In our Sai Centers, selfless service is just as important a spiritual activity as devotional singing. The purpose of this chapter is to explain why. As a start, we can see that Sathya Sai Baba Himself spends His life in service.
You should follow Swami, the leader. This is because, from morning to night, Swami performs even the smallest task Himself; and all His work is for the good of the world. It is in this context that I often say, "My Life is My Message." [4]
Avatars of God are engaged in service; that is why Avatars happen. Hence, when you offer service to mankind, the Avatar will be pleased and you can win grace. [5]
The members of our Organization must be ready and eager to help students, the sick, and the poor. Feel that this is work that pleases Me . . . Spend your days and years in activities that help those in dire need, and thus make this human existence of yours worthwhile and fruitful. [6]
Let me tell you that nothing is impossible if an organized society is set on achieving it. Even liberation from material entanglement can be won through serving and promoting the progress of society. Through the sense of unity, the willingness to sacrifice, and the softness of compassion, all objects can be gained. So, the Sathya Sai Organization must move forward with hearty enthusiasm in the field of service to society. [7]
However, don't limit your service to Center activities. Make service a lifetime activity, which begins with your family.
The first lesson of service has to be learned in the family circle itself [8] .
I do not attach any value to the turning of rosaries by hands that know no help [9] .Do not keep yourself apart, intent on your own salvation through meditation; instead, move among your sisters looking for opportunities to be of help, with the Name of God on your tongue and the Form of God before the mind's eye [10] .
Service is a lifetime program; it knows no rest or respite. This body has been given to you so that you may devote its strength and skills to the service of brother-man. Serve man until you see God in all men; then, what you do will be elevated to Worship. [11]
Americans do an amazing amount of volunteering. But Baba says that there is a difference between conventional social service and selfless service. This difference has nothing to do with the service itself --in fact, Baba says that service to the community is the highest service [12] .Rather, the difference lies in the attitude with which the service is carried out. Selfless service has a spiritual foundation.
Many do such things now as "social service" and not as a spiritual exercise, in a full-hearted manner; spirituality is not found in the activity [13] .Service is primarily spiritual discipline [14] .
What exactly is selfless service? It is the very essence of devotion, the very breath of a devotee, his very nature. It springs from the actual experience of the devotee, an experience that convinces that all beings are God's children, that all bodies are altars where God is installed, that all places are His residences. [15]
The spiritual exercise of service is quite distinct. In service, you devote all your energy and attention to the task at hand, for it is a dedicated task. You forget your body and ignore its demands. You set aside your individuality and its prestige and perquisites. You pluck your ego by its roots and cast it away. You give up your status, your conceit, your name and form and all that they demand from others. This process makes the mind pure. [16]
Baba makes it clear that the service we do is for our own sake. Naturally, we want to help others, but the real value of the service lies in what it does for us --provided we do it with the right attitude: as a spiritual discipline. Selfless service helps us to:
You are doing service for you own sake. You are engaged in service in order to become aware of the Divine Spirit in you, in order that you may discard the allurements of your ego, in order to know yourself and to get the answer to the question that torments you, namely, "Who am I." You do not serve others, you serve yourself; you do not serve the world, you serve your own interest. [17]
Constant work in loving service to others covers the seeds of past sinful and harmful actions, so that they die away and do not grow into a new round of misery [18] .Service is the best spiritual exercise for eliminating the nefarious pull of the mind towards desires [19] .
To remove the evil of egoism, service is the most efficient instrument [20] .How is this possible? By saturating service with love, work can be transformed into worship. When it is offered to God, it gets sanctified as worship. This makes it free from ego. It is also freed from the earthly desire for success and the earthly fear of failure. [21]
When a devotee seeks with humility and purity to give service and love to My creatures who are in need of such selfless service, as his beloved brothers and sisters, as the blessed manifestations of My Immanence, then in fulfilment of my role as Sathya Sai, I descend to help, accompany, and carry that yogi. I am always near such a yogi to guide him and to shower My love on his life. [22]
So, service helps our worldly self. But there is another sense in which selfless service is a self-serving activity: we serve the One God that is within us all, the supreme, absolute SELF.
