SAI BABA AND JESUS OF NAZARETH

May 30, 2004

Om Sri Sai Ram

By Swami Sai Sharan Anand

Sai Baba's closest parallel is Jesus of Nazareth, the son of God. Jesus, the

Christ, is believed to be the only incarnation of the Holy Spirit, in human

form who came to bring about the spiritual regeneration of mankind through the

gospel of love, faith, charity and hope. He was subjected to endless suffering,

pain and torture at the hands of the Philistines, and finally was put on the

cross and embraced death so that mankind may live and attain the kingdom of

heaven. Jesus Christ performed countless number of miracles, even the raising

of the dead so that God may be glorified. The raising of Lazarus is indeed a

classic example of his God-like power. Being the son of God, he could perform

any miracle, such as multiplying the quantity of food and curing the sick and

the diseased. In the pages of the Holy Bible, we read the numerous instances of

the miraculous deeds

of Christ, most of these being performed to glorify God and instill faith in the

minds of the people. When he resurrected Lazarus four days after his corpse was

decomposing in the tomb, he did so mainly because he wanted to show to the

sisters of Lazarus and his friends the supreme glory of the Divine. Another

reason for this interference with the laws of nature lay in his deep love and

great compassion for Martha and Mary, the devoted sisters of Lazarus. Then

there is the question of faith and total surrender to Almighty God. The

resurrection of Lazarus demonstrates very clearly the fact that faith is a

vital factor. Both Martha and Mary had expressed the view that had Jesus been

there, their brother would not have died. So Jesus, when he came to know about

the death of Lazarus, went to the place where the body had been buried in the

tomb and he called out: 'Lazarus, come out.' And the miracle took place

instantly. Lazarus came out of the grave. The fact remains that faith and

God's power may interfere with the cosmic laws and even halt or prevent death

from coming and invoke God's mercy to grant a fresh lease of life to a person.

Faith, however, does not envisage that there will be no more deaths or that

death will have no dominion. Though Lazarus was called back from the tomb, some

years later he died. Similar is the case with the aged American, Walter Cowan,

whom Sai Baba brought back to life. He also died a few years later. The

temporary respite from death enables the person to apprehend the plans of the

divine and gain some measure of spiritual illumination. However, according to

Hindu religious thought, cessation of consciousness is a karmic event and falls

in the pattern of the cycle of birth, death, rebirth. Sai Baba has said both in

his previous and present incarnations that to cure a certain person, to save

from death or to remove some inborn physical blemish would be to interfere

unduly with a person's karma. And in such cases, it

is better to leave the person concerned to bear the consequences of his karma.

Howard Murphet has rightly said:

As mankind is today we cannot expect Sai Baba or any other God-powered man to

dissolve the whole cloud of Man's kartnic sins, curing all diseases, making all

the cripples walk, cleansing all the lepers, opening the eyes of millions of

blind that exist in India alone. The most he can do is to lift a little of the

karma here and there and point the way.

And speaking about the reality and significance of the miraculous, he further says:

A God-man, a living worker of miracles, will be able through global

communications to travel the world and to make his message known to all the

people during his lifetime ... Of old this could not happen and tiding of such

amazing events reached the mass of mankind either through verbal reports or by

accounts written long after the events took place. Now the sceptic, the

doubting Thomas who cannot believe in the lesser or greater miracles can prove

their reality to himself.

If keen enough, he can visit Prashanthi Nilayam to witness them; otherwise he

can wait until Sai Baba comes to his part of the world. The miracles of Krishna

and Christ must be taken on trust or faith; those of Sai Baba you can see for

yourself.

