Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

one has to do. Whatever work you have to do, you should do it with
pleasure and liking. (...)
Children who have no good qualities, education which has no purpose,
a community which has no morality in it, are all perfectly useless. In the
same manner, life in which there is no peace of mind and a night when
there is no moonshine are equally useless. (37-100+102)
Man's life must be a perpetual spiritual effort; any day is a good day
for starting spiritual practice, whether it falls in the summertime or wintertime.
One need not wait for the sun to turn north. The months and
the time are all related to nature, and so they have only relative value.
Pleasant and moderate - these are the directions. Let it not be too garish,
too ramshackle, too costly, too fragile. Take the middle course;
that will yield maximum benefits. The craving for sense objects cannot
be given up fully; so, transform it into an instrument for worship. Dedicate
all your efforts to the Lord; accept all achievements and failures
as proofs of the grace of the Lord. His will decreed that they should so
happen. Transform all the six passions into instruments for spiritual uplift.
Sow in the field of your heart the seeds of good thoughts, charged with
humility; irrigate it with the waters of love; protect the growing crop with
the pesticide called courage; feed the crop with the fertiliser of concentration;
then, the “devotion” plants will yield the harvest of wisdom, the
eternal wisdom, that you are He, and when that revelation comes, you
become He, for, you were always He, though you did not know it.
The individual can fulfil himself only through the service of others, expansion
into the universal. Spiritual discipline has to enlarge the vision,
enhance the experience, and enthuse the individual self to merge in
the Atman.
But the question is asked - then, why is he not seen? Well, he is, as
butter is in milk, in every drop, through and through. If butter has to be
seen, then certain processes have to be gone into-boiling, curdling,
churning etc. So too, by certain spiritual disciplines, like repeating the
name on the tongue, he who dwells in the heart can be visualized: the
immanent God can be experienced as real.
From the experience of saints and sages, you can realise that joy from
the external world is infinitesimal when compared with the bliss won
through spiritual discipline. To win that bliss, spiritual discipline and
non-attachment are essential. When drilling to draw water from the
bowels of the earth, the pipe has to be kept free from air so that the
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