Sathya Sai Baba. Supernatural Experiences and Divine Transformation. Book One

A common feeling among new arrivals was that something unusual was beginning to happen, they could already feel their soul being filled with joy and peace. It was a truly unique experience reminisced by many. This divine vibration permeated through travelers, and people felt they were entering a special sacred place where thoughts calmed down and the whole space was filled with light.

The closer people came to the ashram, the more intense the feeling of joy and bliss became. Finally, when travelers arrived at Puttaparthi, itself, their sense of wonder reached its peak. The feeling seemed to be that this place is somewhere far away in heaven, so far it was hard to believe you were even on earth.

In India and elsewhere in the world, there are spiritual teachers who can work with hundreds and sometimes several thousands of students. As the energy power of Sathya Sai Baba is so enormous, he was able to help tens of millions of people, and in such a way that everyone felt a personal spiritual connection with him.

Sathya Sai Baba was able to change the most diverse situations and circumstances of people's lives with the help of his miraculous power. He transformed all levels of human existence. Being in close proximity with Sathya Sai Baba, people experienced subtle spiritual states. His blessings also manifested themselves quite physically: healing from serious illnesses, protection in dangerous situations, finding a happy family life, building successful business projects etc.

Sathya Sai Baba taught a person's spiritual quest must be in harmony with successful material circumstances. Very often people view the spiritual path only as a practice of prayer and meditation. In fact, everything that happens in life and everything we do are steps on the spiritual path. Good health, a happy family, taking care of one's parents and children, a successful career and business, scientific research and artistic creation are all integral parts of the spiritual evolution of man.

Unfortunately, some erroneously and artificially divide life into two separate means of existing: “spirituality” and “materiality.” Sathya Sai Baba perceived life in unity, therefore his blessings affected all levels and aspects of human existence, including, spiritual and intellectual development, as well as good health, family well-being, and financial abundance. This was also his uniqueness.

5. "My life is my message"

Sathya Sai Baba was born on November 23, 1926, in the south of India, in the state of Andhra Pradesh, in a small village called Puttaparthi. During his long life, he regularly visited various major cities in India, such as Delhi, Mumbai, and Bangalore, but he preferred to spend most of his time in his native village.

Sathya Sai Baba often repeated the phrase: "My life is my message." Of course, what Sathya Sai Baba said to visitors during personal communication, or in his lectures, is very important, but the most important aspect to me is his life, itself. It is important to understand how Sathya Sai Baba lived his life and what we can learn from him by studying his long and bright life path.

His very birth in a tiny remote Indian village is a great lesson that he gives to the whole world and to each of us. Sathya Sai Baba was born in very unfavorable conditions, but by the power of his divine energy he was able to transform everything around. Thanks to Sathya Sai Baba, Puttaparthi, a small, impoverished village eventually turned into a beautiful oriental oasis. Puttaparthi in the twenties, at the time of Sathya Sai Baba's birth, was a tiny village with a few small streets and a small population. In order to buy the most necessary things, such as a jug for water or a cauldron for cooking, local residents had to walk several kilometers to a neighboring village, which was located on the other side of the stormy and full-flowing Chitravati River. In the neighboring village there was a market on Sundays and the locals waded across the river to buy the most basic things. At that time there was not even a bridge across the river.

The nature of Puttaparthi is famous for its magnificence. The village is surrounded by mountains of extraordinary beauty. The highest mountain in the area is called Sai Kailash, which has three peaks. Dense vegetation is everywhere, and the Chitravati River flows through the picturesque valley where there are many small reservoirs and springs. It is a truly fertile land.

I think any person who comes to Puttaparthi immediately notices the stunning beauty of this place. Half of the villagers were Muslims, and the other half were Hindus. In the middle of the village was a tiny square, which has survived to this day. There were also several tiny old Hindu temples in the square. In the Islamic part of the village there was a small mosque, which has also been preserved.

I met devotees of Sai Baba who came to Puttaparthi in the fifties. They told me about how this place looked in those distant times. Almost everyone mentioned that it was extremely difficult to get from the nearest city to Puttaparthi, the wagons drove slowly along narrow and broken roads.

It does not matter where and how we begin our life path, but it is important who we are in essence.

6. Where Sathya Sai Baba is born and lives, everything begins to flourish and grow in prosperity.

Sathya Sai Baba incarnates where he sees fit. I thought a lot about this. Why did he decide to be born in Puttaparthi, in a place so unfavorable for fulfilling his great world spiritual mission? At first glance, it would be much more correct to be born in any large city, in a rich and influential family, but Sathya Sai Baba chose a different path. His parents were outwardly quite ordinary people, but appearances can sometimes be deceiving.

Sathya Sai Baba's mother, whose name was Easwaramma, dreamed of having a son and, in accordance with the tradition of her family, took a vow to perform the daily practice of the ancient Vedic ritual called Sathya Narayana Vrata, the ancient worship of the god Vishnu and the goddess Lakshmi. She performed a ritual every day in order to beg the Lord for a blessing on the birth of her son.