Returning to the momentous and magnificent miracle, resurrection of the dead,

one finds some concrete and easily verifiable incidents when Sai Baba, like

Jesus Christ, has blessed his close devotees with special grace and has granted

them a fresh lease of life. It seems, this miracle of resurrection has to do

with the transfiguring power of love and works like the coming together of the

negative and positive currents of electricity. Baba has emphasized this aspect

time and again. In his interview with R.K. Karanjia, he says:

Q. You are believed to have performed miraculous cures to the extent of

resurrecting the dead. There are cases where you reportedly have saved people

from drowning and other accidents in distant places. Medical experts have

attested to remote controlled surgical operations performed by you. How do you

manage this?

Baba: By my own Sankalpa that is divine will and power. As an Avatar, this power

is intrinsic, inherent, total and natural to my will and decision. I need no

mantras (mystical formula), no Sadhana (spiritual practice) and no Yanthra

(mechanism) to perform the so-called miracles, which are natural to my state.

My powers are simply the expression or assertion of the reality of Godliness,

which merges me with everything everywhere, at all times and places. The

miracles belong to the boundless power of God. Now coming to the main points of

your question, this healing phenomenon has a dual aspect. I can cure, save even

resurrect people provided they are in a spiritually receptive condition. It is

like the positive and negative currents of electricity. My capacity to heal can

be compared to the positive current. Your devotion to me is the negative

current. Once the two

come together, the devotion provides what is called the miracle of healing.

In the days of Christ, no one asked him the rationale of his amazing and unique

miracles of healing. However, if asked, he too would have given a similar

explanation because, in the ultimate analysis, it is faith and love that lie at

the root of all miracles. Truly, miracles are wrought by faith and love. In the

case of the official's daughter, when Jesus saw her sleeping, he said that she

was sleeping; her sleep was not unto death. And he called her to wake up. And

again, in the case of Lazarus, he said the same thing and asked Lazarus to come

out of the tomb. He further said that he revived or resurrected him so that God,

the Father, might be glorified by this act. On the other hand, Sai Baba of

Shirdi always maintained that Allah was the universal master, the doer of all

deeds and thinker of all thoughts, and that he was the servant of that Eternal

Absolute. All

he could do to remove the suffering of his devotees, who had surrendered to him

and left everything to him, was to use his influence with Almighty Supreme God.

And many a miraculous cure took place. Jesus Christ also used to directly

address God, the Father: 'I know you listen to me and fulfill all my wishes and

requests.' And it was on the basis of such direct intervention that Lazarus came

out of the tomb. The point to note here is that the doer and the granter of the

boons is none other than the Supreme transcendental power. But an Avatar has

the power to operate on behalf of the one God whose attributes have been

transferred to him as a substation from the vast power grid.

The event of the resurrection of two ardent and sincere devotees, Radhakrishna

and Walter Cowan, is too well known to be described in detail. In Howard

Murphet's Sai Baba: Man of Miracles and Samuel Sandweiss's Sai Baba: The Holy

Man and the Psychiatrist, we find a full and adequate account of the

resurrection story. Here it may be enough to describe the ultimate emotional

reaction of Elsie Cowan the wife of Walter Cowan and that of Radhakrishna

himself.

Mr. V. Radhakrishna of Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh, paid o visit to Puttaparthi along

with his wife, daughter Vijaya and K.S Hemchand, his son-in-law. They were

staying in a room at the ashram. One evening, he was suddenly taken ill and

soon went into a coma. His wife immediately rushed to Swami and informed him

about the condition of her husband. Swami came to the room where the patient

was lying on the bed. Swami did nothing and he returned saying: 'Don't worry,

everything will be all right.' But the condition of the patient worsened

through the next and subsequent two days. He lay unconscious with no signs of

life, cold and lifeless. In sheer desperation and unable to withstand the

pressure of the Ashramites for taking out the body that was beginning to stink,

for the last rites, Mrs. Radhakrishna once again went to Swami's apartment and

told him all.

Swami laughed and assured her that she should have no fear and he promised to

visit her room to see the patient. Mrs. Radhakrishna, Vijaya and Hemchand

waited, desolate, tense and apprehensive, hoping for some unexpected miracle.

