Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

somewhere else, not on the base. The foundational Divine principle is
being ignored. You are fascinated by subjects and studies that promise
to feed your stomachs and make you materially happy and powerful.
But the truth is the Divine beneath all. Man must either know the
supreme Truth of the one being behind all becoming or at least know
the practical truth of love and brotherhood. These two points are the
limits which education must ever keep in mind - the starting point and
the goal. (7-87/91)
As fog before the sun, ignorance melts away before knowledge.
Knowledge is acquired by uninterrupted inquiry. One should constantly
be engaged in inquiry on the nature of Brahman: the reality of the I,
the transformations that occur to the individual at birth and at death
and such matters. As you remove the husk that covers the rice, so too
the ignorance that adheres to the mind has to be removed by the frequent
application of the abrasive Divine inquiry. It is only when full
knowledge is won that one can be liberated. After the attainment of the
above-said spiritual knowledge, one has to follow the path of the Eternal
Absolute and act according to the new wisdom. (...)
When ignorance and delusion disappear, the Atman in every one
shines in its own splendour. All that we see is as a mirage, the superimposition
of something over the real and the mistaking of that for this.
Things have a beginning and on end; there is evolution as well as involution.
When all is subsumed by involution, or pralaya, only the causal
substance endures. Only the unmanifested cause survives the universal
dissolution. (...)
To realize this Atman, this higher self, there are four obstacles to be
overcome: Sleep, restlessness, entanglement and the bliss of the
highest supreme-object. Let us take these one by one.
Sleep
When the mind withdraws from the external world, it enters into deep
sleep, an account of the overpowering influence of the ever changing
world. The devotee should arrest this tendency and attempt to fix the
mind on the inquiry into the nature of the higher self, the Atman. He
must keep watch over the mind so that he may keep awake. He must
discover the circumstances that induce the drowsiness and remove
them in time. He must start the process of contemplation again and
again. Of course, the usual cause of drowsiness and sleep during
meditation is indigestion. Over-eating exhaustion through too much
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