Sri Sai Baba`S:Charters And Sayings

EIGHTEENTH TALK 363

He says:

Undertake no new worldly duties.

Well, that is clear.* You have pledged yourself, your
time and your strength to the Master's service.
Therefore you ought not to undertake some new thing
which is not actually necessary, which is not actually
your work ; and so again He says that the duties must
be clear and reasonable duties which you yourself
recognise. You must not let people force upon you
duties which you know are not yours. It is just possi-
ble that there may have been there a little personal
application, because the teaching was in the first
place given to Alcyone and with reference to his own
needs as well as to those of the pupils whom, later on,
he himself would teach. Certainly in his case there
was a good deal of that effort from without—I know,
because I was living at Adyar at the time—to force
upon him duties that were not his. Many expected
him to go on carrying out all the onerous exoteric
customs of the Hindu religion, some of which are
so complicated as to take up many hours of time
a day. I remember one thing which makes me
think that this passage referred to it. In one special
case where a whole day was to be devoted to some
sort of ceremony in connection with some departed
relation, some distant connection, I forget now who,
there were features about it which we did not quite
like, and which we thought did not look well; so