In plain words
Beyond that, longing to do work on a lavish scale and stretching out our hands before everyone is not right for the Sathya Sai Organisation. So services that need expense we may do today if we have the strength; otherwise it is good to stop at … as much strength as we have. A small example. We need money. We go to ask for it. Of those who give, each one's mind is of its own kind. Has he put what I gave … to good use or not? I am the one who gave the money, so I must be given special value. Some such feelings, of Ahaṅkāra, or of Ajñāna, or of envy, some things of this kind are found in man. So we must see that such feelings do not arise in them. Now in the world outside many such things are happening. We see them. We hear of them. So we must take care to give such misunderstandings no room in the Sathya Sai organisations. So in money matters we must be very strict.
Satyanārāyaṇa said that each state should keep a mobile van and hold weekly medical check-ups. But in this you must take some care. Medical services are, as far as can be, bound up with the government. All sorts of organisations hold eye camps and polio operations and the like, and fail in some of them. Therefore in some states it made a rule that if these public organisations want to do such things, they must have government permission. To say that we can do it in this way without failure is not right. As far as possible, rather than our doing operations by the hundreds, for ten or twenty people, keeping it small, … through the doctors we have, without any money being spent, we may try as hard as we can to make it a success.
Within our organisations, never spoil the quality. You go after quantity, and the quality is spoiled. So in this you must consult among yourselves and decide among yourselves in what way it is best done. Many poor people cannot meet doctors and get this kind of thing done by them, so there is nothing wrong in our helping. But there is one more way we can take: if any are poor like that, you may take five or six of them and go to a doctor, and, saying we will pay the cost of the medicines, we may have them treated by doctors outside. But the responsibility we must not take. What happens through taking this kind of responsibility is that one or two fail. Then, out in the world, they will weep, ‘The Sathya Sai Baba Society had the operation done and our eyes are gone.’