In the West, it has long been the custom for girls to attend school and college and thus receive the same education advantages as boys, which prepares them to be as equally equipped to enter the work field as men.

Baba also encourages girls in India to attend school and college, to be trained as intelligent partners with their husbands and loving and wise guides to their children, thus to supply the support which their families need.

However, the two cultures are very different with respect to their living arrangements. In India, it is the custom for the members of several generations to live together under one roof, with the new bride joining her husband's family group. In most Western countries, both partners in a new marriage move out of their respective homes and set up a separate household of their own. This custom results in isolation and loneliness, both for parents after their grown children have left the home, as well as for those children, whether single or married, male or female, who are faced with the necessity of finding work to support themselves as soon as they leave school or college.

Married women, including mothers of children, often need to augment the husband's income because of the rapidly escalating cost of living. In addition, many young mothers choose to work as a relief from loneliness and being exclusively with young children all day, which is often a very difficult adjustment after the many varied activities of college. However, they soon discover that assuming the responsibility of two careers places a heavy burden on them.

In addition to the fairly recent trend to identify with men, women have also closed off their hearts to avoid being hurt, disappointed, or ridiculed, or for many other reasons. But Baba has often stated that it is only the ego, which can be hurt or upset. God, who is our true identity, is immune to rejection and lack of love. So bypassing the heart only strengthens the ego and prevents people from remembering that their real heritage is divine.

Baba also teaches that most human love is selfish and contracting in contrast to divine love, which is unselfish and expanding, thus supplying an answer to the question of what we devotees can do as individuals and as a group to alleviate the imbalance in the world caused by the "heart bypass."

We, who are so blessed by being aware of Sathya Sai Baba's advent at this time of stress, can ask Him to activate His counterpart in our hearts - through which to infuse our homes, jobs, and everyone we meet - with His expanding, unselfish love. Its healing current is the only force capable of reconnecting the world-heart, and hence our human hearts, so that love may flow once again throughout the world.

I would like to share how He taught me to set this process in motion in daily life. In March 1974, the plane in which my husband and I were flying from Bombay to London was hijacked. I thought I heard Baba's voice telling me to send love to the hijackers. They were so threatening I was utterly incapable of obeying. Instead, I telepathically asked Baba to allow His love to flow into me and I would gratefully direct it to them.

Eight years later, in a private interview, Baba's first words were "And how was the hijacking, Mrs. Krystal?" His question so took me by surprise that I was sure I must have misunderstood and asked Him to repeat it, which He obligingly did, word for word, exactly as I heard. Instead of waiting for my reply, He turned to the interpreter and said in English, "The plane was filled with My love." Then turning back to me, He continued, "Wasn't it, Mrs. Krystal?" I was profoundly grateful, after all those years, to have His assurance that I had not imagined His directions.

That situation was indeed a desperate one, but it is not necessary to wait for a crisis to force us to remember to ask Baba to beam His love through us to help to dissipate hate and negativity in the world.

Women have an important role to play on the world stage at this critical time, as Baba says that they are endowed with more spiritual assets than men. Consequently, they are better equipped for their role as purveyors of love in this love-starved world.

But we women will fail if we try to use what Baba calls contraction love. We can succeed only if, like the gopis of old, we allow Baba to fill us so full with His expansion of love that we infuse everything and everyone we meet with its healing balm, which is the only cure for the "heart bypass."