Swami eventually came to the room and entered the patient's room and the others

stayed out. Swami was alone in the room with the dead patient. He called others

to the room after some time and as the close kins entered the room, they were

amazed and wonder-struck to see Radhakrishna sitting on the bed, as though he

had woken up after a deep slumber. Swami turned to the wife and said, 'I have

given your husband back to you.' When questioned by Mr. Howard Murphet, Mr.

Radhakrishna narrated his experience in the following words, 'When I became

conscious again, I thought at first that it was the same day. Later they told

me it had been three days I was unconscious, that I was dead and actually

started to stink. But Swami can do anything he wishes. He is

God.'

Mr. Radhakrishna is the fortunate one who has assumed the role of a modern

Lazarus in order to remind a skeptical and faithless age of the power and

potency of God Almighty. His story has been checked and verified and found to

be correct and authentic. Mr. Howard Murphet has himself taken pains to get the

irrefutable evidence from Vijaya, the daughter of Radhakrishna.

The resurrection story of Walter Cowan is far more exciting and unique for it

illustrates what Divine love can do. It is an instance of the transfiguring and

transcendent power of love and the deathless ardor of a devotee. This time the

Lazarus in question is an American devotee, Walter Cowan of California who had

lived a noble life of service and dedication to the highest human values, work

and worship. The facts of the case are as follows:

Walter and his wife Elsie Cowan arrived in Madras on December 23, 1971. On the

morning of the 25th of December word went round that an elderly American had

passed away on account of a fatal heart attack. On hearing the news, John

Hislop, an American devotee from Mexico, rushed to the hotel and met Elsie

Cowan who confirmed the news. She narrated how Walter had suffered the attack

and breathed his last in the arms of Elsie Cowan who had prayed to Swami during

those moments of crisis and had got herself

reconciled to the reality of death and felt that God's will will be done.

However, with the help of Mrs. Roshan Lal, a devotee of Baba, she arranged to

take Walter to the hospital where the attending physician pronounced him to be

dead. In the meantime Elsie Cowan rushed to the place where Baba was attending

a function. After some time when she went again to the hospital, she found to

her dismay and pleasant wonder that Walter Cowan was very much alive. The

matter was brought to the notice of the attending physician who had pronounced

Walter to be dead and had sent the dead body to a room with his ears stuffed

and a sheet over the body as he was absolutely certain that the patient was

dead. Fortunately, the whole matter was investigated by Justice Damodar Rao and

all evidence proved that Walter Cowan who was dead had come back to life. During

the period between his death and reported resurrection, it came to everybody's

knowledge that Sai Baba had himself visited the hospital in

response to the prayer of Elsie Cowan. It is also on record that at the hospital

during the course of subsequent days, Walter's condition fluctuated and he had

several heart attacks. Elsie Cowan kept on praying to Swami, and finally Walter

was declared to be perfectly all right, hale and hearty with no trace of his

previous ailments. Discharged from the hospital, the Cowan couple proceeded to

Bangalore and stayed in a hotel. Walter Cowan's Bangalore physician conducted

his own laboratory tests and found that all tests were negative. Swami was at

that time at Brindavan, Whitefield and John Hislop, too, was there. Swami sent

a message to the Cowans through John Hislop that Walter Cowan should visit

Whitefield ashram in day time and return to the hotel to take

proper rest. John Hislop comments:

The extraordinary thing seems to be that, when the total organism that was

Walter Cowan died; the only entity that returned to life was Walter himself.

Walter's various diseases died with him, but the diseases were not reborn; only

Walter was reborn. A most marvelous and inscrutable event, is it not? All of the

foregoing does not, of course, imply that Walter's physical body had become

immortal. Of course he has had some bad days. At times, he has become

overtired, and at times has suffered perhaps because of an injudious meal.

After all, it is not a teen-aged body; it is an aged body, but nevertheless a

great miracle really happened.

