1980: God is within you
Teachings to treasure, teachings that transform.
In this auspicious year 2015 commemorating the 90th birthday of Bhagwan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, we offer a compilation of key messages from the over 140 discourses in the month of July, including Guru Poornima Days between the years 1958 and 2009.
1980: God is
within you
MAN has to encounter sorrow from three sources while here on
earth. The scriptures mention
these and warn men against them. They refer to them as
Aadhyaathmic (individual personal),
Aadhibhowthic (external elements) and Aadhidhaivic
(super natural). Here Aathma means the
corporeal self and so, the first group of sorrows afflicts man
through physical and mental
illnesses. The second is derived from bhuutha,
which means 'that which is created' and that group
of sorrows is derived from living beings like snakes, wild
animals, worms, insects, etc. The third
word is Aadhidhaivic, where dhaiva
means a deity presiding over a force or phenomenon in
Nature. So the third group of sorrows trouble man through
calamities like floods, drought and
storm.
God can be adored, worshipped and even-imagined or pictured by
man only in human form, so long as the
consciousness as man persists, so long as man cannot escape from this necessity. How can he travel beyond
his limits? He can visualise God only as man,
with super-human or supra-human power, wisdom, love, compassion. He can
never describe or delineate the
formless, the attributeless, the qualityless. It is only by means of form and
attribute that one can pray, adore,
worship or feel the presence. And the form has to be human. Little minds with no faith may argue that God cannot
come as Man but in fact God can be recognised
only as Man by human. This explains the statement, "Dhaivam
maanusha ruupena"---"God through
human form," found in the scriptures.
The sum total of spiritual experience is "Knowing oneself."
This does not mean the knowledge of
one's capabilities and skills, wants and wishes, strength and weakness. It
means the knowledge of who one is, what
one really is. Shankaraachaarya has summarised this knowledge in three lines---Brahma Sathyam (God
is Truth), Jagath mithya (Creation is an illusion), Jeevah Brahmaiva naa para (the Jeeva---the
individual---is Brahma only, is God only, not else). Every 'become' has its source in 'being.' Being is
God. God and the Individual are the undifferentiated One. So human-ness is holy; it is neither
mean or low. It has the status of God, though clouded and contaminated.
The educational system that brings both teacher and student
together, has two aspects' first, the
provision of skills and information so that man can live in
health and happiness and the second,
the understanding of one's inner urges and their sublimation in
order to attain lasting peace,
equanimity and bliss. The two aspects are not opposed; they are
bound irrevocably together.
Both teachers and students have to recognise this truth.
Points to
Ponder:
What are the ways to experience divinity?
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