The core of the spiritual discipline of service is to see everyone as yourself and yourself in everyone [23] .You are not doing service to others, you are doing service to yourselves, to the God in you, the God who is equally present in others [24] .
All waves are on the same sea, are from the same sea, are the same sea. Service teaches you to be firm in this knowledge. [25] Service will also impress the Unity of all mankind on the person doing service [26] .Service can instill more intensely than any other activity the sense of the basic ONE. ... There can be no higher austerity, nothing more rewarding [27] .
God will not ask when and where you did service; he will ask what your motives and intentions were [28] .The attitudes of mutual help and selfless service develop the "humanness" of man and help the unfoldment of the Divinity latent in him [29] .
Our attitude during a service activity determines whether the service helps us grow spiritually. Service performed with a sense of pride or superiority may help the person we are serving, but it does not help us.
Do not pollute your service with the poison of pride [30] .Feel that you are serving yourself, curbing the ego [31] .Engage in humble service and egoism will fade away [32] .
Also, service should be performed without expectations for results.
Do not serve for the sake of reward; serve because you are urged by Love [33] .Service is its own reward [34] .Do not worry about the result. Help as much as you can, as efficiently as you can, as silently as you can, and as lovingly as you can; leave the rest to God, who gave you a chance to serve. [35]
Do not believe that you can by means of selfless service reform or reshape the world. You may or may not. That does not matter. The real value of seva, its most visible result, is that it reforms you, reshapes you. [36]
Sometimes, members try to do what they want to do, rather than what needs to be done. They may perceive some task as more important and others as "less desirable". For example, some would rather serve the food than pick it up from supermarkets and bakeries or clean up afterwards. This attitude is counter-productive, and a more positive approach is better.
Do not consider any act of service as demeaning. Sweeping the streets, for example, is not below your dignity. Do you not sweep the floor at home, do you not scrub and wash off dirt? [37] Serve people with no thought of high or low; no service is high, no service is low, each act of service is equal in the eye of the Lord. It is the readiness, the joy, the efficiency, the skill with which you rush to do it that matters. [38]
Some people critique continually during the service, feeling that they know better how to do certain things. This is the wrong approach; do what has to be done willingly, whatever it is, and bring up your constructive criticisms afterwards, when the service is being discussed in preparation for the next activity.
How can you shorten a line drawn on a blackboard without touching it? The answer is simple: draw a longer line under it. The line above will automatically get shorter. This is how you must use your critical faculty: stay silent and try to do better by showing how things should be done. This is constructive. [39]
We worship God in different ways --prayer, meditation, devotional singing, repeating His name, selfless service, and so on. All of these ways are helpful to us, and to different degrees at different times for different people. Sathya Sai Baba Himself emphasizes different forms of worship from time to time. However, two forms of worship seem to stand out in Sathya Sai Baba's teachings: service and repetition of a Name of God. These two spiritual disciplines reinforce each other, one being an outer activity, of the world, and the other being an inner activity that helps us continuously to remember that God is resident in all beings. Heads in the forest, hands in society [40] .
Service is the best form of worship [41] ,the highest spiritual discipline [42] ,the essence of devotion [43] .The bliss you receive through service cannot be gotten through any other activity [44] .Service is more fruitful than repetition of the Name, meditation, or sacrifice [45] .There is no morality higher than truth, no prayer more fruitful than service [46] .
Repetition of the Name is the easiest and quickest spiritual discipline [47] ,the key to the treasure of bliss [48] ,the means of liberation in this age [49] .It is enough to give you all the results of every type of spiritual discipline [50] .
You must be engaged in constant repetition of the Name of God, so that you remain a true servant of God while claiming to serve man, or rather, so that you may see in man the God that is his real nature [51] .
So move among your sisters looking for opportunities to be of help, with the Name of God on your tongue and the Form of God before the mind's eye [10] .