Walter is alive again, free of disease and filled with enthusiasm to tell people

about the Divine presence of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

Further to celebrate the occasion of Walter Cowan's resurrection, the couple

were blessed by Baba and united in wedding ceremony which is clear evidence of

Baba's great love for the couple. To give further credence to this miraculous

event Walter Cowan has himself related his unique experience. He says :

While in the Connemara hotel in Madras, two days after I arrived, I was taken

very sick with pneumonia and was in bed. As I gasped for breathe, suddenly the

body's struggle was over and 1, died. I found myself very calm, in a state of

wonderful bliss, and the Lord, Sai Baba, was by my side. Even though my body

lay on the bed, dead, my mind kept working throughout until Baba brought me

back. There was no anxiety or fear, but a tremendous sense of well being, for I

had lost all fear of death. Baba took me to a large hall where there were

hundreds of people milling round. it was a hall where all of the records of all

my lives were kept. Baba and I stood before the

court justice. The one in charge knew Baba very well and he asked for the

records of all my lives. He was very nice and kind and I had the feeling that

whatever was decided would be the best for my soul. The records were brought

into the hall armloads of scrolls and all of them seemed to be in different

languages. As they were read, Baba interpreted them. In the beginning they told

me of countries that have not existed for thousands of years, and I could not

recall them. When they reached King David, the readings of my lives became more

exciting. I could hardly believe how great I apparently was in each life that

followed. As they continued reading my lives, it seemed that what really

counted was my motives and character, as I stood for outstanding peace and

spirituality. I do not remember all the names, but I am included in almost all

of the history books from the beginning of time. As I incarnated in different

countries, I carried out my mission which was peace and spirituality.

After about two hours, they finished reading the scrolls and the Lord, Sai Baba,

said that I had not completed the work that I was born to do, and he asked the

Judge that I be turned over to him to complete the mission of spreading Truth

and he requested that my soul be returned to the body under Baba's Grace. The

Judge said, 'So be it!' The case was dismissed and I left with Baba to return

to my body. I hesitated to leave this wonderful bliss, but I knew it was best

to complete my mission so that I could merge with the Lord, Sai Baba. I related

the story to Elsie at once, and she recorded it. I also talked it over to Baba,

and he said it was not my imagination it was a true experience. My life goes on

now under the Grace of Sai Baba, whom I adore and to whom I owe my life.

Samuel Sandweiss, writes:

After Hislop had heard Walter give this account he asked Sai Baba whether

Walter's experience was real or some sort of hallucination. Baba replied: 'The

experience was a real experience, not an illusion. It was an experience

occurring within Mr. Cowan's mind and I myself was there directing and

clarifying the thoughts.' When asked if every person has similar experience

with death, Baba said it is not necessarily so, some may have similar

experiences, some not.

Baba is the dispenser of all boons, the Absolute sole Lord of life and death. It

was chiefly on account of his love for the Cowan couple, their nobility and

purity of heart and soul that he brought Walter Cowan back to life from the

world of the dead. And actually, the resurrected Walter Cowan lived for some

more time engaged in his mission to spread peace and spirituality, doing the

work for Baba. And we have it on record that when Walter passed away a few

years later that Baba sent word to Elsie Cowan: 'Walter has reached safely'

which implied that Walter's yearning to merge with Sai Baba had been fulfilled.

Not only in the power of divinity to resurrect people from not only the brink of

death, but also from actual death, the death of the body, there is a great deal

of similarity between Sai Baba and Jesus of Nazareth. As for the outstanding

and breath-taking miracles, instances are too many and can be cited both from

the Bible and from the authentic biography of Baba and from the countless

number of accounts given by close devotees of Sai Baba. The present author has

witnessed and even experienced the working of such miracles and has been the

recipient of the Grace of Sai Baba which has affected a sea-change in his life

and has brought a new and sustaining vision of the divine essence incarnated in

Sri Sathya Sai Baba.

