When asked recently by a seeker about his mission, Baba replied, "My mission is to be a bridge between God and man, between the Universal and the individual. In the West, money has become a god. It is worshipped as the supreme value, the ultimate consideration that overrides other all other concerns in human activity. That has cast a debasing, consuming evil spell over the Western world. That dark influence is eating into the fiber of the Eastern world, too. Education has given rise to egocentric intoxication, to a deadly scientific and social hubris which destroys that which is natural in man and in our Mother, the Earth. The rich are poor in Spirit. The poor are looking for bread and are exploited by those in power, both political and religious. The Churches, Temples, Mosques, and Synagogues are, too often, preaching a dead religion based on dogma which divides humanity into tiny sects that are based on blindly followed beliefs. Most religious teachers are theologians and scholars without any direct experience of Divine Love and the Oneness of Existence.

People all over the world, rich and poor alike, are passing through a transition of human consciousness at this crucial juncture of our new millennium. My humble task is to inspire people all over the world to realize the shallowness of prejudice, dogmas, beliefs, and the narrowness of cults, groups, and the overidentification with organized religion. The world is too preoccupied with narrowly constructed beliefs of specific religions. It is time to explore the vast expansion and encompassing world of the Spirit, of spirituality unencumbered by narrowness. It is time to forego being bound by any one Book. Instead, scriptures must become the source of the inner journey, the journey home to God, which reveals the truth of the One Soul who is manifesting as many.

My humble task is to remind the poor and the underprivileged that they too are divine, with immense potentialities. It is to remind the poor -- and all of us are poor who live with limited awareness of the infinite goodness, beauty and capacities of the Divine -- that we can help each other to manifest the divine, to create wealth, and dispel the darkness of all man-made poverty, inner and outer. To beg is to undermine human dignity. My work is not charity. It is mutual self-help, developing the individual and the family and society at large as the essence of Seva -- humble, loving service to God, who has incarnated in every life around us.

My humble task is to work for inter-faith harmony so that people don't live in fear of death and destruction in the name of any faith. It is to bring peace from the shrine of the heart and make it available for all to share, so that Mother Earth can breathe in peace.

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