Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

shining example of the peace and joy it gives. Do not follow the trail of
dry logic; do not confuse your brain by cynicism and prejudice, do not
get interested in what others do or believe in and try to reform them or
correct their footsteps; have faith in the basic Atman which is your real
truth; test all lines of conduct on that basis, whether it will hinder the
process of revealing the Atman or not; and carry on, in the light of that
faith and that test, your daily duties and rites. Then, you will never fall
into error. You will also derive great joy. (8-34/38)
Next, about the house of God, the residence of the concretised formful
aspect of Divinity, the temple and the rules of spiritual discipline relating
to it. Rules have overgrown and overwhelmed these institutions,
following the whims and prejudices of various authorities. They have
led people away from right conduct and Brahman and even proper activity;
they have confounded the devotees by their variety and unreasonableness.
They are insisted upon blindly and so, they have done
much harm to the welfare of the world itself. In fact, these rules and formalities
form the first steps in the retreat away from God. They have
fostered atheism in a great measure.
Think deeply over the functions of the temple. Temples are centres of
discipline, where the aspirant is guided step by step to attain a vision
of the truth, they are schools for the training of the spirit; they are academies
for the promotion of sacred studies; they are institutes of superscience;
they are laboratories for the testing of the values of life; they
are hospitals for the treatment and cure not only of the "birth-death-disease"
which has persisted in the individual from ages, but even the
much more patent "mental disorders" that trouble those who do not
know the secret of acquiring peace. They are gymnasia where man is
reconditioned and has hesitant faith, waning conviction and upsurging
egoism are all cured; they are mirrors which reflect his aesthetic standards
and achievements. The purpose of the temple is to awaken the
Divinity in humanity, inducing man to believe that the physical frame
in which he lives is itself the house of God. Therefore all the temple formalities,
rites and rituals emphasise and cultivate this Brahma-wisdom,
the truth that the living being is just a wave of the Sea. (...)
Devotion helps most easily the attainment of the bliss of merger with
the basic Brahman, by canalising towards the Lord the mental agitations,
the sensory reaching out, and the emotional urges of man. It is
in this direction that all the details of the worship of the Lord in temples
took shape. (...)
Moreover, though wisdom and non-attachment might be measurable,
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