Sri Sathya Sai Speaks

To earn the grace of God, you have to pray to the Personified Power with Name and Form; it is your yearning that decides in what form the Lord appears. You call and He answers. If you are not earnest, if you feel indifferent and say, “Let Him come when He wills, in the Form He likes and with the Name He prefers,” He will not come at all. Call on Him with anguish, and He will respond. In Rajasthan, there was a priest who worshipped the image of Balakrishna (the child Krishna) installed in the temple, attached to the palace of Udhaipur. His name was Devesha. His story may not be found anywhere, but since he was intimately connected with Me, I know him very well. Every night he used to “put Balakrishna to sleep” with appropriate ritual and close the door of the shrine, but before he came out, he would take from the head of the image the jasmine garland he had placed there in the evening and wear it himself, before proceeding home. Of course, when the great king (maharana) visited the temple, the garland had to be given to him to wear. One day, however, the great king came immediately after he had worn it inside his tuft of hair, so when the ruler demanded the flower, he had to get inside the shrine, slyly remove it from his tuft, and hand it reverentially back to king. The king was happy that he had not missed the gift, but he was shocked to find a strand of gray hair in it! Suspecting some tricks, he shouted angrily. “What! Has our Balakrishna grown old and grey?” To save his skin, the priest said, “Yes, Yes.” The king replied, “Well, I shall not disturb now, but early tomorrow, I shall come and see if His hair has really gone grey.” Devesha had no food or sleep that night. He wept his eyes out in agony, for, in his fear, he had imposed old age and greyness on the ever-youthful Lord. The morning came, and the king hurried to the temple to open the shrine. They both looked in and, lo, the hair was grey. The king suspected that the hair was false, planted by the priest. So he pulled and tugged at it, only to find drops of blood at the roots. God had responded to the anguished cry, the call of the agony. The Formless will assume any Form and undergo any transformation to satisfy the yearning of the devoted aspirant. The overriding purpose is to make all action-oriented beings (karma-jivis) God-filled beings (Brahma-jivis). One must crave the vision of God; only then is one entitled to the status of human-ness. The human (manava) must reach the Divine (Madhava). One must conquer the mind. The human is the ruler of the mind (manas), not its slave. Who takes the role of educator from the beginning of your life? The mother, is it not? Nature (Prakriti) is the Mother, the feminine principle, the illusory energy (maya). She is the great teacher. If you do not learn the lessons well, nature punishes you, boxes you in the ear, hits you on the head. She is a stern, merciless instructress, but if you learn well, she will lead you proudly to the presence of the Supreme Person (Purushothama). Obey nature and be well trained by her. Then, you can inherit the glory of Purushothama. If you disregard Her teaching, the Mother gets disgusted with you, and the Father will also disregard your entreaties. The commands of nature, given for your good, are called dharma. Have that dharma as the witness of all your thoughts, words, and deeds. Be guided every instant by the dictates of that dharma, and success will be yours. Little children must be taught with the help of big letters scrawled on boards and slates. Temples, images, and crystal stones are the slates and boards for children in spiritual progress. But even if you play with a toy elephant, you cannot get the experience of contacting a live elephant, can you? The formless Godhead can be understood by you only when you have rendered yourself formless! When you are in the world of qualities (gunas), you have to attach yourself only to a God with attributes (Saguna Lord). Even a thief does not like being called a “thief”. He gets either ashamed or angry when he is called that. Why? Truth is his real nature, and his true nature revolts against the appellation. The Atma is always auspicious and holy (sivam). So it protests vehemently when the vehicle where it resides is called inauspicious (amangalam), dead (shayam). The Atma is also beauty (sundaram). A U M is the egoism of Supreme Self (Param-Atma); it has no ugliness in it. So it is always beautiful, charming, lovely (sundaram). That is why, when it is described as ugly, deformed, disgusting, etc., the thief lowers his head in shame, for something revolting to his true nature is being imputed. Truth, Auspiciousness, Beauty (Sathyam, Sivam, Sundaram) is yourself; you have not realised it because of delusion, ignorance, and false inference. Get rid of these and merge in your real self.