From the Sri Sathya Sai Global Council Zone 6 and the devotional wing, we share with you a summary of speeches by our beloved Bhagavan Srī Sathya Sai Baba on the occasion of the auspicious celebration of Mahasivaratri. With love and gratitude we invite you to internalize it and share the teachings of Sathya Sai Baba. You can follow the 2025 calendar of activities on our networks.
Extract from Bhagavan Srī Sathya Sai Baba’s discourse of 03/09/1967 Regarding Mahashivaratri:
“Let me tell you why this day is considered sacred. Today is the fourteenth day of the dark half of the month, when the moon is almost invisible; with only a tiny fraction visible. The moon is the presiding deity of the mind, which is the source of all desires and emotions that entangle it. The mind is, therefore, almost powerless on this day; and if only this night is spent in vigil and in the presence of Divinity, the mind can be totally conquered and man can make that freedom real. So every month the fourteenth day of the dark half is set aside for more intense spiritual practice, and once a year, this Great Night of Shiva, or Mahashivaratri, is set aside for the great consummation. The vigil of this night should be maintained by means of devotional songs or reading of sacred texts, or listening to the reading of such texts, not by attending movies or games or playing cards. Devote yourselves to seeing the good, speaking the good, thinking the good, doing the good; this is the programme for this night’s vigil. Make it the programme of your entire life as well.
«I Am Shiva» (Shivoham)
26/02/1987
«The state of ananda, or pure bliss, is the true nature of man.
The body of man is a receptacle designed to carefully guard a precious treasure. Legends hold that cobras guard hidden treasures. The name of the cobra that prevents access to the priceless treasure hidden in man is aham, the fascination with himself and his belongings.
In order to reach and recover the treasure of bliss, man must first destroy the serpent of egoism (ahamkara). The river is a part, a portion of the sea; it reaches its culmination when it returns to the sea and merges with its source. Fish are water. They live in water and die when deprived of it. The baby is a part of the mother. It cannot survive separated from the mother. The branch is a part of the tree. If one cuts it, it dries up and dies.
Man is a part (amsa) of God. He too cannot survive without God. He lives by the longing to know God, his source.:
In the Bhagavad Gita, the Lord declares: “All living things are parts (amsas) of Me. I am in them as the Eternal Atma” (Gita 15-7).
Man lives for a higher purpose, not to submit, like the beast, to every demand of his instinct and impulses. He must stand as the master, not crawl like a slave. He has the right to proclaim “I am Shiva” (Shivoham), “I am Achyuta” (“I am the irreducible plenitude”), “I am Ananda” (“I am bliss”).
As soon as he becomes aware of his reality, the chains that bind him, whether of iron or gold, fall away, and man attains liberation or moksha.
Two entities: the “seen” and the “seer” Divine bliss is everywhere, around us and within us. It is bliss that sustains and supports us, but this truth is hidden behind the petty egoism that drives us into the sea of storms, in order to gather on the other shore the things that apparently give the bliss inherent in them.
The man envelops the object with a layer of the bliss he has within himself, but while imbibing it, he imagines that the object itself can confer bliss upon him. In fact, it is his own bliss that he is receiving back. After a period of deep sleep, the man declares that he has had uninterrupted bliss.
The mind and the senses, even the reasoning faculty, had no contact with any object, nor did they receive any impact from objects. So the bliss, during sleep, was derived from within his own reality.
There are only two entities: the seen (drsya) and the seer (drk). The seer is the Atma, the seen is the creation. The seer is conscious; the seen or the seen is inert. As long as man is immersed in the inert and denies the Seer, (the witness or atma), he cannot escape from distress and despair.
The bait on the hook hanging at the end of the fishing rod attracts the attention of the fish and tempts it, and the fish is caught and has to give up life. The man who gives in to the desire for sense pleasures has to suffer the same fate. The rishis knew that the “seen” cannot last or bring lasting happiness. They renounced the lower desires and transient comforts. For them renunciation was the true yoga, the true path to merge with the Divine.
The Three Levels of Space in Man There are three levels of space (akasha) in man, of which two are the seen and the third is the seer. The first comprises the earth, the solar system and the billions of celestial phenomena, and includes stars whose light, though already emanated, has not yet reached this planet. To this space The physical space is called bhuta akasha or earthly space.
The second level subsumes the first and retains it in a miniaturized form. It comprises the area known and imagined by the mind and is therefore called mental space (chitta akasha). Even this area is a tiny dot when compared to the space or akasha encompassed by the Atma, which is called the space of cosmic consciousness or chitta akasha.
The other two spaces are but tiny fragments of the seer, or Atma or Brahman. The human being undertakes this journey towards bliss (ananda) which the chitta akasha can offer as its precious prerogative.
The journey does not lead outwards; it has to be inwards, towards Reality itself.
As the sun is hidden by clouds, the embers are covered with ashes, the retina is veiled by waterfalls, the mirror of water is obscured by moss, the consciousness of man is covered by a thick layer of likes and dislikes; how then can the splendor of the Atma shine through it?”
Extract from the divine discourse on the day of Mahasivaratri, 26/02/87
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