In plain words
Of the sacrifice that is in the beast, not even a little is in this man, who ought to become Paśupati, the Lord of beasts. Beasts, birds and animals too take part in sacrifice, dedicate their lives and keep reaching the sacred human birth. At such a time… if man, for his own sake, does not sacrifice, you may consider in how hard a heart this lies. So it is through this sacrifice alone that true yoga comes to us. Today we keep thinking, ‘Enjoyment, enjoyment.’ We eat in comfort. We travel in comfort. We sleep in comfort. ‘This is … enjoyment, this is our good fortune,’ we think. This is not enjoyment. This food, this comfort, this kind of ease lead you little by little to disease. … All these physical enjoyments belong for us to disease, not to yoga. Sacrifice itself is the true yoga. Sooner or later, at some time, we cannot escape making sacrifice in the world. But what is it that we sacrifice? Is it giving up our property and possessions? Or is it giving up money, gold, goods and vehicles? If it is only these, they can be given up easily.
No, no. These are not the sacrifices we must make. These are sacrifices made only to give some comfort in the physical world. We must sacrifice these three that are in us: desire, anger and hatred. Desire is the ruin of Bhakti. Anger is the ruin of Jñāna. Greed is the ruin of karma. A greedy man will not set out to do karma. For one who is angry, Jñāna does not work at all. So he kills his own Jñāna. To one full of desire, true Bhakti never comes. That is why, if we want to develop Bhakti, Jñāna and karma, we must first of all sacrifice all three, that is, the ones called desire, anger and greed. ‘One who makes such a sacrifice is a son of immortality,’ they said. So, out of what has come to us, as far as we can, with good words and keeping our wishes in check, we must take part in some worldly sacrifice. Only when we make such a sacrifice in worldly matters will this greed have a chance to lessen. So we must bring sacrifice into this kind of path.
What we need today is not publicity. Here, if the divine glory of the Sathya Sai organisations is to grow, practice is most needed. … organisations go on doing all the publicity they like. They do publicity on the radio. They do publicity on television. Besides, they go from village to village through people and do publicity. But this is not true publicity. These are not true changes. They are not true building. What changes the heart is our practice alone. Through practice it becomes possible, as far as can be, to change a man's conduct.