Sri Sathya Sai Baba Centre of Calgary
SSIO Canada, Zone 1, Region 13
The difference between sakara and nirakara is the same as the difference between ice and water. - BABA
What is SSE?
Established by Sathya Sai Baba as ‘Bal Vikas’ in 1969 in India, Sai Spiritual Education program has grown exponentially around the world with every Sai Baba Center (estimated to be over 2000) conducting SSE programs for students aged 4 to 17. ‘Bal Vikas’ means blossoming of a child from a tiny bud to a fragrant and beautiful flower. A name change to ‘Sai Spiritual Education’ [SSE] was done during the Sixth World Conference of Sri Sathya Sai organizations held in 1995, to emphasize the universality of the program.
The SSE program aims to raise today’s children into citizens and leaders of tomorrow founded in values, through the concept of ‘Educare’. Sathya Sai Baba has fostered a unique approach to education called Educare, drawing out divine qualities of truth, right-conduct, peace, love and non-violence which are latent within the individual. Educare aligns the heart, head, and hands. True education must in Sai Baba’s words, “broaden the heart and expand one’s love.” True education is “that which fosters the sense of oneness, draws out one’s inherent divine qualities and promotes the blossoming of human personality.”
Educare – Guiding Principles of the term Educare, as used by Sathya Sai Baba:
Divinity is love, and it is the undercurrent of all human values.
Educare elicits the inherent human values and translates them into action in daily life.
The purpose of education is for living a fully human and spiritual life.
The end of education is character, and character manifests itself as the unity of thought, word, and deed
SSE at Calgary Sai Centre
Sai Spiritual Education (SSE) classes are offered on a weekly basis to children between the ages of 4 to 17. Trained teachers undertake classes using a syllabus that has been developed to incorporate the core teachings of Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba whilst maintaining the need to reflect the culture of the country it is being implemented in. Children are taught in appropriate groups constituting the Pre-SSE group ages (4-6),
Group 1 ages(6-8), Group 2 ages (9-11), Group 3 ages(12-14) and Group 4 (15-17). These age groups are further split into year groups to facilitate effective teaching and learning.
In a SSE class, the teacher has to use a judicious combination of the five teaching techniques as prescribed by Bhagawan Sri Sathya Sai Baba to draw out the inherent goodness and divine qualities that are within the child. They are namely –
-Prayers
-Story Telling
-Group Devotional Singing
-Group Activities
-Silent Sitting
The Aims of Sai Spiritual Education are:
“Aim of Educare is to teach the child awareness of the Self” ~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba
- To teach children to love God.
- To foster character development and spiritual transformation.
- To inculcate self-discipline and teach students ways to control the mind.
- To stimulate in children a desire to be of service to all humanity, treating all beings as God’s family.
- To instill the practice of ceiling on desires, and reverence for nature and environment.
- To train them to discriminate between right and wrong, between truth and non-truth; and to follow their conscience (Divinity within).
- To help children become aware of the Unity that underlies all Faiths and that all religions are pathways to the One God.
- To guide all children to have purity and harmony in Thought, Word and Deed.
- To develop children of character with self-confidence and self-reliance.
- To revere nature and environment as God’s creation.
“What the head thinks must be examined by the heart and then put into action by the hands. Education must broaden the vision to include the entire world and all mankind” ~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
“Godhead expresses itself initially as the five elements: the ether, the air, the fire, the water and the earth. All creation is but a combination of two or more of these in varying proportions. The characteristic nature of these five elements are: hearing, touch, sight, taste and smell; recognized by the ear, the skin, the eye, the tongue and the nose. Now, since these are saturated with the divine, one has to use them reverentially and with humility and gratefulness, to promote the welfare of yourself and others; use them with moderation and with the idea of loving service to the community, to all”. ~ Sri Sathya Sai Baba, Oct 15, 1966