God is Love, Love is Selflessness

Dear Boys!

Accept my Blessings and Love. In today’s world, so full of people who are selfish, unloving and unloved, this brand of atheism is almost a religion.

What is the Self? Is it the self that says, "Not I?” For, if it says so, then it is the unreal Self, since the real Self has no thought of itself. The real Self is the selfless Self, the Self that has no thought either of or for Itself.

It is the Self that has forgotten Itself because somehow it remembers Itself only in others. It is the Self that seeks the truth without a thought of self because truth is Selfless Wisdom. It is the Self that is quiet because quietness is the cessation of self through the wordlessness of the mind. It is the Self in wordless meditation, because wordless meditation is the stopping of the mind through union with the Divine.

It is the Self that does not judge, does not evaluate, does not compare, does not condemn, does not separate, does not seek security of any kind and does not even seek Itself. It is the Self that has completely abolished itself and yet in a strange and mystical fashion is never more complete, never more real, never more itself than it has ever been. This is the real Self.

God is Love. Love is Selflessness. Selflessness is the abolition of all sense of selfhood and separateness, all thoughts of you, all identification with the isolative life of the counterfeit being called self. Self is separateness. Separateness is the denial of wholeness. Wholeness is God.

The denial of God is Godlessness, God privation, atheism. Atheism, therefore, as now understood, is not the denial of this or that religion, or the denial of this or that concept of God, it is rather denial of a life of love which is the nature of God. It is the assertion of the life of self which is negation of the Being of God. In short, real atheism is the denial of love, the assertion of selfishness.

The Godward process, called self-sacrifice, in its most real essence, is Love. For, God is love and love alone can lead to Him. The most Godly act is the act of love. So, the most Godless act is the act of non-Love or hate. But hate, which is separateness, can arise only when there is selfishness or self-fulness. Thus it comes to pass that the most Godless, loveless, atheistic act is the act of selfishness or self-fulness.

Love must be completely selfless to be Godward, to be Divine. It’s creation must be, “the beloved first;” its technique must be, "your happiness not mine." This way to happiness is the forgetting of oneself and the remembering of God (Sai Krishna).

Whatever we do reacts upon us. If we do good, we shall have happiness and if evil, unhappiness. Within you is the real happiness, within you is the mighty ocean of the nectar divine. Seek it within you, feel it, free it. It is here, the Self; it is not the body, the mind, the intellect nor the brain; it is not the desire nor the desiring. It is not the object of the desire. Above all these, you are. All these are simply manifestations. You appear as the smiling flower, as the twinkling stars. What is there in this world which can make you desire anything?

It is the pure heart that reaches the goal. Follow the heart. A pure heart seeks beyond the intellect. It gets inspired.

With Blessings and Love,

Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

5.8.1974

(Janmashtami Message)