At the age of 14, Sathya Sai Baba declared to his parents that he had come to this world with a mission to re-establish the principle of Righteousness, to motivate love for God and service to fellow man. Since then, he has consistently called on all mankind to Love All, Serve All and has repeatedly asserted that the essence of all scriptures is Help Ever, Hurt Never!
Through his speeches and writings, Sathya Sai Baba has offered a veritable ocean of knowledge and guidance on all aspects of spiritual, religious, and value-oriented living. He has often repeated that it is not necessary to drink the whole ocean to know its taste, that it is not necessary to read all scriptures to live a life of joy, peace, and love. It is enough to put into practice one aspect of spiritual teaching.
Sathya Sai Baba says that we are all embodiments of God —we are God— and that the chief goal of our lives as humans is to realize that we are God, to experience that we are Divinity, to achieve "enlightenment". Sathya Sai Baba said in 1953 that, "there is no escaping it; all creatures have to reach God some day or other, by the long route or by the short route.” And he mentioned this topic of realizing who we really are in almost every one of his 1500-odd published discourses.
A few drops of the ocean of Sathya Sai Baba's teachings, an attempt to encapsulate its essence, follows. Sathya Sai Baba urges mankind to: