You need the inner vision of the Spirit to see God. The physical eye can see only the physical world. Through a process of enquiry, you have to realize the Omnipresence of the Creator who permeates and sustains the cosmos. Wrapped up in his own ego, man pursues the will-o-the wisp of wealth, power, position, and strength. God’s Grace is needed to conquer these evil traits because they have such a powerful hold over man. When you wish to overcome a powerful enemy, you have to get help from someone more powerful than your enemy. Likewise, to overcome the power of maya, the delusion that subjects man to the physical and the sensuous, man has to seek the Grace of the Divine. Only the Divine is more powerful than maya. By surrendering to the Divine and developing a heart filled with devotion and love, one can face all the challenges of life. (Sathya Sai Baba: 5-1-87)

If you secure the Grace of the Divine, you are reinforced with so much strength that you can carry out even the most difficult tasks. So get the Lord on your side and draw upon His Grace for all your needs. The treasure that is unmistakably precious is the quality of peace, equanimity, unruffledness. Practice this and make it your natural reaction. (Sathya Sai Baba: 3 Sept 1958)

Be eager and earnest to know more and more about the art of joyful living, happy unperturbed living. One can advance only step by step and there is the danger of slipping down two steps when you climb one. What matters is the determination to climb, the resistance with which the sliding tendency is met, the yearning to rise to progress, to conquer the lower impulses and instincts. If you have that, the hidden spring of power will surge up within you; the Grace of the Lord will smooth your path. Keep the ideal before you; march on. (Sathya Sai Baba: 25 Nov 1959)

When has God’s Grace smoothed out your path in life or helped you to find strength in a difficult situation?

The Lord’s Grace is like rain, pure water, falling equally everywhere; but its taste gets changed according to the soil through which it flows. So also the Lord’s words are sweet to some, bitter to others. Like underground water, the Divine is there, in every one, remember. The Lord is the Indweller in all beings, All-pervading. He is the soul of every being. He is in you as much as in everyone else. The sun shines equally on all; His Grace is falling equally on all. It is only you that erect obstacles that prevent the rays of His Grace from warming you. Do not blame the Lord for your ignorance or foolishness or perversity. Just as underground water wells up in a gushy spring when a bore is sunk down to that depth, by constant repetition of the name of God, touch the spring of Divinity and one day it will gush out in cool plenty and bring unending joy. (Sathya Sai Baba: 12-20-58)

Devotion is the easiest way to win God’s Grace and also to realize that He pervades everything; in fact, is everything! Total surrender, leaving everything to His Will, is the highest form of devotion. Such steadfastness is needed in the path of righteousness; that alone is the sign of true surrender: “Let the Will of the Lord prevail; one’s duty is but to connect oneself with the current of His Grace.” (Sathya Sai Baba: Maha Shivarathri, 1955)

The Grace of the Lord is as the Ocean: vast, limitless. By your spiritual practice, your repetition of the Lord’s name (japam), meditation (dhyaanam) and systematic cultivation of virtue (dharma), this Grace is converted into clouds of Truth; and they rain on humanity as Divine love showers, which collect and flow as the flood of bliss, back again into the Ocean – the Ocean of the Lord’s Grace. When Divine love embraces humanity, we call it compassion, the quality not of pity but of sympathy; sympathy which makes one happy when others are happy, and miserable when others are unhappy. (Sathya Sai Baba: 24 March 1958)

What obstacles would you be willing to remove so that God’s Grace can flow freely in your life?