Hello Eve,

Thanks for the post.

You mentioned the controversy surrounding Sai Baba and whether great souls can have a falling. I know from your post that you understand my response below already. It helps me to say the whole thing, though.

Nothing of the Earth plane is spiritual. Everything is Earthly. That means any individual we find out about on the Earth plane is just an Earthly being.

The spiritual or essential eternal self is aside from or outside of the Earth plane. We can access the eternal self through quieting the physical realm and allowing it to come into prominence in our consciousness. There, we are still bound by the physical realm, but are at the same moment boundless in the spiritual realm. Our insight will be contaminated by being drawn back to the physical realm even as we’re meditating and allowing the spiritual to be prominent. But we can tell what is spiritual in our intuition and insights by whether it is full of wisdom, compassion, love, tolerance, and servanthood.

When we hear the words of someone like Sai Baba or contemplate the writings, we are receiving something entirely physical. The Upanishads, Bible, and all other writings are entirely physical. Then, when we contemplate them and shut out the physical realm, they come to life and the spiritual speaks to us, on the spiritual plane. The words are fossils, dead, hard, and cold. The life that was in them when the writer wrote them isn’t in the blobs of ink on paper or vibrations of the ear in speaking. There is no spiritual life in them. But when we read or hear the words, the spirit speaks in fresh, new ways that aren’t in the words themselves. They're for us alone, individually and uniquely. That is the spiritual teaching.

Don’t invest yourself in the teacher. That’s a physical body and mind. You’ll always end up being disappointed. Instead, engage in a dialogue with the infinite with the words coming from physical people opening you up to the spiritual so spirit (the Divine, the guides, our ancestors) can inspire you and you grow spiritually. That means you might receive spiritual insights as a result of your contemplation of words from Sai Baba, Robin Williams, or even your three-year-old child. And the words could have been inspired to be given to you so you come to spirit for the unique message and guidance meant for you. But not every word from Sai Baba, Robin Williams, or your three-year-old child has spiritual intent; and nothing in the people or words themselves is spiritual. The spiritual is entirely between you and the spirit realm. All the rest is physical.

Love and peace, Craig