ANNOTATION: Elaine first met Sathya Sai Baba in 1973 and has watched his mission of love spread around the world in the past 30 years. The platform on which his astounding activities are based is fivefold: truth, right action, peace, love, and nonviolence. "Essence of Divinity" chronicles Elaine's search for a true spiritual teacher and her experiences with Sai Baba. The book also describes Sai Baba's majorservice projects: his free educational system, from elementary school to the university; his program on education in human values; his free health-care programs, which include hospitals that perform the latest heart surgeries; and his project to bring pure water to the people of the Indian State of Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere. Elaine compellingly weaves together quotes from 30 years of Sai Baba's discourses on several important issues: health care, science and spirituality,the environment, the role of women, and vedanta.

ATTAINING DIVINITY · Have you ever wondered who or what God is? · Do you have the thirst to know the supreme truth? · Do you wish to rise above lower consciousness and ascend towards divinity? If yes, then this book is your answer. The journey towards divinity (or truth or supreme consciousness) comprises of two major paths: Knowledge (gyan) and Devotion (bhakti). Actually, both are essential to reach your destination. Some people feel that knowledge is sufficient. But there is the possibility of developing an ego of knowledge and thereby getting stuck in the cosmic illusion once again. Devotion is what will help you to remain established in the liberated state. Devotion gives you the power to easily overcome the obstacles to liberation—the mind, its ego and various tendencies. It helps you to lead a truly successful and peaceful life amidst these chaotic modern times. It adds joy and music to your journey towards the supreme consciousness. With the help of beautiful stories and examples, this book tells you everything about devotion; including what is devotion, its various aspects, its numerous benefits, as well as indications on how to develop devotion and reach the heights of devotion. With practice, you progress from the first to the tenth level of devotion, where you realize that divinity and you are not two different entities—both are one. Such bliss! But you then separate from divinity once again. Why? Only because you love the experience of devotion so much! Such is the sweetness or essence of devotion.

Written seven hundred years ago, Jnaneshwara’s Amritanubhava is one of India’s greatest philosophical and spiritual writings, alongside the Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads and the great texts of Shankaracharya and Kabir. Jnaneshwara opens the spiritual perspective of Absolute Reality by dispelling any duality between our inner divinity and the individuality of our human soul. His astonishingly original discourse alternates the deepest philosophical insights with often amusing analogies to help the understanding without falling into the serious and abstruse trap of didactic treatises. Reading the Amritanubhava is, also and above all, a spiritual experience that Jnaneshawara wished for all humanity. Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi praised this masterpiece, stating that Jnaneshwara had described what happens after Self-realization.