Sri Sathya Sai International Organization

People should learn to honor their promises. They should never go back on their word. Truth is the life breath of the spoken word. Many ancient rulers were even prepared to give up their lives for honoring their plighted word.. Emperor Bali was truth incarnate. Always devoted to the well-being of his subjects, he constantly strove to lead them on the path of truth and to ensure prosperity in his realm. Emperor Bali's grandfather, Prahlada, had the same noble qualities.

People who have read the scriptures or listened to the discourses of scholars, imagine that Sat-Chit-Ananda abides in some special place. This is the root cause of their ignorance of the Real. You are the embodiment of Sat-Chit-Ananda. Everything around you is a manifestation of Sat-Chit-Ananda. People are forgetting their own true nature and separate themselves from the Divine and thus become prey to numerous troubles.

Krishna was the embodiment of love. Hence, love is the virtue He appreciates most. Love has to turn into concrete acts of compassion. Cultivate compassion and develop sympathetic understanding, until you reach the goal of merging in the embodiment of love, i.e.,Krishna.

Fear and anxiety get entrenched in a heart devoid of love. A heart filled with love of the Divine will enjoy peace and be totally free from fear. True love is not a momentary feeling. In the eternal spirit of a human being, love shines as pure and eternally effulgent flame. In this context, it would be more appropriate to describe God as Love itself rather than as an embodiment of Love.

Even insurmountable difficulties will vanish like thin mist when you face them with courage and self-confidence. The problems may appear to be mountainous in nature, but you should not give scope for fear or anxiety in your mind. Mind is like a mad monkey. It easily gets swayed by difficulties. Hence, you should brush aside the difficulties that come your way. Never allow difficulties to get the upper hand.

If a human today is under the sway of sorrow and misery, the mind is responsible for it. Happiness and sorrow, affections and aversions, and the sensual pleasures that humans experience today arise out of the mind. Since the mind is filled with a sense of duality, you suffer. When the mind is trained to see the oneness of all creation, there will not be perversions of any kind.

Men desire the fruits of good deeds, but do not perform good deeds. Men want to avoid the consequences of sinful actions but are engaged in sinful deeds. How is this possible? It is not easy to escape from the consequences of one's actions. But there is no need for despair. If one earns even a grain of grace from the Divine, a mountain of sins can be reduced to ashes. If one feels genuinely penitent, seeks God's forgiveness, and takes refuge in God, all one's actions will be transformed.

One should have confidence in one's inner Self, the Atma. If one has this Self-confidence, they will have Self-satisfaction, which will lead to self-sacrifice which in turn will lead to liberation or Self-realization. Everything is based on the "Self," and everyone is an embodiment of the Self. 

Truth is that which remains unchanged over time. You must live up to this truth. You must realize that the divine is present in everything. Only when you can recognize the omnipresence of the divine will you be able to experience the divine.

We should sanctify our time by performing sacred actions. This is the spiritual lesson we have to learn today. We can experience transcendental bliss only when we overcome the difficulties and suffering that come in our way. Never be afraid of difficulties; face them with courage. Only then will humanness blossom in you. Once you experience the bliss of the Atma, difficulties and suffering will no longer bother you.

It is not easy to understand the nature of the divine. Because the divine is omnipresent, God can undertake any kind of activity. No one is competent to ask whether the Lord can do this or that, whether God can work through one agency or another. There is nothing that is beyond God’s power.

We should lead our lives in such a manner to redeem ourselves. We should love God and aspire only for Him. Your love should be directed only toward God, not for the body. Our speech, actions, and the life-breath itself are meant to experience Atma. Sometimes the body may be afflicted with ailments, but they are like passing clouds. Man is born to attain the eternal truth of the Atma.

The true mark of devotion is to recognize that God is within you and around you, everywhere. You must develop the faith that you are a manifestation of God. The scriptures call upon everyone to find out, "Who are you?" There is no other path than the path of dedication to God and complete surrender to the Will of the Divine.

Love is God. Everything is filled with love. This love can be experienced only through love. There is no other way than love to realize the One Who is the embodiment of love. This (Divine) Love is not something which grows one moment and falls off in another. This Love dwells in man as Atma (the Spirit). The body has been described as the temple of God. In this temple, Love is enshrined as Atma. Such sacred and pure Love can dwell only in a pure heart.