, appropriate teachers must be prepared. The teachers should show sacred and good habits to the students. If there are bad habits among the teachers, the students will also take the wrong path. When these tender-hearted young students are placed in the hands of teachers, the teachers should have the determination to develop good habits and proper thoughts. If a student is bad, he will himself be spoiled; but if a teacher is bad, several thousands of students will be spoiled. Therefore, in the first instance, teachers should get good habits. Really good students are themselves like teachers.

Today students will be students for one or two years, and after that they go and take a job. Then the students are not going to touch the books again. But teachers cannot be like that. They have to keep in contact with books all their lives. Teachers should not exhibit short temper or jealousy at any place. If there are such teachers, they will ruin the entire community of students. It is correct to say that teachers alone are responsible for the students going the wrong way.

There are many things which you have to experience in the coming year. For your ideas, thoughts, and conduct going wrong, the cinemas are responsible to a large extent. In addition to this, because the parents witness the cinemas, these bad ideas come to the students.

There is also an example in the sacred story of the Bhagavatha. When Krishna was not at home, Arjuna went to Subhadra and was telling her all about the Padmavyuha. At that time, Krishna came in and told Arjuna that whatever was being told by Arjuna was in fact being listened to by the child in the womb of Subhadra. Because of this early lesson, Arjuna’s son got into the Padmavyuha but could not get out of it, because he had learnt only the method of getting into it. In view of this, our tradition has been that pregnant women should listen only to sacred and good stories. It had been customary that as the pregnancy reached five months, recitation of sacred stories and festive celebrations were arranged.

Unfortunately, today it has become the practice among pregnant women to see many cinemas. In order to give her satisfaction, the people in the house would take her to two or three cinemas a day. Looking at the immoral pictures which have no good characters in them, the babies in the womb will also get such ideas. The young baby acquires such bad ideas even in the womb of the mother; and as he grows older, he begins to add on to these bad qualities and grows from bad to worse.

Unfortunately, pictures which are intended to extol the sacred traditions are becoming rare; and the young people, not knowing what to do, go and see these bad pictures. If you go back into history and look at the sacredness of the women in India, you will realise their greatness. Instead of learning from the sacred history of the great women in the country, we put our women for sale on the streets of the country. The culture and traditions of our country were such that they have protected the sacredness of our women all through the years that have gone by, and such culture is being neglected and forgotten by us. I am hoping that the students of the Sathya Sai Colleges will make a determination to resuscitate this sacred culture of ours.

We no doubt need material education to carry on in our lives. We need also spiritual education so that we may elevate our souls and lead a good life. We also need the right kind of culture so that we may lead a life which is appropriate to the education which we have. Education without the necessary culture is like chalk powder. Our culture is like an electric current. It can be called the positive of the current. Our education is like the negative in the current. Unless this positive and negative come together, there is no use of the electric current.

Our sacred Bharathiya culture should be carefully protected. If we find young primary school children, as we find today, addicted to smoking, drinking, and playing cards, can we call such a person a human being? The first step is that man drinks wine; the second step is, wine drinks wine; and the third step is that wine drinks man. Our students should never take to such bad practices.

On the other hand, our students should exterminate such bad practices and show themselves as good examples in the country. This kind of bad practice will simply ruin the person and his life. Our respect is disappearing because of these bad practices. We should conduct ourselves in a manner befitting our name “Manava”. Manava means one who conducts himself in a manner by which his ignorance is removed. In this context, it has been said that death is sweeter than the blindness of ignorance. Our respect to the elders must be shown by service and sacrifice.

You may have only two dresses, but you should wash them and wear them clean, and then you will command respect. On the other hand, students go and buy a new pair of pants, cut them in certain places and put patches. Such a person must have been a beggar in his previous life and continues to be so in his present life. Amongst the students, some are becoming so lazy that they are not washing their faces daily. What is such a lazy man going to do for his country? There are many students who do not bathe continuously for two months. What kind of examples can such students set? What is it that they can do for the country? Laziness is rust and dust, realisation is best and rest. Everyone should think for himself whether this is good or bad.

Today an unfortunate situation has developed where if a student is approaching us, we have to stand at some distance because he smells. Students who have acquired education should turn themselves into instruments of good for the country. Wherever there are students, there is confusion. You should make an effort to remove this black mark. This is a disgrace to the student community. You should make the determination to serve your country in a humble way. It is only then that you will be able to exhibit the goodness of your education. You should also be of service to others. Do not always hanker after leadership. Work is worship, duty is God.

Work and worship are your two eyes and between those two eyes, you must carry on your life.

You have a sacred and tender heart. You are young; do not go and enter politics. When you grow older and gain some experience, then you can enter politics and serve the country. You should take that path which does not cause obstruction to your education. If you join politics during your education, you miss the opportunity of being of any service, and you will also miss the opportunity of being of any use to the country. You are neither a student nor you are able to serve your country. You are thus deprived of both aspects.

After completing your education, if you get the good idea of serving your country, you can join politics and do so. As a student, you should be a Vidyarthi and seek knowledge. You should not be a vishayarthi seeking material comforts. For the past ten days and more, you have all been listening to various aspects of Indian culture from the grownups as well as from the younger students. I am hoping that you will be able to put what you have heard into practice for the benefit of your country. I bless you in that direction.