What is the Spiritual Significance of the Prashanti Flag?

Sri Sathya Sai with the Prashanti Flag

The hoisting of Prashanti Flag on the Prashanti Mandir is the Inaugural Function of all festivals celebrated at the Prashanti Nilayam. This has become an event, looked forward to with eager expectation and enthusiasm by the thousands of devotees who gather here. But, most people do not know that the hoisting of the Flag is a meaningful signal of victory, and, even, those who know, do not often recall to their minds what the victory is, that is indicated by the hoisting of this particular flag.

Of course, as all of you have realised, the Dasara Festival marks the triumph of the forces of good over the forces of evil, of Para Shakti (Supreme Divine Energy) in Her three Forms of Mahadurga, Mahalakshmi and Mahasaraswati, subduing and destroying the asuric - (demonic) embodiments of lust, greed, hate and other Raajasic (quality of pride and passion) and Tamasic (quality of inaction and ignorance) vices. 

But, what is your share in this struggle and this victory? What is the impact this ceremony should have on you? This Prashanti Flag symbolises the victory that each of you has to achieve over the demonic urges that infect and torment you. The triumph that deserves to be celebrated here by you is the one accomplished over the forces of ignorance and delusion, that, by their subtle and sinister influence veil your true nature and reality and lead you into the desert wastes of the sensory world.

The Prashanti Flag

All that are created undergo a process of change

Of what benefit is it, to know everything about the 'object,' while knowing nothing about the 'subject'? Such incomplete knowledge is of no avail at all; to boast of it is tantamount to making oneself the target of ridicule!

Examine any object of Nature; examine anything, alive or inert, in Creation. You will observe that they all undergo a process of disintegration, of transformation, of transmutation; they are never one moment what they were the previous moment! It is a flowing river, you cannot dip in the same water more than once! A seed fallen on the ground soon becomes different: a sprout! It fast becomes a sapling, a tree, with a variegated equipment of trunk, branch, twig, leaf, bud, bloom and fruit! Each of these manifestations has a distinct colour, got evidently from nowhere; it has a distinct feel, form, taste, and name, and so, it has a unique purpose and use. The seed itself disappears from the ground, but, is found, multiplied a thousand-fold in identical forms, encased in each of the thousand fruits! What a grand mystery is this!

The same heap of day is transformed by the deft hands of the potter into a vast variety of plates and pans. The one nugget of gold is transformed by the artistry of the smith into a fascinating array of beautiful jewels. These facts are within the experience of every one. The fruit, the pot and the jewel are 'effects'; there can be no effect without a 'cause.' The seed, the heap of clay and the nugget are the material causes, the gardener, the potter and the goldsmith are the instrumental causes; the manipulative causes. So far as the creation of the manifoldness of the Universe is concerned we call Him, God.

When the Cosmos manifested through the Will of God, who is the Universal Absolute, It arose from the Absolute only, since there was then, only ONE, just as even now there is only One, inspite of all this seeming variety. That Will which' emanated from the Absolute persuaded us to see and experience Many; that is all that has happened. The One Reality is still the One, it has not undergone any change. We have super-imposed on the One, the illusion of the Many!

Nature is God's Body, Cosmos is His Will

God, therefore, is the material cause as well as the instrumental cause, the gold and the goldsmith, the potter and the clay, the seed as well as the tree.. "Beejam Maam Sarva Bhootaanaam," Krishna says in the Geeta: "I am the seed of all the elements and all beings." Nature is His Body; the Cosmos is His Will; the Vedas are His Breath. The Sankhya School of thinkers declare that the objective world arose out of the conglomeration and conjunction of disparate atoms; but, they do not pursue the matter and explain what induced the atoms to join with their kind in particular designs and groups. How does this urge arise? How does this awaken, within the minute atom? Who has planted this desire in the tiny heart of the atom? These questions are by-passed.

Most philosophers especially in the West, ignore the problem of identifying the cause of all the effects we find every moment all around us. The Upanishads declare, Ekoham Bahusyam - "I am one, let Me become many," willed God; and God became all this, in response to that divine desire, the primal urge. He became all this. He is therefore the Antar-Atma (the Inner Reality); and the Antar-yaami (the Inner Motivator). The Vedas declare Vaasudevah Sarvamidham - "All this is Vasudeva, God." They all say, Neha Naanaasti, Kinchana - "There is not the slightest trace of many-ness here." Ekam Eva - There is only ONE; Adviteeyam - without a second. 

Realising and experiencing this basic Truth, becoming blissful and aware of one's native Divinity is the victory that this Prashanti Flag denotes. Have you won that victory? No. Why then. am I hoisting it for your exhilaration, on this Festival Day? I am only hoisting it to instruct you, to inspire you, and to remind you of the precious heritage of Upanishadic wisdom, that your forefathers have earned and left for you. You are basking today in the sunshine of their glory; you have the chance to live on the fortune they have left behind for their children and children's children. This Flag invites you all to share in that immeasurable treasure.

Source: Divine Discourse delivered on October 16, 1974 at Prasanthi Nilayam