Contemplation is Neglected if we don't Listen, Think it Over and Absorb

How amazing is this! You can get sacrifices of the highest order performed by yourself or through scholars versed in Vedic ritual. You can visit and praise the holiness of diverse shrines and inspire others to journey thereto. Similarly you can master the highest scriptures and teach them to many and make them experts. But how many of you have succeeded in mastering your own bodies, senses and wayward minds, and turned them inward to gain perpetual and unchanging equanimity? You embark upon an undertaking with a purpose, goal, or an end in view. But the endeavour is sublimated into a yajna (sacrificial rite) only if the purpose, goal or end is the glorification of God. God is the yajna, for He is the Goal. His grace is the reward. His creation is used to propitiate Him; He is the performer as well as the receiver. Every act, where the ego of the doer does not surface, becomes a Divine offering.

In yesterday's words of Swami we got aware that we neglect contemplation or better, nobody knows it good enough to know what contemplation is, we are rather naive and think we can feel a bit of love and that's it and Swami's divine presence is not felt anymore.

If we have been meditating, we know how to transcend the mind and that all are one if we do it together, there is only one mind as well, only it is the realm of differences, everything is always changing, nothing remains the same and divinity it the realm of no differences, it doesn't change ever and it is always the same and what is new for us is that the two realms are together, but separate, one turns not into the other.

If the divine level is never changing, eternal, immortal and true always without exception, it is an absolute truth and it cannot change and therefore, if we get aware of God consciousness, we get aware that nothing has changed and everything is as it always was and had been and always will be, but the body level changes and we get older, man may come and man may go, but I (higher self or divine I) go on forever. (Vedic saying).

Swami talks here to spiritual people and sacrifices of the highest order, priests, Sannyasins and even Vedic scholars, pundits are versed in Vedic rituals and they perform their rituals and they think they reach God and he is telling all that it is not true. And he goes on telling that we can go for pilgrimage and praise the holiness of the shrines and even inspire others to do the same and we can master the highest scriptures, learn it all by heart, recite them and even teach it to others and become experts, but still, how many have succeeded in mastering the body, the senses and the wayward mind and turned inward to gain perpetual and unchanging equanimity?

If we would have spent all our life in learning by heart Veda and reciting out loud and we sacrificed our time and energy for it and we would teach it even to others, I don't think we would be happy, to hear that it is all in vain.

But it is exactly the same in our centers, we go on singing and that's it, we are not aware of what we are doing, not in singing, no during service activities and not in the study circle, we just do it together.

How amazing is this? 

Amazing that we can tell someone don't think family as part of the whole only, we have to live the divine message, all are one, there is only one family, the family of humanity and they don't hear it, like words don't do it.

I wonder what happens in such a mind and why she is not able to listen, probably too much passion.

How amazing is this! You can get sacrifices of the highest order performed by yourself or through scholars versed in Vedic ritual. You can visit and praise the holiness of diverse shrines and inspire others to journey thereto. Similarly you can master the highest scriptures and teach them to many and make them experts. But how many of you have succeeded in mastering your own bodies, senses and wayward minds, and turned them inward to gain perpetual and unchanging equanimity?

And he is telling us the reason why we don't get it. We embark upon an undertaking with a purpose in the mind, also when playing theater, it is but socializing and not developing a divine awareness. If we think family we embark also with a purpose, to be together as family and we can see the sick result of it. We have some who think family and they tell us whatever comes to their minds out in the open and everybody has to listen to it, that is the idea of family, but no discipline and it doesn't feel good and no Swami in it, no divinity. 

The problem is we can mediate and go beyond the ego and the mind in transcending it and in the moment when we are finished with our meditation, we open the eyes and are in the mind again, we don't get aware of it, but we feel good during meditation and we feel energized and happier and less worried and relaxed etc. 

With Swami we have to transcend the mind together, we transcend it when we listen to others in the study circle, we transcend it when we see the oneness in people if we are able to keep that inner focus during singing, during activity together, during study circle, we get aware of the divine presence.

