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“That's all right,” she said, “just give me a dollar and I'll give you change.'
"No," he explained, “I do not have any money. All I have is my airplane ticket.”
"You have no money with you at all? And you traveled all the way around the world?” The woman was astounded. She was even more impressed by his calm and unperturbed manner as he met this challenge. She wanted to know more about him and what had brought him here.
He told her of the talks he had been invited to give, that The Temple of Understanding sponsoring the Conference had provided him with his ticket, and that as a spiritual teacher, he never kept any money. Just then Dr. Sethi, President of the Jain Society of New York, and Pravin Koradya, arrived to greet Gurudev and take him to Dr. Sethi's home. Within the week, Gurudev would give talks at the Consulate of India and the West Seventy-Second Street Yoga Center in Manhattan, and at Loyola College in Washington, D.C.
Before they left the airport, the young woman requested all the details of Gurudev's scheduled talks. She intended to secure time off from her work in order to fly to Boston. True to her word, she went to hear him at Harvard Divinity School and later, when he spoke in the New York area.
The Third Spiritual Summit Conference was co-sponsored by The Temple of Understanding and by Princeton Theological Seminary as an educational outreach in the form of seminars, informal seminars at schools and colleges along the East Coast and at formal meetings at Harvard Divinity School. The workshops preceding the Harvard Conference were led by one or two representatives of various religions.
The first stop in this series was at Wainwright House in Rye, New York, where a group of men searching for the spiritual foundations of their existence had formed the Laymen's Movement. Gurudev and Swami Rangānathānanda shared the leadership of the Oct. 1-3 contemplative weekend retreat. They then spent two days with students at Manhattanville College at Purchase.
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