3. You are perfect from the beginning, for God created you in his image and likeness
God is love. Love can only be felt through love. One who is in love can find oneness with the Divine.
(Sathya Sai Baba – "Collection of lectures", 1991)
Love is the greatest treasure in the world. God is the True Self of every person, which is why to love God means to love your Higher Self. Love begins with love for oneself, which is the divinity that lies dormant in the Spiritual Heart of each person. Self-love has nothing to do with selfishness.
True love for yourself lies in the awareness of your infinite creative potential. How can you love God if most of the time people don't even know how to accept themselves? How can you love your neighbor if you do not understand how to accept and love yourself?
To love God means to see God in every person. You look into the eyes of the person right in front of you and see in them the light of the True Self, which is also your True Self. I was incredibly lucky in the ‘90s to meet Mother Teresa at the Delhi airport as she walked through the huge airport building blessing everyone in her path. I watched her actions with awe, feeling the amazing divine love emanating from Mother Teresa. I also approached her in order to receive a blessing.
The divine vibrations of Mother Teresa at that moment gave rise to amazing realizations in me. Thoughts and images flowed through my mind. An inner voice spoke to me.
You contemplate the True Self, which means you contemplate God. You trust your intuition, which means you trust God's plan, because intuition is the voice of God. You respect yourself, which means you respect God because you are divine. You allow your dream to come true, because in your dream God creates this perfect world. You do your job in life and follow your destiny, which means you are doing the work of God. You love yourself because you are originally perfect, for God created you in his own image and likeness. You are originally perfect because God incarnates in the world in every person.
It is very helpful to meditate on your name and appearance. Try to respectfully look at your reflection in the mirror or at a photo or video of yourself, or perhaps listen to a recording of your voice. What you feel when listening or seeing will be an important indicator of how you perceive yourself, because the soul is manifested in your voice and appearance. Self-love begins with love for your name, appearance, and voice.
All people are deeply interconnected because all are one in the Divine Consciousness. By reading Christian and Buddhist sacred texts, you will learn about the importance of love and compassion, and you will start to consider how to love the whole world.
It is very easy to love all of humanity; it is more difficult to love the person who is nearby and right in front of you. Loving humanity is a good idea, in theory, but often that’s where it ends. We keep people at arms-length and at a distance, viewing humanity as a collective noun made up of abstract people with their abstract joys, needs and sufferings. But humans are not abstractions of reality – we are people traversing the highs and lows of everyday life trying to become the hero of our own journey. When we condense humanity down to something we can “love” as an idea, but not actually impact on a personal level, we miss out on the beauty that comes with interdependent relationships. When you begin to appreciate each person as an individual, abstract humanity turns from having ideas about someone’s reality to directly engaging in the truth of their reality. This is when you begin to “love your neighbor as yourself” and face the complexity of humanity at an individual level by loving people in spite of their complicated lives.
The person right in front of you may need your help, understanding, and support. To see the Eternal Consciousness in every person behind the veil of their personality is true love.
4. Sathya Sai Baba blew on the branches three times, they instantly turned into a small crucifix
Dr. John Hislop is very famous among Sathya Sai Baba's devotees. He was a man of unique destiny, who for many years practiced various spiritual systems and communicated with leading gurus and philosophers of the twentieth century such as Krishnamurti and Shivananda. However, John Hislop continued to feel dissatisfied and incomplete in his spiritual life.
He felt that all the books he read and the seminars he went through, in which he studied the practices of yoga and meditation, were just steps to something very important. At the end of the sixties, he learned about Sathya Sai Baba and immediately came to his ashram. Seeing Sathya Sai Baba for the first time, Hislop was shocked by the strong vibrations of love emanating from him.
Subsequently, John Hislop published an amazing book entitled “My Baba and I”, his conversations with Sathya Sai Baba, in which he shared the most interesting answers given in response to various questions relating to the spiritual development of man and society. For many people, the book became a reference point providing clear answers to the difficult questions in one’s spiritual development. This book has been translated into numerous languages, and new editions are constantly being printed. People who want a deeper understanding of Sathya Sai Baba's philosophy read and re-read this amazing book.
John Hislop was a blessed soul, and a particularly close devotee of Sathya Sai Baba. Hislop was fortunate to follow him relentlessly for many years, observing his life and listening to his wise instructions. We are lucky that Hislop not only enjoyed his fellowship with Sathya Sai Baba but carried the good news further by writing books, communicating with people, and telling stories about Sathya Sai Baba that he witnessed or directly participated in.
In the early seventies, Sathya Sai Baba went to a large nature reserve located near the city of Mysore, in the very south of India. Sathya Sai Baba took several people with him on the trip, including John Hislop. The area near Mysore is famous for its mild climate and beautiful pristine nature consisting of low mountains covered with jungle, full-flowing fast rivers, a huge number of wild animals and the life of the local population untouched by civilization.
An account of the trip records how Sathya Sai Baba walked with his small group for a long time through the jungle accompanied by local guides. Finally, everyone sat down to rest on the bank of a fast mountain river, enjoying the beautiful views of the mountains. Suddenly, Sathya Sai Baba picked up two branches, folded them in the shape of a cross and showed them to John Hislop before he blew three times on the branches. They instantly turned into a small crucifix of magnificent work. Sathya Sai Baba immediately gave this wonderful crucifix to the shocked Hislop. Photos of this cross are well known and very common.
Many times, I have watched Sathya Sai Baba materialize objects. He made several circular movements with his right hand and small flashes of light appeared directly from the palm of his hand. Rings, rosaries, or amulets miraculously appeared from these flashes. Materialized objects may seem the most ordinary, but in fact they are the greatest objects of power arising from the pure divine light. One of the ways in which Sathya Sai Baba materialized objects was extremely unusual, he blew on his hand three times and an object appeared there.
Breathing is a sacred act. Life begins with the first breath and ends with the last breath. Breathing happens by itself. It is not in our will to breathe or not to breathe. Breathing is the divine will manifested in man. In fact, God, himself, breathes in every person.