Sathya Sai Baba The World-Avatar Teaching and Revelations

preciate demonstrative trappings like matted hair, rosaries, marks on
forehead or sacerdotal robes. She values sincerity, yearning, virtue,
compassion, love. 24.11.72, (22-159)
Shutting yourself in a room and offering incense and flowers to a picture
or image of God, singing or reciting his glory are very poor substitutes
for the discipline that will liberate you from ignorance. All beings
are images of God; all men are his pictures; then, why shut yourselves
in? All creation is marching on a pilgrimage to him; why then behave
as if you are trekking alone? You believe that time spent in church or
temple or the domestic shrine in adoration and in ritual worship is devoted
to God and the rest is spent for other purposes. But, you cannot
separate and limit the realms of God and man like that. God is ever
with you everywhere. "All is God".
Society is the school where this lesson is taught to those who seek earnestly.
The sages of this land resorted to hermitages in the forests, and
mixed there with the steadfast seekers in scholastic discussion and
learnt the truth: "This universe is enveloped in God" - God is the string
on which the worlds are strung. April 1973, (22-238/239)
Society is the expression of Divinity in manifold phases, with its love,
ardour, eagerness to comfort and console. A chance conglomeration
of humans does not make a society. It has to be welded into a unit by
the consciousness of kinship of God, by sharing each other's joys and
sorrows, and cultivating empathy. The individual has to manifest
through word and deed, the Divine bliss inherent in him and society.
Turning the beads of a rosary between the fingers or sitting erect contemplating
the tip of the nose are only harmless ways of spending time;
active participation in society in a spirit of dedication and surrender,
conceiving all acts as acts of worship, all men as embodiments of the
Supreme, is a more beneficial form of spiritual discipline. There is no
spot where he is not, no object which is not he. As the holy scripture
declares, he willed that he become all this! Worship, adoration, and pilgrimage
cannot be the end-all! The goal is the realization of: “I am he,
he is I”. That alone can fill the heart will bliss.
When you separate yourself as an individual, envy, resentment, jealousy
and pride start defiling you. Love alone can weld you into kinship
with all. (...)
Once you transcend the human scale, and reach out to the Divine, the
eagerness to adore will drop off. You can evoke the Divine in you by
adherence to righteousness. (...)
397