Do not run after all and sundry who repeat textbook materials and wear the cloak of fakir-hood (mendicancy). Examine their daily conduct, motives, their advice, and the relationship between what they say and do. Stick to your faith; do not change your loyalty as soon as something untoward happens or someone whispers about somebody else! Do not pull down Sai Baba’s picture from the wall and hang some other picture at your first disappointment. Leave all to Him; let His will be carried out — that should be your attitude. Unless you go through the rough and the smooth, how can you be hardened? Welcome the light and the shade, the sun and the rain. Do not think that only those who worship a picture or image with pompous paraphernalia are devotees. Whoever walks straight along the moral path, whoever acts as they speak and speaks as they have seen, whoever melts at another’s woe and exults at another’s joy — they are devotees, perhaps greater devotees.

– Divine Discourse, Feb 26, 1961.