Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

FIRST TALK 9

great, and because, being so great, it acts upon the
mind with a kind of authority—so much so that the
thought whiah it generates is often mistaken for an
idea inspired from on high. The first pressure that
comes upon your mind is not from on high at all, it
is from a very worldly level as a rule. You must
shake yourselves free of that; shut your ears to that,
keep them open only to the sound from above, to the
voice of the Master and to His thought. It is little
wonder that, in those older days, in India and other
countries, whenever men set themselves to live the
spiritual life, the first thing they did was to get out
of the ordinary life, to go away and live in a cave or
a jungle, somewhere, by themselves. You see how
great an advantage they gained. They went away
from this pressure of opinion. They were free then
to follow their own way, much more free than we are.
What we are trying to do is, I quite admit, a much
more difficult thing. We have to attempt the same
task while remaining in the outer world, because
it is that world which we are intended to help, and to
help not from without by meditation and by thought
alone, as no doubt the hermit and the monk did, but
by actively living in it. It is a very beautiful idea, it
is a great privilege for us, but it is hard; and the
resldt of the difficulty has been that very few have
really been successful in the attempt. They have
been content to take the Theosophical teachings in
the same way that the average Christian takes the