In plain words
Soft, sweet words cool the heart
Today, from village to town, there are many parties. What is the reason? This is a great disease. Because that disease has entered, unrest has spread over the whole world. ‘What is it to me what anyone thinks? What is it to me if they think what is not in me? It has nothing to do with me’: on that faith we must stand firm. A small example. I tell myself this: if someone far away, in a village or in a town, says ‘Sai Bābā with the basket of hair’, it reaches me. Because it is in me. Wherever it is said, it belongs to me. If someone comes face to face with me and says ‘bald Sai Bābā’, it has nothing to do with me. I have no bald head. Why should I quarrel with him? This is the true way. If there is some fault in you, you must accept it when he speaks of it! When it is not in you, you need not fear whatever anyone says. The young have lost such faith. Only when you foster that faith does contentment come. Let the whole world abuse you; you need not be afraid in the least. For why should you fear a fault that is not in you? People are like crows. We must not give way to excitement over any one thing. We say, ‘Śānti, Śānti, Śānti’. Why should we say Śānti three times? What does it mean? Ādibhautika, ādidaivika, ādhyātmika. Śānti of the body, of the mind and of the spirit: all three are needed. Because you are in three forms. You are not one person, but three. The one you think you are, the one others think you are and the one you really are. That is the body, the mind and the Ātma. We must have these three kinds of Śānti. That is why we say it three times. For thirty years we have been saying ‘Śānti, Śānti, Śānti’ three times, but there is no Śānti in us anywhere. We say it just like a gramophone or a tape recorder. Even as you say Śānti, you must ask yourself, “Is there Śānti in me?” A man has fought with someone. He came home in that anger. He sang bhajans. He sang even the bhajans in excitement. At the end came the word ‘Śānti’. There is no Śānti in merely saying the word Śānti. How then shall we gain Śānti?