For You and Me

And so, we have come to the last pages of this book, dear Reader, you and I together. I hope you have become more interested in the pilgrimage, that every one has perforce to undertake to the seat of God. Baba has spent so far, only thirty five years in the human frame and He has assured us that He would inhabit it for over sixty years more. During Dasara, 1961, He said that He has just started the work for which He has come. Therefore, subsequent chapters of the Life of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba are bound to be even more inspiring and elevating. May an ever increasing number of brothers and sisters gather to draw that inspiration and practise that Upadesh.

The golden Age of Human Redemption is here. The splendour of its Dawn has already filled the clouds on the eastern horizon with Golden Glory. Mankind is awake. The Sun will circle the entire World. 'I came,' Baba says, 'because the good men of the world, the saintly, the wise, the Sadhu and the Sadhaka, the Guru and godly, panted for Me.' May the pure and the righteous rejoice!

The wicked and the false, the cowardly and cruel may also rejoice, for He, in His Mercy, will nurse them back into the holy path. Baba one day said, if I close the door against the sinful, the fallen and the renegade, where else can they go?'

You and I have no excuse now to be content with only maps and guide books, to consult the case histories of famous invalids who cured themselves or to poor over tomes that confound the brain. He has come, Dattatreya, Dakshinamurthi, Dhanavanthari, all in One, as loving as the Mother, as strong as the Father, as wise as the Guru, as All-seeing as God.

And, what does He ask of us? To start this very moment the discipline needed for the Good Life, the Sadhana to sublimate the impulses and the instincts.

With what offering shall we approach Him? Not even the Pathram, Pushpam, Phalam and Thoyam, hitherto prescribed as the minimum. No. Offer Sathya, Dharma, Santhi, Prema, or at least the effort to attain these four or any one of the four. Sincerity in the struggle to improve, that is enough. "Offer in the Pathram of the Body, the Manopushpam fragrant with Humility, the Hridayaphalam ripe with Tapas and sweet with the Rasam of Daya, Danam and Damam, and the Thoyam of Tears, welling out of Ananda. That is enough," says Baba.

May He, the Source, the Stream and the Sea, the All-pervasive, All-inclusive, All-animating SATHYAM-SIVAM-SUNDARAM vouchsafe to us all the strength and the steadfastness, to journey towards Him.