The Sai Spiritual Education model is an inspirational model, not an instructive one.
The Aims of Sai Spiritual Education or Bal Vikas are:
- To foster character development and spiritual transformation.
- To inculcate habits of discipline and self-discipline so that students learn to be masters, rather than slaves, of the mind and thus have absolute control over the sense organs.
- To engender in children a desire to be of service to all humanity and in this way to be of service to God by helping them to be of service to God by helping them learn about life and teachings of Swami.
- To cultivate humility, practise ceiling on desires, and render selfless service.
- To train them to be able to discriminate between right and wrong, between truth and non-truth; that is to always follow the inner promptings of the Divine.
- To help children be fully aware of the Unity underlying all faiths and all mankind.
- To guide all children to have purity and harmony in Thought, Word and Deed.
- To help children realise their conscience and follow that as the path for attaining Divinity.
- To give priority to the development of character, self-confidence and self-sufficiency.
- To foster the understanding and practice of the five inherent human values of Truth, Righteousness, Peace, Love and Non-Violence.
As Sri Sathya Sai Baba explained in straightforward terms:
“Born in society, brought up in society, educated by society and deriving countless benefits from society, what are you doing for society? Social service should be regarded as an expression of gratitude to society for what it has done for us. Without society, we cannot survive.”
Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Divine Discourse, 23 March 1989).