THE JOURNEY OF ‘MY DEAR STUDENTS!’...

The culmination of the Third World Youth Conference of the Sri Sathya Sai Organisations at Prashanti Nilayam in July 2007 highlighted the need for documentation of Bhagavan’s Message for the world youth, especially His students. While Bhagavan has given hundreds of Discourses to His students on innumerable occasions at Prashanti Nilayam, Brindavan and Kodaikanal over the last 3 decades, there has been limited chronological or thematic documentation of the same. The only Discourses available are the Discourses given by Bhagavan on the occasion of the 16 Summer Courses in Indian Culture and Spirituality held at Brindavan between 1972 and 2002. But besides these, Bhagavan has given many Discourses to His Students at the Institute and Hostels at Prashanti Nilayam and Brindavan, on special occasions at the Sai Kulwant Hall and the Trayee Brindavan, and of course during the most coveted Kodaikanal visits. Majority of these Discourses which were for an exclusive audience have not been documented in a book form

That is when the Journey of ‘My Dear Students’ commenced. The students of Bhagavan’s Hostel at Prashanti Nilayam embarked on the onerous task of compiling these hitherto unreleased Discourses which contained a gold mine of His Message to His students and to the world youth at large. It was a collective decision of His students to offer a compilation of 108 such Divine Discourses at His Lotus Feet on the occasion of His 85th Birthday.

The Journey of My Dear Students from Volume 1 in November 2008 to Volume 5 in March 2011 has been a very momentous and enjoyable one. We have experienced His Divine Grace working through us over the last 30 months. This offering has been possible only by His Blessings and continuous support. Bhagavan has blessed each of the volumes of this series over the last 2 years. We have attempted to present those memorable moments and a comprehensive list of all the 108 Discourses in the subsequent pages.

This offering would not have been possible without the team effort of His students from the Publications Division at the Senior Hostel at Prashanti Nilayam. Two main teams worked for this project. The first team was the Content Team. Their work included transcription of the Discourses from the original Telugu and the translator’s English, proof reading to ensure that the right context is maintained all through, editing and removing all personal instructions and guidelines or reprimands of Bhagavan which were person-specific, and formatting the content in an attractive and reader-friendly format. It is important to confess that many of the audio files were recorded using the then available recording media and as a result the sound quality was not up to the mark. Many of these were first digitised from their original audio cassette format and subsequently used. It took enormous effort to get each Discourse into its current publishable format. A rough estimate of the time taken from the transcription to the final formatting would be of about 12-15 man hours per Discourse. More so because those working on this project were His students who had limited experience in this field and were giving their best as an offering to their Most Beloved Mother Sai.

The other team of students associated with this project was the Creative Team. They added the colour and artwork to the Book. This included designing attractive and meaningful cover page designs. This also included selection of memorable photos of Bhagavan with His students and preparation of beautiful and aesthetically designed collages of Bhagavan with His students on various occasions and at varied locations. A total of 38 collages with about 200 rare photos of Bhagavan and His students have been included in these 5 volumes of My Dear Students! This team worked very hard to please Bhagavan with their work and bring forth all those cherished memories that His students had with Him. And Bhagavan always spent time looking at these collage pictures and giving His words of wisdom on many of them when He released the volumes.

The Logistics Team very meticulously maintained the stock of books and catered to the requirements of diverse groups of readers over the last 2 years and more. They also did a very commendable job with a lot of enthusiasm.

The My Dear Students Team consisted of 36 members from over 4 batches of students from 2007 to 20011 from both the Under Graduate and Post Graduate classes, who gave their best for this endeavour. The research scholars associated with the Sai Publications Division of the Hostel played a very important role in guiding the students in this endeavour. The senior teachers of the Hostel, teachers from other campuses of the Institute and the Institute administration played a very vital role in giving the much needed inspiration and guidance to the students in their endeavour to please Bhagavan. A special mention must be made of the Warden of the Senior Students Hostel at Prashanti Nilayam who gave a lot of opportunities to the students to channelise their God-given talents and capabilities into this project and give their best in order to make it a worthy offering to Bhagavan.

The readers have given their full support all through, the project would not have been sustainable without them. We are immensely grateful to them for their most valuable feedback.

We express our heartfelt gratitude to Bhagavan for giving us this life transforming opportunity of participating in this noble endeavour. We pray that He continues to bless us with many more such opportunities in the future so that we can sanctify our lives by being His humble instruments in the task for which He has descended in this human form...