1958: Discrimination and Detachment

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.


1958: Discrimination and Detachment

Discrimination and detachment are the twin talents given exclusively to humans.  Discrimination in­structs you how to choose your avocations and your associates. It tells you the relative importance of objects and ideals. Detachment saves you from too much attachment and injects a sense of relief, at times of elation or despair.

The tongue is liable to four big errors: uttering falsehood, scandalising, finding fault with others, and excessive articulation. These have to be avoided if there has to be peace (santhi) for the individual as well as for society. The bond of brotherhood will be tightened if people speak less and speak sweet. That is why silence was prescribed as a vow for spiritual aspirants by the spiritual texts. Practise moderation in speech.

Prema must again transform all relation­ships — social, economic, educational, professional, family, religious, legal, and others. The sense of equality that everyone is the repository of the divine Essence must transmute social and individual behaviour.

 The Grace of the Lord is always flowing like the electric current through the wire. The bulb is the spiritual exercises you perform; the home is your heart. Come to Me gladly; dive into the sea and discover its depth; there is no use dipping near the shore and swearing that the sea is shallow and has no pearls. Dive deep and you will secure your desire.

 Well, man is divine, take it from Me. He is really here on a holy mission, for a divine purpose. To con­sider one as mean or weak or sinful is a great mistake. That is itself a great sin. A person must earn their birthright, namely, peace (santhi). Restlessness is an unnatural state. One’s real nature is peace.

There are three types of intellect, according to the predominance of one or other of the three qualities (gu­nas): (1) inertia or sloth (thamas), which confuses truth with the untruth and takes untruth as truth; (2) passion or activity (rajas), which, like a pendulum, swings from one to the other, hovering between the two, unable to distinguish between them; and (3) purity or serenity (sathwa), which knows which is truth and which is untruth.

 Eat well, so that your physical faculties might grow and the good physique will in turn develop your intel­ligence more fully. Devotion (bhakthi) leads to power (sakthi), and power will grant skill (yukthi). The skill will help you to fix your attachment (rakthi) on the proper objects, and your devotion thus promoted finally results in liberation (mukthi).


Points to Ponder

·       What can we do to learn to practice silence and moderation in speech?
·       It is no use indulging in arguments and disputations; one who clamours aloud has not grasped the truth, be­lieve Me.”


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