Here is the dawn of another year with Him. A year of benevolent love—another year with the Avatar!

When man got confined to compartments—this and that, they and we, you and I—disintegration became the word, making lives purposeless. Lost in the jarring sounds of money and hate, I became unwanted, I became a no one. Then, He came, as Sai, to remind me that You am I. And, with it, my identity and peace was restored. Now, with the coming year, many more I’s, like before, will be rescued.

Stepping into this New Year, in step with His mission is the best resolution. For the sake of mankind, for the sake of God, for the sake of love, let more hands join in, in this great march with divinity. Purely for the sake of giving and receiving love, let us be a part of this mission of unity.

Well… all words of love said and done, how can I love when hate lashes out at me! Bombed, looted, murder, suicide, scoop, competition—name a tragedy and a man it is. Compressed into painful blisters of ego, man leaves no breathing space. I have often cringed at words snarled at me. Adding to this was the societal norms that supported the wrong-doers. Is this dharma—truth so weak, so frail? And, in the process I began to hate. Then, I looked at Him with blame and pain, pleading for a shade and that’s when He invited me to His fold, to His mission. Involved in a small way in this mission of love and service my pains took a second stand, and then… it gradually faded. Later, in its place He and His mission came to focus. What a beautiful way to find peace! What a beautiful way to tame the mind! What a divine way to find love!

Dear readers, His mission has a purpose (unity) and to be a minute or the minutest part of it is to find a purpose in our lives as well which is far from hate and ego. Just to be of service: the pleasure we get from it and the pleasure we give through it is the joy of the world, the joy of the Lord. So, let’s run head on into this mission of ‘love in action’ and welcome the New Year with high spirits of dedication and love.

Sathya Sai Speaks

The New Year festival must mark either the culmination or the beginning of a sadhana or spiritual discipline; otherwise it is not a ‘Pandaga’ but a ‘dandaga’: not a festival but Wastival.

Some fruits ripen well on the tree, in the open air; some have to be kept hidden in straw or dry grass or in a closed room. So, too some devotees crave for the company of the Lord, His Seva, His constant presence and His darshan; others keep Him in the tabernacle of their hearts and nourish Him there and they enjoy in secret the dhyana of the Lord. Bhaktas are of different type.

Religion and belief in God are being challenged now by all kinds of people; it is the duty of religious and god fearing persons now to meet this challenge by demonstrating in their daily lives how religion has chastened them and how the realization of the constant presence of God has made them better and more useful citizens, more efficient and more reliable, more earnest and more courageous.

The calendar calculates the movement of the sun and the moon and of the starts in the sky; but of the constellations in the Hridaya-aksha the firmament in you, and of the moon, called the mind and of the sun, called buddhi? Have you ever calculated the movements of these, for the more valuable calendar of your human carrier?

(from the April 1960 issue of the Sanathana Sarathi)