Sai Baba, like Jesus Christ, is a Ray from the Supreme. Incarnations, like

Krishna, Christ and Sai Baba, come after epochs. The event of their coming

marks the end of the sad, waste time, the degeneration of moral and spiritual

values and the beginning of a new age. Krishna, the full incarnation, lived

five thousand years ago and directed humanity to the pathways of peace and

love. Jesus Christ came two thousand years ago. He brought the kingdom of the

heaven on earth both by his teachings and by his own example. Sai Baba has a

more difficult and challenging task as he has come in an age of rank skepticism

and eclipse of all moral and spiritual values. But he has declared, time and

again, that the task for which he has come, will succeed and the golden age

would dawn upon the earth. He says: 'My life is my message.'

Another striking similarity between Sai Baba and Jesus Christ has to do with the

preaching of sermons. The commandments of Jesus Christ and his teachings,

specially delivered in the Sermon on the Mount contain the series of

illuminations, which are as sacred as Holy Writ. The teachings have reached

vast millions of Christians all over the world and have made Christianity the

most universal and effective of all religions. The central kernel of Christ's

teaching is the emphasis on love, faith and charity. Not that there is

something entirely new, original and revolutionary in his sermons; they consist

of, and are the concentrated essence of the eternal verities contained in all

world religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. One can find a close

resemblance between teachings of the Vedas, Upanishads, Sasthras and Puranas

and the gospel of Christ. It has been

substantiated that Christ had visited India and was conversant fully with Indian

thought and philosophy. Sai Baba has thrown an altogether new light on the life

of Christ. And he has even gone on saying that there was a deep relationship

between him and Jesus. The remaining portion of this chapter will deal with

this aspect of the close affinity between the two, as between father and son.

Sai Baba emphasizes the central unity of all religions. He says: There is only

one caste, the caste of humanity. There is only one religion, the religion of

love. There is only one God and he is omnipresent.

This essential unity of all religions is revealed by the logo seen at the

Ashram. The symbols of the five major world religions appear in the logo. They

are 'Aum of Hinduism', the 'Wheel of Buddhism', the 'Fire of Zoroastrianism',

the 'Cross of Christianity' and the 'Crescent and Star of Islam'. The symbolic

meanings of these symbols reveal and demonstrate the eternal verities of life

and man's burden of the spiritual quest.

Listen to the primeval Hum resounding in your heart as well as in the heart of

the universe; Remember the Wheel of Cause and Consequence, of deed and destiny

and the Wheel of Dharma that fights them all; Offer all bitterness to the

sacred Fire and emerge grand, great and Godly; Cut the 'I' feeling clean across

and let your ego die on the Cross to endow on you eternity; Be like the Star

which never wavers from the Crescent and is ever fixed in steady faith. The

main thrust and purpose of all religions is to make present in man his

intrinsic and innate humaneness and to take him to the heights of divinity.

Religion, in the ultimate analysis, is to enable man to get over alienation

from man, nature and God and to help him get over his loneliness.

It seems Sai Baba considers Jesus Christ to be very dear to him. The very fact

that Christmas is celebrated at Prasanthi Nilayam is a clear pointer of his

partiality towards the Christians. Although the devotees of Baba belong

generally to all the major religions of the world, the single largest groups

are the followers of Hinduism and Christianity. However, the followers of Islam

are seen in microscopic minority although some of the sincere and resilient ones

belong to that religion.

Returning to the theme of the title of this chapter, 'Sai Baba and Jesus of

Nazareth'. In their beautiful and exciting book, Sai Baba: The Embodiment of

Love, referring to Sai Baba's Christmas discourse of 1972, Ron Lang asked Sai

Baba the following question in an interview given by Sai Baba in January 1980:

'Does this omission in the Bible mean it was you who sent Jesus of Nazareth

into incarnation?' 'Yes', he replied. Ron Lang continues, 'My wife and I

gasped, although I have no recollection of this. Followed my question: which

lay at the very core of my soul: in that case, are you what Western Christians

call the Cosmic Christ?' 'Yes', he replied.

