You would not offer a faded flower to God. Likewise, the heart, which may be compared to a flower, should be fresh and devoid of impurities before it is offered to God.

 The sixth flower is tapas (austerity). Tapas does not mean forsaking wife and children and escaping into the loneliness of the forest. Real austerity is the exact coordination between one's thought, word and deed. The evil man can never achieve this; he behaves falsely to his own self. When man succeeds in this tapas, the words he utters will have such power that what he says will be transformed into mantras. Then, we have the seventh flower, dhyana (meditation). Today, there are in vogue as many systems and methods of dhyana as there are hairs on my head. Everyone describes it according to one’s own whim and fancy. Sitting quiet and transferring their emotions and feelings to God is no dhyana. They must transmute their emotions, desires, and feelings with the help of God into divine qualities. They should not bring God down to their level; they must raise themselves to the level of God. The eighth flower is satyam (truth), that which is unmodified by the passage of time. The Divine alone persists unchanged from the past, through the present into the future. When this flower blossoms in your heart it will reward you with eternal fragrance.

Bagavan Sri Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba