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I am so glad that I learned how to meditate from a guru back in the 1970’s when people where shown and nurtured into a meditation practice for free. We were asked to donate whatever we could afford and it was okay to not donate anything at all, and still receive the gurus teachings.
There were lots of gurus back then going around the world accepting devotees for free, lots of free spiritual festivals also taking place at many places around the world. One of the ways I could tell if a teacher was qualified or not was in the experience which they imparted to their followers; especially “darshan.” Darshan was a big thing back then.
This was before computers and the internet; and it was not until the late 1990’s that yoga, meditation, and spiritual teachers became commercialized and started charging money for their services. Before then it was voluntary donations. I think it became commercialized when it spread to materialistic (mostly western) countries, and also with the invention of the internet.
Yoga and meditation was in India for many centuries and it was not about money, rather it was about devotion to a practice and a teacher. People gave generously out of love. Today it is different; Ram Dass called what we have today “spiritual materialism,” where spirituality is for sale. Anything can be justified by the mind regardless whether it is ethical or not. Yes, the universe does provide to those who are in harmony with it.
I live in the U.S., the most capitalistic country on Earth, everything here is about money and it sometimes makes me sick. Money in this world has become more important than life. People die because they don’t have money for medicine, food, or healthcare. People live in ignorance because they can not afford an education, and that has now spread to spirituality as well. On Earth money is God. That is my opinion.
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