Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

• FOURTH TALK 59

Now you know these Qualifications have been
stated over and over again in the various religions,
but this translation differs slightly from any that has
been given previously. In the case of the first one,
Discrimination, however, there has been very little
variation, I think. In the Samskrit it remains
Viveka. In the Pali it is Manodvaravajjana, that is
^ the opening of the doors of the mind". It is the same
thing as u conversion " in Christianity, the turning
round from a worldly life and learning to appre-
ciate the higher life—to distinguish between the real
and the unreal. But in the teachings of the Lord
Gautama Buddha, which preceded that of our present
World Teacher, this was emphasised as the firm
intellectual conviction of the worthlessness of all
earthly aims. The man, that is to say, had arrived
at the intellectual conviction that nothing which people
usually value here on earth was really worth having,
that the attempt to gain wealth, power and influence,
was waste of time, that all these things were temper"
ary, transitory, ephemeral, in fact, and that, because
of this, only the higher, the spiritual and the more
permanent things were really worth anything. It is
very much what is expressed by the Apostle, when he
says: ti Set your affection on things above, not on
things on the earth/' That is what it comes to.

I remember that in the very early days of the
Society, our Vice-President, Mr. Sinnett, put it as :

s( Giving allegiance to the Higher Self," or to the ego.