The Sai Teachings

The Importance of Service

Today, we are confronted everywhere by statistics parading quantities and reports in glowing terms. Do not bother about adding to the number or achieving a target. I value quality, not quantity. Genuine and intensive devoted service offered in a few spots or villages is more fruitful than superficial service offered to a large number. Convince yourselves that life cannot continue long without others serving you and you serving others. Every relationship - be it master-servant, ruler-ruled, guru-disciple, employer-employee, or parents-children and so on - is bound by mutual service.

Everyone is a servitor. The farmer and labourer whom you serve, produce by their toil your food and clothing as their service to you. Remember that the body, with its senses-mind-brain complex has been awarded to you to be used for helping the helpless. 

Service is the highest of paths of Devotion which wins the Grace of God. Service promotes mental purity, diminishes egoism and enables one to experience, through empathetic understanding, the unity of mankind.

The Sai Teachings

The Purpose of Life

To a superficial observer, life appears to revolve around eating and drinking, working, and sleeping. But verily life has a much deeper significance. Life is a sacrifice. Every little act is an offering to the Lord. If your days are spent in deeds performed in this spirit of surrender, your sleep would be a total immersion in the Divine Consciousness! 

Most people commit the great fault of identifying themselves with the body and accumulate a variety of things for its upkeep and comfort. When the body becomes weak and decrepit with age, they still attempt to bolster it by one means or the other. How long can death be postponed? When Lord of Death’s warrant comes, everyone must depart. Position, pride, and power - all vanish before death. Remember, you are not this body! It is your vehicle to serve all. Realising this, strive day and night, with purity in body, mind and spirit, to realise the Higher Self.

The Sai Teachings

What must we achieve in this life…

The human being is a composite of man, beast and God, and in the inevitable struggle among the three for ascendency, you must ensure that God wins, suppressing the merely human and the lowly beast. Man must know the Universe as basically Divine. You and the Universe are one; all are subsumed in the same unique entity.

The cosmic vision can be acquired either by watching the Universe or one's own inner Cosmos. One has only to discover oneself. In the citadel of the body, there is the lotus temple of the heart, with subtle “space” within. In it are contained heaven and earth, fire and air, sun and moon, stars and planets - all that is in the visible world and all that sustains it, and all into which it submerges.

Instead of rotating round the earth in the higher realms of space and planning to land on the moon or Mars, if only one plans and prepares to travel into one’s own inner realm, what sublime joy and peace can be attained!

 

 

The Sai Teachings

Remember, never do anything because you have to
The only reason to do something is because you want to and
because you know it is the right thing for you to do.

The Sai Teachings

Modern Education

Modern education is mere bookish knowledge, confined to what is contained in the texts. Today many are pursuing such secular education only. Secular education alone is not enough. It must be supplemented with spiritual education. Spiritual education has its effect on one’s heart, and is called Educare.
Educare means bringing out the latent Divinity, that is hidden in the heart of human beings and establishing it as an ideal to the whole world. Through Educare, you must develop the principle of love and students must follow the path of truth. True education is that which is suffused with truth and love. Secular education is for making a living, whereas spiritual education is for reaching the goal of life. It is the duty of students as well as educators to harmonize the secular education with spiritual education. This is the prime necessity today.

The Sai Teachings

Enduring Life’s Problems

Your life may be compared to a stalk of sugar cane. Like the cane, which is hard and has many knots, life is full of difficulties. But these difficulties must be overcome to enjoy the bliss of the Divine, just as the sugarcane has to be crushed and its juice converted into sugar to enjoy the permanent sweetness.
Enduring bliss can be got only by overcoming trials and tribulations. Gold cannot be made into an attractive jewel without it being subjected to the process of melting in a crucible and being beaten into the required shape. When I address devotees as, “golden one” or “Divine Embodiments of Love”, I really mean it! You must go through the vicissitudes of life with forbearance and become attractive jewels. You should not allow yourselves to be overwhelmed by difficulties. Develop self-confidence and have firm faith in God.

The Sai Teachings

Divine Gifts

Everyone should treat whatever happens to them as gifts from God. Pleasure and pain should be treated alike as Divine gifts. There is a unique joy in this process. In daily life we tend to treat defeat, loss or grief as calamities. But nothing occurs in the world without a cause. Hunger is the cause for eating. Thirst is the cause for drinking. Difficulties are the cause of sorrow.
If you would like to enjoy enduring happiness, you must discover the source of such happiness. That source is love. There is nothing greater than love in this world. Everything has a price. The price to be paid for enduring happiness is Divine Love. The primary wealth for man is Love. Everyone should seek to acquire this wealth. With this wealth anyone can enjoy enduring bliss.