We don't embark in that undertaking with the purpose or goal or an end in view, we just do it because it is devotional singing and purifying the mind and we get aware of the joy of oneness, it is all over the world the same. If there is a purpose in view it should be that we feel that we become one and that is how we sacrifice the ego and accept the experience of the eternal being level in that togetherness as our own higher self. If we are one with all, the innate divinity is one with all, the end is only the glorification of God and that means there is only One, and that is a glorification of God.

You embark upon an undertaking with a purpose, goal, or an end in view. But the endeavour is sublimated into a yajna (sacrificial rite) only if the purpose, goal or end is the glorification of God.

God is the activity, because he is the Goal. And how do we get his grace? 

He told us God is like a tank of grace, but we need some water taps and Swami said if you remember that some of us look like water taps, but even if we are potentially ready to be connected with that tank of grace we need to have 'pure love', pure love alone can make the connection with the tank of God and his grace can flow. 

Swami is such an instrument of divinity as avatar telling us that he is God, God is the whole universe. He shows us the way to get aware of the divine realm always true and not changing eternal being in us and how to get aware that it is our own higher self, to get aware we have to live on that non-changing being level and we get there by being one with all.

God is the yajna, for He is the Goal. His grace is the reward. His creation is used to propitiate Him; He is the performer as well as the receiver. Every act, where the ego of the doer does not surface, becomes a Divine offering.

We have to make every act a divine offering and that is only possible if we are always aware of the One only. If we are in illusion and we sacrifice something for God it is not really for God, but for our own, because there is ego involved, we do it for a certain purpose and even if it is the purpose of pilgrimage, it is still that little person who does it, we are not aware that we are one only.

If we develop God consciousness we get aware that there has never been a time we were not and we always will be, because the being level doesn't change. 

You are divine in nature and we are divine, but we don't get aware of it alone, the sacrifice of ego can only be if we do it together for the highest and divinity.

We cannot get aware of it if we don't do it and even if we would learn the whole Gita by heart, it would be too much and probably an impossible task, and still we would not reach the reality Swami is talking about, but we do reach if we do it together and if we are not neglecting contemplation.

Sai Baba is a contemplation movement of selfless service, it means not only selfless service to the needy, but to be aware that we are all one, being aware who we really are. 

That is contemplation and selfless, we should keep it in our focus that all are one and that is why he said we should always be in meditation and we can call it amazing or not. 

I don't think it is that amazing, it is more scary that we are singing and doing something and that they are not aware of themselves really, we don't know about contemplation, we do neglect it still and it was not something he said to others, but he tells it to us. Even if we would call it a contemplation movement, based on selfless service, everything Swami did was to develop that contemplation in us and most of us have no idea about it and live in the hope that a little love will be good enough, when that love is not even love, but just feeling the memory of the divine presence in the past and waiting for him to come again in the future, that is what is practiced now. 

If we don't neglect contemplation, we are constantly thinking about his words and we see it in our own life and we get aware of it and only then his words are really absorbed and become part of the higher self. 

Now we just thought over Swami's words and we look at it in our own life and our experience with the others and why the call it family. Swami calls it a movement of selfless service and they all run to feed the  needy, but forget to keep the awareness that all are one, that is the divine purpose in it and the glory of the divine, getting aware by doing in the activity of the divine oneness, what means no difference what so ever, not between devotees and others, not between families, not between religions, humanity is one and therefore, divine and only on that universal level we can transcend the mind and be divine and realize it, everything in parts, no matter what it is, it keeps us on the mind level.

The insight with seven million people looking old-fashioned like in a theater scene two hundred years ago or even more, that is a purpose, a strange purpose, but it is a purpose nevertheless and not the universal being level of the divine principle of 'I am that', not good enough to transcend the mind. The real message of oneness gets lost in that, it is more likely to be only mind thinking that we are a family, it is not true and  not good enough in that movement, because Sai is only one, the Atmic principle and not the mind and not the body.