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How relieved I was upon finishing. I had met my fear and survived and was still alive and conscious. I was happy and joyfully tumbled into my chair to listen to Swami’s talk. First Swami sang lovingly to the young female students, and they sang back to him, filling the room with innocent vibrant love. I was filled with bliss at being a part of Swami’s love that day—all that love.
Developing Discrimination
This story is about how discrimination develops when we engage in dharmic community-building activities. It is an example of how easy it is for even sensible, intelligent, educated people to be off balance, as we struggle for discipline and the subtleties involved in developing good discrimination.
In 1995, I was invited to a European country to speak to a large group of Sai devotees who were also psychological and spiritual therapists. I was asked to direct my comments to a problem that had developed in Sai Baba Centers. Therapists were coming to the centers and discussing their latest therapeutic techniques and encouraging people into treatment, thinking that their therapies could help devotees overcome blocks that hindered spiritual progress. Some therapists were laying on hands to free up physical, psychological, and spiritual energies. They projected the image of being gurus and of being more spiritually advanced than others, even capable of being intermediaries for Swami. Certain modern healing practices were being presented as having special power to help along the path, overshadowing the path that Swami was teaching. People in Sai Baba Centers were subtly encouraged to spend money on therapy by being given the impression that doing so would help them get closer to Swami. Sometimes study groups would focus mainly on therapeutic theories and forget to explore Swami’s teachings.
This distracting influence violated Swami’s guidance that there is no intermediary between him and devotees and that
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