Sri Sathya Sai International Organization

To eliminate the ego, strengthen the belief that all objects belong to God, and that you are holding them on trust. This would prevent pride; it is also the truth. Then, when you lose a thing, you would not grieve. God gave; God took away.

The flames of anger, pride, hatred, envy are more devastating than other fires; they arise in the mind stealthily and in spurts; they are ever demanding more and more to feed upon. Fire is called anala in the Geetha, for anala means, "not enough!" Fire never says, "Enough" or "I am satisfied."

Bring devotion and lay it here and take from here spiritual strength! The more such business is done, the more pleased am I. Bring what you have, namely, your sorrows and griefs, worries, and anxieties, and take from Me joy and peace, courage and confidence.

The Lord is a Mountain of Love (Prema); any number of ants carrying away particles of sweetness cannot exhaust His Plenty. He is an Ocean of Mercy without a limiting shore. Devotion is the easiest way to win His Grace and also to realize that He pervades everything — in fact, is everything! Total surrender, leaving everything to His Will, is the highest form of devotion.

Try to understand my doctrine of Love. I often address you as "embodiments of the Divine Self". You will be true embodiments of the Divine only when you develop divine love. The only being worthy of love in this world is God. All others are only objects of transient attachment.

You may say that progress is possible only through My Grace; but, though My Heart is soft as butter, it melts only when there is some warmth in your prayer. Unless you make some disciplined effort, some spiritual practice, Grace cannot descend on you. The yearning, the agony of unfulfilled aim melts My Heart. That is the anguish that wins Grace.

God will grant you what you need and deserve; there is no need to ask, no reason to grumble, Be content. Nothing can happen against His will.

Strive to acquire Grace; Grace is the reward for spiritual practice; the highest spiritual discipline is to follow the instructions of the Master.

The body has been described as the temple of God. You must fill yourself with the feeling that God is in you, beside you, around you, and with you wherever you go. When you love God with this consciousness, the love results in Self-realisation.

The mind has to be killed so that illusion (Maya) may be rent asunder and the reality revealed. Every day during the dark half of the month, the moon, and symbolically its counterpart in man, the mind, wane, and a fraction is diminished; its power declines. Finally, on the fourteenth night, there is just a wee bit left, that is all. If a little extra effort is made that day by the spiritual aspirant, even that bit can be wiped off and mastery of the mind completed.

The lesson of Sivarathri is that devotees should foster good and sacred thoughts. They should be filled with godly thoughts. They should seek to become one with the Divine by reflecting on their inherent divinity. If you constantly chant the name of God, God-realization will come in due course.

Sivarathri is a day when one tries to establish friendship between the mind and God. Shivarathri makes one aware of the fact that the same Divinity is all-pervasive, that It is to be found everywhere.

Devotion means giving up all other desires and dedicating all actions and thoughts to God. When you offer every act of yours to God, it becomes worship. Everything you do must be done as an offering to God.

It is better to substitute good thoughts for the bad and cleanse the mind of all evil by dwelling on righteous deeds and holy thoughts. Forget the things that you do not want to remember. Bring to memory only those things that are worth remembering. That is the sane way to achieve spiritual progress.