JOIN USWhat is it with the spiritual path? What are we seeking? I wanted to understand the difference between the ego-led ‘I’ and the ‘I’ that was able to destroy the ego to experience a happier, freer life.
I had read and heard that to attain Liberation necessitated much sacrifice.
I had seen a photo of Sathya Sai Baba and was told he was God on earth. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I could succeed at becoming a student of his teachings, but I was willing to try.
If I had any idea what was going to happen to me, perhaps I would have taken my hard-earned ticket to India and ripped it up into bits and pieces and tossed it in the trash.
After coming to live at Prasanthi Nilayam, Sai Baba’s ashram town, I began the deep study of his discourses and his writings. He always taught that the Ego was an obstacle to success, not only on the spiritual path, but in daily affairs as well.
He said, “Arjuna entered the battlefield, fully equipped and fanatically determined to destroy his enemies. But when he took his position in the battlefield, he saw ‘my teachers’, ‘my grandfather’, ‘my kinsmen’, ‘my cousins’, etc. and he was moved so much by this sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ that he discarded the bow and desired to return to the forest and beg for the rest of his life, rather than fight the war. The ‘I’ that has really nothing to do with earthly possessions, blinded him.”
It took me years of study, sacrifice of the accepted way of life, inner reflection, and many failures before I began to understand that when I speak about MY possessions, MY family, MY work, these have no connection to the Self I actually am. Until we know better, we are deluded into thinking that we are in control of the movie of life.
Sai Baba explained, “Lord Krishna taught Bhagavad Gita and removed this delusion (moha). The lesson for you is: Be unmoved by duality. Let not defeat or success affect your inner calm and inner joy. See yourself as your Self unrelated to others or the objective world. When you know your real Self, you are liberated! That is Moksha.
Being aware of who I am was easy, on a mental level. However, to accept that I was not my personality, my possessions, my talents, my body or my mind...That was nearly impossible for me, it is a difficult truth to grasp. It is only by Sathya Sai that I achieve any day-by-day success.
“People believe that every man has a free will,” Krishna Incarnate stated. “It is an entirely wrong belief. They imagine that it is because of man’s will, determination, sadhana and effort that he is able to achieve success. This is all due to the aberrations of their ahamkara (ego) and the reflection of their false sense of doer-ship.”