In plain words
But today's students have cleverness to excess. But character is declining. When we give children some excellent ideas, some excellent matters, those children try with their cleverness to find out the position of the one who speaks. If we are teaching a student about Satya, Dharma, Śānti and Ahiṃsā, that student may try to enquire whether these human qualities, the very form of the five prāṇas, are present in the teacher who teaches him. Besides, because the Sathya Sai Organisations have spread across the country today in many ways, they are watching with a thousand eyes. Let the slightest fault appear, and they keep examining it with a thousand eyes, they do. So, with great care, we must try to give students only the things we practise. If we set about telling students without practising, however hard we toil, there will be no benefit in it. It is time wasted. Money wasted. Our strength and capacity go to waste. So we must put at least one thing into practice and go forward to teach those children. If a teacher, smoking a cigarette, tells a student, ‘Hey, smoking a cigarette is wrong’, will that student listen? Are things today such that he would listen? The student will not listen merely because he is told. It is an age that asks, ‘If smoking a cigarette is wrong, why are you smoking?’ So, at the time we teach students that they must speak Satya, we too must follow Satya.
A small example. At home there are the mother and father. They sit in the drawing room and watch a video. They listen to the radio. Suppose some telephone call comes just then. Thinking their enjoyment will be disturbed, they put it down. Or the boy goes and picks up the telephone, and when he says ‘Hello’, someone speaks from the other end. Wondering whether their enjoyment will be disturbed, the parents tell the boy, ‘Say not available, boy,’ they say. At this the boy thinks hard. ‘Father is sitting right here, and still he tells me to say my father is not here; this is a lie, is it not?’ he reflects. In some small, trifling matter we lead our children into this kind of Asatya and wreck their whole future. In the same way, because teachers too walk a way contrary to the teachings they give, the students, though they hear it, have no wish at all to put it into practice.
So parents too must first become students. They must first put all these human values into practice. Even in worldly matters they must take care not to speak Asatya. They must try to gain forbearance. Dharma. What is Dharma for us? There are two: the Dharma of the body and the Dharma that belongs to the Ātma. The Dharmas of the body are the natural Dharmas of Prakṛti. That is, Dharmas bound up with the guṇas. The principle beyond the guṇas: that alone is Svadharma. That is, following as our Ātma directs. This is what I keep telling the children now and then: the four F's. Follow the Master, Face the devil, Fight to the end, Finish the game. Follow the Master: who, then, is your Master? The master who teaches you your lessons, or the master who develops some other kind of sādhana? No, no: your heart itself is your Master. Your conscience itself is your Master. Follow your conscience; your conscience will not lead you on a wrong path.
A small example. One night a thief committed a theft in a house and came away with all the goods. By daybreak these people had given a police complaint. The police, suspecting him, caught him. But this man, who was the thief, keeps telling the lie that he did not steal, so as to escape; but with his own Ātma as witness, ‘Last night I went. I committed the theft. I put all the goods at such-and-such a place’: this truth he does not tell at all. Once he deceives his own (master) conscience, he can no longer enter the good path at all. Whoever deceives his own Ātma, his master, cannot do good deeds. So you must behave with your Ātma as witness. The faith ‘What I do is good, what I say is true’ must grow in oneself. Then alone does self satisfaction come. That is what they called ‘Ātma-tṛpti’. When this Ātma-tṛpti comes, one sacrifices everything. That is what they called self sacrifice. The moment one has made this sacrifice, self realisation, Ātma-sākṣātkāra, is attained. So, for teachers, self confidence is the first and most urgent need. The person who has this self confidence will surely gain self satisfaction. Once self satisfaction has come, he makes self sacrifice. The person without self satisfaction is the very one who cannot make sacrifice. One who lacks self satisfaction cannot carry out even a small task properly. Self realisation is for him alone who has made this self sacrifice. He can recognise his own true nature for himself. So first of all we must enter this field with self-confidence.
Teachers! Of all the services there are in this world, this service of the teacher is a very excellent service. A sacred service. It has fallen to it to set right who knows how many hundreds of students. So you, who have entered such a sacred path, must strive as far as you can, without sparing your strength. This Education in Human Values is a sacred field. We must make a fitting effort to spread this awareness through the whole world. Today teachers from 42 countries, all of them, have come and gathered here. All these teachers must take these matters to heart so that they hold fast, go back to their own countries, gather the teachers in some institutions in those countries too, teach them as well, and give them fitting training. As for how teachers should be in this: they must be like a burning lamp. This burning lamp alone has the fitness to light the other lamps. That is why, only when all of you, today's teachers, are like burning lamps can you give all the other teachers fitting encouragement to develop this kind of light. You must keep this lamp of learning within you guarded always, without a break. Then alone shall we be those who have achieved our aim fully and joyfully.
This Human value is not something new that we acquire; it is already there in our natural life! It is the chief thing in life. It is our very life. This is what they called ‘The proper study of mankind is man’. That is, the oneness of these three, our thoughts, our words, our action, is our svarūpa. Gokak too spoke of this in the morning. We must regard the five sheaths called the annamaya-kośa, prāṇamaya-kośa, manomaya-kośa, vijñānamaya-kośa and ānandamaya-kośa as reflections of Satya, Dharma, Śānti, Prema and Ahiṃsā. The annamaya-kośa is this body. Within it is the very subtle prāṇamaya, and within that again the still subtler manomaya. But today our journey reaches only from the annamaya-kośa to the manomaya-kośa, and there we come to a halt. We cannot reach the goal we must reach. What is our goal? Our journey, which began with food, must take Ānanda itself as its goal, and that same Ānanda as its end for us. Though the body is annamaya, through this body we must attain the manomaya, enter the vijñānamaya, and through this Vijñāna merge into the ānandamaya. If, for however long, we go on living with this annamaya body alone, when shall we ever experience the ānandamaya? Animals, birds and beasts too go on living this kind of life. Then where is the special greatness of humanness? Having studied so much, gained so much knowledge, taken so many degrees, if we behave in a state lower than beasts, how then can we speak of the special greatness of humanness? These animals, birds and beasts have no vijñānamaya. They may have it to some small extent, but these animals, birds and beasts have no power to weigh things eternal and transient, no power to enquire into the Ātma and the non-Ātma. Man alone has it. That is why they said, ‘Jantūnāṃ narajanma durlabham.’ We must carry our life, which began with this annamaya body, on its journey up to the ānandamaya. For that, the vijñānamaya is very necessary. For that, we must spread the teaching and instruct through practice.
When we teach children, we must watch even the smallest things closely. We must not give them the chance to misuse their time too much. If we give it, they will take up who knows how many kinds of ways. Now and then in class we must ask small questions, whether the children have understood what we said, and take their answers. Now and then, in what is called a quiz, we must put some questions on the matters we have had them read and recite, and give enthusiasm and encouragement to those who answer well. Not only that: when they go home, after games and songs, we must give them Home work too. We must question him again in class whether he did this Home work himself or got someone to do it and came, and find out whether he gives the right answer to it. In this way teachers must toil ever so hard to give the children enthusiasm and encouragement and to develop them.