DUAL LOYALTY issue applies to Sai orgn. & institutions people, but not to individual spiritual aspirants seeking enlightenment

Last updated on 5th Sept. 2015

I felt it appropriate to put up a comment I made in the FB post, "A question about DUAL LOYALTY related to Sai Baba(s) and my response", https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/1659088817641022, as a separate post below (slightly edited).

I think the DUAL LOYALTY issue mentioned in Swami's discourse (in the post referred above) and the one raised by some, including me, in today's context, deals with office bearers and employees of Sai organizations and institutions. Yes, there are some committed spiritual aspirants in the Sai devotee fraternity who primarily seek to be enlightened and view Swami as a spiritual master (Guru). And some among this group also have the great blessing of having enough leisure time and being materially quite well off. For these people, in this post-Mahasamdhi phase, Sai orgn. and institutions are not of so much importance, except to the extent they provide them a reference base for accessing teachings of Swami, and experiencing spiritual vibrations of places where Swami spent most of his mission-life (like Sai Kulwant Hall of Prasanthi Nilayam).

But there are many, many more devotees of Swami, who I think outnumber the above group (focused on attaining enlightenment group) by a large factor, who want to lead their family lives in an atmosphere of devotion to Swami and the values of Sathya, Dharma, Shanti & Prema. The Sai orgn. provides a great platform for such people. I personally have benefited to a great extent by the Sai orgn. platform from around 1993-94 to 2002 in the Maharahstra, India Sai orgn. It provides an AUTHENTIC source of teachings of Swami especially in the context of being in a community of Sai devotees, and provides a FANTASTIC platform to practise teachings of Swami with the support of a community (e.g. congregational singing, congregational service to the poor activities, congregational study of Sai literature).

And then there are Sai institutions in Puttaparthi and elsewhere which employ a lot of people. For these people it is a mix of a regular job as well as platform to serve Swami through the institution. I have experience of this too as I was with the Sai university (though I was offering free service I was part of the staff group and saw their work lives at very close quarters) from Jan. 2003 to March 2012. I mean, many are married, have children who need to be raised in a very (materially) aspirational India today. They are not Seva Dal offering free service, as you will not get such Seva Dal to work full time, in enough numbers, to keep the institution going.

The DUAL LOYALTY issue applies to the above groups of people, namely, office bearers of Sai orgn. (and serious members of the orgn.) and employees of the Sai institutions. As I understand it, they are the main workforce for the Sai mission of reinforcing Sathya, Dharma, Shanti and Prema in the world. In other words, they are the MISSIONARIES of the Sathya Sai mission focused on spreading these values by teaching and example. Seeking enlightenment in a very focused way, to my mind, may not be easy to balance with being a missionary of the Sathya Sai mission.

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Update on 5th Sept. 2015

This post was put up on The Spirituality Daily dated, Sep. 5, 2015, under Leisure category here: http://paper.li/GoodBlogPosts6/1316176678?edition_id=27e09270-5356-11e5-8f5c-0cc47a0d15fd.