Subsequently, Sathya Sai Baba said that when he considered his incarnation on earth, he decided to be born in the family of Easwaramma, only for the reason that Easwaramma practiced Sathya Narayana Vrata with the deepest devotion. He saw the greatest spiritual power of this woman and her devotion with which she performed worship, and so decided to incarnate in her family.

People perform various spiritual practices, such as meditation and prayer, which no one may know about, even neighbors and relatives. Higher teachers, on the subtle plane, know about all the prayers that people perform in the depths of their hearts. What can be hidden from human eyes is revealed to the Lord, for the human heart is like an open book to God. The story of the incarnation of Sathya Sai Baba is one such example.

Sathya Sai Baba gives us the most important lesson in the history of his birth in Puttaparthi. This village was one of the poorest and most inaccessible places on earth. Any person born in such a place would be doomed to poverty and oblivion. People who are born and live in such conditions live their whole lives without any prospect of getting a good education and achieving social success. In Puttaparthi there was nothing but the most beautiful nature. The maximum that a person born in this area could count on, if he was lucky, was to get an elementary education and work all his life in rice fields or in petty trade.

Sathya Sai Baba, only due to his great divine power, became a strong magnet and attracted a huge number of people, many spiritual seekers, and gigantic financial resources. All this made it possible to build in his village the largest ashram in India, the best Indian university, a huge stadium, a modern hospital, an international airport, as well as supply drinking water to all neighboring villages. Truly, where Sathya Sai Baba is born and lives, everything begins to flourish and to flourish and prosper.

7. Little Krishna who settled in a small Krishna temple

From childhood, Sathya Sai Baba began to work miracles. He materialized sweets for neighborhood children, cured diseases, and sometimes even levitated. At first, his parents could not understand what was happening to their little son. All relatives and neighbors thought some strange spirit had moved into him, and they even tried to treat the boy for this so-called illness. Gradually, however, it became clear to everyone around him that Sathya Sai Baba was not an ordinary boy, and they began to treat him like a child with unique abilities.

One of the first significant miracles he performed was saving his village. At that time, the entire area was in the grip of a serious epidemic. The people of Puttaparthi were very worried that one day trouble might come to their house. The boy Sathya Sai Baba blessed all the inhabitants so that the epidemic passed by, and indeed no one fell ill in Puttaparthi, although many people were ill in the surrounding villages. This miracle made a great impression on all the villagers.

As a teenager, Sathya Sai Baba announced to his parents that he was a divine teacher. He said he should leave his home and start preaching. Sathya Sai Baba founded the first ashram in the late forties in a small Krishna temple located in the very center of Puttaparthi. This is a very ancient temple, which has survived to this day. The antiquity of this temple can be determined because it is located far below the level of all other buildings on this street. In order to get to the territory of the temple you need to go down the stairs. The design of the columns and stone carvings also indicate the antiquity of the structure. The temple is very small. Even a person of average height cannot stand up fully and they would need to bend down a little.

This Krishna Temple during Sathya Sai Baba's childhood was abandoned. With his friends, Sathya Sai Baba completely restored the temple and settled in it. It was in the ancient temple of Krishna that he began to receive his first visitors, who soon flocked to him for spiritual advice and healing.

In the fifties, not far from the village, at a distance of about two to three kilometers, Sathya Sai Baba founded his main ashram, which is called Prasanthi Nilayam, which means in Sanskrit – the place of the highest peace. In those years, impassable bushes grew on this territory and villagers tried to bypass this jungle side. It was a dangerous place where cobras and scorpions lived.

The first devotees, who came to this deserted place, were very surprised when the very young Sathya Sai Baba told them this place will have a large temple (mandir), a canteen, a post office, a shop, and large houses where hundreds of thousands of people from different countries of the world will stay.

People shyly listened to Sathya Sai Baba as he spoke about the coming greatness of this wild place. They did not consider it possible to doubt the words of their teacher, but they did believe with some difficulty. However, over time, all the predictions of Sathya Sai Baba came true and became a reality. I was lucky to hear stories about the founding of the ashram from the lips of those people who were direct participants in these events.

8. Sathya Sai Baba forbade the cobras to crawl into the territory of the ashram, and they went to the neighboring mountain

One of the big problems that the first residents and visitors of the ashram came across was the large number of cobras that lived in the area. Once a large cobra crawled into the ashram, frightening everyone present with its large size and hissing. Immediately, Sathya Sai Baba left his room and went to the place where the cobra was. He addressed her as if he were talking to a man and asked that all cobras immediately leave this territory and not dare cross the line as he indicated it to them. After that, all the cobras left the territory of the ashram and still do not cross the indicated line, although they could still be found outside this line.

In subsequent years, a small path was laid along this line, which ran along the border of the ashram. Many times, I passed through it and saw how the cobras crawled only in the permitted area, but never crawled into the territory of the ashram.

