In plain words
From somewhere came again, “Who are you?” He grew angry. He drove the cattle home. Telling his mother what had happened: “Mother! Tomorrow I will not drive the cattle out. There is a big enemy of mine out there. Whatever I say, he says the same. Whatever I sing, he sings the same and mocks me,” he said. Then his mother, giving him courage, said, “My dear! Tomorrow I too will come with you.” Next day he took his mother and went to that hilly place. He sang a song loudly. The echo was heard from the hills. “Mother! You heard it, didn’t you! Someone sings just as I sing and mocks me,” he said. Then the mother drew her son close: “My dear! You are mistaken. No one is mocking you. It is nothing but your own echo,” she said, and set his mind at rest. Like that foolish boy, man today sees ‘reflections’, takes those very reflections to be Satya, and goes badly wrong.
‘I am not the body’
If you want to see God, make firm the faith ‘I am not the body’. To think that the body is ‘I’ is mere illusion. The children must understand this well. What you see are your own reflections, not separate. You think you are seeing Sai Baba. But I am not this body. I am you, and you are I. Recognize this Satya fully. Once you recognize it, there will be no differences at all for you any more. You slapped someone on the cheek. Whom did that blow strike? It struck you yourself. You think you hit someone. Not someone: you hit yourself. In the same way, whomever you abuse, you are abusing yourself.
Everything you experience is what you have done to yourself, not what others have done. In truth there are no others at all. What is everywhere is One alone. In every person the one same principle of the Ātma shines. So, first of all, recognize your own true nature. That itself is the principle of Prema. Prema is one. The Prema we see towards the child, towards the mother, towards the wife, towards the husband, towards all these, is one Prema alone!