Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

culiar good fortune or a special act necessary. It is enough if the mind
is always fixed on God, if the Lord is meditated upon without break.
That will cleanse the mind; the delusion clogging it will disappear. This
by itself comprises liberation, for what is liberation but the decline of
delusion? A person who has achieved this stage, will attain the stage
of Brahman, howsoever he might die. Such a person is called wise.
(...)
The types of knowledge you mentioned now are all useful at some
stage or the other of one's spiritual development; but by none of them
can you escape the cycle of birth and death! That which realises you
is known as the knowledge that you yourself experience; that alone
can help you to be free. (2-166/168)
Devotion to the Lord is a form of discipline to reach the goal. The seeker
should not stop with the acquisition of devotion; he should pay attention
not so much to the love that he has towards the Lord, as to the
love and grace that the Lord bestows on him! He must be eager to find
out which behaviour of his, what acts of his, will be most pleasing to
the Lord, will fill the Lord with bliss. Inquire about it, yearn for it, carry
out things that will secure that objective, that is a real devotee.
But people generally do not follow this ideal of devotion, nor do they
think about the implications of that ideal. They only pay attention to the
love of the devotee for the Lord; and in the process, they do not pay
much attention to Divine order and the work of which the Lord approves
and appreciates! This is why Krishna says: "Activity which
pleases the Lord is superior to the action which fulfils the yearning of
the devotee”. - Whatever the devotee does or thinks or plans or observes,
should draw down the grace of God. It should not be subject
to his own will; it should be in accordance with His will. The devotee
must test every thought and feeling on the touchstone of the Lord's declared
preferences. (2-197/198)
The awareness of being only the witness of everything, is the secret
of self-realization. Self-realization is: the knowledge that “I am the truth
of me"; or “I have known myself"; or "All are one Atman”; or “I have experienced
that the individual and the Universal are not separate". This
is what every person has to discover for himself; mere asceticism without
this is a sheer waste of time and energy. (2-226)
Arjuna: "It is indeed very difficult to know that basic Atman, that inner
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