JOIN USOnce riding on a train from Warsaw to Krakow, Poland, I sat beside a grandmother traveling with her grandson—about six.
At the beginning of the journey the boy asked, “Grandmother, where is this train going?” She answered and then he asked, “Why?” She patiently answered every why, why, why, for hours. In school, teachers answer the questions, then bosses, perhaps…..But at some point we must look within for the answers to life’s questions.
Beloved lord Sathya Sai Baba has said, “There is no need to seek the truth anywhere outside yourself. Seek it within you: you are the miracle of miracles. Whatever is not within you cannot be found anywhere outside you. What is visible outside you is but a rough reflection of what really is within you! The ancient belief was that Easwara (God) ruled over the world, and was outside it. This, the Indian seekers put to the test through Sadhana (spiritual exercises) and revealed that God was and is in the world and of it.
This is the first contribution of Indians to spirituality— that God is not external to man, but is his very inner core. They declared that it is impossible to remove Him from the heart where He has installed Himself. He is the very Atma of our Atma, the Soul of our soul. He is the inner Reality of each one of us!”
If this is so, then what keeps us from being in constant contact with the Almighty?
Swamiji, explained, “From the time he wakes up, till he goes to sleep, man looks at everything externally. He hardly spends a few moments to develop his inner vision. All the external objects can only confer momentary pleasure. Pursuing these pleasures, man wastes his precious and sacred life. He can never achieve peace in this way.”
Obviously, we are responsible for losing the link between ourselves and God. When the internet is not functioning, we cannot Google the answer to our mundane question. Likewise, if we do not connect to the internet, we will not contact God, our own self, That which is the embodiment of all knowledge.
How can we reconnect to our spiritual identity? Parthi Sai has taught, “If you use sound, the energy is wasted. So do not waste energy with too much talking. For this reason, the ancients observed silence. In silence you discover your own truth. Close your eyes and sit in silence. Then out of the vibration comes, ‘So Hum’. So is the inhalation, and Hum is the exhalation, So means God, Hum means ‘I’, I am God….. When we do not follow the teachings of the self, what is the use of reading books?”
Therefore, according to Sai Baba, to find the truth, we must go beyond books. We must travel into the interiors of the self while in silence.