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This ancient insight is new knowledge for most Westerners. Returning from my first trip to Swami, I found out just how much we in the West do not understand this concept. I remember the first time a fellow psychiatrist asked, “Sam, what did you learn in India?” I promptly answered, “I learned that I am God.” I noticed that he looked at me in a very strange way. I could almost hear him say, “Dr. Sandweiss, the psychiatrist, went to India and came back thinking that he is God. Something very traumatic must have happened to him.” I saw the look in his eyes and said, “No wait! You’re God too!” That seemed to make things worse.
The belief that the body is separate from the mind must give way to realizing that the body and the mind are inextricably interwoven and reflect an underlying oneness. Just as there is no separation between an individual’s body and mind, there is truly no separation between individuals; all individuals are essentially one. Seen through the mind, the cosmos appears as many. Seen through love, the whole cosmos is one; it is God. “There are many stars but one sky, many countries but one earth, many people but one breath,” says Sai.
Sai Baba’s loving omnipresence gives us confidence in the oneness of everything, including our oneness with God. We begin to seriously consider that in all the apparent diversity and chaos there is an underlying unity, and that unity is love; that unity is God.
Mind Is a Bundle of Desires
In order to beer understand how our minds are an obstacle to realizing our true divine nature, let us look into Swami’s description of the nature of the mind.
When I presented the book Spirit And The Mind to Swami in 1985, he looked at the title and asked, “What is the mind?” Now having at least an intellectual awareness that the mind is the instrument that promotes and sustains the illusion of duality (when actually, all are one), I answered, “Swami, I think the
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