In the words of Ron Lang,

As the reader can imagine, my wife and I came out of that interview in a daze.

So Sathya Sai Baba was the one whom Jesus called the Father, the Christ indeed,

the Cosmic Christ. The second coming had come, had lived for forty-four years on

earth and perhaps only a handful of Christians were aware of it. At first, it

was too stupendous to grasp. Yet I only know that I came to believe it, and I

am reporting precisely what happened. In his Christmas day discourse in 1972 he

had given some more valuable and revealing information about Jesus Christ. He

said:

There is one point that I cannot but bring to your special notice today. At the

moment when Jesus was emerging in the Supreme principle of Divinity, he

communicated some news to his followers, which has been interpreted in a

variety of ways by commentators, and those who relish the piling of writings on

writings and meanings on meanings, until it all swells up into a huge mess.

The statement itself has been manipulated and tangled into a conundrum. The

statement of Christ is simple: 'He who sent me among you will come again.' And

he pointed to a lamb. The lamb is merely a symbol, a sign. It stands for the

voice 'Baba' the announcement was of the advent of Baba. 'His name will be

Truth,' Christ declared. Sathya means Truth. 'He will wear a robe of red, a

blood red robe. (Here Baba pointed to the robe he was wearing.) He will be

short, with a crown of hair.' The lamb is the sign and symbol of love. Christ

did not declare that he will come again. He said, 'He who made me will come

again. That Baba is this Baba and Sai, the short curly hair crowned red robed

Baba, is come. He is not only in this form, but in every one of you, as the

dweller of the heart. He is there; short, with a robe of the colour of blood

that fills it.'

Like Jesus of Nazareth, Sai Baba, too, is a Ray from the Supreme, a symbol

perfected in love. In another discourse in1972, Baba said:

People talk of the sacrifice of Christ as evidenced by his crucifixion. But he

was surrounded and bound, and crowned by the crowd who captured him with a

crown of thorns and later nailed to the cross by his captors. A person bound

and beaten by the police cannot say that he has sacrificed anything, for he is

not a free man. Let us pay attention to the sacrifices that Jesus made while

free out of his own volition. He sacrificed his happiness, his prosperity,

comfort, safety and position. He braved the enmity of the powerful. He

renounced the ego, which is the toughest thing to get rid of. Honour him for

these. He willingly sacrificed the desires with which the body torments man,

this is sacrifice greater than the sacrifice of the body under duress.

There cannot be any better and more revealing commentary on the supreme

sacrifice made by Jesus that is the renunciation of everything and the final

embrace of death and martyrdom so that mankind could live and attain the

kingdom of heaven. In this sense, the crucifixion of Christ may be regarded as

a supreme act of love and self-surrender. Only the divine which is truly the

embodiment of love could lay down his life for the good of mankind. Love is

chief motivating force behind the actions of an Avatar. Sai Baba has not

hitched his wagon to the stars; he has started his mission to bring all

humanity together under evangel news of universal brotherhood of man and the

fatherhood of God. According to him God is love and Love is God. Thus, all the

three major incarnations of God, Krishna, Christ and Sathya Sai Baba are truly

symbols perfected in love.

Jesus Christ also centres his sermons and teachings on the sublimating and

unifying principle of love. 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.' There is equal

emphasis on charity, compassion, faith and forgiveness which are the central

gems which Christianity is all about. Christ says: 'The kingdom of heaven is

within you.' Baba also stresses the idea that there is the inner divinity in

all of us and the whole purpose of the spiritual quest or Sadhana is to merge

oneself with parmatma, Being, Awareness and Bliss. A close look at Christ's

Sermon on the Mount and Sai Baba's