Believe me, these are not very pleasant meetings. On hot Indian evenings, I often walked along this dimly lit path to get to my room. Sometimes a characteristic rustling in the bushes was heard. There were cases when cobras showed themselves, but, nevertheless, they never violated and still do not violate the boundaries assigned to them. Cobras live on the mountain and do not enter the territory of the ashram.

I first came to Puttaparthi in 1993. At that time, it was already a fairly large ashram, around which a university was built, one of the best in India, two modern hospitals, a huge stadium, a museum of all religions, and even an airport capable of receiving international class aircraft. In those days, a small town grew up around the ashram, and this place could no longer be called a small poor village.

I was lucky that I traveled to Puttaparthi for twenty years, and so I was able to watch this small one-story town around the ashram grow into a beautiful oasis with a huge number of multi-story buildings. Every year more and more people came to see and communicate with Sathya Sai Baba, so the population of Puttaparthi grew rapidly.

Puttaparthi became a beautiful oriental city, before our eyes, with many good hotels, restaurants of Indian and European cuisine, and with this more and more new Kashmiri and Tibetan jewelry shops opened, as well as shops with the best Indian silk.

9. What is Darshan?

The lifestyle in the ashram was surprisingly mild and very comfortable. People were settled in simple but comfortable rooms, with those who wished to settle in more comfortable conditions in hotels outside the ashram. I was always pleasantly surprised by the fact that everyone was settled, and no one concerned themselves with asking what tradition a person belonged to, or what religion he professed.

When a person came to Sathya Sai Baba, he was always welcome, and doors were always hospitably opened before him. In other Indian ashrams, there are quite strict rules for living. In almost all ashrams in India, only those who belong to the tradition are settled.

Usually, Sathya Sai Baba recommended for people to live in his ashram for no more than two months a year, and then they could return to their homeland. He recommended people to come to him every year, but for a rather limited time. This was due to the fact that his energy was so powerful, and so it was more beneficial for most people to be in close proximity to him for no more than a month or two. Of course, there were people he allowed to stay for a few months or even a few years.

The daily program was constant and never changed, except for the days of big religious festivals such as Shivaratri or Christmas. Everyday Sathya Sai Baba went out to his audience, which was called Darshan.

The word Darshan comes from the Sanskrit word darsh, meaning, to see. This is a unique phenomenon of the Vedic tradition, the analogues of which, however, can be found in different cultures. Seeing a divine teacher is a unique experience that results in great divine mercy and grace. People came from different parts of India, as well as from many countries of the world, in order to directly meet Sathya Sai Baba and feel the boundless energy of love.

To see a great teacher directly is a life-changing blessing. It is quite difficult to talk about Darshan. In order to understand it, you need to experience it on your own. When I returned from India to Russia, my friends asked me, “why did you go to India?” I tried to talk about Darshan, but it was very difficult to explain, almost impossible. I felt that my words were powerless.

Friends told me, “we have videos and photographs of Sathya Sai Baba and therefore we can see him without leaving home. What is the difference?”

This difference can only be felt if a person has experienced this amazing sensation in his own experience. When you are in close physical proximity to Sathya Sai Baba, you get the opportunity to touch the vibrations and energies of the highest level – this is the essence of Darshan.

Sathya Sai Baba went out to the people twice a day – in the morning and in the evening. Every day, tens of thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people gathered to see him. The morning program ran from about 9 am to 11 am, and the evening program from 4 pm to 6 pm. The place where Sai Baba went out to the visitors is called the Mandir, which means temple in Sanskrit.

Those wishing to see Sathya Sai Baba usually arrived two or three hours before the start of the program and stood in line. Everyone wanted to sit closer to the path along which Sai Baba passed. The Mandir was divided into two equal parts – women sat on one half, and men sat on the other. In Indian tradition, such a division is considered natural and is not perceived in any way as a restriction on the rights of women. It is believed that feminine and masculine energies should not be mixed in the temple premises and people perceive this as something completely natural.

10. Letters addressed to God

Even when Sathya Sai Baba was very young, a tradition arose to give him letters and notes. This is a very interesting tradition, in my opinion, worthy of being told in more detail. Sometimes there was an opportunity to talk to him personally and ask questions, but a sufficiently large number of people did not have such an opportunity, since there were always a lot of visitors around Sathya Sai Baba. People wrote notes and tried to pass them directly into his hands the moment he passed by.

I think the tradition of giving letters to Sathya Sai Baba had a deep meaning. What did people write about? These letters thanked him for healing and support. Sometimes the letters contained very specific requests for help – people wrote about their problems and asked for blessings. The letters asked spiritual questions, they asked for healing, for solving family troubles, or problems related to work and business. Even though I sometimes had the opportunity to communicate personally with Sathya Sai Baba, I also wrote letters to him. Sathya Sai Baba took my letters, and solutions to my problems and answers to my questions always came.